tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/non-violence-32312/articlesNon-violence – The Conversation2023-06-21T03:35:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2080292023-06-21T03:35:40Z2023-06-21T03:35:40ZEat, Pray … Boycott? Elizabeth Gilbert’s withdrawn novel is a valid act of cultural resistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533038/original/file-20230620-19-i2zb96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2333%2C1819&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elizabeth Gilbert at the European premiere of Eat, Pray, Love, London, September 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jeffers/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elizabeth Gilbert, the celebrated author of <a href="https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/eat-pray-love/">Eat, Pray, Love</a>, has cancelled her latest novel, The Snow Forest. Planned for publication in February 2024, there is now no release date. </p>
<p>Gilbert declared that her decision to suspend publication was out of respect for her (potential) Ukrainian readers, who had taken to the review website Goodreads to express their sorrow and displeasure at the news that The Snow Forest was set in Russia. </p>
<p>The act of self-cancellation raises some interesting questions. Gilbert’s novel is apparently set in the mid-20th century in Siberia and concerns a group of people who decide to remove themselves from society to resist the Soviet government and defend nature against industrialisation, so it potentially has some important messages for modern audiences. </p>
<p>Some have <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/15/uivc-j15.html">described</a> the self-cancellation as being prompted by “a few hundred people participating in a stage-managed event … a fascistic minority … obeying the instructions of various far-right nationalist outfits”. The novelist Francine Prose has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/15/elizabeth-gilbert-the-snow-forest-russia">expressed concern</a> that Gilbert is caving to online bullying.</p>
<p>Others argue that writing a work of historical fiction that humanises Russian people does not amount to taking sides in a war. Rather, they see objections to the novel as <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/eat-pray-love-author-cancels-herself/ar-AA1cDmC5">sadistic online shaming</a> – motivated not by real concerns to help a marginalised group, but by a desire to cause pain to someone else (in this case, Gilbert). </p>
<p>On the other hand, Gilbert’s action and the arguments of those calling for the cancellation of her novel can be seen as part of a long tradition of boycotts, divestments and sanctions – a strategy that has often had significant symbolic and cultural components, and has often proved effective. </p>
<h2>Non-violent resistance</h2>
<p>The strategy of non-violent non-cooperation has a long history. It was a feature of American colonists’ struggle against British rule, and India’s independence campaign, during which Indians boycotted British goods and made their own instead. </p>
<p>The struggle against South African apartheid was largely won not by violent resistance, but through international campaigns that isolated the regime. These boycotts were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/23/israel-apartheid-boycotts-sanctions-south-africa">cultural, economic</a> and <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/10/nonviolent-strategy-training-won-key-victory-anti-apartheid-sports-boycott/">sporting</a>. The sports boycotts, in particular, caused <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781403915917_14">social and psychological pain</a> and eroded the ideological foundation of the apartheid system. The stigma of being citizens of a pariah state contributed to a large section of the white population supporting reforms. </p>
<p>Czechoslovakian resistance to Soviet occupation in 1968 involved leaflets in Russian, German and Polish explaining to the occupiers that they were in the wrong. Secret radio stations broadcast advice and resistance news. Street signs were changed. People on the streets of Prague wore Czech flags on their lapels. These actions were combined with protests, blockades and sanctions. In the end, both sides compromised, but the ground was laid for even bigger non-cooperation later.</p>
<p>In the mid-1980s, the people of the three Baltic countries under the yoke of the Soviet Union – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – began gathering in their thousands, and eventually hundreds of thousands, to sing banned patriotic songs. They raised outlawed flags and held music festivals in what became known as the <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/estonias-singing-revolution-1986-1991/">Singing Revolution</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Baltic Way, August 1989.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kusurija/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>In 1989, more than a million protesters lined up to form the “Baltic Way” – a continuous human chain that stretched 675 kilometres through the three Baltic states. The protest, <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/how-a-photographer-captured-the-1989-baltic-way-protest-from-above/30119472.html">photographed from above</a> by an activist journalist, was pushed into international headlines. In the summer of 1991, the Baltic states declared independence from the Soviet Union, which collapsed a few months later. <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA198-3.html">Civilian resistance</a> has been an official part of Lithuania’s defence strategy ever since. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.2008.00488.xth">Symbolic protests, humour, satire and rock concerts</a> were also important in the student-led <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/otpor-struggle-democracy-serbia-1998-2000/">Otpor!</a> movement in Serbia which, helped by the West, successfully deposed pro-Russian president Slobodan Milošević.</p>
<p>Similar tactics helped pro-West activists in Ukraine’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orange-Revolution">Orange Revolution</a> in 2004. They adopted orange as a unifying colour across the country, and eventually deposed pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-russias-war-against-ukraine-one-of-the-battlegrounds-is-language-itself-201170">In Russia's war against Ukraine, one of the battlegrounds is language itself</a>
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<h2>The battleground of culture</h2>
<p>Suzanne Nossel – chief executive of PEN America, an organisation that advocates for free expression, defends writers and fights censorship – has called Gilbert’s decision to withdraw her novel “<a href="https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-regrettable-that-elizabeth-gilbert-delayed-publication-of-new-novel-set-in-russia/">well-intended</a>” but regrettable. “Fiction and culture are essential to supporting mutual understanding and unleashing empathy,” she argues: “literature and creativity must not become a casualty of war.”</p>
<p>However, Nossel also admits culture is not just caught in the crossfire; <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/16/ukraine-russia-fight-cultural-erasure/">it is itself a battleground</a>. The war in Ukraine is being waged through “propaganda, intimidation, false narratives, and a campaign of cultural annihilation”. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda offensive has helped keep many Latin American, African and Asian nations neutral; weakened the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns; and kept China on side. Culture, says Nossel, must be mobilised as a “wellspring of defence”.</p>
<p>Since the invasion of Ukraine, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c74781a7-2bce-4031-9a41-732106905aee">creatives there</a> have protected galleries, museums and collections. They have used writing, dance, fashion, film, painting and poetry to assert their national identity and desire for peace. At the same time, they have cleared ruins and helped with repairs. </p>
<p>Some Ukrainians have even used brave forms of symbolic resistance on the front lines, such as singing and chanting. One woman confronted Russian soldiers and tried to put sunflower seeds in their pockets, explaining that flowers would grow when they died on Ukrainian soil. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/today-is-not-my-day-how-russias-journalists-writers-and-artists-are-turning-silence-into-speech-185120">'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech</a>
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<p>These types of protests, if repeated, can weaken the soldiers’ resolve, make them reluctant to shoot, and even cause <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/02/ukraine-secret-weapon-civilian-resistance/">mass mutinies and defections</a>, as happened during the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. </p>
<p>In Russia, hundreds of thousands of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/09/russia-brutal-arrests-and-torture-ill-treatment-anti-war-protesters">peace activists have protested</a> with signs and chanting in the streets. More than 13,500 have been arrested. Thousands of Russian <a href="https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/webinar_registration_russian_war_resisters?utm_campaign=vhlo&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nonviolenceinternational">writers, journalists, war evaders and conscientious objectors</a> have fled to countries across Eurasia. </p>
<p><a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/03/facing-severe-repression-russians-turn-to-antiwar-graffiti/">Subversive street art</a> and graffiti critiquing the war have spread across Russia since the Kremlin cracked down on anti-war protesters. Posters, stickers, coded messages on social media, emojis, weblinks and QR codes have been used to organise and resist creatively within a repressive regime.</p>
<p>All of this <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/03/5-ways-to-support-courageous-nonviolent-resistance-in-ukraine/">non-violent cultural resistance</a> complements the practical measures taken against Russia, which have included frozen bank accounts, blocked online propaganda, disrupted technology systems, and trade restrictions. According to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/01/young-russians-putin-digging-his-own-grave-ukraine-sanctions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">young Russian anti-war protester, Sergey Faldin</a>: </p>
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<p>When sanctions bite and hard times hit the country, people will lose their fear. Then Putin will be finished.</p>
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<p>Cancelling the publication of one novel may seem like a small gesture – one that is insignificant when compared with the power of missiles, tanks and a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-21/us-arms-industry-military-spending-profits-ukraine-war-russia/101843752">booming arms industry</a>. But words and ideas underlie all actions, and many small, diverse actions can add up. </p>
<p>Gilbert’s act of solidarity with the people of Ukraine has sparked debate and made a contribution to international non-violent resistance through boycotts and cultural means. In its small way, it does help the causes of peace and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marty Branagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to cancel the publication of her latest novel needs to be understood in the context of a long history of symbolic protest.Marty Branagan, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of Peace Studies, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1998632023-04-24T20:05:48Z2023-04-24T20:05:48ZSpying, sabotage, subversion, people-smuggling: the brave women who resisted the Nazis through non-violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522279/original/file-20230421-26-a6fs2k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Many people think Nazi Germany was beaten only through military violence, and mainly by men. As Barack Obama <a href="https://fpif.org/a_lesson_on_nonviolence_for_the_president/">said in 2009</a>: “Nonviolence could not have halted Hitler’s armies”. In fact, non-violent action was widely used <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/non-violence-against-nazis-interview-with-george-paxton/">in resisting Nazism</a>. Brave women often led it. They later got little recognition, though this is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48658137-josephine">now changing.</a></p>
<p>Women in nations such as France, Germany and Holland gathered intelligence, founded resistance groups, published underground media and coordinated people-smuggling operations. Some engaged in sabotage. Their networking and people skills were invaluable, and their lack of visibility under a sexist regime was an asset. Some of these brave women sacrificed their lives for the cause.</p>
<p>It is useful to consider their impact today and how such female-led, non-violent movements might help people around the world resist dictatorships and invasions, such as in Ukraine. </p>
<p>Some German women used overt, concentrated tactics – such as those who were thrown into jail for speaking out against Hitler, and <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-rosenstrasse-demonstration-1943">the “Rosenstrasse” group</a>, who protested in Berlin in 1943. These non-Jewish women shouted for their Jewish husbands to be set free, despite the threat of being machine-gunned. Amazingly, they succeeded – at least <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14781159408412772">in the short term</a> – with about 2,000 men released. Most of these men survived the war. </p>
<p>Resistance campaigns ranged from those waged by individuals to those involving large sections of the population. For example, about 10,000 Norwegian teachers, supported by around 100,000 parents, successfully resisted <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/non-violence-against-nazis-interview-with-george-paxton/">the Nazification of schools</a>. <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/dutch-citizens-resist-nazi-occupation-1940-1945">Dutch strikes</a> in 1941 and 1943 involved hundreds of thousands.</p>
<p>But secret, dispersed tactics were more common. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-nonviolent-resistance-is-a-brave-and-often-effective-response-to-aggression-178361">Ukraine: nonviolent resistance is a brave and often effective response to aggression</a>
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<h2>Pioneer daredevils</h2>
<p>Many women excelled at gathering and communicating intelligence. Frenchwoman Ruth “Malou” Altmann reported on German conversations overheard on trains, bistros and streets, and the messages she heard on secret radios, about matters such as troop movements. With her <a href="https://mhm.org.au/books/malou-french-resistance-fighter/">excellent German</a>, her information was always exact and often very important. She memorised things such as the layout of a town hall so other resistance members could raid it for ration tickets. Travelling unnoticed by bike, with her three-year-old daughter, she avoided suspicion. </p>
<p>US citizen <a href="https://www.virago.co.uk/titles/sonia-purnell/a-woman-of-no-importance/9780349010168/">Virginia Hall</a> had a fake leg and battled sexism to become the first Special Operations Executive (SOE) liaison officer of any gender. The <a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/SOE">SOE was a volunteer force</a> set up to work with resistance groups in occupied societies and boost their morale.</p>
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<span class="caption">Virginia Hall receiving the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CIA/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Hall infiltrated Vichy command to get information on Nazi activities in France. She was a pioneer of spying, sabotage and subversion in an era when women were rarely thought heroic. Hers was a very modern form of resistance, based on propaganda and creating dissent within to topple a regime.</p>
<p>Underground media spread information to wide audiences to counter Nazi propaganda. German posters were torn down, and walls plastered with graffiti and stickers. Messages were typed on banknotes, which were scarce and rarely destroyed. </p>
<p>Flyers were written by Sophie Scholl’s <a href="https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/defying-hitler-the-white-rose-pamphlets">White Rose group</a> and posted around the country. Scholl was a kindergarten teacher, philosophy student and daughter of an ardent Nazi critic. She founded White Rose with her brother Hans and a group of like-minded friends in 1942. </p>
<p>She and Hans were arrested after dropping flyers into a courtyard at a Munich university. Convicted of high treason by the Nazis, she was executed in Munich on 22 February 1943, aged just 21. </p>
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<span class="caption">White Rose group members Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
