Beyond Violence and Non-Violence: Resistance as a Culture (Ramzy Baroud)

Ramzy Baroud -- World News Trust

July 15, 2010 -- Resistance is not a band of armed men hell-bent on wreaking havoc. It is not a cell of terrorists scheming ways to detonate buildings.

True resistance is a culture.

It is a collective retort to oppression.

Understanding the real nature of resistance, however, is not easy. No newsbyte could be thorough enough to explain why people, as a people, resist. Even if such an arduous task were possible, the news might not want to convey it, as it would directly clash with mainstream interpretations of violence and non-violent resistance. The Afghanistan story must remain committed to the same language: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Lebanon must be represented in terms of a menacing Iran-backed Hizbullah. Palestine’s Hamas must be forever shown as a militant group sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state. Any attempt at offering an alternative reading is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists and justifying violence.

The deliberate conflation and misuse of terminology has made it almost impossible to understand, and thus to actually resolve bloody conflicts.

Even those who purport to sympathize with resisting nations often contribute to the confusion. Activists from Western countries tend to follow an academic comprehension of what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Thus certain ideas are perpetuated: suicide bombings bad, non-violent resistance good; Hamas rockets bad, slingshots good; armed resistance bad, vigils in front of Red Cross offices good. Many activists will quote Martin Luther King Jr., but not Malcolm X. They will infuse a selective understanding of Gandhi, but never of Guevara. This supposedly ‘strategic’ discourse has robbed many of what could be a precious understanding of resistance -- as both concept and culture.

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Gandhi, a combat veteran, delineated between 3 levels of response to a violent confrontation which threatened one's life, family, property and even religion. "Ahimsa" was the highest level: Where one acted to counter the threat without harming the perpetrator. This resistance must be to the point of death for the one attacked, if that is what it took to eliminate the threat.

Recognizing that most people would never achieve Ahimsa, Gandhi then said the level of resistance was necessary: Where one acted with violence, if need be, to eliminate the threat. I paraphrase: "Take the man who goes furiously about, sword in hand, slaying everyone who would try to stop him. The man who would dispatch (kill) this lunatic would be held in high regard in his community." But there was the 3rd way: to stand by and do nothing in the face of the threat to you, your family, your property and religion. He termed this "cowardice."

Gandhi's philosophy has been questioned as to efficacy in all situations. King certainly used Gandhi's principles (if not Thoreau's) when organizing against apartheid in the U.S. But others, including Orwell, believe that his impact was less than thought, and sub rosa, acquiescent to British Imperialism. There is an overview of criticism of Gandhi-ist non-violence:

sehttp://www.transnational.org/Resources_Nonviolence/2007/Weber_Gandhi_critics.htmlcond

When studying at U. of Florida in 1967, I read the classic "From Race Riot to Sit-in" by A. O. Waskow. This book is about delineation as well; defining as it were the differences between sit-ins, civil insurrections (a Watts riot, say), riots, race riots and pogroms. Rose Wood would probably not be a race riot -- the invaded blacks shot back. A necessary reading for anyone contemplating methods or a "culture" of civil disobedience.

The big challenge is what constitutes "culture" or "community" at present. With the Big 3 networks shrinking, daily newspapers collapsing, mags going out of existence and even the Top 40 essentially gone, what constitutes the mass means of conveying the important cues, messages, policies which constitute a nation? The Internet? At this point, hardly. In short, what would constitute a "movement," "nation-wide" agreement on change, "sentiment" for action? Would we recognize these if we saw them?

edited for grammar

the biggest protests in world history were before the Iraq War even started, but it barely merited a blip in our media whereas a handful of mostly astroturf teabaggers are presented as populist insurgents.

The non-violence must be calibrated today. Instead of doing it to be seen resisting, you simply have to resist, stop cooperating, and find ways to throw wrenches in the machine without harming others.