Nonviolence: 25 lessons from the history of a dangerous idea

Mark Kurlansky’s magnum opus Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea has been on my reading list for two years now, but Barnes and Noble has continually thwarted me. In other news, I applied for my first real library card the other day.  Put those two things together, and I finally got to cram my head full of information on the history of this outrageously successful idea.

The book encompasses a wide range of world histories and religious text, but the bulk of it is focused on EuroChristian and American history (highlighting the constant internal battle of violence vs. nonviolence).  It is said the victors tell (or revise) the story of history, and since the victors are generally the ones with lots of guns, the outrageous success of nonviolence whenever it is tried (almost without failure) is easily put aside.  If you are interested in the history of an idea that is generally labeled dangerous, unpatriotic, foolish, and unmanly, I highly recommend this book.

And if you’ve ever heard about how Christianity was 100% nonviolent and opposed to all things warfare in its early days, and you wonder how we got here from there, this book is an excellent case study.

The Twenty Five Lessons

*Kurlansky’s own words in italics

1.  There is no proactive word for nonviolence.  Not in any language or culture or religion.  The idea is untried enough that there has not been a need for a positive word that is not the mere negation of another that is often used (-violence).

2.  Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.

3.  Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.

4.  Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.

5.  A rebel can be defanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.  Ghandi was a nice old idealist.  Jesus was interested in saving souls.  King was a good guy for a time back when America still had racism.  Martin of Tours, sainted because of this soldiers unwillingness to fight anymore, is made into a patron saint for the US Army.  If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel.

6.  Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.  Historically, the most typical lies have included that the war is “defensive” or for “freedom/liberty.”  The enemy is enshrowded with rumors and conspiracies; he thinks of nothing but evil and will not stop without a violent intervention.  The enemy leaders don’t think like civilized people do.  We had no fault in the matter, of course.  But whatever it is, there are always lies.

7.  A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings. When you see allusions to the past with vague and grandiose descriptors like “evil” or “madman,” you will soon be committed to war.

8.  People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.  It’s no secret that one wrong turn tends to justify another in our minds.  No where is this truer than when your purpose in a war zone is to break and hurt.

9.  A conflict between a violent and a nonviolent force is a moral argument.  If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, the violent side has won. There are lots of stories in history where a nonviolent movement became fed up and took a violent turn.  They all die out remarkably fast at that point.

10.  The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power. It’s been observed that all men with power want one thing more than all else: more power.  And once power is gained by a person or a state, anything will be prepared for, done, and justified to defend that status.

11.  The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes. People tire of violence and become disappointed with how different and fruitless it is compared with the promises the people buy before a war.

12.  The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force. We are capable of some beautifully brave and powerful things, but we are so trained to think of real power as force, a strong power over people to have our way.  The state is particularly prone to this impairment.

13.  It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails. In America’s memory has generally forgotten that nonviolent religious sects far outnumbered those calling for independence from Britain without violence.  But the nonviolent sects were quite silent, hence they lost the fight for violence and were forgotten by history.

14.  All debate momentarily ends with an “enforced silence” once the first shots are fired.  A great violent tragedy or first skirmish effectively marginalizes any voice calling for peace without violence.

15.  A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.  If a revolution can be made to include a war, the post-revolutionary power will have no problem framing violence as necessary for peace in the minds of the general public.  It is no coincidence that countries birthed without violent  revolution tend to put much less emphasis on militaries.

16.  Violence does not resolve.  It always leads to more violence.  Wars create “peace,” which is merely a veneer for an armistice lasting a few years until unresolved tensions mutate into new alliances and wars in different (usually, not always) regions.

17.  Warfare produces peace activists.  A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.

18.  People motivated by fear do not act well.

19.  While it is perfectly feasible to convince a people faced with brutal repression to rise up in suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance. This is a significant reason why a brilliantly successful strategy of nonviolence is so rarely tried.

20.  Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all-volunteer professional military.

21.  Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper,” without limits.

22.  Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation- which is only dismissed as irrational if the violence fails.

23.  Violence is a virus that infects and takes over. Seeing the continual failure of violence to establish peace has not lead to less violence; it has lead to more.  In the past 6,000 year, there have been approximately 50 years untainted by war, and the trend is growing.