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<p>Traute Lafrenz, the last surviving member of the White Rose, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/traute-lafrenz-the-last-of-the-white-rose-anti-nazi-resistance-dies-aged-103">died last month</a>, aged 103. </p>
<p><a href="https://museedelaresistanceenligne.org/media1893-Charlotte-Nadel">Charlotte Nadel</a> was from a family of Russian immigrants to France. A librarian at the Sorbonne University, she became co-founder of the resistance group Défence de la France. Within two years, their publication grew from 5000 basic flyers to a newspaper with 150,000 copies. Although caught and imprisoned, Nadel was freed in August 1944 and kept resisting. </p>
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<span class="caption">30 September 1943 issue of the Resistance newspaper, Défense de la France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>The Germans knew how important this underground media was. It corrected false stories, exposed the truth about roundups, recruited people into the Resistance, and encouraged them to act. Punishments for resisters included being sent to a concentration camp, or executed. </p>
<p>There were other dangers. Marie Servillat (alias “Lucienne”) had her arm crushed in a printing press for the underground newspaper Combat. In 1944 she was shot in the chest and legs and taken by the Gestapo to a hospital, but later escaped.</p>
<p>These newspapers gave the impression of <a href="https://ignatius.com/a-noble-treason-notp/">a much larger movement</a>. This was a clever tactic later used by the <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/otpor-struggle-democracy-serbia-1998-2000/">Otpor movement</a> to end the Milosevic regime in Serbia. </p>
<p>Papers like Femmes Françaises asked mothers to protest for more food rations. On Bastille Day 1944, women were urged to place red, white and blue flowers on war monuments and march to the town halls demanding bread. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/resistance-9780747596745/">Agnès Humbert</a> had studied at the Sorbonne and was a writer and historian at a Paris art museum. After the German invasion, with many men in prison camps, she became one of the first resistance leaders. She called one early flyer: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a glimmer of light in the darkness … Now we know for certain that we are not alone. There are other people who think like us, who are suffering and organising the struggle: soon a network will cover the whole of France, and our little group will be just one link in a mighty chain. We are absolutely overjoyed!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Underground media depicted the Nazi regime <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-french-resistance-olivier-wieviorka/6713786?ean=9780674731226">as lying</a>, irrational, not natural, and vulnerable. It painted the Resistance as reasonable, sensible and rational. </p>
<p>Such media made resistance leaders think deeply, sort out their strategy, and speak clearly to the general public, who had to be persuaded before they would act.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-lockdown-protester-in-germany-has-caused-a-furore-by-comparing-herself-to-an-anti-nazi-hero-151148">A lockdown protester in Germany has caused a furore by comparing herself to an anti-Nazi hero</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Hiding and smuggling people</h2>
<p>Women led smuggling operations, <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/category/gene-sharps-198/140-hiding-escape-and-false-identities">hiding Jewish people</a> and other evaders from the Holocaust. Individuals like young Dutchwoman <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/seducing-and-killing-nazis-sophie-poldermans/book/9789083003405.html">Hannie Schaft</a> hid people in their homes. </p>
<p>Groups like the National Movement Against Racism, led by <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/codename-suzette-anne-nelson/book/9781925266207.html">Suzanne Spaak</a>, a wealthy Belgian based in Paris, smuggled many children to <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/village-of-secrets-9781473513037">remote villages</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521772/original/file-20230419-23-gvtlwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suzanne Spaak.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women also kept downed airmen, agents and escaped prisoners out of prison, helping them return to active service. At first impromptu, this aid soon turned into a complex set of escape lines involving about 10,000 helpers. </p>
<p>60-year-old Marie-Louise (code-named “Françoise”) Dissard took over one escape network. She found guides and safe houses. She bought food, civilian clothing and medical supplies. She opened her small flat as a headquarters. To get money, she went to Switzerland, climbing barbed-wire fences and dodging border guards. </p>
<p>Women, says <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Women-Resistance-Margaret-L-Rossiter/dp/0030053390">historian Margaret Rossiter</a>, “took a keen interest in helping [airmen] return to their bases, while many Frenchmen were involved in sabotage and guerrilla operations”. This shows how women and men worked differently in the Resistance, women mainly working in non-violent activities. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1190&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1190&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521777/original/file-20230419-22-41cvqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1190&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An undated image of Nancy Wake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some women, like Australian <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/nancy-wake-russell-braddon/book/9781542021661.html">Nancy Wake</a>, who was married to a rich French businessman, moved between non-violent and violent tactics. Wake began as an ambulance driver who fed prisoners of war. She then led escape lines, and was herself rescued from prison after beatings and questioning. After becoming an SOE agent, she went back to France to train and supply large resistance groups.</p>
<h2>Sabotage</h2>
<p>Resistance leader Agnès Humbert was arrested in 1941. Working as a slave in a German prison, she lifted her spirits by slowing the making of cloth and crates: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>After every successful act of sabotage my heart feels lighter. It’s a sort of rite of atonement for me, between me and my conscience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Polish-born <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16045166-the-spy-who-loved">Krystyna Skarbek</a>, aka Christine Granville, served longer than any other of Britain’s wartime women agents and became famous for her bravery. Resourceful and effective, she gathered intelligence in Hungary, Poland and France. She also wrecked German communications, and destroyed barges carrying oil from Romania to Germany. </p>
<p>These women worried about violence and felt moral concerns. Said Wake,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hate war and violence but, if they come, then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Teenaged resister <a href="https://www.accidentaltalmudist.org/heroes/2020/04/29/girl-with-a-gun/">Simone Segouin</a> was from a French farming family near Chartres. At 14 she was helping her father shelter and feed resistance members. She became a courier, riding a repainted bike stolen from Germans, in the guise of a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/02/22/simone-segouin-french-resistance-dies/">sweet-faced farmer’s daughter</a> carrying baguettes in a basket”. An expert in explosives and guerrilla tactics, she helped liberate Chartres and Paris in August 1944. Asked in 2014 if she had ever killed anyone, she answered that she may have, during an ambush. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You shouldn’t have to kill someone like that. It’s true, the Germans were our enemies, it was the war, but I don’t draw any pride from it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>She become a paediatric nurse, had six children, and died aged 97 in February this year.</p>
<p>Spying, though non-violent, often helped the Allies carry out violence. In 1940 Humbert worried about moving from propaganda activities to smuggling maps and military documents for the Allies:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know all too well what they will do with it. Because of my meddling there will be widows, inconsolable mothers, fatherless children … French people, living peaceful lives – will be killed and wounded, children maimed. Where are my lofty humanitarian ideals now? Have I taken leave of my senses? … What a filthy business. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>After the war she joined the Friends of Peace, arguing against war. </p>
<p>Some women were pacifists, such as SOE radio operator <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_Life_in_Secrets.html?id=tIyOGwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Noor Inayat Khan</a>. She came from Indian Muslim royalty, and would be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/18/executed">shot in Dachau concentration camp</a>. She had struggled with the moral questions of war, as her brother Vilayat explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[We] had been brought up with the policy of Gandhi’s nonviolence, and at the outbreak of war we discussed what we would do. She said, ‘Well, I must do something, but I don’t want to kill anyone.’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521775/original/file-20230419-20-3rz72n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noor Inayat Khan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suzanne Spaak only used non-violent methods to smuggle people. Arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943 and condemned to death, she wrote: “I hold that human life is sacred.” She was very sorry for the death sentence of a fellow resister, which she felt was her fault. Once arrested, Spaak was kept in horrific conditions and subjected to torture. She was executed <a href="https://yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/spaak.asp">on 12 August, 1944</a>, just days before the liberation of Paris. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thinking-back-to-gandhi-amongst-brute-force-and-umbrellas-32449">Thinking back to Gandhi amongst brute force and umbrellas</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Effectiveness</h2>
<p>The effectiveness of smuggling and hiding people was most obvious, with 7,220 Jewish people saved <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM695veBSUU&t=22s">in Denmark alone</a>. In Holland, <a href="https://mishpacha.com/forgotten-heroine/">Truus Wijsmuller</a> was a social worker. Unable to have children, she dedicated herself to helping the children of others instead. Politically involved, she had a large network of friends. She smuggled Jewish children into Holland, including a Polish boy hidden under her skirt.</p>
<p>After Kristallnacht, she realised that Jewish children were no longer safe on the continent. She negotiated with the Nazis to move about 10,000 Jewish children to England. When the war began, she <a href="https://dutchreview.com/culture/resistance-heroine-who-saved-thousands-of-jewish-children/">continued this work</a> illegally.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521776/original/file-20230419-26-4qon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wijsmuller in 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nancy Wake’s escape line (one of many) smuggled 1,037 men from France. Many airmen later said they escaped only because of women’s help.</p>
<p>The effects of spying and underground media were more subtle, but helped grow groups such as the Maquis. These were mainly young, working-class men who had escaped into the forests and mountains to avoid being sent to Germany to work. They organised themselves into active resistance groups and were vital for the Allied advance after D-Day. Women also joined the Maquis and were very effective leaders. </p>
<p>For example, while an all-male Maquis group in the Vosges region spent most of the war <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/barney-greatrex-michael-veitch/book/9780733640902.html">in hiding</a>, Krystyna Skarbek made the first contact between the French and Italian Resistance on opposite sides of the Alps before D-Day. She freed captured Resistance leaders and persuaded a whole German garrison on a strategic mountain pass to defect, without any bloodshed.</p>
<h2>People skills</h2>
<p>Women often began resistance movements, growing their numbers through networking and people skills, using their less visible positions within a sexist regime. </p>
<p>Virginia Hall was great at influencing and connecting people, winning over key French officials and getting far more information from them than her male peers. She made friends with Suzanne Bertillon, chief censor of the foreign press in Vichy’s Ministry of Information. Bertillon set up a network of 90 contacts, including farmers, mayors and businessmen, to give Hall information on industrial production, troop movements and a German submarine base being built in Marseille. The base was later destroyed by Allied bombs. </p>
<p>Spaak also showed excellent recruiting skills, bringing together women from all classes – social workers, clergy, girl scouts, officials and guards – including the Jewish communist immigrant Miriam Sokol. The women’s friendship rose above their political differences. In contrast, their husbands never got past their dislike for each other. </p>
<p>Women’s ability to quickly build broad networks of resistance challenges the common belief that armed men are better at dealing with ruthless opponents than unarmed women. These stories also show how women can step out of conventions and defy stereotypes. </p>
<p>It’s hard to point to one reason – either violent or not – for the defeat of Nazism. Each of the actions described, taken alone, eroded the Germans’ power in small ways. When put together they had a great impact. They provided useful intelligence for the Allied forces. They encouraged <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/unarmed-against-hitler-civilian-resistance-in-europe-1939-1943/">dissent, resistance and non-cooperation</a>. They saved many lives. They got airmen back in the air. They wrecked Nazi resources. </p>
<p>Resistance came at a cost. Exact figures are <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution">hard to establish</a>, but it’s thought that more than 4,000 women of various ages <a href="https://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/nazi.html">were hanged by Nazi forces</a> (separate to those who died in the Holocaust). Many more were shot or guillotined. Although terrible, this is a tiny fraction of the <a href="https://statisticsanddata.org/data/the-number-of-deaths-in-the-second-world-war-by-nation/">68 million</a> or more killed by military violence during the war.</p>
<p>There were many failures of resistance at national and international levels. Some useful non-violent strategies were barely used, such as economic non-cooperation through boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the international companies which <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10660185/Nonviolence_Against_Nazism_What_Occurred_and_What_Could_Have_Occurred">propped up Nazism</a>. </p>
<h2>Lessons today</h2>
<p>Still, if <em>ad hoc</em> non-violent action had a role in defeating Nazism, it might succeed almost anywhere. It could possibly have worked last year in <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-nonviolent-resistance-is-a-brave-and-often-effective-response-to-aggression-178361">Ukraine</a>, which has a history of successfully ending pro-Russian governments <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/orange-revolution-english/">through nonviolent mass action</a>. That’s much harder now the war is entrenched.</p>
<p>Non-violent action today could be improved and better resourced. Democracy movements in Ukraine, Myanmar, Syria and Sudan could be supported by much stronger global boycott and divestment systems and <a href="https://nonviolentpeaceforce.org">international peacemaking</a>
<a href="https://www.peacebrigades.org">forces</a>. <a href="https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/19sd/index.html">Mass nonviolent resistance</a> could begin with dispersed, stay-at-home strikes, which pose little risk. <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/02/ukraine-doesnt-need-to-match-russias-military-might-to-defend-against-invasion/">Experienced activists and trained volunteers</a> could lead such resistance.</p>
