The Phone and the Sword

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12522848
Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook

The BBC feature about Gene Sharp brings back a lot of memories. Back in the days of the Peace People I read a lot about non-violence, and Gene Sharp’s three volume ‘The Politics of Nonviolent Action’ was the bible of non-violence. In time I came to conclude that non-violence wasn’t a universal answer and that there were situations were it just couldn’t work. But I remained, and remain, convinced that it is a powerful and important force, and that its neglect in the universities and libraries of political science is extraordinary.

What I am now starting to think is that that a large part of the impact of the modern media revolution – or the impact of modern media on revolution - is that Facebook, Twitter and so on are providing the missing link which makes non-violence effective in a lot more places than it once might have been.

The two great success stories of 20th century non-violence are the campaigns of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Their approach saw non-violence as a force, one which turned the violence of the oppressor against itself, weakening the oppressor rather than strengthening him. The non-violent protestor was a soldier, and calmly took a soldier’s risks. He or she just didn’t shoot back, and their example and their refusal to meet violence with violence undermined and discredited those who relied on violence. And that worked very powerfully, in India and in the southern states of the US.

But in both cases there were particular features which made the technique more effective. There was an apparatus of law, which the oppressor relied on to give legitimacy to his rule but which could be used against him. There was huge disparity between the professed ideal of the state and the reality. There were wider institutions and constitutions, in London and Washington, which could be exposed and embarrassed. And there was a reasonably free press which was willing to expose the hypocrisy and violence behind the rhetoric.

The absence of law, ideals, and an effective press made non-violence less effective against, for example, the Nazis, or indeed in the face of the religious and ethnic violence to which India succumbed on achieving independence.

Now we have more or less non-violent revolutions, organised, recorded, and promoted largely over laptops and mobile phones. No running of guns, no planting of bombs, no plotting of coup d’états, no leaders even, just people claiming the streets and public spaces of their cities – and telling others all about it through the mobile media. That mobile media is in effect providing the wider context of ideals and publicity which make nonviolence so powerful, and is doing it even in states and societies were there is little pretence of democracy, constitutional ideals, or a free press.

At least for now, the phone is proving to be mightier than the sword.