Helpful_hank Writes About Nonviolence

I’ve never protested in the street about anything. I have to admit, the ghastliest encounters I’ve ever had have been with strangers on Internet forums. But setting aside my personal triumphs, there is a form of protest that I deeply admire, for the sole reason that I am incapable of ever facing an opponent in this way. In my current state of relying too closely on my fight-or-flight instincts, mustering up the rationality, courage and perseverance required to face terror in the face and react with nothing but love is something I will gladly leave to the experts.

Anyway, here is a perspective on non-violence that I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling upon.

From reddit.com…

Nobody understands nonviolent protest.

Nonviolent protest is not simply a protest in which protesters don’t physically aggress. That is, lack of violence is necessary, but not sufficient, for “nonviolent protest.”

Nonviolent protest:

• must be provocative. If nobody cares, nobody will respond. Gandhi didn’t do boring things. He took what (after rigorous self examination) he determined was rightfully his, such as salt from the beaches of his own country, and interrupted the British economy, and provoked a violent response against himself.
• must be certain not to justify the violent reactions they receive. It cannot succeed without rigorous self-examination to make sure you, the protester, are not committing injustice.
• “hurts, like all fighting hurts. You will not deal blows, but you will receive them.” (from the movie Gandhi —one of my favorite movie scenes of all time )
• demands respect by demonstrating respectability. The courage to get hit and keep coming back while offering no retaliation is one of the few things that can really make a man go, “Huh. How about that.”
• does not depend on the what the “enemy” does in order to be successful. It depends on the commitment to nonviolence.

A lack of violence is not necessarily nonviolent protest. Nonviolence is a philosophy, not a description of affairs, and in order for it to work, it must be understood and practiced. Since Martin Luther King, few Americans have done either (BLM included). I suspect part of the reason the authorities often encourage nonviolent protest is that so few citizens know what it really entails. Both non-provocative “nonviolent” protests and violent protests allow injustice to continue.

The civil rights protests of the 60s were so effective because of the stark contrast between the innocence of the protesters and the brutality of the state. That is what all nonviolent protest depends upon — the assumption that their oppressors will not change their behavior, and will thus sow their own downfall if one does not resist. Protesters must turn up the heat against themselves, while doing nothing unjust (though perhaps illegal) and receiving the blows.

“If we fight back, we become the vandals and they become the law.”  (from the movie Gandhi)

For example:

How to end “zero tolerance policies” at schools:

If you’re an innocent party in a fight, refuse to honor the punishment. This will make them punish you more. But they will have to provide an explanation — “because he was attacked, or stood up for someone who was being attacked, etc.” Continue to not honor punishments. Refuse to acknowledge them. If you’re suspended, go to school. Make them take action against you. In the meantime, do absolutely nothing objectionable. The worse they punish you for — literally! — doing nothing, the more ridiculous they will seem.

They will have to raise the stakes to ridiculous heights, handing out greater and greater punishments, and ultimately it will come down to “because he didn’t obey a punishment he didn’t deserve.” The crazier the punishments they hand down, the more attention it will get, and the more support you will get, and the more bad press the administration will get, until it is forced to hand out a proper ruling.

Step 1) Disobey unjust punishments / laws

Step 2) Be absolutely harmless, polite, and rule-abiding otherwise

Step 3) Repeat until media sensation

This is exactly what Gandhi and MLK did, more or less. Nonviolent protests are a lot more than “declining to aggress” — they’re active, provocative, and bring shit down on your head. This is how things get changed.

The concept of nonviolence as it was conceived by Gandhi — called Satyagraha, “clinging to truth” — goes far deeper and requires extraordinary thoughtfulness and sensitivity to nuance. It is even an affirmation of love, an effort to “melt the heart” of an oppressor.

But now that you’re here, I’d like to go into a bit more detail, and share some resources:

Nonviolence is not merely an absence of violence, but a presence of responsibility — it is necessary to take responsibility for all possible legitimate motivations of violence in your oppressor. When you have taken responsibility even your oppressor would not have had you take (but which is indeed yours for the taking), you become seen as an innocent, and the absurdity of beating down on you is made to stand naked.

To practice nonviolence involves not only the decision not to deal blows, but to proactively pick up and carry any aspects of your own behavior that could motivate someone to be violent toward you or anyone else, explicitly or implicitly. Nonviolence thus extends fractally down into the minutest details of life; from refusing to fight back during a protest, to admitting every potential flaw in an argument you are presenting, to scrubbing the stove perfectly clean so that your wife doesn’t get upset.

In the practice of nonviolence, one discovers the infinite-but-not-endless responsibility that one can take for the world, and for the actions of others. The solution to world-improvement is virtually always self-improvement.