<p>Military violence is <a href="https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-military-expenditure-passes-2-trillion-first-time">expensive</a>, <a href="https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/global-warming-and-militarism-and-nonviolence-by-marty-branagan-9781137010094">consumes resources</a>, has a <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047487/the-pentagon-climate-change-and-war/">huge carbon bootprint</a>, and continues cycles of violence. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-15-3877-3_13-1">Non-violent action led by women</a> is never easy. But it causes far fewer deaths and is <a href="https://rune.une.edu.au/web/handle/1959.11/52804">more sustainable</a>. Could it ultimately replace military violence?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199863/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marty Branagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Could non-violent action by women ultimately replace military violence? There is much to learn from the bravery of female-led resistance movements during the second world war.Marty Branagan, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of Peace Studies, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1783612022-03-04T15:07:26Z2022-03-04T15:07:26ZUkraine: nonviolent resistance is a brave and often effective response to aggression<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450065/original/file-20220304-19-42vkf0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C1171%2C863&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Screengrab of unarmed Ukrainian civilians trying to stop Russian convoys.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Responses to the Russian invasion have been swift. Thousands of people both <a href="https://observers.france24.com/en/europe/20220225-thousands-of-ukrainians-sign-up-to-fight-for-their-country-as-russia-invasion-continues">in Ukraine</a> and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/we-are-going-to-defend-ourselves-ukrainians-join-war-front">abroad</a> are enlisting to fight against the odds. </p>
<p>Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are being forcibly <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-president-orders-general-mobilization/a-60908996">mobilised</a>. An “international legion” is being formed from hundreds of <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvyq4/russian-ukraine-invasion-foreign-fighters-battalion">non-Ukrainians</a> volunteers. People across the world are <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/saltzman/2022/02/24/ukraine-help-support-app-website-donations/6923840001/">donating money to help Ukraine buy military equipment</a>. Western countries are <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ukraine-russia-funding-weapons-budget-military-aid/">sending arms</a>. </p>
<p>But could non-violent resistance be an effective or even better alternative? </p>
<p>Advocates of pacifism and nonviolence are often ridiculed as naïve, as dangerous, or even as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23337486.2021.2014237">unpatriotic cowards</a>. Even in academic circles, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21624887.2017.1342750">pacifism is “subjugated”</a> in the sense of being both dismissed and denigrated. </p>
<p>Yet a long tradition of pacifism counts at least one famous Russian among its ranks: <a href="https://www.stockholmuniversitypress.se/site/chapters/e/10.16993/bbb.c/">Leo Tolstoy</a>. Since he penned his <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/christoyannopoulos/publications/tolstoys-political-thought-christian-anarcho-pacifist-iconoclasm">passionate denunciations of all violence</a> around 1880-1910, there has been <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820">mounting evidence</a> that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance, even against despots. Nonviolent resistance also seems to lead to outcomes more respectful of human rights in the long term.</p>
<p><a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/jpn/jpn-overview.xml">More research</a> is needed on this, but what we do know is that nonviolence makes strategic use of the moral high ground. As <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/christoyannopoulos/publications/tolstoys-political-thought-christian-anarcho-pacifist-iconoclasm">Tolstoy would acknowledge</a>, this doesn’t mean violence won’t happen, but the nonviolent protesters risk suffering violence rather than inflicting it. The same principle was put into practice by followers of Gandhi: they knew that violent repression of nonviolent protesters would attract attention.</p>
<p>It’s a brave strategy, and one as potentially risky as facing the enemy with weapons. And it might not work. But it can help shift the moral balance – and with it, the balance of power. It treats opponents as human beings, and could help convince them and their supporters to rethink what they are doing and their allegiances.</p>
<p>It’s <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41311-017-0137-6">not clear that violence always works either</a>. We often assume it does. But any effectiveness depends on the response of the adversary, who might comply, or resist. Meanwhile violence polarises. It hardens resolves. And of course it claims victims, aggrieves friends and relatives, who might in turn seek revenge. </p>
<h2>Nonviolent resistance to Russia’s invasion</h2>
<p>In the case of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, many would argue that violent resistance meets the stringent criteria of <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/01/25/just-war-nato-ukraine-putin-242271">“just war theory”</a>. This is a war of <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2022/02/24/vladimir-putins-imperialism-and-military-goals-against-ukraine/">imperialist aggression</a>, of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/02/22/ukraine-vladimir-putin-martin-kimani-speech/">nostalgic power projection</a>, driven in part by <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putins-paranoia-why-ukraine-has-left-him-in-fear-t0nmq8pkq">paranoia</a> and <a href="https://time.com/6150787/putin-us-risk-ukraine-war/">revenge</a> for the geopolitical losses and the brutal capitalist <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/12/vladimir-putin-russia-nostalgia-soviet-union/603079/">“shock therapy” of the 1990s</a>.</p>
<p>The Ukrainians <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48007487">chose Volodymyr Zelensky</a> as their president. They are in favour of <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/debunking-the-myth-of-a-divided-ukraine/">closer ties with the EU</a> and the west. Russia might feel threatened by Nato’s expansion, but those countries that joined did so precisely because they were afraid of Russia. This invasion, if anything, vindicates their fears. So the call to fight back is understandable – and tempting.</p>
<p>But there are other – nonviolent – ways of resisting. Some Ukrainians have stopped Russian tanks by <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/02/ukraine-secret-weapon-civilian-resistance/">blocking them</a>. People have confronted troops with <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-civil-resistance-russian-aggression/31728966.html">boos, chants and verbal tirades</a>. The Ukrainian road company has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/26/ukraine-russia-roads-signs-facebook/">encouraged people to remove road signs</a> to confuse the invaders. </p>
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<p>Ukraine is <a href="https://betonit.blog/2022/03/02/make-desertion-fast/">offering money and amnesty</a> to anyone who deserts from the Russian army. Zelensky addressed the Russian people <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/volodymyr-zelensky-address-invasion_uk_6216c790e4b0d1388f0ef326">in their language</a> telling them to resist as well.</p>
<p>In Russia, thousands have <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-what-anti-war-protesters-in-russia-risk-by-speaking-out-178098">demonstrated in the streets</a> despite considerable personal risks. <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-anti-war-protest-movement-small-defiant/">Numerous public figures</a>, <a href="https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/offener-brief-russische-wissenschaftler-wenden-sich-gegen-putin-17833982.html">hundreds of Russian scientists</a>, even over <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-orthodox-clerics-stop-war-ukrane/31730667.html">150 clerics</a>, have expressed opposition to the war already. There are reports of small gestures of resistance like <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10221938512678246&set=a.1718055237520">this woman</a> wearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag in the Moscow metro.</p>
<p>Further away, the activist group Anonymous has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hacker-group-anonymous-has-waged-a-cyber-war-against-russia-how-effective-could-they-actually-be-178034">waging cyber-attacks</a> against Russia. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-01/these-organizations-are-cutting-ties-with-russia-over-war-in-ukraine-list">Major international corporations</a> and <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2022-02-25/champions-league-final-moved-from-russia-to-france-amid-ukraine-invasion">sports organisations</a> are cutting ties with Russia. The toughening <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/business/list-global-sanctions-russia-ukraine-war-intl-hnk/index.html">economic sanctions</a> imposed by multiple governments will put further pressure on Putin and the Russian elite (although they will cause considerable suffering to the Russian population).</p>
<h2>Nonviolent resistance on the horizon?</h2>
<p>So, plenty of responses to Putin’s invasion have been nonviolent, some very creatively so. There are <a href="https://rethinkingsecurity.org.uk/2022/02/24/unarmed-resistance-to-occupation-lessons-for-ukraine/">more options</a>. In his 1973 study, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, the American political scientist Gene Sharp listed <a href="https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/">198 potential methods of nonviolent action</a>, which some have since <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/198-nonviolent-methods-upgraded/">updated</a> to include possibilities opened by the internet.</p>
<p>Even as individuals away from the conflict, <a href="https://theconversation.com/think-the-worlds-in-a-mess-here-are-four-things-you-can-do-about-it-68789">we make choices every day</a> that can join in the effort. Either way, responses that do not opt for violence are still responses, just ones involving no physical violence – and sometimes, for Russians and especially for Ukrainians, at very considerable personal risks.</p>
<p>By contrast, Russian soldiers might be emboldened by violent responses. Putin’s regime will spin what it can to its advantages. Fighting violently against a power like Russia also poses considerable risks, including in strengthening Russian resolve.</p>
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<p>Nonviolent resistance, and especially nonviolent resistance where the resister nonetheless still risks suffering violence, instead spreads hesitation and doubt in the invading force. It keeps delegitimising the actions of regime backers. It might make them start reconsidering their allegiances.</p>
<p>It is of course easy to say all this from a comfortable shelter away from the conflict. I do not mean to lecture people on the ground. It is up to Ukrainians, currently living the horrors of this war, to decide how to best defend their communities and their country against military invasion. The anger at the invasion is justifiable, the urge to resist too, and the temptation to do so violently understandable. </p>
<p>Tolstoy’s condemnation of violence was not popular back then, whether among those who wanted to topple the tsar or those who were fighting for national liberation elsewhere. But with the experience and lessons about nonviolence accumulated since then now behind us, some people in Ukraine, but also in Russia and elsewhere, have been resisting nonviolently even in the face of superpower invasion. Their strategy might be worth taking seriously and might generate more creative tactics yet – and these may prove at least as effective as violent resistance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178361/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandre Christoyannopoulos is affiliated with the Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence (as its Editor-in-Chief). </span></em></p>Nonviolent protest could also prove effective in stopping hostilities in Ukraine.Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1731082021-12-06T12:42:52Z2021-12-06T12:42:52ZQuotes from Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth that resonate 60 years later<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435618/original/file-20211203-21-axlnf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frantz Fanon</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Franz Fanon, the Martiniquan born psychiatrist, committed Algerian revolutionary and Pan-African thinker, died 60 years ago on December 6, 1961 just after the publication of his last book, The Wretched of the Earth. To mark this 60th anniversary, Nigel C. Gibson has just published his collection, <a href="https://darajapress.com/publication/fanon-today-the-revolt-and-reason-of-the-wretched-of-the-earth">Fanon Today: The Reason and Revolt of the Wretched of the Earth</a>. He discusses some important quotes from Fanon’s global classic</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Space</strong></p>
<p>In the first chapter of <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em>, ‘On Violence,’ Fanon describes colonialism as a system of absolute violence that can only be opposed through violence. He references South Africa as he powerfully describes the colonial world expressed in space:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The colonist’s sector is built to last…a sector of lights and paved roads, where the trash cans constantly overflow with strange and wonderful garbage, undreamed-of leftovers…The colonist’s sector is a sated, sluggish sector, its belly is permanently full of good things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, the colonised sector,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the shanty town, the Medina, the reservation…[is] a disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people. You are born anywhere, anyhow. You die anywhere, from anything. It’s a world with no space, people are piled one on top of the other, the shacks squeezed tightly together. The colonised’s sector is a famished sector, hungry for bread, meat, shoes, coal, and light.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He then adds an important measure of decolonisation,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we examine closely this system of compartments…its ordering and its geographical layout will allow us to mark out the lines on which a decolonised society will be reorganised.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fanon rocked the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/all-african-people-conference-held-accra-ghana">All-African Peoples Conference</a> in December 1958 when he raised the issue of violence in contrast to Kwame Nkrumah’s nonviolent “positive action” agreed upon by many delegates. The following year Fanon became ambassador to Ghana and by then the crucial problem for Fanon was the lack of ideological clarity among leaders, regardless of their position on violence and nonviolence.</p>
<p><strong>The rationality of revolt and the philosophy of organisation</strong></p>
<p>The centrality of the “rationality of revolt” to a “new politics” is highlighted by these two quotes, from the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The insurrection proves to itself its rationality and demonstrates its maturity every time it uses a specific case to advance the consciousness of the people in spite of those within the movement who sometimes are inclined to think that any nuance constitutes a danger and threatens popular solidarity.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>If the rationality of revolt becomes the material force of revolution where “violence represents the absolute line of action,” the “new politics is in the hands of…[those] who use their muscles and their brains to lead the struggle for liberation”.</p>
<p>But it is the cowardice and apathy of the “elite” and their “incapacity” to “rationalise popular practice” and “attribute it any reason” that leads to the postcolonial tragedy.</p>
<p>It was not only the leaders who were subject to Fanon’s anger. He was brutally honest in his criticism of the revolutionary militant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It sometimes happens at meetings that militants use sweeping, dogmatic formulas. The preference for this shortcut, in which spontaneity and over-simple sinking of differences dangerously combine to defeat intellectual elaboration, frequently triumphs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He calls the militant’s logic shocking and inhuman.</p>
<p><strong>The nationalist bourgeoisie and their organisation</strong></p>
