Indeed, as the Game Theory studies of The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma attest: There are a number of different strategies one may choose, but, interestingly enough — the one which is most widely effective, if you adopt only one — was one described by a Jewish Rabbi about 2000 years ago: An Eye For An Eye, with Forgiveness.

Pure peace strategies fail against pure wolf strategies. They just get eaten alive. Gandhi’s policies worked against ENGLAND because the English are a fairly decent people who had blinded themselves (or looked the other way) to the wrong things they were doing. His processes shown a steady light on them, and thus worked, eventually calling that essentially decent people to his side.

If he’d done the same thing against Nazi Germany, before he had any semblance of notoriety, he would have found himself, early on, being tortured in the deepest, darkest hole they had, and no one would even know his name.

The Eye for an Eye business, it works consistently — tit for tat. You abuse me, I will abuse you when things come around, as they inevitably do (reputation also factors in, here — if you have a reputation for fucking people over, then anyone in that position will move to fuck you over first). The “with forgiveness” acts as a stopgap against the endless chains that come out of eye-for-an-eye — that is, the generational “your grandfather killed my grandfather, so I kill you!” stuff… once in a while, someone says, “fuck it. Let’s bury the hatchet right here, and end this.” — if both sides stand on that, then the vendetta ends, and both sides know not to fuck with each other in the future.

https://webupon.com/blog/iterated-prisoners-dilemma-game/

}}} Dr. King, who was a student of Gandhi’s teachings, believed in nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow. That mission was successful due to the fact that those in the position to change things could either be reasoned with, or overridden.

I’d assert that, even under Crow, most of the people doing it had blinded themselves to the reality, and his pacifism forced them to examine that reality and realize how wrong their ideas were.

Most had no real option to resist, so speaking of them as either cowards or heroes is not correct.

I have written at some length about all of this. Please see this and this for a much fuller discussion.

Yes, he was mistaken, in that he thought that this would move to world to retailiate quickly enough. In point of fact, the Allies ignored extensive evidence of the Holocaust through the closing stages of the war. A little strategic bombing aimed at the death camps would have saved thousands, if not millions, simply by letting them live until April 1945.

Gandhi only enjoyed some measure of success because British India did not have a large, indigenous, white settler population. No large body of white people who remember that two generations ago they were white trash scum. Now they are landed lords. But if they lose they will be white trash scum again. For them the socioeconomic stakes are too high to allow for sentiment.

Gandhian methods were used in Algeria by Ferhat Abbas in the 1940s and by Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa in the 1950’s. They failed completely and utterly. They failed because the white settlers had no problem with using as much violence as they had to to preserve their privileged status quo. A British mother would be reluctant to send her son to fight in India to preserve the Raj. A white settler mother will sternly bury her fifth son to protect her way of life.

What is missing from this discussion, though, are the many examples, large scale and small, where an unarmed population used methods of ahisma (nonviolence) or satyagraha (soul-force) to resist tyranny, and not only against pansies like the British occupiers of India (he said ironically).

I wonder, for example, why no one has mentioned the nonviolent resistance of the Danes? Denmark was occupied, but never conquered, and almost all of the Danish Jews were protected and escaped the Nazis.

Or places like la Chambon in southeastern France, a Protestant village that protected and saved hundreds of Jews while being occupied by the Germans. There is considerable evidence there that the Chambonais’ courage and the social solidarity and cohesion in the area acted as a brake on the viciousness of the German occupiers. If the pacifism-doesn’t-work position is correct, the Germans should have — and would have — simply killed everyone, Protestant, Jew, and Catholic alike, until they got their way. But they didn’t. Why? Is it impossible to believe that the courage and solidarity of the Chambonais touched a place deep in the dark heart of the German occupiers that made it impossible for them to do what they were ordered to do?

Have these examples (and there are hundreds of others throughout history) brought about the Peaceable Kingdom on Earth once and for all? No. But neither has war.

If neither method — war or non-violence — has produced Paradise Restored, I ask: In which direction is each heading?

Has war (or preparation for war)made the need for war any less? I don’t think so. The war in Iraq, for example, has resulted in more violence than there was originally, just as the attacks of 9/11 created more violence than before, etc. Is there anyone who really thinks that war will ever end war?

What has the effect of nonviolence been on the injustices it was aimed at? On balance it has a better track record than war does. Because of the disciplined, mass use of nonviolent methods, there’s less need for nonviolent resistence — that is, less tyranny, more justice — in places like the Czech Republic or Slovakia; the Ukraine; South Africa; Birmingham or Selma.

So if we grant the obvious that neither war nor nonviolence has ended injustice or oppression on Earth, which method holds the most promise?

For me, I see much more promise in nonviolence than I do in war, acknowledging that each carries with it suffering. The difference is that with war the intention is to inflict suffering on others, while with nonviolence the intention is to take the suffering onto oneself. As Camus (Satre?) said, neither victim nor executioner.

It indeed takes courage whose source resides outside the mortal human experience to take the non-violent path. Sometimes you have to lose your life to find it.

Ignoring of course the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of innocent Vietnamese murdered by the brave Yankee nonpacifists.

The Vietnam War simply put off the reckoning among the Vietnamese people. Gandhi’s point, right there. Still, he was speaking to a smarter crowd than we have here.

Yep. In fact, I’ll take it further: Himmler And Company were only able to create the concentration camps because Jews had *already* been tried, and found guilty, in that same court.

They knew. Not the specifics, maybe – gas? fire? – but they knew.