The Heroism of Non-Violence

by Doctor Science

A MLK Day post, slightly delayed

One of the reasons gun fans give for wanting everyone to bear arms is that armed people are better able to resist or change a tyrannical, unjust government. In one of our recent discussions, for instance, someone said:

Not that guns are the way to fight every problem. Sometimes peaceful ways are much better, like MLK. But I think Nazis would have shot MLK and then gone about their business.

Along these lines, last week Rush Limbaugh said:

If a lot of African-Americans back in the '60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? I don't know, I'm just asking. If John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?

John Lewis replied:

Our goal in the Civil Rights Movement was not to injure or destroy but to build a sense of community, to reconcile people to the true oneness of all humanity. African Americans in the ‘60s could have chosen to arm themselves, but we made a conscious decision not to. We were convinced that peace could not be achieved through violence. Violence begets violence, and we believed the only way to achieve peaceful ends was through peaceful means. We took a stand against an unjust system, and we decided to use this faith as our shield and the power of compassion as our defense.

Cut due to spoilers for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey movie:

Lewis and his fellows practiced heroic non-violence, and it worked. I don't think it worked for Lewis -- or for Gandhi, or for Nelson Mandela, or for any of the other successful practitioners of non-violent resistance -- because their opponents were wimpier than Nazis, who would have just "shot them and gone about their business". The trouble is that nonviolence is *hard*, it takes patience and discipline. Look at the notorious "pepper spray cop" incident, for instance:
 
YouTube link
The Occupy protestors display a level of discipline and self-control any military unit would be proud of. I think they were extremely brave.

What I notice is that we can't seem to make non-violent heroism into a *story*, a narrative that grips and inspires people, that makes non-violence salient. And by "we" I guess I mean "Hollywood", first of all.

For instance, one of the many changes between the book of The Hobbit and part I of Peter Jackson's treatment is that, in the book, Bilbo never actually uses his sword on anything except giant spiders, though he also waves it about to threaten Gollum. He's a trickster and a burglar, not a fighter; he's very brave (on occasion), but his bravery comes from his willingness to take risks (like walk into a dragon's den unarmed) and to do what he thinks is right (as with the Arkenstone), not from an urge to ATTACK!!

And yet, that's what Jackson has him do (at the end of what used to be "Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees"), and it's only after that that Thorin truly respects him. You're a man now, little hobbit.

Now I'm sure Jackson would say that he only made these changes to make the movie more "exciting" or "engaging", or to move the narrative along. But the upshot for our collective imagination is that a fundamentally non-violent, trickster hero becomes a conventional violent one, and we lose a template for non-violent heroism.

Is it possible to show the heroism of non-violence in our most influential media? If we don't see it in our favorite stories, how likely are we to seek it in our hearts?

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This is an experiment, to see if I can write shorter (hah!) posts more frequently, by writing quickly and leaving out the art.

Comments

[firefall]

Gandhi (the movie)?

[Dan Miller]

Not if you've seen the sequel.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Wow, I never thought that Rush would be a Black Panther Party supporter.

Perhaps the NEW Black Panther Party should show up on his doorstep and let Rush know how much they appreciate his support.

[dr ngo]

Nice observation on The Hobbit. We just saw it, and enjoyed it, bearing in mind that it's PJ's Hobbit, not Tolkien's. But I didn't catch that particular, and significant, change.

[Countme-In]

"But I think Nazis would have shot MLK and then gone about their business."

Luckily, we live in a civilization wherein the Nazis can shoot MLK and then go about their business like clever boots.

"I don't know, I'm just asking. If John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?"

I don't know, I'm just answering, if John Lewis had had a gun, I think he would have been shot before he reached the bridge and then beat upside what was left of his head and his body dragged behind a pickup truck, and then Ronald Reagan would have placed his podium right smack dab on the chalk outline around Lewis' body and kicked off his campaign for President while holding a coon gun over his shoulder.

I don't know, I'm just asking, but if Django was not a figment of Quentin Tarentino's imagination, would he shoot fat f*ck Rush Limbaugh through the eye with his six guns and then have his horse do circus tricks over the carcass?

I don't know, I'm just speculating here, but if Lewis had chosen guns over "what he says" was peaceful resistance, I think we would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble through the intervening years and there would have been roughly 20 million dead modern Republicans, many of whom would have been gunned down as they crossed over the bridge from the Southern Democratic Party.