<p>Given that he was writing at a moment when more than half of Africa had recently gained independence, his critique of the nationalist middle class and nationalist parties reads like a script which has been repeated over and over:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs…Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth. The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilised.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the same time, wary of the rising xenophobia and chauvinism in newly independent West African nations, Fanon argues that national consciousness is not in fact nationalism. Rather, national consciousness “enriched and deepened into humanism…is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.” For him the building of a nation has to be “accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalising values.”</p>
<p><strong>A new humanism</strong></p>
<p>Those universal values are expressed in the four-page conclusion to <em>The Wretched of he Earth</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>So, comrades, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than follow Europe?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fully cognisant of the fact that neocolonialism can wear a Black or Arab face, Fanon is critical of how newly independent African countries, even when they used the language of socialism, didn’t do much more than follow Europe’s model, looking to take over the colonial apparatus – its states and institutions – for their own interests. Fanon considered this a product of the crisis of thought, the lack of a philosophy of liberation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That same Europe, where they were never done talking with humanity, never stopped proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of humanity. Today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fanon rejects the humanism proclaimed in Europe. Based on colonisation, exploitation, slavery and violence, European humanism dehumanises. And so “We must find something different”. He rejects what is central to European humanism, profit and the reduction of the human to outputs in production.</p>
<p>“If conditions of work are not modified,” he adds, “centuries will be needed to humanise this world which has been forced down to animal level by imperial powers”. He’s saying, humanising the world means rethinking everything, “work[ing]out new concepts… and setting afoot a new humanity”.</p>
<p><strong>Time as the space for human development</strong></p>
<p>Fanon envisioned time akin to Karl Marx’s great phrase, as “space for human development”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sense of time must no longer be that of the moment or the next harvest, but rather that of the rest of the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Humanising the world means creating a new conception of time, the time to create a new society.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have realised that the masses are equal to the problems which confront them…experience proves that the important thing is not that three hundred people form a plan and decide upon carrying it out, but that the whole people plan and decide even if it takes them twice or three times as long. The fact is that the time taken up by explaining, the time ‘lost’ in treating the worker as a human being, will be caught up in the execution of the plan.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rather than top-down the plan should come from “the muscles and the brains of the citizens” because “people must know where they are going, and why”. In the early pages of <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em> Fanon speaks of those dehumanised beings who become historical protagonists through the struggle.</p>
<p>This is just the beginning, the work of humanising the world does not end there, in fact by the end of the book it is clear that while this remains a crucial turning point because consciousness, let alone material reality, are not changed overnight. Mental and physical liberation has to be ongoing after the colonists had been kicked out. The “new society”, the liberated “new person” – collectively, socially, and individually – has to be consciously and intentionally developed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fanon was brutally honest in his criticism of militants and Africa’s post-independence elites.Nigel Gibson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151192019-04-09T04:36:06Z2019-04-09T04:36:06ZAnimal rights activists in Melbourne: green-collar criminals or civil ‘disobedients’?<p>Thirty-nine people were arrested yesterday in Melbourne over an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-08/melbourne-vegan-protest-blocks-trams-traffic-causes-chaos/10980056">animal rights protest</a> that blocked a major intersection. The protest caused chaos for commuters during the morning peak hour, and politicians and the media were quick to condemn the act. </p>
<p>The prime minister <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6007213/pm-lashes-un-australian-vegan-protesters/">denounced</a> the “shameful, un-Australian” conduct of “green-collared criminals”. The opposition leader <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/animal-rights-peaceful-protest-causes-chaos-in-melbourne-39-arrested">commented</a> that protesters should thank farmers, rather than attack them. And some people on social media <a href="https://twitter.com/KTB1115/status/1115055980566335488">ridiculed</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/sammyLXXXIV/status/1115059121089273856">abused</a> those engaged in the protest. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1115055980566335488"}"></div></p>
<p>Yet Australia, like most liberal regimes, should allow citizens to protest as part of their right to free speech. Civil disobedience has traditionally played a positive role in democratic societies. Indeed, the label “civil” is meant to signal something praiseworthy in the protest. </p>
<h2>Civil disobedience isn’t the same as non-violence</h2>
<p>Civil disobedience is traditionally identified with the non-violent campaigns of <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gandhi-leads-civil-disobedience">Mahatma Gandhi</a> and Martin Luther King junior. But as I explain in <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786607164/Civil-Disobedience-A-Philosophical-Overview">my book</a> on this subject, this has had the unwelcome result of suggesting that “civil” means “non-violent”. </p>
<p>After 39 activists were arrested, Superintendent David Clayton <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6006138/forty-melbourne-vegan-protesters-charged/?cs=14231">explained</a> yesterday that Victoria Police: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>…respect the right of people to protest peacefully. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This statement suggests the Melbourne protest was not peaceful, despite the fact protesters were holding placards that read: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a peaceful protest. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What many found despicable in this protest was the disruption of public traffic. They think the right to protest does not imply the right to cause others to remain stranded on their way to work. From this standpoint, the activists’ disruptive conduct constituted an act of violence and, as such, was incompatible with the principles of civil disobedience.</p>
<h2>The danger of neutralising dissent</h2>
<p>But this reasoning is misguided and dangerous. It’s dangerous because it risks neutralising the potential of civil disobedience as a form of dissent. When the government claims that only non-disruptive protests are “civil”, it’s also implying that those who seek to go beyond mere symbolic actions, and to have some impact on others through their protest, are censored as “criminal” and uncivil. </p>
<p>Sociologist Herbert Marcuse captured this risk with the notion of “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02691721003749901?journalCode=tsep20">repressive tolerance</a>”. He argues that a government may successfully neutralise dissent by persuading citizens that there are “good” and “bad” ways of protesting. The good ones are those that cause no disruption, the bad ones are those that do – and citizens should engage in the good ones only. </p>
<p>But it is no coincidence that protests that cause no disruption are also the least likely to have an impact on public opinion and therefore force the government to take action. </p>
<p>This is exactly what occurred in Melbourne yesterday. After many non-disruptive protests that led to no answer from the government, the activists resorted to a disruptive act to force society to face the moral issue of animal treatment in the food industry. This was necessary to ensure their view, for once, was not ignored by the public.</p>
<h2>What civil disobedience is and isn’t</h2>
<p>I describe civil disobedience as an act of communication (albeit illegal). It is a way for citizens to “persuade” others of the necessity of changing a law, policy of practice. Its civility lies in the fact it shows respect and consideration for those it addresses. </p>
<p>But this need not be done in strictly non-violent ways. For example, in some cases forcing others to face our opinion (even against their will) is not uncivil, insofar as they remain free to decide whether to endorse or reject our view. </p>
<p>The conduct becomes uncivil when it seeks to “coerce” others to accept one’s view – for example, via threats. This is why terrorism is inherently uncivil. </p>
<p>Many people defended Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing as a form of civil disobedience, since he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden-russian-moscow-meeting">claimed</a> to have leaked classified documents to the public “so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day”. </p>
<p>The same could be said of the Melbourne protest. One of the protesters <a href="https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All we want is for people to watch the documentary and understand what goes on in Australian abattoirs. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The protesters sought to persuade others to take action to promote animal welfare, not coerce them. </p>
<p>Of course, these activists resorted to an illegal act to carry out their protest, and for that reason they may be answerable to the law. Yet, I would argue, as civil “disobedients”, they should be treated with more leniency in comparison to standard lawbreakers.</p>
<h2>Not all peaceful protest is civil</h2>
<p>There is another important reason why we should resist the idea of civility as synonymous with non-violence. When right-wing groups decide to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/politicians-unite-against-racism-as-neo-nazis-and-independent-senator-condemned-20190106-p50pw5.html">organise a peaceful protest</a> in support of their racist views, their action may certainly be described as “non-violent”, insofar as it causes neither injury no disruption to others. </p>
<p>But this protest could never be considered “civil”, despite its non-disruptive nature, because at its heart lies an inherent disrespect for some segments of society. </p>
<p>Claiming that some people are less worthy than others, simply because they belong to a certain race or religion, is inherently uncivil. Those who engage in protest, even non-violent ones, to advance those claims should appropriately be condemned as uncivil disobedients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Piero Moraro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the government claims that only non-disruptive protests are “civil”, it risks censoring those who seek to go beyond mere symbolic actions and have some impact on others through their protest.Piero Moraro, Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1134172019-03-13T13:35:02Z2019-03-13T13:35:02ZAlgeria: how millennials used humour and creativity to force Abdelalziz Bouteflika to stand aside<p>Algerian citizens protesting against their president, Abdelalziz Bouteflika, have been heard. The 82-year-old politician <a href="http://www.aps.dz/algerie/86748-le-president-bouteflika-adresse-un-message-a-la-nation-annoncant-le-report-de-l-election-presidentielle">officially announced</a> on March 11 that he will not run for a fifth term and that presidential elections, initially planned for April 18, will be postponed.</p>
<p>For more than two weeks Algerians <a href="https://theconversation.com/protesters-in-algeria-use-nonviolence-to-seek-real-political-change-112738">from all ages and social backgrounds</a> protested peacefully calling for an end to Bouteflika’s regime. He has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/03/01/world/middleeast/ap-ml-algeria-protest.html">sick and silent</a> for years, and protesters dismissed his capacity to rule.</p>
<p>Bouteflika has been ruling since April 1999, and many of those now protesting against him have never been able to demonstrate before. Political protests were banned and repressed during the <a href="https://mondediplo.com/2017/08/11algeria">bloody decade of the 1990s</a> because of terrorism and the state of emergency that followed.</p>
<p>With 45% of the Algerian population under the age of 25, young people who’ve taken to the streets to protest in 2019 never experienced such a regime. In their nonviolent protests, they used technology and diverted popular iconic brands and advertising slogans to raise awareness of their calls for a fresh set of political leaders.</p>
<h2>Positive messages flooding the web</h2>
<p>Algerian millennials thrive on positive messages. They flooded the web with images of young demonstrators kissing, handing flowers to police officers and women on international women’s day, distributing water bottles, volunteering for first aid or encouraging people to clean the streets after the demonstrations. This galvanised Algerians’ pride, and surprised many who know little about a country that has largely remained closed to tourism.</p>
<p>Their actions during the protests were in stark contrast to the past regime. They’ve been eager to emphasise the difference between their open-mindedness and aspirations for change and the symbolic closure of the country. </p>
<p>Whenever spontaneity was muzzled – on national television for instance – young people retaliated by staging debates in the streets that respected the diversity of opinions.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/149BMhTaDtM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An Algerian TV anchor resigned after she had to read an announcement by the president confirming he planned to be a candidate in elections.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many have criticised the country’s millennials for “being asleep”, embittered by the lack of prospects in Algeria and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-algerian-dream-of-traveling-to-europe/a-37637561">obsessed with an European Eldorado</a>. Yet, their attachment to the country, and their refusal to destroy public spaces during the protests showed how strongly they feel about the future of their country.</p>
<h2>‘Only Chanel can be N°5’</h2>
<p>They may not yet have much access to employment, but the protesters showed real creativity during the demonstrations. Local media headlines called it a “renaissance” of the Algerian nation.</p>
<p>Humour became a central weapon of their resistance, crossing borders thanks to the hyper connectivity of the millennial protesters.</p>
<p>Young people who often dream of wider access to global markets, used iconic brands, films and series as political resources. For example, memes hijacking the iconic taglines of Marlboro advertising went viral, such as: “You are in a bad shape (‘Mal Barré’), your system is seriously damaging our health.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263353/original/file-20190312-86686-10igvvd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The iconic ‘Marlboro’ brand was twisted to say ‘You’re in bad shape’ and beneath it, ‘Your system is bad for our health’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DR</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another sign imitated the black and white typography of an iconic Chanel perfume advert to poke fun at Bouteflika’s attempts to run for a firth term. It read: “Only Chanel can be N°5.” Another sign shouted: “Look at your Rolex, it’s time to go.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263442/original/file-20190312-86717-7ecgcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Making fun of the government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N.O.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The YouTube logo became “YouNamar” for “Y'a en a marre” (“We have enough”), while other signs imitating Wifi adverts claim: “Connected people, disconnected system.” Elsewhere, a mock-up of a Microsoft message claimed “Your 5.0 system needs to be rebooted”, while another poster showed a computer folder struggling to install “democracy in Algeria”.</p>
<p>These messages serve two main purposes for the young Algerians. They know they are being watched, within the country and outside it. By using such references they insist that while they feel estranged from Algeria’s current regime, they aspire to radically change it.</p>
<h2>A strong connection to the world</h2>
