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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The use of nonviolence.
Message-ID: <1086@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jan-86 22:48:01 EST
Article-I.D.: mmintl.1086
Posted: Mon Jan 27 22:48:01 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 10:51:11 EST
References: <566@decwrl.DEC.COM> <495@whuts.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 79

In article <495@whuts.UUCP> orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) writes:
>>   I agree in the use of civil disobedience.  Two of my heroes happen to be
>>Martin Luther King and Gahndi but I have a serious question that I do not
>>know the answer. How do you fight a government that does not mind killing
>>people?
>> 
>>The British for the most part where civilised an where not going to wipe
>>out the population or even try to.  The allowed constraints on themselves
>>and thus had "weaknesses" that could be used against them.  The same in
>>the US with the civil rights movement the violence got bad and some people
>>did die but the government did not openly condone it.  The courts also did
>>there best to stop such violence.
> 
>In the first place the assumed benevolence of the British in India is
>questionable.  In fact, recall that the British openly fired upon
>and massacred hundreds of Indian women, children and men at Amritsar.
>While General Dyer was tried for this crime a number of the British
>in India raised money for his retirement and as encouragement for
>proper handling of the uppity Indians.  I do not buy the oft-repeated
>argument that the British were somehow a bunch of wimps who allowed
>Gandhi to win by nonviolence because they were "nice chaps".  The
>British showed in many situations besides Amritsar that they could be
>quite brutal in conquering an Empire.  On the other hand, even the
>most brutal suffer pangs of conscience in inflicting pain upon those
>unwilling to retaliate in kind.  For one thing, one of the psychological
>points of violent subjugation, is to somehow "win" or "defeat"
>one's opponent and thereby control them.  When a Gandhi or Martin Luther
>King refuses to play by those rules by refusing to be controlled
>without responding with violence then the rulers have trouble dealing
>with it.

The issue was not the benevolence of the British *in India*.  Gandhi
managed to appeal to the British populace, and since that populace was,
as a group, benevolent, and *since it ultimately controlled the govern-
ment*, this was effective.  In the absence of a free press, the appeal
would not have been possible; without a democratic government, the
effectiveness of popular opinion would have been much more doubtful;
and without a liberal tradition in English culture, the appeal would
likely have fallen on deaf ears.

>I am not sure what can be done about widespread mass murder but a 
>society can never operate for long on such a basis.

That depends on exactly what you mean.  Societies can tolerate mass murder
of outsiders indefinitely.  Consider the Jews in Europe.  Mass murder was
practiced against them more or less continuously from the end of the Roman
Empire until modern times.  Armies in ancient times generally felt free to
slaughter the enemy population if it was convenient.  England's refusal to
use slaughter against Gandhi and the Indians was rather more a historic first
than an example of a general law.


>There was no
>violence per se that ended Stalin's reign of terror simpy his death
>and the final recognition that Soviet society could not continue on
>such a basis.

>We often tend to assume in our individualistic outlook that such
>reigns of violence are the product of one man, one demented dictator.
>But that is false.

Don't you see some contradiction between these two statements?

>A Hitler, a Pol Pot, a Stalin has no power unless
>he is able to give orders to underlings who is willing to obey him.
>If those people refused to obey, and if the vast majority of society
>simply refuse to obey then all a dictator's power crumbles.

If 90% of the population refuses to obey, but the other 10% will do
anything, and the 10% includes the armed forces, guess who wins?

Once you have fallen into a dictatorship, the only viable options are
armed revolution, outside intervention, a coup, or waiting for the
dictator to die.  Under the right circumstances, non-violent resistance
may make a coup more likely, but some minimal amount of sympathy from
the army is required before this can work.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108