Removing Dictators is Just a Start

Transcript

Greetings everyone. This is Michael Nagler with your Nonviolent Movement for December 10 of 2024, and possibly, our last episode for this year.

And I'd like to share with you some inspiring documents, some testimonia about nonviolence in a particular tradition – in the Quaker tradition. And at some later program, we'll probably look at this whole question of how nonviolence keeps raising its beautiful head in the whole Christian tradition. It keeps being put down and comes back again.

But for now, I just want to look at a great human being who was one of those who rediscovered the nonviolent teaching of Jesus, or the nonviolent Jesus himself. And that was, of course, George Fox. Who, in the 17th century, started what now has become the Quaker movement. They call themselves the Society of Friends. But because they used to go into kind of tremors of excitement while communing with the Lord, they were disparagingly called Quakers and Shakers by other people.

And they did something that is often done in nonviolence. You adopt with pride the apparent insult that's being offered to you by an opponent. So, I don't want to go on and on with this. Let me get to an important statement by George Fox himself. And these statements will all be directed to the question of war. Here's George Fox.

“Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace and ensue it,” I’m not sure what that means, “ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all.

“We know that wars and fighting proceed from the lusts of men,” that's a quote from James, “out of which desires and the Lord hath redeemed us, and so also out of the occasion of war. The occasion of which war and war itself wherein envious men who are lovers of themselves more than lovers of God, kill and desire to have men's lives and estates, all bloody principles and practices.

“We, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny with all outward wars and strife, and fightings, with outward weapons for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.”

So, that is the ringing declaration by George Fox, which was repeated in 1887. It was revisited by a large group of Quakers in Indiana – Richmond, Indiana. And that led in 1887 to what they call the Declaration of Richmond, which is a much longer document. It covers all the aspects of Quaker belief and practice.

But I want to read you again just the part that pertains directly to war. Quote, “We feel bound explicitly to avow our unshaken persuasion that all war is utterly incompatible with the plain precepts of our divine Lord and lawgiver, and the whole spirit of his gospel. And that no plea of necessity or policy, however urgent or peculiar, can avail to release either individuals or nations from the paramount allegiance which they owe to him who has said, quote, ‘love your enemies,’ unquote.

“And in joining this love and the forgiveness of injuries, he who has brought us to himself has not prescribed for man precepts which are incapable of being carried into practice.” Now that is extremely important. Let me repeat it. “He who has brought us to himself has not prescribed for man precepts which are incapable of being carried into practice, or of which the practice is to be postponed until all shall be persuaded to act upon them.”

In other words, you don't wait until the other person drops violence and adopts nonviolence before you adopt it yourself. Okay, going on with the quote, “We cannot doubt that they are incumbent now and that we have in the prophetic scriptures the distinct intimation of their direct application not only to individuals, but to nations also. When nations conform their laws to this divine teaching, wars must necessarily cease. We would, in humility, but in faithfulness to our Lord, express our firm persuasion that all the exigencies of civil government and social order may be met under the banner of the Prince of Peace, in strict conformity with his commands.”

So, these are very important declarations of nonviolent faith that say that no matter what the excuses have come along, you know, we have to save the world for democracy or whatever, it can be done. They may be met. These demands may be met under the banner of the Prince of Peace.

And, of course, this leads to a consideration of one of the classic questions that constantly comes up in nonviolence, an objection that people will instantly raise. And it's perfectly natural for them to do it. And we must be able to address it calmly and respectfully.

And that is, quote, “It never would have worked against Hitler.” Now, that was addressed directly by Ralph Summy, who was an Australian theologian, peace activist who wrote a very important article called Nonviolence and the Case of the Extremely Ruthless Opponent.

Well, we have a case of an extremely ruthless opponent who has just fallen not to nonviolence, but to violence. And I'm talking, of course, about the abdication of the role of Hafez al-Assad in Syria, that he was unfortunately vulnerable to this label, extremely ruthless opponent, I think we have no doubt now. I'm not going to go into the ghastly details. But the question, the challenge, if you will, that's before us now is could nonviolence actually have been applied in that regime, in such a regime?