<p>The Algerian regime underestimated young people’s ability to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317412090/chapters/10.4324/9781315685410-13">mobilise online</a>. The older generations had lived through an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/07/business/algeria-liberalizes-its-socialist-system.html">era with a single, socialist party system</a>, product shortages and the absence of global brands. </p>
<p>But over the past few decades, today’s young people have grown up with access to an increased number of imports of international brands into Algeria which have brought with them new ideologies. This mass of global reference points have shifted the aspirations of young people. </p>
<p>At the same time, young political leaders have emerged in countries where Algerians have relatives, such as Justin Trudeau in Canada, Barack Obama in the US or Emmanuel Macron in France. Such phenomena acted as powerful catalysts and motivation for change, <a href="http://ecomnewsmed.com/article/3653/en-algerie-il-y-a-plus-de-smartphones-que-dalgerien">connecting</a> them to the wider world, which they feel they have been shut out from for years. </p>
<p>While Algerian millenials seek this global connection to millennials elsewhere, <a href="https://kedge.edu/annuaire/nacima-ourahmoune">my research shows</a> that
the mechanisms involved are not simply about absorbing a global culture and erasing Algerian culture. Rather, it’s a complex relationship, that hasn’t yet descended into aggressive nationalism.</p>
<p>For example, a recent study <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01568163">published with my colleagues</a> explained how the iconic, century-old Algerian soda brand, Hamoud Boualem, <a href="http://www.made-in-algeria.com/news/coca-cola-algerie-6055.html">competes</a> with the Coca-Cola brand which appeared in the Algerian market much later. Yet the competition between the brands didn’t divide consumers between factions of hardcore nationalists and staunch lovers of America. Consumers appreciate the heritage of their Algerian soda, without condemning the American giant.</p>
<h2>The awakening of Algeria</h2>
<p>The behaviours and consumption patterns of young Algerians demonstrate how they’ve become accustomed to a globalised world, but at the same time take pride in Algerian society, free from the burden and influence of the global North.</p>
<p>Diverting brand slogans to demand democratic freedom is part of the same phenomenon: love for the country, pride and a sense of autonomy and responsibility. The recent demonstrations have shown how young people have invented their own style of protest with humour and pacifism, a way of claiming it can also reinvent its own society.</p>
<p>An inscription on an Algiers wall expressed it really well:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the first time I don’t want to leave you, my Algeria.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And using humour, another poster condemned any attempt at interference from the US. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear USA there is no more oil left. Please stay away unless you want olive oil.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such acts also show that young Algerians are not only aware of their history but also know how to capture the essence of it, to twist it and turn it into a new form of Algerian identity.</p>
<p>Young Algerians have just shaken up an entire country. Let’s now hope that they can translate their energy into real political change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nacima Ourahmoune ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Young Algerians who dream of accessing global markets have extensively used iconic brands, films and series as political resources.Nacima Ourahmoune, Professeur Associé / Chercheur/ Consultant en marketing et culture de consommation, Kedge Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1101482019-01-31T11:42:15Z2019-01-31T11:42:15ZHow Howard Thurman met Gandhi and brought nonviolence to the civil rights movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256435/original/file-20190130-103164-pswg2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Howard Thurman's image on Howard University chapel's stained glass window.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Howard_University_-_Andrew_Rankin_Memorial_Chapel_-_stained_glass_window_with_three_deans_including_Howard_Thurman.JPG">Fourandsixty from Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Director Martin Doblmeier’s 2019 documentary, <a href="https://www.tpt.org/backs-against-the-wall-the-howard-thurman-story/">“Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story,”</a> highlighted Thurman’s important role in the civil rights struggle as a key mentor to <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/vernon-e-jordan-jr">many</a> <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/marian-wright-edelman-40">leaders</a> <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/reverend-jesse-l-jackson">of the movement</a>, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-theologian-who-helped-mlk-see-the-value-of-nonviolence-89938">Martin Luther King Jr.</a>, <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/james-farmer-21349629">among</a> <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/reverend-dr-otis-moss-jr">others</a>.</p>
<p>I have been a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/They_Looked_for_a_City.html?id=_hhtQgAACAAJ">scholar of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr.</a> for over 30 years and I serve as the editor of Thurman’s papers. Thurman’s influence on King Jr. was critical in shaping the civil rights struggle as a nonviolent movement. Thurman was deeply influenced by how Gandhi used nonviolence in India’s struggle for independence from British rule. </p>
<h2>Visit to India</h2>
<p>Born in 1899, <a href="http://www.bu.edu/htpp/the-papers/">Howard Washington Thurman</a> was raised by his formerly enslaved grandmother. He grew up to be an ordained Baptist minister and a leading religious figure of 20th-century America.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Journey of the delegation in South Asia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Korpus</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1936 Thurman led a <a href="https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/10/when-howard-thurman-met-mahatma-gandhi-nonviolence-and-the-civil-rights-movement.html">four-member delegation</a> to India, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), known as the “pilgrimage of friendship.” It was during this visit that he would meet Mahatma Gandhi, who at the time was leading a nonviolent struggle of independence from British rule.</p>
<p>The delegation had been sponsored by the Student Christian Movement in India who wanted to explore the political connections between the oppression of blacks in the United States and the freedom struggles of the people of India. </p>
<p>The general secretary of the Indian Student Christian Movement, <a href="https://library.columbia.edu/content/dam/libraryweb/locations/burke/fa/mrl/ldpd_4492546.pdf">A. Ralla Ram</a>, had argued for inviting a “Negro” delegation. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papers_of_Howard_Washington_Thurman.html?id=rc6VZwEACAAJ">He said</a> that “since Christianity in India is the ‘oppressor’s’ religion, there would be a unique value in having representatives of another oppressed group speak on the validity and contribution of Christianity.”</p>
<p>Between October 1935 to April 1936, Thurman gave at least 135 lectures in over 50 cities, to a variety of audiences and important Indian leaders, including the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rabindranath-Tagore-Uma-Das-Gupta/dp/0195669800/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1548792576&sr=8-6&keywords=tagore+biography">Rabindranath Tagore</a>, who also played a key role in India’s independence movement.</p>
<p>Throughout the journey, the issue of segregation within the Christian church and its inability to address <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/5906.html">color consciousness</a>, a social and political system based upon discrimination against blacks and other nonwhite people, was raised by many of the people he met. </p>
<h2>Thurman and Gandhi</h2>
<p>The delegation met with Gandhi towards the end of their tour in <a href="http://gandhiseries.blogspot.com/2011/10/gandhi-bardoli-protest-and-satyagraha.html">Bardoli, a small town in India’s western state of Gujarat</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhi, an admirer of <a href="https://blackpast.org/aah/washington-booker-t-1856-1915">Booker T. Washington</a>, the prominent African-American educator, was no stranger to the struggles of African-Americans. He had been in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/98/2/570/133494?redirectedFrom=fulltext">correspondence with prominent black leaders</a> before the meeting with the delegation.</p>
<p>As early as May 1, 1929, Gandhi had written <a href="https://minervasperch.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/mahatma-gandhi-message-to-the-american-negro-1929/">a “Message to the American Negro”</a> addressed to W.E.B. DuBois to be published in <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=crisisnaacp">“The Crisis</a>.” Founded in 1910 by DuBois, “The Crisis” was the official publication of <a href="https://www.naacp.org/">the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>.</p>
<p>Gandhi’s message stated,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is no dishonour in being slaves. There is dishonour in being slave-owners. But let us not think of honour or dishonour in connection with the past. Let us realise that the future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Understanding the idea of nonviolence</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/10/when-howard-thurman-met-mahatma-gandhi-nonviolence-and-the-civil-rights-movement.html">conversation lasting about three hours</a>, published in <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papers_of_Howard_Washington_Thurman.html?id=rc6VZwEACAAJ">The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman</a>, Gandhi engaged his guests with questions about racial segregation, lynching, African-American history, and religion. Gandhi was puzzled as to why African-Americans adopted the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Slave_Religion.html?id=G3CkQgAACAAJ">religion of their masters, Christianity</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi, spinning cotton, in a photo from 1931.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-India-INDIA-/7ff0a6c899e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/40/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He reasoned that at least in religions like Islam, all were considered equal. Gandhi declared, “For the moment a slave accepts Islam he obtains equality with his master, and there are several instances of this in history.” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44209369?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">But he did not think that was true for Christianity</a>. Thurman asked what was the greatest obstacle to Christianity in India. Gandhi replied that Christianity as practiced and identified with Western culture and colonialism was the greatest enemy to Jesus Christ in India. </p>
<p>The delegation used the limited time that was left to interrogate Gandhi on matters of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0392192116666470">“ahimsa,”</a> or nonviolence, and his perspective on the struggle of African-Americans in the United States. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/gandhi-made-india-mahadev-desai-made-gandhi/story-pzU3tEGwLPjKtCwmPFcNjK.html">Mahadev Desai</a>, Gandhi’s personal secretary, Thurman was fascinated with the discussion on the redemptive power of ahimsa in a life committed to the practice of nonviolent resistance. </p>
<p>Gandhi explained that though ahimsa is technically defined as “non-injury” or “nonviolence,” it is not a negative force, rather it is a force “more positive than electricity and more powerful than even ether.”</p>
<p>In its most practical terms, it is love that is “self-acting,” but even more – and when embodied by a single individual, it bears a force more powerful than hate and violence and can transform the world. </p>
<p>Towards the end of the meeting, Gandhi proclaimed, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world.”</p>
<h2>Search for an American Gandhi</h2>
<p>Indeed, Gandhi’s views would leave a deep impression on Thurman’s own interpretation of nonviolence. They would later be influential in developing Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance. It would go on to shape the thinking of a generation of civil rights activists.</p>
<p>In his book, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.260684/2015.260684.Jesus-And_djvu.txt">“Jesus and the Disinherited,”</a> Thurman addresses the negative forces of fear, deception and hatred as forms of violence that ensnare and entrap the oppressed. But he also counsels that through love and the willingness to nonviolently engage the adversary, the committed individual creates the possibility of community. </p>
<p>As he explains, the act of love as redemptive suffering is not contingent on the other’s response. Love, rather, is unsolicited and self-giving. It transcends merit and demerit. It simply loves. </p>
<p>A growing number of African-American leaders closely followed Gandhi’s campaigns of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/satyagraha-philosophy">satyagraha</a>,” or what he termed as nonresistance to evil against British colonialism. Black newspapers and magazines announced the need for <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300205619/breaking-white-supremacy">an “American Gandhi.”</a></p>
<p>Upon his return, some African-American leaders thought that Howard Thurman would fulfill that role. In 1942, for example, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0807000469">Peter Dana of the Pittsburgh Courier, wrote</a> that Thurman “was one of the few black men in the country around whom a great, conscious movement of Negroes could be built, not unlike the great Indian independence movement.”</p>
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<h2>King, love and nonviolence</h2>
<p>Thurman, however, chose a less direct path as an interpreter of nonviolence and a resource for activists who were on the front lines of the struggle. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/With_Head_and_Heart.html?id=Z5_07RsCWWsC">As he wrote</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was my conviction and determination that the church would be a resource for activists – a mission fundamentally perceived. To me it was important that the individual who was in the thick of the struggle for social change would be able to find renewal and fresh courage in the spiritual resources of the church. There must be provided a place, a moment, when a person could declare, I choose.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Georgia-U-/db147adc924c43559a8e188a82e2ddff/4/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>Indeed, leaders like Martin Luther King did choose to live out the gospel of peace, justice and love that Thurman so eloquently proclaimed in writing and the spoken word, even though it came with an exacting price. </p>
<p>In his last letter to Martin Luther King, dated May 13, 1966, Thurman expressed his regret for the time that had elapsed since he and King last spoke. He ended the short note with a rather <a href="http://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/172824">foreboding quote</a> from the American naturalist and essayist <a href="http://www.eiseley.org/">Loren Eiseley</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Those as hunts treasure must go alone, at night, and when they find it they have to leave a little of their blood behind them.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>King, like Gandhi, fell to an assassin’s bullet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Walter E. Fluker consulted with Journey Films in the production of the film documentary, "Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story". </span></em></p>Howard Thurman, a mentor to MLK, first met Gandhi during a visit to India in 1936. He came to understand nonviolence as a force more powerful than hate that had the power to transform the world.Walter E. Fluker, Professor of Ethical Leadership, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1044292018-10-19T10:42:58Z2018-10-19T10:42:58ZAnti-fracking activists released on appeal – but criminalisation of nonviolent protest is new norm<p>Three men who were imprisoned after blocking access to a fracking site in Lancashire have been released <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/17/court-quashes-excessive-sentences-of-fracking-protesters">after an appeal</a>, a decision met with joyous relief by campaigners. These anti-fracking activists initially received lengthy prison sentences for “causing a public nuisance” – prompting 1,500 academics to sign a critical <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmXGgV93AycjcfbWmWBQ_7eYxbI69n5PIQhM_0B9kF1qMSaA/viewform">open letter</a> in response. Their sentences were quashed as “excessive” by the Court of Appeal on October 17. </p>
