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Nonviolence the Superior and Sustainable Path
The best way to
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militarism
T OM H. H ASTINGS
Democracy,
said
Winston Churchill, is
the worst form of gov-
ernment—except for
all the rest.
This is also true for
nonviolence. When people are
victims of injustice, especially
a violent injustice, a violent re-
sponse is easy to justify. “I’m not
going to sit still while someone at-
tacks me,” is quite reasonable.
But the consequences of our
actions are worth considering. If
our violent self-defense or defense
of others actually makes the out-
comes worse, we should think it
through. Almost invariably, non-
violence is the worst response—
except for all the rest.
It is most instructive when ana-
lyzing this question to ask, “What
is the goal? How did we fail to
achieve it? How did we succeed
in achieving it?” When we follow
the trail to the eventual outcome,
we learn that nonviolence is, by
far, the superior and sustainable
path.
BY
Often it’s helpful to ask the
counterfactual. What if Rosa Parks
had punched the bus driver in the
nose? She may have gotten a few
oth
others
to also get physical
an violent, but she never,
and
ev would have generated
ever
na
nationwide
sympathy and
th public policy changes
the
th ensued.
that
What if Cesar Chavez
ha approved when his mi-
had
gr
grant
farmworkers fought
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attacked by white members of
the Teamsters union? They might
have beaten down some bullies—
and never generated the wide-
spread direct support of main-
stream Americans that enabled
their victories.
One must wonder about the
counterfactual operating in the
other direction. What if Mus-
lims opposed to US military aid
to Egypt and to the Saudi royal
family—two regimes who may
be Muslim but who use US mili-
tary aid to oppress their own peo-
ple--had devised and conducted
a purely nonviolent campaign to
challenge that policy? Instead we
saw Osama bin Laden declaring
all through the 1990s and beyond
that US support for corrupt Mid-
dle East regimes made him and
his followers enemies of the US.
We saw what they did on Sept. 11,
2001.
And what if Hamas were com-
pletely nonviolent, staging peace-
ful demonstrations in opposition
to Israeli domination and oppres-
sion? What if they made a special
appeal to US citizens based upon
their nonviolent suffering and re-
sistance to Israeli injustice? What
if they demonstrated the same
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African Americans did during the
Civil Rights movement and asked
the US citizens to oppose US mil-
itary aid to Israel?
The research is clear, insofar as
it goes. We have barely begun to
perform massive, empirical stud-
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chosen to wage them, but again
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ing that the record is clear. By the
numbers, nonviolence is the best
chance to achieve stated goals. It
is also faster, and involves much
lower costs. Much.
When we hear someone say
that guns helped the Civil Rights
movement to succeed, or that vi-
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that burning down buildings in
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attention, let us bear in mind the
outcomes. The US Civil Rights
movement achieved gain after
gain for about 10 years, from Rosa
Parks to the Voting Rights Act,
1955-1965. Then riots and armed
black power self-defense began
and the gains all screeched to a
halt and stayed halted to this day.
Nonviolence is lousy for those
whose emotional needs for bloody
revenge and catharsis are higher
than care for actual results. This
is understandable. This is even
MXVWL¿DEOHLQPDQ\FDVHVLQPDQ\
philosophies. But it fails, general-
ly speaking, again and again.
The best way to move our hu-
man rights, civil rights, justice
and freedom desires forward is for
good people to get involved, be
both nonviolent and disciplined,
and to insist on the public policy
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and serious problems, from racism
to militarism.
Is this easy? Nope. If it were, I
would be reporting that it had all
been worked out and solved. But
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again and again in our US history.
Our best hope is to reward nonvio-
lence and to participate in it.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is core
IDFXOW\ LQ WKH &RQÀLFW 5HVROXWLRQ
Department at Portland State
University and is founding direc-
tor of PeaceVoice.