I'm going to argue that it could have. And I want to take a look at, how it would have worked. Well, of course, the ideal is to have started early, maybe in year one of this 13-year regime. Or maybe even sooner, maybe to build democratic institutions that would make it impossible for such a regime to take hold. Wouldn't that have been a glorious conclusion?

And our friend Mubarak Awad, a very important Palestinian peace activist, pointed out to me many years ago that democracy was not common among the regimes of Arabic states. Which is kind of curious because democracy as a social style internally in a domestic regime was famously practiced by, for example, the Muslims in India, that they didn't practice the kind of caste hierarchies that Hindus did.

So here you have this peculiarity that they had the infrastructure of a democratic regime, a democratic principle in their society, but somehow that evaporated when they became a nation state. And that's not uncommon, as we see throughout the world that, as Max Weber pointed out, the definition of a state is that entity which has legitimate, or it's given legitimate authority to wage war, to commit violence, to commit death.

So, here's back to my question. How could it possibly have worked in Syria? Well, in the Metta Center, we have developed a model called the escalation curve. And that shows that at the very early stages of conflict, nonviolence can be applied, can be practiced without too much risk, without too much suffering. But as conflicts become more bitter, more dehumanizing, the requirements on us, if we want to practice nonviolence against them, become more and more difficult.

So, what could they have done if they had started at an early stage of the escalation curve in Syria? One thing they could have done would have been to gather resources. I mean, for example, we have the overthrow of Milosevic in former Yugoslavia. You have a successful episode that involves a certain amount of nonviolence, and out of that, you bundle it up and carry it forward for other organizations.

And of course, what they could have done was reached out to UCP organizations. That is organizations that have – there are now about 20 of them, which carry out what's called Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping around the world.

Now, this institution of Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping is a basic underlying principle, but it always has to be adjusted to local conditions. And in particular, in a regime like the Assad regime in Syria, you would have to be careful to avoid the label of foreign influence. That is that this is not a native, an Indigenous uprising. You're bringing in foreigners to tamper with our country. And these extremely ruthless opponents, they will really be looking for an opportunity to label you as being under the influence of foreign parties.

So, while you're gathering resources, maybe inviting in an unarmed civilian peacekeeping organization, you have to make it perfectly clear that this is home based. And I think, for example, this was well done in Egypt in their version of the Arab Spring.

Now, there's another consideration here, which is very important and happily can be dealt with very conveniently. That is the belief which turns out to be false, that unlike Hinduism, unlike even Christianity, nonviolence is not a requirement, is not applicable, it's not something that you can do in a Muslim context.

And of course, we have the outstanding example of Bacha Khan, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who launched constructive program among the Pathans of North West India, as it was then, is now part of Pakistan. And he formulated an organization called the Khudai Khidmatgars, or the Servants of God. And at their height, they had somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 people.

Now, you have to realize –  while this was going on, I went out to a shop on the north side of Berkeley campus who I knew was – the shopkeeper was Islamic, and I knew that he was actually from that area. And so, I talked to him about this uprising, and he said, “You know, there's no one more Muslim than your Pathan.” They were very, very mainstream Orthodox, if you will, Islamic people, extremely committed, extremely devoted to the faith. And there they are, suddenly adopting nonviolence.

And doing that before the influence of Gandhi had actually been directly felt, though, you know, it must have been percolating around. But Abdul Ghaffar Khan himself did join with Gandhi, and that was quite a spectacular, combination that they were able to mount.

So, what are we saying here? Start as early as you possibly can. Gather resources, learn the history of nonviolence around the world. With some care, bring in unarmed civilian peacekeeping organizations, at least for training.

