Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

It requires an opponent who is capable of being shamed.

Hitler wasn't shameable, nor Stalin. America wasn't in fighting the native tribes in the 19th century, or the Philippines at the turn of the 20th. The Japanese at Nanking and elsewhere. The Ottoman Empire in Armenia (a matter Turkey to this day will not acknowledge or discuss), in Greece, in Assyria, and Kurdistan following WWI. China in Tibet. Britain/Australia and the aboriginal populations.

Guatamala (1968-96). Pakistan (1971). Burundi (1972 & 1993). North Korea. Equatorial Guinea. Indonesian in East Timor. Agentina (1976-1983). Rwanda. Cambodia.

Nonviolence is a tool. It's not the only tool. It is frequently, but not always, disproportionately successful.

View on HN

Nonviolence is a simple idea. It works when majority of people stop working, enough to cause loss to a company or the ruling party. It requires that the ruling party gains it power from the working class, which was the case in British ruled India and similarly in Iran.

It will fail if one nation is attacking another. It would have worked against Hitler if the German people had revolted (I guess they did not because they believed in Hitler's ideas, few minority that did not could be got rid off). Nonviolence would not have worked if British people used it against Hitler.

Being shameable is not necessary (but is helpful). For example, the occupy movement in America, even though nonviolent is not successful because the companies (or the top 1%) are not losing anything. There is not enough critical mass to the movement to affect the profits (enough that they take notice).

This is wrong. Nonviolence on its own doesn't work at all. Gandhi would have been forgotten by now if people like Bhagat Singh hadn't been making enough trouble to cause the venture to not be worth the cost. Martin Luther King would have failed had the black panthers not been effective with their violence (e.g. "the bomb blast heard 'round the world" mentioned in a King speech). Peaceful resistance probably was tried in Germany, but the Nazis had a habit of disappearing people who didn't toe the party line. You honestly believe the majority of people in Germany thought Hitler was wrong? It was dangerous to disagree.

I don't think Nonvioence and Game Theory play nice together. Nonviolence as a complete solution strikes me as an idea that we really want to believe but isn't actually true. There are many things in this world that are bad and I would like to see changed. I'd love to be able to just be nonviolent and cause it to change but I don't think history is very kind to this fantasy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com