<p>But it’s wrong to frame this case as an aberration followed by a simple victory for common sense. In fact, the harsh treatment of these activists fits into a larger pattern through which non-violent protest has been criminalised in the UK. </p>
<p>According to a 2017 government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-and-climate-change-public-attitudes-tracker-wave-22">survey</a>, only 16% of the public support fracking – the fracturing of underground rocks, to access oil and gas. Many view it as a high-risk, low-reward practice – and scientific research suggests a link between fracking and <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-fracking-cause-bigger-more-frequent-earthquakes-16056?sr=3">earthquakes</a>, as well as risks of <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaar5982">water shortages</a> and damage to the <a href="https://cdn.friendsoftheearth.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/HMW%20REPORT%20FINAL.pdf">countryside</a>. Environmentalists highlight the bigger issues of climate change and the desperate need to adopt alternatives to fossil fuels. </p>
<p>For these reasons, the protesters peacefully <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-45652464">blocked a convoy</a> in July 2017 bringing equipment into Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire. They did this by sitting on top of lorries. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/26/jailing-fracking-protesters-fight-caroline-lucas">described</a> the crackdown, which entailed severe 15 to 16-month custodial sentences given to three of the protesters, as “an act of desperation from the fracking industry and the government”. Since then protesters have adopted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2018/oct/15/fracking-protesters-attempt-blockade-lancashire-site-video-report">similar tactics</a> at the site, as fracking started in the UK again on October 15 for the first time since 2011. </p>
<p>Fracking activists often face state repression on the ground. <a href="http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/3140/">Research</a> carried out at the Barton Moss anti-fracking camp in Greater Manchester between 2013-14 found that despite an overwhelmingly peaceful campaign, the scale and in some instances violent nature of the policing operation undermined the right to peaceful protest. But police incursions into the rights of protesters have extended further.</p>
<h2>Spy cops</h2>
<p>In recent years, evidence has come to light of abuse by undercover officers who have infiltrated the environmentalist and other social movements since 1968, including the Stephen Lawrence Justice Campaign. A recently published <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/15/uk-political-groups-spied-on-undercover-police-list">database</a> documents the scale, scope and character of the undercover surveillance of political activism. The abuse uncovered so far by activists, independent researchers such as the <a href="http://undercoverresearch.net/">Undercover Research Group</a> and journalists including The Guardian’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/robevans">Rob Evans</a>, demonstrates the criminalisation of protest through intimate state surveillance. </p>
<p>Some officers had sexual relationships with their targets in order to seem more trustworthy, a tactic one activist “Jacqui” described as like having been “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/24/undercover-police-spy-girlfriend-child">raped by the state</a>”. Undercover officer Bob Lambert fathered a child with “Jacqui”, before disappearing from her life without explanation.</p>
<p>Another common tactic was adopting dead babies’ identities to build a believable “paper trail” should targets become suspicious. This is something that has horrified and hurt the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/24/we-had-fond-memories-of-our-brother-but-the-police-have-made-them-dirty">families of these children</a>. A myriad of other practices have been identified, ranging from officers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/20/police-admit-officers-role-in-mass-release-of-mink-by-protesters">breaking the law</a> while undercover, to appearing in court under a <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/undercover-police-bob-lambert-exclusive">false identity</a>. These practices have resulted in a number of possible miscarriages of justice. It is suspected that more than <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14742837.2018.1480934">1,000 groups were affected</a>. </p>
<p>A key question in the undercover policing case has been how much senior officers knew about or encouraged the most troubling tactics of these officers. Activists have denounced the government-ordered, yet slow-moving, <a href="https://www.ucpi.org.uk/about-the-inquiry/">Undercover Policing Inquiry</a>, calling for the resignation of its chair, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43487941">John Mitting</a>. Critics allege the lack of transparency, particularly around the anonymity of the police officers during the inquiry, fits into this pattern of state repression. </p>
<p>An Investigatory Powers Tribunal in a case brought by Kate Wilson, an activist deceived into a long-term sexual relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy, has been presented with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/21/met-bosses-knew-of-relationship-deception-by-police-spy-mark-kennedy">new evidence</a> in recent months that Kennedy’s commanding officers knew of his relationship with Wilson and did not intervene. This adds weight to the belief that a lack of concern for the human rights of protesters is institutionally or culturally endemic in the police.</p>
<h2>Strike rights curtailed</h2>
<p>Patterns of criminalisation also exist elsewhere. The 2016 <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/15/contents/enacted">Trade Union Act</a> dramatically <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ilj/article/45/3/299/1750051">curtails</a> labour rights in Britain. It imposes new higher strike ballot thresholds, including a double threshold for “important public services” such as teachers and energy workers, making it much more difficult to go on strike legally. It also requires unions to give police the names of “picket supervisors”, and makes it easier for employers to use courts to stop strikes.</p>
<p>The 2017 <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/594788/Code_of_Practice_on_Picketing.pdf">Code of Practice</a> on picketing asks unions to ensure that “no more than six people” are present per workplace entrance, as any more would give rise to “fear and resentment”. These policies were introduced despite the fact that fewer days than ever were <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/labourdisputesintheuk2016">lost to industrial action in 2016</a>. This is another way in which the right to nonviolent protest has been eroded.</p>
<p>The privatisation of public space is another means through which rights have been curtailed. The large-scale selling off of public land, and growing prevalence of pseudo-public space, has been condemned by public figures including Labour leader <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/25/corbyn-joins-calls-reclaim-uk-public-space-from-corporate-owners">Jeremy Corbyn and Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable</a>. The use of private security, as well as so-called “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-44794429">civil injunctions</a>” by private companies who find themselves the focus of activism, shows the way that private firms can exploit the system to their own advantage, installing what effectively amount to protest exclusion zones within communities.</p>
<p>The vocal criticism of the verdict and subsequent release of the Lancashire fracking protesters does suggest that opposition is growing. </p>
<p>The ongoing case of the so-called <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-45724040">Stansted 15</a> will add to the overall picture, whatever the result. The defendants allegedly prevented a Home Office charter plane from taking off in March 2017 in order to stop the migrants on board from being deported. They are standing trial <a href="https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/live-stansted-15-trial-updates-2064632">on terror charges</a> under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act and could face potentially lengthy jail sentences if convicted. </p>
<p>It’s time we acknowledged this pattern of creeping criminalisation of protest – in the courts and in the streets – as a serious threat to our freedom and democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Stephens-Griffin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The criminalisation of fracking protesters is not the exception, it has become the rule.Nathan Stephens-Griffin, Lecturer in Criminology, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/974872018-06-06T15:17:50Z2018-06-06T15:17:50ZPalestinians are not powerless – they can take the initiative<p>Donald Trump’s recent policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been unambiguous, to put it mildly. His administration is increasingly aligned with <a href="https://theconversation.com/profile-avigdor-lieberman-israels-hardline-defence-minister-96474">one of the most right-wing governments</a> in Israel’s history. Most radically of all, it reversed a longstanding US policy by <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-recognition-of-jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-israel-means-for-the-middle-east-88722">recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel</a>, and relocating the US embassy there from Tel Aviv. But, while the US policy has been the subject of furious debate, there’s been relatively little discussion about how the Palestinian leaders can respond.</p>
<p>It’s very important not to see the Palestinians and their leaders as passive actors or helpless victims. This is an evolving situation, and the Palestinian people are far from powerless. In fact, the current US-Israeli alliance presents Palestinian leaders with new opportunities to formulate counter-policies and preserve the Palestinian issue’s status as a just cause.</p>
<p>There’s plenty to do on the home front, and high up the list is achieving national unity among the different Palestinian political factions – Fatah and Hamas – and also the wider Palestinian communities in the homeland and the Shatat (diaspora). </p>
<p>Shatat communities have been marginalised in Palestinian political life ever since the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7385301.stm">Oslo Accords</a> were signed in the early 1990s. While the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) returned to the occupied territories, the vast majority of the Palestinian refugee and displaced communities in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan were left waiting for an end to the displacement that began in 1948. They are still waiting today.</p>
<p>The PLO’s existing institutions need to be reformed and reinvigorated, and Palestinian communities within the homeland and the Shatat given a true voice in them. More than that, if Palestinian leaders want to put Israel under pressure, they need to think seriously about engaging in national campaigns of nonviolent popular resistance and civil disobedience.</p>
<h2>Changing course</h2>
<p>One of the Israeli military and political leadership’s biggest fears is the emergence of an unarmed and nonviolent movement in the occupied Palestinian territories, one that could attract international support and the attention of the world’s media. The possibility of Palestinian refugees marching towards their confiscated land and demanding their national rights has <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-s-refugees-have-always-haunted-israel-now-they-re-on-the-march-1.5958265">haunted Israel for 70 years</a>, and the last thing the Netanyahu government wants to see is an organised peaceful mass resistance movement that the wider world might feel comfortable supporting.</p>
<p>Along these lines, there’s another radical option the Palestinian leaders should consider: to shift its focus from the failing two-state solution to the pursuit of full and equal rights for all its citizens.</p>
<p>Palestinians in Israel face severe everyday discrimination, and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem are living under oppressive military occupation. Both are subject to complex and unjust legal structures that accord full rights to Israelis and settlers while denying protection and national rights to indigenous Palestinian communities.</p>
<p>Seeking equal rights and justice in all of Palestine is not only a democratic question, but a challenge to exclusive ideologies that have maintained separation and conflict. Among Palestinian intellectual and political representatives, the discourse of citizenship and equality is <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/israel-palestinians-mahmoud-abbas-demography-two-state.html">regaining currency</a> as a primary means of conflict transformation – largely because of the failure of the two-state solution.</p>
<h2>The high ground</h2>
<p>Another option is to keep pursuing international recognition of Palestinian statehood. This may not make much impact on Palestinians’ everyday lives, but it will certainly help enhance Palestine’s international status and foreground the Palestinian issue in international law. And that in turn will put Israel under increasing pressure to accept Palestinian national independence.</p>
<p>The most recent breakthroughs on this front came at the UN, which in 2012 effectively <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-statehood/palestinians-win-de-facto-u-n-recognition-of-sovereign-state-idUSBRE8AR0EG20121201">recognised Palestine’s statehood</a> and granted it membership as a “non-member observer state”. That move has granted the Palestinians access to international justice mechanisms; today, the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/palestine">International Criminal Court</a> is investigating potential war crimes committed by Israel since June 2014 in Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza.</p>
<p>The Palestinian political leadership can also do more to leverage the PLO’s recognition of Israel. Whereas the PLO has recognised Israel’s right to live in peace and security since the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel has never reciprocated and recognised Palestinian statehood. Instead, in the words of <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18dzscm">Sara Roy</a>, the Oslo process saw the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories became “formalised” and “institutionalised”. Yet despite <a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/173784-180502-palestinian-leader-to-i24news-oslo-agreement-to-be-voted-obsolete">repeated statements</a> bemoaning the Oslo framework’s failure, the Palestinian Authority has yet to capitalise on this obvious political inequality. Instead, it is still firmly committed thanks to the political, economic and security interests of its ruling elites.</p>
<p>To change the calculus, the Palestinian Authority leadership needs to put the issue of equal state recognition back on the agenda and consider the merit of its dogged commitment to the Oslo Accords. Options like this might not reverse the damage created by Trump’s alignment with the right-wing Israeli leadership, but they will prove that the Palestinians are serious and capable of developing policies that can lead to genuine change and win over international public opinion.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>More articles about <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/palestine-1178?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Palestine</a>, written by experts:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-palestinians-to-be-resilient-the-rest-of-the-world-has-failed-them-96587?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Stop telling Palestinians to be ‘resilient’ – the rest of the world has failed them</a></em></li>
<li><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/five-myths-about-palestines-youth-activists-debunked-96736?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Five myths about Palestine’s youth activists – debunked</a></em></li>
<li><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-now-has-a-toxic-biosphere-of-war-that-no-one-can-escape-95397?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Gaza now has a toxic ‘biosphere of war’ that no one can escape</a></em></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yaser Alashqar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Palestinian nonviolent protests and mass movement of resistance is one of Israel’s biggest fears.Yaser Alashqar, Adjunct Assistant Professor and Lecturer in conflict studies and Middle East politics, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/966792018-05-17T12:33:43Z2018-05-17T12:33:43ZFor Gaza’s peaceful protesters, power is all about perception<p>On the 70th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/cards/israel-palestine/nakba">Nakba</a> – the displacement of Palestinians when the state of Israel was founded – the people of Gaza, who have been under Israeli blockade and the rule of Hamas for more than a decade, mobilised in their largest civil resistance demonstrations since the early 2000s. Since the protests began on March 30, the Gazans have been met with <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-palestinians-to-be-resilient-the-rest-of-the-world-has-failed-them-96587">tear gas and sniper fire</a>. Thousands have been injured, and more than <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-israel-palestinians-gaza-hospital/gaza-hospitals-strive-to-cope-with-numbers-of-wounded-protesters-idUKKCN1IG2Q4?il=0">100 killed</a>.</p>