24.  The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.

25.  The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.

On the immorality of total pacifism and the superiority of active and creative nonviolence, one unmanly, foolish activist once said:

“The kind of pacifism that does not actively combat the war preparations of the governments is powerless and will always stay powerless.  Would that the conscience and common sense of the people awaken!”

-Albert Einstein

It reminds me of prophets that dreaming of a day when a just people would beat their swords into plowshares as we realized that redemptive violence becomes an illusory myth in time, that a people who lives by the sword will die by the sword, and that it is far more disarming to love enemies than it is to mirror them!

blessed are the peacemakers

Jon Stewart interviews an Israeli and a Palestinian on their efforts to bring more peace to the region.  Anna Balzer and Mustafa Barghouti discuss their efforts modeled on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s doctrine of non-violent revolution.  They discuss occupation, homeland insecurity, and the political and religious resistance to dialogue.   And Joe Wilson interrupts…

Part 2 here

Thoughts on violence from the WWII priest who blessed the atomic bombs

This i shameless plagiarize from a like-minded brother.  Provocative thoughts on war and hell and violence and non-violence, from a Catholic priest on Tinian who blessed epic violence and now offers his thoughts.  I wish i had seen this in time to post on the recent Hiroshima anniversary, as this man has much more to contribute than i did.   Read before commenting…

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This is from Father George Zabelka who in 1945 blessed the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before you begin reading, read this: If you do not read every word of this note- Do. Not. Comment. No skimmers deciding what I need to know before hearing me out. Period.

“These are good words by the way. If the length of this troubles you, I feel sorry for you. Hopefully you’re not the kind that reads John 3:16 once a week instead of reading through entire sections of scripture. You should learn to read. Take the time to look over this and let a brother in Christ (Zabelka) convict you.”- Cody Sandidge

The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the Church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians – and I said nothing. As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary – told openly by the military and told implicitly by my Church’s leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.) I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan. His example and his words of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This brought me face to face with pacifism – active nonviolent resistance to evil. I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this blew my mind. He said, “Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head of our white brothers.” I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear: “Love your enemies. Return good for evil.” I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.

For the last 1700 years the Church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie. War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the Church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived, and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies.

For the 300 years immediately following Jesus’ resurrection, the Church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the Church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community. Yet the Church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians.

Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic. Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and his teaching, they couldn’t fail. When opportunities were given for Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army, these opportunities were rejected, because the early Church saw a complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.

Today the world is on the brink of ruin because the Church refuses to be the Church, because we Christians have been deceiving ourselves and the non-Christian world about the truth of Christ. There is no way to follow Christ, to love as Christ loved, and simultaneously to kill other people. It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit. It is a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It is a lie to say that learning
to drive a bayonet into the heart of another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.

Now, brothers and sisters, on the anniversary of this terrible atrocity carried out by Christians, I must be the first to say that I made a terrible mistake. I was had by the father of lies. I participated in the big ecumenical lie of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches. I wore the uniform. I was part of the system. When I said Mass over there I put on those beautiful vestments over my uniform. (When Father Dave Becker left the Trident submarine base in 1982 and resigned as Catholic chaplain there, he said, “Every time I went to Mass in my uniform and put the vestments on over my uniform, I couldn’t help but think of the words of Christ applying to me: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”)

As an Air Force chaplain I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang “Praise the Lord” and passed the ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.

All I can say today is that I was wrong. Christ would not be the instrument to unleash such horror on his people. Therefore no follower of Christ can legitimately unleash the horror of war on God’s people. Excuses and self-justifying explanations are without merit. All I can say is: I was wrong! But, if this is all I can say, this I must do, feeble as it is. For to do otherwise would be to bypass the first and absolutely essential step in the process of repentance and reconciliation: admission of error, admission of guilt. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. I was there, and I was wrong.

