Author: Joseph

Violent and Nonviolent Liberation Movements	

by Peter Jones

Editor’s Preface: This unpublished essay was presented at an international conference of peace researchers and activists (July 1-6, 1975, Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands), and continues our series of rediscoveries from the War Resisters’ International archive. For further notes please see the end. JG

There are various reasons why many of us are committed to the nonviolent struggle for liberation as opposed to those who are at times prepared to commit themselves to the necessity of armed struggle or selective violence. In general, nonviolent activists reach position through ethical or religious considerations, while others have come to it out of tactical or pragmatic concerns, sometimes after working with other movements first. Whatever the reason, our first task is to clarify a definition of nonviolent action, as it so often misunderstood or misused; governments frequently claim to be nonviolent institutions and radicals often think of nonviolence as acting passively or only within the framework of the law. On a number of occasions we find ourselves working alongside or in solidarity with groups or people committed to revolutionary violence: in most aspects we can identify with their program or goals, but there are times when in all conscience or for tactical reasons we are unable to continue along that road with them. 

One of the greatest problems arises when we have to define structural violence to people who see governments and corporations as the injured party when others have taken up the armed struggle against them—the structures of law and order often describe themselves as not-violent or non-violent, and a military force which exists to defend that society is not seen as “violent” because it is a defense force, not an aggressive force. A classical example of this is in the Middle East where the present Israeli government came to power through help from agencies like the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern gang, but now poses as the guardian of the peace against Arab guerilla movements—much as the British saw themselves in regard to the Zionist movements only 40 years ago in Mandate Palestine.  Similarly, in South Africa, the Afrikaner regime, which fought against the British in I899-I902 in a protracted guerilla war, now presents itself to the world as the last bastion of Christian civilization on the African continent, holding back the forces of atheistic communism, which they identify with the African liberation movements.

Those of us committed to nonviolent change are no more committed to support for structural violence than we are to armed struggle, and we tend to be suspect to both as a result.  Through non-cooperation we are a threat to the State; to the liberation movements we are an obstacle because we appear to be advocating passive resistance in the face of injustice. A common concern to pacifists today is the increasing escalation of violence and the brutalizing effects it has on people participating kin it—the increase in the use of torture since the Algerian war is indicative of this “trend in the last two decades.  As governments working alongside the military-industrial complex step up their level of counter-insurgency operations, so the brutality increases in response; thus the need for secrecy increases for the revolutionary forces, and the military operations rely increasingly on hierarchical and elitist structures of command just like the system they seek to confront and overthrow. A new pattern of repression easily follows as yesterday’s oppressed become tomorrow’s oppressors following military victory, although there are often differences in degree, and few of us would question that China, Cuba or North Vietnam are materially better off today than they were before “liberation.” With an elitist power structure this is quite easy and there is no army in the world that does not operate essentially at this level, even the People’s Militia beloved of the New Left.

Another problem at this level centers on the link between nationalism and armies, where the military become identified with the State, and in power find its attractions too great to relinquish—or they find themselves in a position where relinquishing their power could lead to national disintegration and so they remain in power by default.  In the last few years such military regimes on the Left and the Right have come to power in many parts of Africa, with Ethiopia and Nigeria as typical examples, as well as Portugal in Europe—let alone the regimes in Latin America where it was always found “impracticable” to restore civilian democracy again.  The Left has tragically tied itself in knots arguing about tactics to be adopted with regard to the military, especially after the events in Chile in 1973.

The final conclusion of the Vietnam war also focuses on two inherent problems facing us—the NLF with North Vietnamese support have finally defeated the Thieu regime and the power of the United States, but we can hardly countenance every future or ongoing liberation struggle dragging any other peoples through such appalling hell and suffering before final “victory.” We are also faced with the increasing manipulation of the contestants by the great powers and arms suppliers in their own interests, because they alone can supply the kind of military equipment needed to fight today’s wars at the level we have seen in S.E. Asia or may yet see once more in the Middle East.  These divisions of interest affecting the effectiveness of the liberation struggle are now being tragically reflected in Angola, or more cynically in Kurdistan.

