Pacifism in Action

Gerry makes a long, detailed comment to Communism and Violence.

Media control? What's this I keep hearing about the impending demise of the mainstream (controlled) media, replaced by an online independent media?

At this stage of development, the blogosphere is probably full of itself. The struggle for control of information to the public is a very important one. Even in the blogosphere, most of the commentary is on stories published by the mainstream media, but there are alternatives. So even here, the mainstream media is pervasive as the source of stories.

Now for an anecdote. Two guys were discussing how homogeneous the news was. I suggested they try reading the alternative media. All I got was silence and blank stares. I suppose the moral of this is that the mainstream is safe and people may feel insecure in the world of alternative media.

Police violence: My argument is that until there is absolutely no violence, abusiveness, or provocation by the demonstrators it's crap to point at the police etc and bleat about violence coming from them. I don't know too many soldiers or cops who would use violence against utterly peaceful people behaving calmly and non-provocatively. Peace stuffs them.

The case of Rachel Corrie is the answer to that. She is the epitome of pacifism. She had trusted that the "decent human being" driving the bulldozer would not run over her, or, at least, the other "decent human beings" in the army and police would either stop the driver or pull her to safety.

What then is provocation? Is standing in front of a bulldozer provocation? Yes. Ms. Corrie had provoked the reaction by not submitting to barbarism, by not selling out her integrity, and by not showing fear in the face of the power of the State. For that, she was murdered in cold blood by "decent human beings".

Defiance is provocation. If the source of power is violence, then defiance threatens that power. If people are no longer afraid of the violence, then what good is the power? Those in power will lose control unless they get the people to submit again.

S11? First get S11 to stop behaving like yobboes before telling me peace can't work or blaming the cops.

I know the existing anti-establishment propaganda seeks to deny this, Douglas, but (shock, horror) most soldiers and police are actually decent human beings who have to do some really crap work and they would soon refuse to follow orders if they felt they were being used to savage their own citizens who were behaving peacefully and non-provocatively in exercising their freedom of speech.

This is an interesting pair of paragraphs here. A minority of S11 protestors were yobbos, therefore the S11 protestors should stop behaving like yobbos. However, the majority of police and military are "decent human beings", therefore they must all be "decent human beings".

The police must be excused from attacking because they were provoked whereas the demonstrators must refrain from attacking if they are provoked. Thus "decent human beings" have their breaking points and their behaviour is excusable. The demonstrators must endure all things patiently.

First give peace a chance before being so sure it can't work. In fact I argue that if you just never give in to the urge to retaliate, abuse, provoke, attack, they run out of reasons to use violence against you and they sart to question their own violence and ultimately they would cease to follow orders to attack.

People have their breaking points. Even Jesus whipped the moneylenders in the Temple. You are asking people to endure the unendurable.

Again, I return to the example of Rachel Corrie. The bulldozer driver did not stop nor did the Israeli soldiers intervene to stop her cold-blooded murder.

What provocation did Rachel make? Was it her defiance in the face of injustice? Her courage in the face of death?

I still say that truly peaceful methods used properly constitute a tactic they have no answer for. It (peace and calm) will overcome them. But you've got to get rid of the hotheads and those who justify violence under _any_ cicumstances before you can possibly test what I'm proposing. Then you'd still have your hands full trying to neutralise and eject the agents provocateur inserted into your protest by your political opponents. Restrain those bastards and hand them over to the police to be taken away, making it clear to the cops that these guys are not part of your protest. I'm talking about stuff no one I know has ever tried in this country so I don't know where the evidence is that it doesn't work.

Their answer is to shift into low gear and drive over you.

Abu Ghraib? I didn't know that anyone expected the publishing of those photos to result in the overthrow of GWB.

The dishonour that we all bear is that no one was ashamed of those photographs. We, in Australia, UK, and the USA, have no sense of honour and no sense of shame. We, the people, voted those bastards who gave the orders back into office. Thus, we are all guilty of what happened and continues to happen in Iraq. We can no longer claim that we did not know what was going on.

As I've said elsewhere, if all of those Republicans and Democrats who oppose the Iraq war and Bush's mad foreign policy objectives were to organise effectively to stage massive and ongoing peaceful protests in Washington, they theoretically have the numbers (millions) to gridlock Washington till Bush resigns. All it would take is cranking up the commitment in ordinary people to take to the streets to effect regime change. But the organisers would owe it to those people to keep it peaceful and orderly. It could be done. As I said thousands of camcorders feeding images to the independent media would get the news out there.

Ah yes! The mythical independent media. Independent of what? We all have our agendas. Mine is at the top of my blog.

I agree that mass action is needed to change the situation in Iraq. But if the mass action is to keep the existing system, then the mass action defeats itself for the Iraqi war is to maintain the Capitalist system.

You'll never see me at a non-peaceful demo, and if I'm at a demo and the demonstrators turn violent, abusive or ugly, I and everyone else who is committed to peaceful methods would just walk away from it. You'd lose the numbers game big time every time, and once gone, those numbers take a lot of convincing before they'll ever trust the organisers again. Violence is the enemy of any cause.

Once again, I appeal to the example of Rachel Corrie. She did not demand any conditions to her intervention. She did not ask that the suicide bombers stop before she decided to go to Palestine.

It is easy to be a Pacifist in your living room. But the real need for Pacificists is out there in the dangerous places.

From this correspondence, I have to realise that my Party uses Pacificism as a tactic not as a strategy. We employ non-violent methods at this stage of the struggle because as you say violence drives away people. (This is why the media goes out of its way to portray demonstrations as violent.)

The days of violent uprising are over unless you want to see a bloodbath. It's no longer pitchforks against muzzle-loading muskets. Don't make me give you a tactical rundown as to why violence actually plays into the hands of the establishment.

I agree that violence plays into the hands of the establishment which is why we work hard at protests to quell the violence despite the provocation. The problem is the violence of the State which has shown no compunction doing what it needs to stay in power.

But I don't see a problems because I assert that peaceful protest is the most powerful and effective weapon the people have. Done properly, it will bring any unpopular regime to it's knees.

Unified action is the most potent weapon that people have. As long as we are divided, we are defeated. This action must be directed by the people to achieve the type of society that they want.

All you need is the numbers, and that's not a problem because in democratic terms, without the numbers you don't have the right to assert your will anyway, and once you have the numbers you don't need to sabotage your cause with stupid violence. It's Neandethal. The world has morphed, Douglas.

The problem is that the ruling class also realises this as a numbers games, and will do all in its power to restrict the growth of numbers: propaganda; bribery; and state terror.