Yes, war is Hell, and Christ did not come to justify the creation of Hell on earth by his disciples. The justification of war may be compatible with some religions and philosophies, but it is not compatible with the nonviolent teaching of Jesus. I was wrong. And to those of whatever nationality or religion who have been hurt because I fell under the influence of the father of lies, I say with my whole heart and soul I am sorry. I beg forgiveness. I asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas (the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings) in Japan last year, in a pilgrimage that I made with a group from Tokyo to Hiroshima. I fell on my face there at the peace shrine after offering flowers, and I prayed for forgiveness – for myself, for my country, for my Church. Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This year in Toronto, I again asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas present. I asked forgiveness, and they asked
forgiveness for Pearl Harbor and some of the horrible deeds of the Japanese military, and there were some, and I knew of them. We embraced. We cried. Tears flowed. That is the first step of reconciliation – admission of guilt and forgiveness. Pray to God that others will find this way to peace.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace. It is only the governments and war departments that promote war and slaughter. So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard. We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and religious. They will move when we make them move. They represent us. Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and security of one country. All countries are interdependent. We all need one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There’s no question about that. We’ve got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.

The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing of Hiroshima. By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but we still dropped it. We knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue, and we also knew – at least our leaders knew – that it was not necessary. The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not able to hurt you, you must make peace.

Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus. As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And yet I said nothing. Thank God that I’m able to stand here today and speak out against war, all war. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke out against all false gods of gold, silver, and metal. Today we are worshiping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust in physical power, militarism, and nationalism. The bomb, not God, is our security and our strength. The prophets of the Old Testament said simply: Do not put your trust in chariots and weapons, but put your trust in God. Their message was simple, and so is mine.

We must all become prophets. I really mean that. We must all do something for peace. We must stop this insanity of worshiping the gods of metal. We must take a stand against evil and idolatry. This is our destiny at the most critical time of human history. But it’s also the greatest opportunity ever offered to any group of people in the history of our world – to save our world from complete annihilation.

U2 goes green for Iran

U2 made a lot of commotion in religion-land a couple years ago when it started pushing the “Coexist” theme with the song “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” Bono, the prophet from Dublin, is quite possibly the 4th member of the Trinity, and he knows it. He caught flack when in the breakdown of the song, he wrapped around his forehead a banner with the word “Coexist” (C for the Islamic cresent, X made to look like the Jewish Star of David, and the T for the cross of Christianity) and sund “Jesus, Jew, Mohammad, it’s true.. all sons of Abraham… father Abraham, look what you’ve done, you’ve pit your son against your son.”

People got worked up about it, of course. I don’t think he meant to sound syncrotistic, but that was the charge nonetheless. Religions are more than beliefs; they are cultures too. And these three religions happen to be responsible for an enormous amount of violence in the world today (especially the two on either end). I think the prophet from Dublin was calling for coexistance of people groups, rather than the charged syncrotisazion of all religions. Just my two cents.

“Sunday, Bloody Sunday” was about a religiously fueled skirmish between Protestants and Catholics that left a good number of people bleeding in the streets. Bono adapted the theme in light of the Christian/Jewish/Islamic violence after 9/11. And then this thing in Iran popped up on the radar.

I’ve been tracking this ordeal in Iran. Bono, in fact, has been calling me for advice on the matter, and I told him to do this:

And on Iran, I’m quite surprised the protest does seem to be flickering out. There’s been a lot of blood, but Mousavi is still alive (for now, at least). But Iran’s theocracy has been challenged in a severe way, and this is a novelty. They are on a course for change, and it is only a matter of time. It’s important to note though, that Israeli or US military action will have the blowback of empowering the hardliners, and likely secure the theocracy, undoing the good from this novel challenge to power. There may be no easy way to get around this fact, but if our leaders take us to war, I hope they keep this very much in mind.

Islamo-fascism (points for pundits and death knells to critical thought)

You know what term has been getting under my skin recently?  It’s one that I hear flare up as a battering ram every time there is talk of ending the Iraq War or giving some sort of court process to the guys we hold in Gitmo.  And recently, I’ve heard a lot of people locally come out swinging with the term, what with the shooting of the recruiting soldier here in Little Rock last week.

Islamo-Fascism has been that term for me as of late.  Maybe it’s evidence that I’m getting way to hung up on my politics and social justice rants, but nevertheless, someone has to utter that word every time there emerges evidence that some (*gasp*) in the Islamic world are not fans of the US.  You hear it from right-wing pundits nonstop. What does it mean?  If you answer “I don’t really know,” you are pretty close.  If you answer “it actually means nothing,” I say you are right.

I wonder why we don’t hear about Christiano-facists???