Then one thing that you must do is start to educate your own people. And, of course, that's tricky because, you know, they have to know what democracy is and how to get it started. But the regime is often extremely sensitive to this, and may, and may, indeed crack down. And that's exactly what happened. In the case of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, he started his career by starting schools. And the British, who were in charge, the Raj had not been displaced by any means by then. This is the early ‘20s, up to the ‘30s. They called him in and said, “You can't do that. You can't start schools in your own country.”

So, this is an example of the paradox of repression. You push people into a corner where they either have to let you do what you're doing, which will get them out of power eventually, or they have to stop you in a way which is going to make them look very bad. It's one thing if you're, you know, throwing rocks and things like that, but it's another if you're starting schools or spinning cotton. And they have to step in and say, “Hey, you can't do that.”

So, this is point three – educate your people and prepare them. Get them training in nonviolence. And then finally start organizing the people into cadres, as I think did happen in Cairo. It's a good idea to set up redundant networks. It's a good idea to plan for all contingencies, knowing that there will be suffering and death along the way. The longer you've waited, the more there'll be. And knowing that that suffering and death can become meaningful. So, it's not something that's thrust upon you all unwilling but rather something that you adopt willingly in order to achieve a goal.

Now, I've mentioned planning for all contingencies, and one of the contingencies that nonviolent movements often forget to plan for. But is really quite important, is the contingency of success. All right. So, you have gotten the dictator out of power. Then what happens? And that is often a very, difficult moment in the whole nonviolent episode. This is a real – where the nonviolent moment really comes in.

If you have planned to bring in alternative institutions ahead of time, and you can do that, you’re home free. The problem has been solved. But often enough, this is not the case in real life. People respond, they react to oppression, it goes too far.

And as sociologists say, like Ted Gurr, people will put up with an awful lot of oppression or from pressure that they will not put up with being made destitute. You know, when their children are starving, they can't take it anymore, they fight back. At this point, they react.

And even if they react without overt violence so that we can call it a strategic nonviolent uprising, they need to have something prepared to take its place. Otherwise, and I think we've seen this in the Arab world, you get rid of one dictatorial regime, and the next thing that comes in is equally, if not more, autocratic.

So, that's how it could have been done in Syria. And it could have been a classic case of nonviolence against an extremely ruthless opponent. What we have to cope with now is what has actually been done, what is the training and the attitude of the people who carried out this, quote unquote, “successful uprising.”

Successful in the sense that it “worked,” recurring to another, topic of nonviolence as developed by the Metta Center. It worked. It did what it was supposed to do. But did it really introduce another kind of force, another kind of power? That, at this point in Syria, remains to be seen.

But I think the important point that I want to leave us with is, and this was made by one of the earliest theorists of nonviolence, Adin Ballou in the US, that nonviolence really comes into its own against a ruthless opponent because of that paradox of repression and the unpopularity of ruthlessness, and people not liking to be oppressed after a certain point.

So, I think this is an outline of how that could have been done. And, you know, possibly we will see more of this going on forward in the future.

I would like to leave you now with a couple of resources that have become available. One is at the Annenberg School of Communication in Pennsylvania, which has been a leader in the study of the effects of violent media.

They have now actually looked into the possibility of nonviolent media. They created a five-minute video which, bolstered integration efforts between former enemies, even Palestinians and IDF soldiers. Imagine, just in five minutes, you're able to sweep away what has happened, what has been done to people for – well, for decades.

And in the Annenberg School, there is now an institution called the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab. We are really going to look into this at Metta because we do believe that the marriage of science – modern science, with the theory of nonviolence, is going to be a powerful one.

And finally, another great resource, this time from Pace e Bene, our Franciscan activist friends, they have created a Nonviolence Guidebook. And what I want to say is, it looks wonderful. I haven't actually reviewed it yet. I have a strong feeling that I'm going to love it, and that you are going to love it also. And that it will have done, in its time, a lot of good in this world.

So, let's talk about that next time – the Nonviolence Guidebook that's now available from Pace e Bene. Until next episode, friends, have a wonderful nonviolent season. Thank you for listening.