Our essential differences focus on the argument over ends and means; selective revolutionary violence may appear justified in the face of reactionary violence of the State and its agents, but it can easily become a cancerous phenomenon—once embarked upon it is hard to stop.  In today’s world the people’s revolutionary struggle against imperialism and injustice is heralded as the way forward to victory, and nonviolent action is scorned as being bourgeois and passive.  In Palestine, SE Asia and South Africa, the liberation movements say that they tried nonviolence but it didn’t work. Qs problem here is largely one of equating nonviolent action with constitutional action or protest—which was met with repression as at Old Windhoek in Namibia in 1959? or at Sharpsville or Bissau; and also the apparent assumption that nonviolent action would not involve death or suffering as the regime in question felt resistance.  Apart from questioning this concept of nonviolence, v/e find ourselves in a difficult position We can identify with the struggle against imperialism and accept their definition of structural violence; likewise we often share their goals and many parts of their constructive alternative program. As part of the Western imperialist camp, we are in no position to criticize those who have taken to arms; rather it is up to us to work nonviolently to change those structures, which oppress people both within our own societies and in the Third World. Likewise we have to clarify in practice what we mean by nonviolent action, recognizing that the theoretical argument will be conducted indefinitely; but it is incumbent upon those of us committed to nonviolent struggle to show how it can work and what it involves, as well as act in solidarity with those fighting for justice whatever their tactics.

For many oppressed people today the great panacea is armed struggle, and in their enthusiasm for this, they often tend to overlook the possibilities of nonviolent actions or play them down.  In South Africa the liberation movements rejected nonviolent  action after Sharpeville, but their main successes since then have been in the field of nonviolent action—workers on strike, especially the great contract labor workers strike in Namibia in 1971-2; the Ovambo election boycott in 1973; the massive “NO” accorded to the Pearce Commission in Zimbabwe; and the mass walkout from Northern Namibia in the second half of 1974? when over 4000 people walked to freedom in .Zambia through Angola.  The resistance of the Tangwena in Zimbabwe continues; likewise the Black Churches in Namibia have been committed to nonviolent opposition to the illegal South African regime, particularly since the reading of the Open Letter to the Prime Minister of South Africa in all the Lutheran Churches in June1971.

In Palestine/Israel the tragedy of the Arab liberation movements is that in developing armed attacks on Israeli settlements, they have touched on the very nerve-end of Zionism—the fear of extermination and indiscriminate massacre, whatever the sentiments of the Attackers.  In all cases it has enabled oppressive regimes to gain continuing support from other countries by referring to the backers of the liberation movements as a threat to the Western way of life—though on the other hand it should bo justly conceded that the tactics of armed struggle would have been unnecessary if we had mobilized the forces of opposition against the growing structures of oppression in the first place.  We did almost nothing and oppressed people often sec the armed struggle as the only way left open to them to resist their oppressors.  In that sense it is our failure rather than theirs.

However, we do need to clarify far more what we mean by nonviolent action.  We now have Gene Sharp’s case studies in hand and can show that nonviolent action is not simply a prerogative of Western Bourgeois society or one successful only when used against a moderate force (as the British in India are often made out to be, despite Amritsar and other counter-measures to the opposition).  There are many current examples, which receive little attention in the media, let alone in our own press— the resistance of the peasants in Ecuador or at Larzac, the United Farmworkers in the USA, CLAT (Central Latino Americana De Trabajadores) in Latin America, or the Third Way in Vietnam.  The resistance of the Czechs to the invasion of the Warsaw Pact forces showed great potential for nonviolent resistance to overwhelming military strength, at a time when modern technology has made large-scale conflict obsolete, and allows the superpowers to tread freely almost where they choose.  The forces of the state try to incite revolutionary groups to use violence as that is a language they understand and can prepare to counter; nonviolent action they cannot understand and ultimately can do nothing to prepare their troops for psychologically or in any human terms.  One of the British governors in India cursed Gandhi for using nonviolent direct action techniques as he only understood the tactics of violent resistance— which he could deal with—but felt helpless against a people who refused to meet brute force with retaliatory violence and hatred.  The Indians hated the system of the British Raj but they would not hate the people who unwittingly formed part of it because they knew no better—their oppressors were just as oppressed as they were; so too are the soldiers who were trained by the US Army to kill Che Guevara, or the Black Africans fighting with the white armies of Smith and Vorster. The Czechs knew after Hungary in 1956 that armed resistance to the invasion in 1968 would be futile; their spontaneous resistance based upon non-cooperation showed the possibilities of extending this form of action—if people were prepared for it in advance, and if international solidarity were more forthcoming.  The cynicism of US and Soviet imperialism in 1968 showed only too well the dangers of relying on the great powers for military support—and this trend is now repeating itself in 1975 in “the Middle East and South Africa.