I, for one, was hoping this Islamo-fascism term would go out of fashion with the end of the previous administration.  It was probably too much to expect, but the mention of the term has at least subsided significantly.

As far as I can tell, “Islamo-fascism,” a term came onto the scene in force during the Bush era, was a improper and educationally lacking neologism used to sway public opinion.  There is evidence of the word being sparsely used before this point, but it was post-9/11 that it became a media-savvy, household term.  And a compliant media made it oh-so-trendy to talk about.  There are two words run together to create a term synonymous with “terrorism,” but is also used to reductionistically label any possible enemy so long as he is Muslim.

Short history lesson:

If we started popularly using this term “Islamo-fascism” right after the 9/11 attack (when anti-Muslim hysteria was sweeping the media and culture) then it is easy to see that the prefix “Islamo-“ is not at all neutral.  It means “bad” in this case.  The suffix of the term is generally a bit more vague to people.  What is fascism, you may ask?  Well, the truth is that historians have argued about the meaning of the term “fascism” for decades and have reached no conclusion.  It emerged in the early 20^th century Italy to describe a government structure that had no distinguishing feature other than a name.  Italy’s dictatorship was really nothing new.  Italy even used the term for years before she even came up with an actual definition for herself (because then, like today, nobody really knew what the term “fascism” meant).  Mussolini favored keeping the term as vague and open to interpretation as possible in order to encompass as many people as possible.  Actually, when other nations started considering adopting a form of fascism after Italy, the Italians objected saying that it was only an Italian thing.  I write all this just to expose some of the ridiculous nature of the term itself.  We can say that there are some common traits, that sometimes reoccur in nations that called themselves fascists.  But even then, most of these tenants are so vague (suspicion of Marxists, suspicion of liberal democracies, support for the military, vying for national supremacy) that it could just as accurately (which is not much) be said that the average Christian in America is every bit as much fascist as the average al-Qaeda unit.

So if the term “fascism” is fully known to historians and the academia to mean nothing consistent enough to merit it’s vogue usage, why then would an administration or the media latch onto it with such tenacity?  Because it’s a pejorative term that is vague enough to pass for a quick label, I suspect.  At a time when “Islam” meant “bad,” and if a vague term like “fascism” always means bad, and we have historically always tried to kill any fascists, and if we want the public to hop on board with killing any opponents without thinking all that hard first, then let’s run the terms together.  That way, we can label something that we don’t think people need to adequately understand in order to take position on.  It makes sense if you are trying to build a public consensus, doesn’t it?  I think those in media and in popular culture who continue to use the term are sadly buying into an packaged term with an etymology they are ignorant of and with implications they have not really thought out.

But the truth is that it is so poorly reductionistic.  When I hear the term “Islamo-fascist” used over here, it makes me feel the same way I do when I hear a Palestinian refer to Israelis as “Zionists” or when I hear Muslims refer to “militaristic American imperialists.”  When you reduce the Other to a simple term, you dehumanize him in some sense.  It becomes easier to say things like, “Some people can only be dealt with one way.”  And we know what one way means (hint: doesn’t involve civil discourse).  It makes me sad that Palestinians reduce Israelis to mindless “Zionists” who can only be dealt with one way; it makes me sad that several Muslim groups reduce us to “militaristic imperialists” who can only be dealt with one way; and it makes me saddest of all when I hear Americans, specifically Christians (who should know better than to reduce people into easy categories), reduce certain Muslim peoples to “Islamo-fascists” who can only be dealt with one way.

I have no problem with someone labeling me an American.  But if they reduce me and my whole tribe as just a bunch of militaristic imperialists, without considering any of our perspectives or differences among us, then that is immature.  It is the same issue we are guilty of if we were to reduce any militant Islamic group to “Islamo-fascists,” with no consideration that they may have any legitimate grievance at all.  A mark of maturity is being able and willing to see through the eyes of the Other.

It is so, so easy to think that there is only one way to deal with a problem.  It is shockingly easy for us to reduce people to simplistic categories and never even consider that the Other has any legitimate grievance.  And in case we are not clear on this, yes, it’s safe to assume that anyone we can an opponent has at least some legitimate grievance against us.  But we can label them easy, point-scoring terms so that we don’t have to see them as worth speaking with.