The protesters look similar – except for the guns. They sound about as noisy. Their faces are all determined. They all have posters.
One element may hold the key to which group wins or loses, and it’s not the guns.
I keep wondering what’s in the mind of Republican voters when they faithfully follow directives meant to dismantle democracy to preserve white power? They think they have themselves a chosen one to protect them from a Deep State that exists in Q Land. But it makes them miss the true deep state that infests the whole of authoritarian culture (not affecting only Republicans, BTW).
You can recognize the true deep state because it’s structured to eat its faithful. It’s a key part of a system meant to separate the “worthy” from the “losers.” Examples might be when a leader repeatedly chews up his own staff people and spits them out. Or when he hollows out entire public institutions and scatters their collected knowledge to the wind. Not least might be when he rips sobbing children from their parents and casts whole families into ice-cold dungeons of abuse. None of those are exaggerations of the reality we live in.
Even more are the structural violences that refuses help to the poor, the sick, the helpless in hours of need. Or refuses education to the young. Homes to a family. Or healthcare to anybody. The current administration didn’t have to create those structures. They were already built by the authoritarian system that came before.
The gift of this administration though, is to bring the system into the open in ways that can’t be ignored and must be addressed. This kind of violence does not bring about a culture that anyone I know wants to live in – left or right. There’s something different we want to be fully human. It must be built in a different way than the old authoritarian system built itself, on the backs of poor and Black bodies for the profit of a few wealthy, powerful and white. We can read that history when we get brave enough, but there’s no history of how to build the world we want. That hasn’t been written yet, except where we’re writing it as we speak.
What does that mean for this tense moment when armed protesters are breaking in to vote counting places and a president and his friends are making up wild stories to hold on to power?
There’s a different way. We can move into that space if we can take a deep breath and steel ourselves to practice nonviolence. The kind Gandhi practiced and beyond.
Whenever there’s a threat of danger, nonviolence suddenly becomes less interesting to lots of people. I’ve been around for several wars now and notice that nonviolence sounds reasonable when things are peaceful, but when things get unsettled people start wondering how they can use nonviolence to protect themselves and it gets less relevant.
That response might make sense in a culture like this where we’re taught that all problems are solved with violence. But it doesn’t build a culture that ends wars, builds thriving communities, ends climate change, heals stricken land and forest, creates wellness where trauma, pain, fear and agony live, weaves webs of care that raise and educate brilliant, caring, creative families, or innovate industries and cities that solve social and environmental problems that look insurmountable. That’s the kind of culture we really want.
Right at this crossroads moment where we all know we want to choose a new world, what choices can we make that would help ensure the direction we take will lead us where we want to go?
Let’s talk about nonviolence for a minute. How does nonviolence actually work in the face of violence?
Lengthy studies by Drs Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephen studied a series of nonviolent and violent revolutions against repressive dictators in different countries. They found that three out of four nonviolent revolutions were successful, which is a lot higher success rate than the one-in-four rate for violent revolutions. But why?
After another lengthy study they determined that the primary factor that made nonviolent revolutions successful was the vastly greater participation rate by the population.
In a violent revolution, only strong young people could be involved. It takes lots of strength and stamina to fight violently. It also required a willingness and commitment to acting violently. It’s difficult to sustain a violent struggle with a small numbers of mortals. It takes a lot out of you. Fortunately for the human race, violence is not actually that popular an activity, even though you wouldn’t know it watching our media.
In nonviolent revolutions, the tactics may appear to be “softer.” Based on the assumptions of violence in authoritarian systems that means “weaker.” But what the researchers found was that by virtue of the mass of participation the soft became powerful, and the massive support of the people created sustainability for the struggle. Against all authoritarian assumptions the human tendency to mutual support goes on steroids when people feel their lives and values are at stake.
Here are a few stories that illustrate the point, from the video series
“A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict”.
Disk 1 – India, Nashville, and South Africa Disk 2 – Denmark, Poland and Chile (fascinating, and free to view at the link below)
- Introduced by the story of Mahatma Gandhi, you see the birth of a new way of looking at challenges to oppression
2. The Nashville TN student protests, part of the sweeping story of the American Civil Rights Movement
3. The struggle in South Africa was in essence a nonviolent struggle that hinged on economic boycotts and mutual aid that are buried under a few stories of violence.
4. Denmark proved that nonviolence can even work against a Hitler.
5. The Gdansk worker protests are a case study in grassroots organizing and powerful popular determination. The Solidarity Movement today is still the voice of the people in Poland.
6. Chile’s liberation from the dictator Pinochet is recent enough that you see the way (semi) modern media was used in a brilliant struggle for liberation.
These are only a few of the many stories of nonviolent struggle for freedom and justice in human history. They show that nonviolence in not passive. Nonviolence requires strategy, preparedness, courage, strength, ingenuity, flexibility, resourcefulness, and awareness. Nonviolence builds power for people in ways that violence cannot. Nonviolence builds community power and voice that unites and strengthens an entire community. It results in a deeper sense of solidarity and shared purpose than violence can ever do.
It’s also successful. The struggle for a true democracy will succeed when the tactics are nonviolent.
Commitment to nonviolence is the tool that will win over an administration trying to foment civil war to sustain white power: firm commitment to nonviolent discipline. We can win this fight for democracy by using this tool that perfectly upholds democratic values.
Now with the advent of mass education, wide internet connection among people, and common travel, there is not only hope that new ways of governing ourselves are within our grasp. We can build the world we truly want to live in, on the once-more-thriving planet we love and call our home. We can also pass it successfully to our children with pride.