Reading: The Failure of Nonviolence
Chapter: Nonviolence Against Dictatorship By: Peter Gelderloos (2016) related tags: #tFoN
Paid hacks in the media, universities and think tanks make the distinction that democratic elections are “fair and free” whereas the elections that confer office on dictators are manipulated.
Interesting that he says this but is now, in 2026 (and has been for a while), relying on academics to weasel him into spaces. Regardless of whether it was paid or not, how does a person with zero academic qualifications get to even do a guest fellowship at an Austrian university? And why would someone critical of academia and what it does to the work of others offer to do the work for academia?
I don't know, but the irony is quite large here. (And I know academics who are critical of academia, but at least they're honest about what they're doing there. Joy James openly states that she knows the academy captures and requires people work on things that don't surprise them; others point out that they're there for a paycheck. But it's weird to be so vocal about this and then just... hand something over, no notes and no discussion. Is it for the credibility? The access to audience?)
I can't even disagree with this, but I find these critiques even more shallow with future information.
By ousting a dictator and demanding elections, a nonviolent movement allows a government to clean its image, rebuild its legitimacy, and mask a smooth transition to a more powerful form of government as though it were some kind of grassroots revolution or responsiveness to popular pressures.
Regardless of the veracity of this statement, it'd be a better use of time if we explored why and how this phenomenon happens.
The government of China successfully crushed the nonviolent Falun Gong movement, torturing to death 2,000 or more practitioners, and they used equally harsh methods to put an end to the peaceful Free Tibet movement, which can hold concerts with popular bands in the US and Europe but inside occupied Tibet people can’t even get away with hanging up a picture of the Dalai Lama.
Questioning the choice of using the Falun Gong without qualifying who they are, which also makes what China did/does to them look more heinous (especially since we should be seeking to help people leave cults rather than torture them for being part of one, and it ensures that very few people would/will not leave Falun Gong because they had/have no safety net to fall back on).
However, Falun Gong (which operates Epoch Media Group) has been supporting far right movements and conspiracy theories in their “exile” from China. They are actively working against the liberation of many people and actively support eugenics...
... Which was known before fucking 2016, Peter. I know this because I lived in China; I also know this because, prior to living in China, I had friends who left this very cult. So this group that you use as an example of “nonviolence not working” is very literally a group that had other motives and is currently supporting heinous governments. Cool.
Ironically, the unwritten part of Gene Sharp’s method—reliance on businessmen, international media, and powerful governments—is the only thing causing an impact, as the Burmese government slowly begins to liberalize. But because it is the Burmese state’s desire for investment and not the actions of oppressed Burmese people that is achieving this liberalization, the operative concern is what is good for the Burmese elite, what will help them get richer, what will help them cement their power in the eyes of “the international community”. Given that the desire for cheap labor in southeast Asia is explosive, we can imagine just what a “free” Burma will look like.
I know anger is what we should be feeling, and I can usually handle snarky texts... but this is exhausting.
All of this is correct, but I'm so tired of not analysing what it actually means and just stating it without ever looking at what's happening and how. That's all this book is... just statements. There's no real analysis.
The case of Belarus, one of the failed Color Revolutions, is particularly interesting. The rulers of Belarus have little interest in cultivating business relations with the West, because their economy is fully integrated with Russia’s. Elite support, that secret weapon of the Color Revolutions, could not make a showing here, and the police did not have their hands tied in dealing with demonstrators.
Peter, what? Elite support could not make a showing in fucking Belarus? Do you not know who was benefiting from that economic entanglement with Russia? Maybe you should, I don't know, consider that there are elites who aren't from the US... lest you sound like a fucking Stalinist who can only do “America bad, everyone else good” bullshit.
The Milgram experiment, in 1961, demonstrated most famously how people would follow orders from an authority figure that went against their conscience, even it meant torturing and killing.
Footnote 51. Someone didn't bother to double-check whether what he learned about the Milgram experiment was true or not, huh.
I know we still teach it as true, but the replicability of this study is dubious, difficult, and therefore unlikely. In his own research notes, Milgram often ignored that a significant number of people who did administer the first shock dropped out upon hearing the other person say that they were in pain.
This is like when teachers complain about kids not being able to sit still, and it's really just two kids in the classroom who are pretty fucking mobile and feel like they're 'everyone' on some days.
Anyway, this footnote goes with this:
Countless psychological studies have demonstrated that institutional power succeeds in making its members feel free of responsibility and immune from any pangs of conscience.
Other than the Milgram experiment, he... includes nothing else. What are the other “countless” psychological studies, Peter? Did you find them? (From 2018, but here's an article from 2012 that also mentions Gina Perry's book on the subject.
He's not wrong that institutions make their members feel free of responsibility, but it's also largely related to their distance from the problem. That's why automation has been such a boon; if a computer makes a choice based on set criteria, you're not responsible for the problems that happen. It's when people are forced to see the results of their actions that they start reckoning with their actions. We also see this in the use of drones in the military. We see far more guilt in soldiers who've had to use face-to-face tactics than we do soldiers who've pushed buttons on a desk. That is far more useful and interesting than continuing the myth of Milgram's research.
However, democratic governments tend to tolerate nonviolent movements, to keep them around, because such movements can be most useful to those in power.
Honestly, he'd benefit from Joy James's conversation on the captive maternal. Weird that I've never seen him reference her in later pieces, lol.