Is It Time to Critically Interrogate Nonviolence & Nonviolent Direct Action?
Wrong Kind of Green Apr 02, 2018 Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering, The International Campaign to Destabilize Venezuela, UncategorizedMarch 15, 2018
Time to question nonviolent direct action as the path to change.
Activism. Democracy. Change through nonviolent direct action. These, Doug Henwood points out, have been fetishes for much of the US left for quite some time, especially that portion of the US left that takes its marching orders from corporate funders. Gene Sharp, the founder of the Albert Einstein Institute who passed away at the end of January was regarded as the father of American nonviolent direct action.
I usually write a weekly piece for Black Agenda Report, but this time I’m going to use that space to republish somebody else’s work, easily the most important thing I’ve heard so far this month. It’s an hour long Doug Henwood interview for the weekly radio show Behind The News on KPFA radio. Doug talks with Marcie Smith, who is writing a book on Sharp’s long and problematic career in the service of the US national security apparatus. Smith is an adjunct econ professor at John Jay College. She reveals how Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institute which he founded weaponized and deployed nonviolent direct action in the service of successful and unsuccessful US attempts to overthrow the governments of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, China, Myannmar, Iran, Egypt during the Arab Spring, Venezuela, the former Yugoslavia and the Baltic States.
Besides deploying nonviolent direct action to topple governments standing in the way of Uncle Sam’s global empire, Gene Sharp and his funders have mentored a good deal of what some regard as the US left – at least those parts of it under the influence of one-percenter philanthropy – in the tactics and what passes for the philosophy of nonviolent direct action. According to Sharp’s and the Albert Einstein Institute’s peculiar philosophy, property destruction is violence, while the ravages of poverty and deprivation, of economic blockades and lack of medical care just to name a few phenomena, are not. Sharp’s views on the methods and importance of nonviolent direct action are highly influential in such quarters as Moral Monday and the so-called New Poor Peoples Campaign, parts of the environmental movement, and other places. Whether or not we embrace or espouse nonviolent direct action as an occasional tactic or a bedrock and fundamental strategy we owe it to ourselves to understand the origin of this idea, why the national security state promotes it, how and for whom it works and does not work, and why.
It’s time to critically interrogate the fetishes of nonviolence and nonviolent direct action as a path to the world we need to build. This great interview is a good start to that conversation. Here is the link. Click to listen or download it.
[You can find Doug Henwood’s Behind the News shows archived for the last several years at http://leftbusinessobserver.com .]
- WATCH: Economic Media: For the Decolonization of Money [Jonathan Beller]
- WATCH: Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood: The Imperial Paradox: Ideologies of Empire [2008]
- Before Collapse, Credit Suisse Quietly Conquered an Obscure Debt Market – Debt-for-nature Swaps
- WATCH: Next Floor (A Short Film by Denis Villeneuve)
- WATCH: How American Imperialism Works [in 5 Minutes]
- Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics
- Liberalism in India – a Beast that Devours By Way of Shapeshifting
- Briefing: SDG 13 & the Carbon Capture Boom
- A SYSTEM ON LIFE SUPPORT
- WATCH: The Betrayal by Technology: A Portrait of Jacques Ellul
- Forgive Us Our Debts
- ‘Our Defeats’ Review: A striking Post-Mortem of the Revolutionary Dream
- When Thinking About Fossil Fuel Phase-outs: The Key Word is ‘Unabated’
- Why Many Progressives Misrepresented and Condemned the Ottawa Trucker Protest
- The Outrageous Depths to Which the Fallen Left Have Descended
- Ukraine, International Law, and a Left Worth Wanting
- Freedom Convoy – Support Black Truckers
- WATCH: Negating Colonial Lies About Russia
- WATCH: Russia & Ukraine – What’s Really Happening? [Feb 23, 2022]
- Western Reporting – News From Nowhere
- A Message from Mohawk Women from Grand River Concerning Vaccine Mandates & Freedom
- Message from Candy Sero, Mohawk Elder, After Being Trampled by Trudeau’s Henchmen
- Interview with Candy Sero, Mohawk Elder, Prior to Being Trampled by Trudeau’s Henchmen on Horses
- LISTEN: Kanenhariyo (Mohawk War Chief) Discusses Ontario’s “State of Emergency” in response to Truckers Rebellion
- Support for Canadian Truckers Skyrockets – Alongside Vaccine Injuries in Canadian Children
- How the Left betrayed the Truckers
- As Workers Resist, the Left Recoils
- Now is the Time for Mass Resignations from Within the Ruling Class
- Parasite Empire Unravelled
- Climate Warriors and Flagships from Hell
- The Left’s Covid Failure
- Stealth Game: “Community” Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya
- WATCH: Digital ID: Freedom-As-A-Service. The Lure of Entitlement as the Method for Entrapment.
- LISTEN: 5 Key Takeaways from COP26, Glasgow 2021
- Revolt of the Essential Workers
- LISTEN: Dr. Mordecai Ogada – A Case for Scrutinizing the Climate Narrative
- The Big Green Lie
- Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class
- What’s Really at Stake with Vaccine Passports
- WATCH: The New Financial Markets on Nature’s Destruction Explained to my Grandmother – Frederic Hache
- You Cannot Make This Stuff Up: Klauss Schwab Is A Rothschild On His Mother’s Side – BIG BROTHER in the 21. Century on The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – A Decade of Social Manipulation for the Corporate Capture of Nature [ACT VI – Crescendo]
- Is this man a Russian agent operating in the Black community of St. Louis? – ? CommunistNews.net on Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 5]
- Freedom of Speech Not Allowed for Black Organizations on Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 5]
- Misanthropic Philanthropy , #WrongKindofGreen #SettledSeance – Not The Grub Street Journal on The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex [ACT I]
- Vanessa Beeley Presents Exposé on White Helmets at Swiss Press Club in Geneva | Arrêt sur Info on SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire
Recent Posts
Categories
Recent Comments
Archives
Share the Knowledge

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.