An element of nonviolent action is the way it appeals to international solidarity— the Palestinian Arabs’ case would gain far greater support if Arab sources were channeled into large and small-scale imaginative nonviolent actions designed to show the Zionist movement in its true colors and remove its justification for the use of retaliatory violence.  A mass walk-in across the borders, a fleet of boats with Palestinian families coming to resettle their family lands rather like the early Zionist pioneers, or the immobilization of Jewish Agency offices all over the world by Palestinian families demanding to go to “Eretz Israel” under the Law of Return, have all been suggested as examples designed to isolate the Zionist justification of bombing refuge© camps and murdering Palestinian leaders in retaliation for guerilla attacks.
\
Another problem facing Arab guerilla groups is they way they can be divided and manipulated by the forces that provide them with arms—in the interests of those forces they can be pushed into taking up positions against their own will, and simply reflect the jockeying for power and influence in the Arab world (let alone the cynical maneuverings of the US and Soviet power blocs), ranging from radical regimes in Algeria to reactionary regimes in the Arabian peninsula whose only common ground is a hatred of Israel.  The real hub of the problem lies between the Israeli people and the Palestinian Arab people; outside manipulation—as opposed to solidarity—distorts the way forward, just as outside reliance in neighboring Cyprus has caused disaster to the hopes for a unified Cypriot national identity.

At the moment the Israeli and South African regimes both survive through Western financial and military support apparently justified by fear of the military backers of the liberation movements.  Our outside role is to erode those bases of support while those inside increasingly focus on the repressive nature of the system they have to live under—or which has driven them into exile.  In this respect, nonviolent actions must be clearly proclaimed in advance and supported from outside by international publicity—particularly as the regimes grow more afraid and repressive.

The vital components of nonviolent action are non-cooperation with injustice and the constructive alternative.  Here those of us in solidarity can help in support publicity and practical help for the latter programs where possible.  Nonviolent action stresses the participation of all those involved at various levels and the power of the individual to change the situation him or herself, alongside others, rather than relying on hierarchies or elitist military command structures which are by their very nature authoritarian and unquestioning.  More and more, nonviolent action requires international solidarity to embarrass and force the hand of the oppressors boycott actions, shareholder actions, the People’s Blockade, transnational protests, occupations, or Greenpeace actions against French nuclear tests in the Pacific or the WRI protests in East Europe following the Czech invasion of 1960.

The massive military power at the disposal of oppressive regimes has left many oppressed people with little option except to resort to nonviolent struggle; in South Africa, Latin America, India and Europe, peasants and workers have turned to it as the only way forward when armed struggle is not a practical alternative. It is crucial in consciousness-raising and the tremendous power given to those participating as they see how they can begin to effect changes in their own surroundings themselves, rather than by relying on ethers or waiting for some unseen day to dawn when victory, they are told, will be theirs.

To summarize, those of us in the West committed to nonviolent struggle have a long way to go to justify our conviction that only nonviolent action is truly revolutionary.  It is too late to criticize our brothers and sisters who have resorted to armed struggle when we form part of the oppressive structures they are fighting against; our task is to demonstrate our solidarity with them where we feel able to, and work nonviolently to change those structures, which oppress them.  We need to clarify further what we mean by nonviolent action, defining clearly the nature of structural violence at home and abroad, and show our willingness to lend our weight in solidarity with those who are fighting the nonviolent struggle, much as the “socialist” countries supply arms for the armed struggle because they believe that is the way to the ultimate victory over Western imperialism—at least, where it coincides with their own interests.  We have to clarify that nonviolence means nonalignment and not neutrality and non-commitment, that it means active resistance and not passive submission, and that in the long run it is a total way of life as well as a tactic, not just to be used when convenient (as in India before 1947) and then dropped when it has served its purpose.  It requires imagination, creativity and ^courage as well as a vision, and applies is much in the Third World as in the Western world and the “socialist” countries.

Franz Fanon castigated the West for its bloody record of injustice and oppression, but Algeria showed only too well that armed struggle is not a glamorous liberating force, but as cancerous and destructive as the ways of the blood-soaked West, even if the end appeared to justify the means for those who made it after a decade of bloodshed and hate—let alone the aftermath, and its effects on both the New Algeria and defeated France.
We assert nonviolent action as the only way forward to create a world based on the values which we proclaim—values which we share with many others, but feel we have to stand firm in our personal conviction that unless we look after the means, then we will never achieve peace through war or a nonviolent society through armed struggle.

Reference: IISG/WRI Archive Box 72: Folder 2, Subfolder 1. We are grateful to WRI/London and their director Christine Schweitzer for their cooperation in our WRI project.

Caption
Poster art courtesy alterni-tee.com