I don't know, I'm just kind of free associating here, but if Lewis had decided armed resistance would have been effective, I suspect I wouldn't have had to look at Tea Party illustrations of Barack Obama dressed as an African witch doctor.

[Countme-In]

I don't know, my mind, it wanders, but if John Lewis started waving around automatic weapons with large capacity magazines in Limbaugh's grill I suspect the latter vermin would announce his support for stringent gun control in a voice several octaves above his usual Foghorn Leghorn, but I doubt Wayne LaPierre would hire Lewis as a teacher/armed enforcer in his kid's grade school.

[cleek]

If a lot of African-Americans back in the '60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma?

Rush thinks the law in 1960s Alamaba would have sided with AA's who killed whites in self-defense ?

[Countme-In]

"Rush thinks .."

No, he doesn't.

I'm just saying, but if John Lewis thought violence was the answer, Limbaugh's minstrel show would have been fatally fire-bombed early on and AM radio would still be a place to go for high school sports and a little MoTown, instead of being the vermin-infested home of white trash it has become.

[Countme-In]

If John Lewis has less self-control, the Virginia State House would be in flames today and Bilbos ...

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+does+bilbo+mean&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

... would be in use to deal with the fleeing scum.

[russell]

Thank you for this, Doc S.

The fact is that many black people in the 60's did arm themselves.

The fact is also that the significant social changes brought about by the efforts of blacks and others in the 50's and 60's came primarily through peaceable action rather than violence or the threat of violence.

That has been, historically, the norm in this country, and we should all be grateful for it.

[Matt McIrvin]

But I think Nazis would have shot MLK and then gone about their business.

Say, let's ask Dr. King himself what he thinks about that comparison. ...Wait a minute...

Harry Turtledove wrote an alternate-history story riffing on this with Gandhi: the Nazis win WWII, Gandhi tries nonviolent resistance on them, and they shoot him and go about their business.

It's a way of simultaneously dissing nonviolence, and congratulating white Anglophone bigots and colonialists for having good enough hearts that when they oppress and murder people, a wimpy strategy like nonviolence actually works on them, unlike if they were really evil.

(Even if it's so, "better than the Nazis" is not what you would call a high bar.)

[sapient]

That has been, historically, the norm in this country, and we should all be grateful for it.

Seconded.

That said, the part of the civil rights movement that consisted of nonviolent demonstration, passive resistance and civil disobedience was something unique in American history. It involved people breaking unjust laws, willing to fill the jails, in order to raise the consciousness of enough people so that the laws might be changed. The incredibly large-scale discipline and bravery of the people involved in the movement was unprecedented, and hasn't been repeated. It wasn't the norm at all.

[Hartmut]

Iirc Churchill would have shot Gandhi, if it had been up to him (actually he was for letting him carry his hunger strike to the (lethal) end). Sir Winston was never above using ungentlemanly methods against the 'lower races'.
Btw, Gandhi himself admitted that non-violent resistance would not work against all adversaries, only those that still reatined some humanity. I think it was this 'moral blackmail' that really angered Churchill.

[Phil]

If a lot of African-Americans back in the '60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma?

Or just imagine if armed whites in the Jim Crow South had done their freedom-defendin' duty to protect people from government tyranny and stood up for black people instead of, you know, terrorizing them, lynching them and murdering civil rights workers trying to register voters. In fact, it seems like our freedom-defendin' gun owners are usually trying to reinforce existing power structures rather than actually defend against tyranny. I know, right? Who would have imagined.

I wonder if Rush will bother to tell his audience who took the initiative in disarming legally-armed blacks in California? (NB I don't actually wonder.)

[Phil]

I didn't see a lot of freedom-defendin' gun owners standing up for the rights to assembly and free speech at the 1968 Democratic National Convention either, come to think of it.

[skeptonomist]

Oh, now you've spoiled "The Hobbit, Part I"! Now there is no point to seeing the movie at all. I was really looking forward to the incredible expansion of the story and all the new things that must have been added.

[sapient]

Further to Phil's comments:

Thom Hartmann's article (not sure where I saw the link first - another blog) on the history of the Second Amendment, which was passed to preserve the power of state militias to control slave uprisings, is really interesting.

No wonder they ignored the "well-regulated militia" language in the recent Supreme Court decision.