democracy and political violence...

I'm all for democracy. As a pacifist, I do not condone violence as a way of effecting political, economic, or social change. I also believe in non-violent resistance. I recently asked Douglas some questions about Communism and the justification for the use of violence in "the struggle". I believe my comments there are worth reading before we proceed here.

After the exchange with Douglas, I've been thinking about the violence thing quite a bit. And I've come to realise the following:

1. If one is commited to peaceful/democratic means for effecting change, one would seek to educate (convince, persuade, inform, teach) "the masses" in order to effect change. If one chooses this path, one generally understands that authoritarian, violent, abusive methods are counter-productive to the peaceful/democratic process.

2. Those opting for violence as a means for effecting change fall into two groups:

(i) They have not got the numbers for non-violent change to be effective and successful. They are not concerned about the wishes of the majority. They are authoritarians who "know what's best" and are prepared to impose it on the whole community at great human cost to that community if it chooses to resist violence with violence. Once such a minority gets to power, it must maintain a totalitarian regime in order to stay in power.

(ii) They have the numbers but are too belligerent, ignorant, paranoid, inexperienced or undisciplined to know how to effect successful change in an non-violent way. Again, the result is very costly in human terms - and in this case, virtually unnecessary. Due to their ignorance and paranoia, such people tend to condone and in fact prefer authoritarian regimes.

Previous rants on related topics can be found here: [ 1 ] .. [ 2 ] .. [ 3 ] .. [ 4 ] .. [ 5 ]
[ 6 ] .. [ 7 ] .. [ 8 ]