<p>The world’s media quickly responded with an array of conflicting reports. The debate over the protests, which have been dubbed the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/with-the-great-return-march-palestinians-are-demanding-a-life-of-dignity/">Great Return March</a>, is really an argument about the extent to which the protests were violent actions orchestrated by Hamas – and, by extension, the extent to which Israel was justified in using lethal force against the demonstrators. The demonstrators have a critical stake in this debate. </p>
<p>Some outsiders portray the protesters as a violent danger to Israeli soldiers and citizens – and thereby justify the Israeli response as a matter of security. Similarly, when they attribute the organisation and conduct of the demonstrations to Hamas, Israel’s own security rhetoric comes to the fore. That in turn provides a significant boost to Hamas’s dwindling support in Gaza itself. But other coverage of the demonstrations portrays the protesters as peaceful activists unaffiliated with Hamas – meaning Israel can be said to have used excessive and unlawful force.</p>
<p>For Gaza’s peaceful activists, the competition between these different representations is everything. The power of civil resistance, also known as non-violent struggle, lies partly in the spectacle it creates of unarmed civilians under attack by armed authorities. If the wrong spectacle is created, the power of protest is squandered.</p>
<p>The use of violent measures against unarmed protesters often backfires – sympathy is elicited, awareness is raised and support is galvanised. Citizens may withdraw support for their government, and soldiers or the police unwilling to follow violent commands may refuse to act. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has <a href="https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20180404_refuse_to_shoot_at_unarmed_protestors#add">called on Israeli soldiers</a> to refuse to shoot at protesters who do not “pose mortal danger”. But if civil demonstrations turn violent and pose a physical threat, then a violent response can be justified, both morally and legally. </p>
<p>Understanding the origins and nature of these demonstrations is therefore paramount.</p>
<h2>Taking over the narrative</h2>
<p>The Nakba day demonstrations were originally conceived by Gaza journalist and activist Ahmed Abu Artema, who wrote a viral <a href="https://www.facebook.com/aburtema/posts/10210817352613780">Facebook post</a> wondering: “What if 200,000 Palestinians came out in a peaceful march … entered our occupied territories for a few kilometres, raised the flag of Palestine and the keys of return … and insisted on staying there peacefully without any form of violence?” As his idea <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/opinion/gaza-protests-organizer-great-return-march.html">gained traction</a>, youth committees were set up in Gaza, local organisations were consulted, and political factions were invited to involve themselves. </p>
<p>As 20 organisers called on participants to use non-violent methods of resistance, informal camps began to pop up on the border. Muthana al-Najjar, a journalist, was the first to set up a tent 700 metres from the fence that separates Gaza from Israel. Others were erected alongside it, each named after a village from which Palestinians had been expelled. The demonstrators held reading chains and “pray-ins”. They planted olive saplings near the fence – and some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mobWJFfV3I">dressed as characters from Avatar</a>, a film where a powerful corporation occupies a planet and violently oppresses its indigenous inhabitants. Different organisations, such as the Waed Society for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners, used the opportunity to highlight their particular causes. </p>
<p>But despite the protests’ non-violent origins and goals, events unfolded rather differently. As is common in civil resistance movements, a violent fringe emerged.</p>
<p>Ahead of the demonstrations, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-army-gears-up-for-gaza-mass-protest-1.5957896">Israel warned</a> the protesters that it would shoot anyone who came within 300 metres of the fence. Hamas duly took the opportunity to stake its claim on the protests, giving its workers time off to join the largest demonstrations on May 14 and 15. Young men affiliated with Hamas set tyres alight, threw stones and Molotov cocktails, and tried to breach the fence. These actions combined with Hamas’s specific involvement gave Israel justification for the use of force.</p>
<p>As the dust settles from the resulting violence, further investigations can determine who exactly was killed by the Israeli army, under what immediate circumstances, and how and when the balance between violent and non-violent methods shifted. It’s all part of the same old game: the fate of the peaceful protesters’ cause depends how these demonstrations are framed, and therefore, on who is able to take control of the narrative.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Fleischmann is a Research Fellow with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict</span></em></p>Thanks to a violent fringe of protesters backed by Hamas, a far larger non-violent movement is struggling to control the narrative of what’s happening in Gaza.Leonie Fleischmann, Lecturer in International Politics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814272017-07-26T01:55:29Z2017-07-26T01:55:29Z100 years ago African-Americans marched down 5th Avenue to declare that black lives matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179312/original/file-20170722-28515-16wxxmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Silent protest parade in New York against the East St. Louis riots, 1917.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95517074/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This article was published on July 25, 2017.</em></p>
<p>The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black. </p>
<p>On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.</p>
<p>New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene. </p>
<p>The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement. As I have written in my book <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469609850/torchbearers-of-democracy/">“Torchbearers of Democracy</a>,” African-Americans during the World War I era challenged racism both abroad and at home. In taking to the streets to dramatize the brutal treatment of black people, the participants of the “Silent Protest Parade” indicted the United States as an unjust nation. </p>
<p>This charge remains true today.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Several thousand people attended a Seattle rally to call attention to minority rights and police brutality in April 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One hundred years later, as black people continue to insist that “Black Lives Matter,” the “Silent Protest Parade” offers a vivid reminder about the power of courageous leadership, grassroots mobilization, direct action and their collective necessity in the fight to end racial oppression in our current troubled times. </p>
<h2>Racial violence and the East St. Louis Riot</h2>
<p>One of the great accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement has been to demonstrate the continuum of racist violence against black people throughout American history and also the history of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-making-of-black-lives-matter-9780190601348?cc=us&lang=en&">resistance against it</a>. But as we continue to grapple with the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/police-shooting-castile-trial-video.html?_r=0">hyper-visibility of black death</a>, it is perhaps easy to forget just how truly horrific racial violence against black people was a century ago. </p>
<p>Prior to the “Silent Protest Parade,” <a href="https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsoflyn00nati">mob violence and the lynching</a> of African-Americans had grown even more gruesome. In Waco, a mob of 10,000 white Texans attended the May 15, 1916, lynching of a black farmer, <a href="http://www.tamupress.com/product/First-Waco-Horror,1483.aspx">Jesse Washington</a>. One year later, on May 22, 1917, a black woodcutter, <a href="https://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/memphis-burning/Content?oid=4438125">Ell Persons</a>, died at the hands of over 5,000 vengeance-seeking whites in Memphis. Both men were burned and mutilated, their charred body parts distributed and displayed as souvenirs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-black-women-and-police-violence-139937">A short history of black women and police violence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Even by these grisly standards, <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/57mbk5qp9780252009518.html">East St. Louis</a> later that same summer was shocking. Simmering labor tensions between white and black workers exploded on the evening of July 2, 1917.</p>
<p>For 24 hours, white mobs indiscriminately stabbed, shot and lynched anyone with black skin. Men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled – no one was spared. Homes were torched and occupants shot down as they attempted to flee. White militia men stood idly by as the carnage unfolded. Some actively participated. The death toll likely ran as high as 200 people.</p>
<p>The city’s surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93505758/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>East St. Louis was an <a href="http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/American+Pogrom">American pogrom</a>. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061972942">Ida B. Wells</a> traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and <a href="http://gildedage.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-gildedage%3A24051">collected firsthand accounts</a> of the aftermath. She described what she saw as an “awful orgy of human butchery.” </p>
<p>The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. <a href="https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilson's_War_Message_to_Congress">On April 2</a>, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting <a href="https://theconversation.com/1917-woodrow-wilsons-call-to-war-pulled-america-onto-a-global-stage-75022">America’s singularly unique place on the global stage</a> and his goal to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s vision and America itself. </p>
<h2>The NAACP takes action</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.naacp.org/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a> quickly responded to the massacre. Founded in 1909, the NAACP had yet to establish itself as a truly representative <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/lift-every-voice">organization for African-Americans across the country</a>. With the exception of <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466841512">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, one of the NAACP’s co-founders and editor of The Crisis magazine, the national leadership was all white. Branches were overwhelmingly located in the North, despite the majority of African-Americans residing below the Mason-Dixon line. As a result, the NAACP had largely failed to respond with a sense of urgency to the everyday horrors endured by the masses of black folk. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Weldon Johnson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Weldon_Johnson.jpg">Twentieth Century Negro Literature</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321968/along-this-way-by-james-weldon-johnson/9780143105176/">James Weldon Johnson</a> changed things. Lawyer, diplomat, novelist, poet and songwriter, Johnson was a true African-American renaissance man. In 1916, Johnson joined the NAACP as a field secretary and made an immediate impact. In addition to growing the organization’s southern membership, Johnson recognized the importance of expanding the influence of the NAACP’s existing branches beyond the black elite.</p>
<p>Johnson raised the idea of a silent protest march at an executive committee meeting of the NAACP Harlem branch shortly after the East St. Louis riot. Johnson also insisted that the protest include the city’s entire black community. Planning quickly got underway, spearheaded by Johnson and local black clergymen. </p>
<h2>A historic day</h2>
<p>By noon on July 28, several thousand African-Americans had begun to assemble at 59th Street. Crowds gathered along Fifth Avenue. Anxious New York City police officers lined the streets, aware of what was about to take place but, with clubs at the ready, prepared for trouble.</p>
<p>At approximately 1 p.m., the protest parade commenced. Four men carrying drums began to slowly, solemnly play. A group of black clergymen and NAACP officials made up the front line. W.E.B. Du Bois, who had recently returned from conducting an <a href="http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1292426769648500.pdf">NAACP investigation in East St. Louis</a>, and James Weldon Johnson marched side by side. </p>
<p>The parade was a stunning spectacle. At the front, women and children wearing all-white gowns symbolized the innocence of African-Americans in the face of the nation’s guilt. The men, bringing up the rear and dressed in dark suits, conveyed both a mournful dignity and stern determination to stand up for their rights as citizens.</p>
<p>They carried signs and banners shaming America for its treatment of black people. Some read, “Your hands are full of blood,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Mothers, do lynchers go to heaven?” Others highlighted the wartime context and the hollowness of America’s ideals: “We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in six wars; our reward was East St. Louis,” “Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty,” “Make America safe for Democracy.”</p>
<p>Throughout the parade, the marchers remained silent. The New York Times <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1917/07/29/96262006.html?pageNumber=12">described the protest</a> as “one of the most quiet and orderly demonstrations ever witnessed.” The silence was finally broken with cheers when the parade concluded at Madison Square. </p>
<h2>Legacy of the Silent Protest Parade</h2>
<p>The “Silent Protest Parade” marked the beginning of a new epoch in the long black freedom struggle. While adhering to a certain <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674769786">politics of respectability</a>, a strategy employed by African-Americans that focused on countering racist stereotypes through dignified appearance and behavior, the protest, within its context, constituted a radical claiming of the public sphere and a powerful affirmation of black humanity. It declared that a “New Negro” had arrived and launched a black public protest tradition that would be seen in the parades of the <a href="http://lsupress.org/books/detail/the-world-of-marcus-garvey/">Universal Negro Improvement Association</a>, the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter marches of today. </p>
<p>[<em>Context on today’s headlines, each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=context">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The “Silent Protest Parade” reminds us that the fight against racist violence and the killing of black people remains just as relevant now as it did 100 years ago. Black death, whether at the hands of a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/us/alton-sterling-doj-death-investigation/index.html">Baton Rouge police officer</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/charleston-church-shooter-i-would-like-to-make-it-crystal-clear-i-do-not-regret-what-i-did/2017/01/04/05b0061e-d1da-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html">white supremacist in Charleston</a>, is a specter that continues to haunt this nation. The expendability of black bodies is American tradition, and history speaks to the long endurance of this violent legacy.</p>
<p>But history also offers inspiration, purpose and vision. </p>
<p>Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson and other freedom fighters of their generation should serve as models for activists today. That the “Silent Protest Parade” attracted black people from all walks of life and backgrounds attests to the need for organizations like the NAACP, following its recent national convention, to remember and embrace its origins. And, in building and sustaining the current movement, we can take lessons from past struggles and work strategically and creatively to apply them to the present. </p>
