this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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The key to non-violent protest is that you don't plan on going home afterward. You go, you stay, and you don't leave -- until somebody drags you to the jail, the hospital, or the morgue.
The key to nonviolent protest is that they have to be an alternative to violence - in other words, both sides must be fully aware that either nonviolence works or violence follows.
That's certainly not how Gandhi imagined it would work.
Certainly. But of course, when the state has a much higher capability for violence, command of professional martial organizations, mature systems of espionage, infiltration, and surveillance, as well as vast propaganda resources, non-violence is a decent way to start. Not the kind of "non-violence" that takes an Uber to Denny's after the march -- the kind of non-violence that won't simply "blow over," but the kind of non-violence that absolutely will not stop until it's dealt with, one way or the other. Not everyone who goes to a protest needs to be a martyr, but there should be a core of people who believe enough in the cause to put themselves at risk of winding up with a criminal record, a hospital bill, or... worse.
I'm not arguing for pacifism. I just don't like that people have an idea that non-violent protest is the cowardly, half-hearted strategy of dilettantes and tourists.