Nonviolence

‘In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action.’ – Martin Luther King

Non-violence to Martin Luther King is a matter of demanding radical justice through non-violent means. Of the ‘the relentless pursuit of truthful ends by moral means’.

For him, the ends cannot justify the means – more, the ends are the means, because you cannot really expect to achieve your dreams. Thus the path must be virtue, just as the end must be an ideal, if an un-achievable one in the immediate sense.

‘The non-violent resister is prepared to suffer even unto death. He believes that by suffering alone he can bridge the gulf between himself and his opponent and reach his heart.” frames MLK in his speech-plan. He continues: ‘He aims at raising them from the destructive physical plane to the constructive moral plane where differences can be peacefully adjusted. Thus, he seeks to eliminate antagonisms rather than antagonists.’

This sentiment only makes sense in the context of his conception of humans – all humans – as possessing infinite capacities for goodness. Thus nonviolence is an appeal to that goodness. It’s an attempt not only to achieve some form of individual emancipation by transcending any form of oppression through non-violent resistance, but also to redeem the oppressor by appealing to their better nature – by shaming them by relentless non-violent resistance.

The moral-high ground of the idea is undeniable. A non-violent movement demanding justice and faced with brutality in shutting it down will always be making a powerful statement – especially in de-legitimizing those opposing them. There is no denying that violence easily becomes a loss of moral high-ground and thus, shuts off avenues of compromise and reason. In the age of media and international conceptions of human rights, and pressure there-of, non-violence cannot be considered precisely ineffective either.

It’s this issue of appealing to the better nature of your oppressor that I find questionable. Why must the onus of redeeming the oppressor be placed onto the oppressed? Leaving aside the pragmatism of non-violence in trying to appease an oppressor with a monopoly of violence such that you cannot effectively demand change through violence, non-violence as an ethic of revolution, in that it is chosen for it’s redemptive nature rather than pragmatism, seems… difficult, at best.

For one, assuming the capacity of infinite goodness in all people – including those in power seems problematic. People in power – and here I refer not just to powerful people, but also to normal people benefiting off of an underclass – can be ‘good’ and still find it eminently reasonable to maintain this power, if simply by not recognizing others as worth their ‘goodness’. If Martin Luther King says there is nothing inevitable about progress, then I’d argue that there’s nothing inevitable about goodness being touched by suffering either.

For one, have they not already suffered? Is suffering not what they are protesting, in fact? Is the difference then a sort of organised, public suffering meant to attract attention such that it is un-ignorable? Assuming the ability to shame people into doing good thus becomes a matter of manipulating the media, perhaps, and that seems like a hollow endeavor to me, stripped of its righteous rhetoric of redemption and morality. Playing the media game is increasingly messy in the modern world anyway, and it is easy to imagine non-violent protest going un-remarked and unnoticed, just as it is easy to imagine any other form of protest being deliberately painted in a terrible light. There seem to be no easy answers.

On the note of the concept of the means being as much the end as the end itself – if the end is emancipation, to assume that violence is somehow an unworthy means to that end is also very much positional. To Malcolm X, for instance, violence – if not in the carrying out of it, then definitely in the willingness to carry it out to protect yourself – was very much emancipatory in and of itself. The ability to demand the application of the same laws for yourself as for others – the right to self defense, just as if you were any other (white) person was very much a radically transformative idea – just as much as any concept of turning the other cheek – in implication being stronger, being the bigger man than the oppressor was the emancipatory ideal of Martin Luther King.

Another problem with non-violence protest is its transformation from a radical ideal to the only way of protesting. Isn’t there an issue when the oppressor can demand that any protest against oppressiveness be conducted only by non-violent means? What does it mean when the oppressed are told to turn the other cheek?

The idea of non-violence remains attractive though, especially since violence is escalating, and it never remains confined to where idealism would have it remain confined to. It is emancipatory on a very straight-forward level, however, as a way of wresting power for oneself.

As the question is not exactly an academic one, I admit that the moral high-ground, and sheer lack of violence of non-violence appeals, despite my doubts as to how fair or effective it is to shame the oppressor into compliance. It’s in the academic sense that violent, clean, straight-forward emancipation makes its appeal – and even that isn’t as straight-forward as it might appear.

In the end – there is no simple answer. And perhaps that is the answer.