<p>Because, at their core, the demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as one of the signs raised to the sky on that July afternoon in 1917: </p>
<p>“Give me a chance to live.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thousands marched in silence against racial violence after a riot left hundreds of blacks dead and thousands homeless. The demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as they did in 1917.Chad Williams, Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/789732017-06-13T09:05:00Z2017-06-13T09:05:00ZWhy criminalising non-violent extremism won’t prevent terrorism<p>In the wake of the terrorist attack on London Bridge, Theresa May <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-statement-following-london-terror-attack-4-june-2017">said</a> that recent attacks “are bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism.” </p>
<p>In 2015, the prime minister <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/470088/51859_Cm9148_Accessible.pdf">had written that</a> where “non-violent extremism goes unchallenged, the values that bind our society together fragment”. Going one step further, in its 2017 manifesto, May’s Conservative party called for a <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto">new approach</a> where: “We will consider what new criminal offences might need to be created … to defeat the extremists.”</p>
<p>What this push for new legislation targets is not the criminal behaviour of violence, but the ideology behind it. This is based on the problematic assumption that criminalising the motivations behind an action can prevent it from happening: but my research suggests that the opposite may well be the case. </p>
<p>Under <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/contents">UK legislation</a> terrorism is defined as violent acts committed to advance a political, ideological, or religious cause. This means that individuals engaging in such attacks are doing so to communicate and bring about some form of political transformation. Violent attacks are done for a political cause, to advance an ideological goal. </p>
<p>The crucial question then is how can states and wider civil society create a context whereby non-violent forms of political expression are considered preferable to such violent alternatives. In other words, how can we make 21st century politics function in a way that draws people with these views in, rather than alienates and isolates them?</p>
<h2>The rush to criminalise</h2>
<p>In new <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1338055">research</a> I’ve published on negotiations, I discuss how such issues are often due to the orientation of the criminal justice system. Instead of just criminalising political violence, states frequently criminalise a much broader range of non-violent forms of political expression.</p>
<p>Because politicians like May link certain ideologies to acts of violence, these ideologies are regarded as being just as criminal. All corresponding non-violent expressions of these ideologies – such as certain extreme interpretations of Islam – are to be considered in like terms, as a “pernicious ideology”, as May’s predecessor <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-easter-message-2016-christian-values-christian-country-a6954996.html">David Cameron</a> stated following the terror acts in Brussels in 2016.</p>
<p>For instance, during the conflict in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin was censored, as were many advocating their political ideology. This led to a silencing of the political debate. Those challenging the violence of the IRA, but advocating for their goals – a united Ireland – were frequently labelled as terrorist sympathisers. For instance the former leader of the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), John Hume, notably <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07907180600707532?src=recsys">stated</a>: “Listening to honourable members opposite one would think that it [the pursuit of Irish unity] was a crime.” </p>
<h2>Cutting off dialogue</h2>
<p>But criminalising non-violent forms of expression undermines dialogue – a <a href="https://kar.kent.ac.uk/38094/">crucial component</a> of resolving conflict in all forms. If people don’t talk to one another they will have a much more limited understanding of what “the other” side actually wants. It will mean each side sees their goals in opposition to other, and any gains they make as the others’ losses.</p>
<p>Terrorism itself is an expression of these goals, but it is at the end of a spectrum. Intervention much earlier on down the scale could possibly enable alternative pathways to resolving the political objectives. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2013.813248">Academic interviews</a> with a number of “radicals” in Canada revealed how the pathway into jihad is by no means linear nor predetermined. Engaging with, rather than criminalising, those who are moving towards political violence is essential to its prevention.</p>
<p>When non-violent expressions of a political ideology are criminalised this links the very ideology with criminality, and with terrorism. Holding a belief, no matter how disagreeable you may find it, does not make a person a perpetrator. Media headlines after the recent terror attacks in the UK provide disturbing examples of just how demonising such language can be. One headline in The Daily Mail read: <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4571902/London-Bridge-killer-slipped-police-s-net.html">“Another fanatic slips through the net”</a>, while another in The Sun called one of the attackers “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3723382/attacker-arsenal-kit-kfc-c4-doc-jihadi-flag-radicalise-kids-thrown-out-mosque-quizzed-cops/">The Jihadi next door”</a>. </p>
<p>Instead of focusing on the acts, such media coverage demonises the individuals, creating suspicion against all those of a particular religion or culture. As a result, this alienates the very communities which counter-terrorism forces needs to work with most. </p>
<p>Linking those who hold illegal beliefs directly to terror may isolate and marginalise their voices and ensure that they are unable to openly express their political beliefs. Many of the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1338055">murals and graffiti</a> in Northern Ireland are illustrative of this very issue. As a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1338055">former IRA prisoner explained</a> to me as part of my research, “the state were in total control of all other expressions of citizenship”. As a result these individuals are likely to operate covertly rather than in the open, making it more difficult to engage and challenge their positions. Instead, they are reduced to simple characterisations, such as evil jihadists, closing down opportunities for dialogue rather than opening them up. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173330/original/file-20170612-7026-1k68gii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mural in Belfast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/34517490@N00/9100970882/sizes/l">nicksarebi/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Providing legitimate and credible non-violent alternatives to terrorism may seem fanciful, but the motivations for some of these individuals often begins in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2010.501423">their social exclusion and alienation</a>. Addressing and engaging with these issues much earlier could help prevent violent motivations ever taking root. </p>
<p>This means re-orientating criminal justice so that the focus is on the illegitimacy of political violence, not the identities and individuals themselves, could help prevent these attacks, particularly as they become more difficult to detect. Dialogue, not criminalising non-violent forms of expression, will help prevent political violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Kirkpatrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It cuts shuts down the chance for dialogue.Daniel Kirkpatrick, PhD Candidate in International Conflict Analysis, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/665182016-10-19T14:56:39Z2016-10-19T14:56:39ZJustifying the use of violence to fight social injustice is a recipe for disaster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141970/original/image-20161017-4749-o3rt5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela depicted on church wall in west London. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toby Melville/Reuters </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is reaping the bitter fruits of violence: both apartheid’s and the African National Congress’s armed struggle.</p>
<p>At his 1964 trial for treason Nelson Mandela set out the basis for the African National Congress’s (ANC) decision to use violence to fight the violence of apartheid. At one stage he <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/i-am-prepared-to-die">stated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This conclusion, My Lord, was not easily arrived at. It was when … all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At round about the same time across the Atlantic Ocean in the US, Martin Luther King <a href="http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol03Scans/414_4-Nov-1956_Pauls%20Letter%20to%20Amer%20Christians.pdf">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It would be both cowardly and immoral for you patiently to accept injustice…. But as you continue your righteous protest … be sure that the means you employ are as pure as the end you seek. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using love as your chief weapon. Let no man pull you so low that you hate him. Always avoid violence. If you sow the seeds of violence in your struggle, unborn generations will reap the whirlwind of social disintegration.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s university <a href="http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2016/09/27/the-staggering-stats-on-damage-caused-to-sa-universities-during-the-student-protests/">campuses are burning</a> as students protest, demanding <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/university-funding-5277">“free</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonisation-debate-is-a-chance-to-rethink-the-role-of-universities-63840">decolonised</a> education”. Those students using violence, inter alia, argue that justice demands the use of such violence and that in effect it is a form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-student-protests-in-south-africa-have-turned-violent-66288">self defence</a>. </p>
<p>Should they heed Mandela, or King?</p>
<h2>A violent society</h2>
<p>There is an all pervasive presence of violence and contempt for human life in <a href="https://africacheck.org/spot_check/factsheet-south-africas-201516-crime-statistics/">South Africa</a>. Nothing illustrates this more graphically than <a href="http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-southafrica.html">abortion statistics</a> and the <a href="https://africacheck.org/factsheets/guide-rape-statistics-in-south-africa/">rape</a> of children. </p>
<p>Extrapolating from King’s words, it would be difficult not to conclude that the ANC’s prescription for fighting apartheid was shortsighted. It also did not grasp King’s insights about the inevitability of reaping what one sows when opting for violence. </p>
<p>Crucial to King’s thinking was that violence has a life of its own. The ANC, for its part, believed that the consequences of the decision to use violence could be controlled and managed. </p>
<p>Even more fundamentally, the ANC failed to grasp or understand the full consequences of justifying the use of violence to achieve a “noble” end. One consequence of this is that it provided the generations that followed the justification to use whatever means necessary to achieve their “just” ends. </p>
<p>In the 1980s I was often a defence advocate in <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/index.php/publications/1632-the-ritual-of-the-necklace.html">“necklace”</a> murder trials. Necklacing involved forcing a tyre over the shoulders of a person accused of collaborating with the apartheid government. The tyre, doused in petrol, would then be set alight. Necklacing as a means to cast off oppression was, to paraphrase King, “the end in the making”. </p>
<h2>Feeding the tyrant</h2>
<p>The point King makes is that once one opts for violence as a strategy to fight injustice, the devastating consequences will prevail for a long time afterwards.</p>
<p>His point was that meeting violence with violence only serves to feed the tyrant. To apply King’s challenge to South Africa, the aim should have been to starve the violence of the twin tyrant of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/national-party-np">Nationalist Party</a> (the party of apartheid) and white capital through militant non-violent civil disobedience.</p>
<p>Even when the ANC was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/2/newsid_2524000/2524997.stm">unbanned in 1990</a> it refused to abandon the “armed struggle” until it achieved its ends, as Anthea Jeffery writes in her book <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Peoples-War-Anthea-Jeffery/9781868423576">People’s War</a> (page 462). In this way it continued to feed the tyrant of violence which diminished the value and dignity of all human life. </p>
<p>Thousands of people were murdered between 1990 and 1994, many by the forces of the Nationalist Party, but many also by a brutal fight for power leading up to the 1994 elections between <em>inter alia</em> the ANC, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/WR92/AFW-08.htm">IFP</a>, Pan Africanist Congress and Azanian People’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/war-between-azapo-and-udf-popular-violence-1980s-and-1990s">Organisation</a>.</p>
<p>And then in 1994 there was an attempt to preach reconciliation, love, tolerance and nonviolence. But, by then, morally speaking, the nation had been grievously damaged. It had been dehumanised by apartheid, and the use of violence to fight it. It had been established on the hatred central to the use of violence.</p>
<p>The evil of apartheid combined with the ANC’s decision to fight violence with violence, and to use violence in its own internal conflicts, was a toxic cocktail. The results are still with us today.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141979/original/image-20161017-4735-12fzfez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters in front of a barricade during a fees protest at the Vaal University of Technology.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span>
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<p>This is evident in the violent turn the student protests have taken. A student recently stated on national television that the only option open for the protesters was to use violence, or to threaten the use of violence, until their demands were met. </p>
<h2>Taking the high road</h2>
<p>King’s aim was to shame the racists, to stir their consciences. Fundamental to this was the belief that hatred and violence should be met with militant non- violent action. Crucially, this also meant being prepared to take the full consequences of such action. These consequences included imprisonment, beatings and even death. </p>
<p>If South African students were to embrace King, I have no doubt that those with economic power would be shamed and their consciences stirred. The overwhelming majority of ordinary South Africans also would come out in open support for the just cause of making tertiary education accessible to the poor and powerless.</p>
<p>South Africa’s students could make a significant contribution to the nation’s moral regeneration if they disavowed violence and took the high road espoused by King. </p>
<p>As a nation we are still reaping the fruits of the violence of apartheid and the use of violence to fight it. South Africa’s students can help the country break that cycle. And is it not central to the call of university students to say no to the status quo, in this case the use of violence, and to provide a new and better way? </p>
<p>A concluding thought by King is also cause for further reflection: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It (the nonviolent approach) does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=TU_HozbJSC8C&pg=PA423&lpg=PA423&dq=the+nonviolent+approach+does+something+to+the+hearts+and+souls+of+those+committed+to+it.+It+gives+them+new+self-respect&source=bl&ots=TXu5eIyzP_&sig=8Qv-SVA6f_dlv9ASdRjM3TZTPNk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKw57KveHPAhVKD8AKHZjxDQUQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=the%20nonviolent%20approach%20does%20something%20to%20the%20hearts%20and%20souls%20of%20those%20committed%20to%20it.%20It%20gives%20them%20new%20self-respect&f=false">self-respect</a>.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Matthee SC does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South African universities are aflame as student protests for free education turn violent. But, would a non-violent approach, as preached by Martin Luther King, be more effective in their cause?Keith Matthee SC, Senior Counsel and PHD theological student at the University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.