Please stop using movies as a substitute for knowledge of history. It didn’t work in India either. The only reason Gandhi was successful was because there were hundreds of millions willing to kill if he starved himself to death.
Dunno about South Africa, but the Civil Rights movement wasn’t going anywhere if the federal government, and specifically the federal marshals, didn’t show up. In one of the seminal moments:
Those are guys with guns on each side of Jame_Meredith, backed up with more guys with guns, and the threat of hundreds of thousands of guys with gun. The whole movement in the South would have gone nowhere if the South didn’t believe the North was willing to use force to make the Federal laws stick. They believed it because of that whole thing called the Civil War that made a whole mess of the place a hundred years earlier, not because the Mahatama sat on the shores of the Indian Ocean making salt.
The people with the guns were on the other side in Selma and the like. Bus boycotts and marches were not backed up with any threat of violence.
You actually believe that the people who systematically murdered millions and millions of people in some of the most gruesome ways imaginable would have a change of heart because some some people were killed in the street? Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up this claim? In spite of the fact that we have historic evidence that there are plenty of people willing to slaughter innocents just because someone’s giving them a paycheck?
You are saying that hundreds of thousands or millions or more of people need to allow themselves to be killed, just because they’re a convenient scapegoat for society’s ills or some other bullshit reason, on the minuscule chance that they might influence something, somewhere. That idea is monstrous.
No. I’m saying if they were forced to do all their killing in public view, some of them might be less inclined, and, more importantly, those who witness the killing might be motivated to do something about it. It’s a lot easier to get away with mass murder out of the public view, IMO.
How can I have evidence for an unverifiable hypothetical? It all comes down to how you view human nature.
But would they be as willing to do it when their wives, mothers, kids can see them doing so?
I didn’t say they need to. And (once again :rolleyes:) I’m not advocating that they just throw themselves on the bayonets, here. Especially with reference to the Holocaust - if you’re going to die, make your death say something.
I’m not clear who you are talking about when you say “pacifists”. Conscienseous objectors? Ghandi? Are we talking about pacificsm in a sense that violence of any kind is wrong, no matter if it is in self defense or in the defense of others or just a general treatment of violence as a last resort.
Put me down for somewhere between:
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any
other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.
Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it
with their lives and freedoms.”
-Robert Heinlein
and
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetant”
-Isaac Asimov
I believe any belief system based on absolutes is going to be wrong…um…except that one…which proves my point I think.
Anyhow, forget the existential bullshit. People have a right to their lives and there is no expectation that they should have to submit to having it taken away from them. Since there are violent people willing to use force to take what does not belong to them, there is an inherrent right to use whatever means necessary to defend yourself.
I don’t think that is inconsistant with the pacifist views of Ghandi or of consciencous objectors. Ghandi was fighting…er…pacifying for the right of India to govern itself as a nation. In that particular example, I believe demonstrating through non-violent means was effective. The reason it was effective is because an armed insurrection gives the state justification to respond with force against what is perceived as violent criminals. Unarmed protest forces the state to become a tyrant who is forced to rule by the barrel of a gun or bayonette. Of course this only works in systems where the state actually cares about the political ramifications. It would not be effective against Hitler or Stalin or other dictators who have no qualms about using force to achieve their ends.
Consciencous objectors are a little different but no less justified. They did not ask to join the military. They are being forced into a situation where they may have to kill under the threat of imprisonment by the state.
There is, however, a bit of a conflict between your values as a pacifist and the practical reality that you are now in a combat situation where people are depending on you to pull your weight.
Isn’t it a bit presumptuous for you to ask people to lay down their lives for your utterly unproven theory? Especially when fighting back actually has evidence backing up its efficacy?
Yeah, a lot of them would.
Yeah, make your death mean something by showing those bastards you won’t go down without a fight. Then the next murderous bully will have second thoughts. Though if he still goes through with it I suppose you’d blame his actions on me for perpetuating the “cycle of violence.”
Look, these guys who declare themselves total pacifics at any cost are mostly full of crap. It’s easy to be a pacifist when you live in a Western democracy. I’m not a pacificst and in my 36 years, I’ve never killed anyone, never been in a situation where my life or the lives of people around me were in any real danger. In fact, the handful of minor scuffles and altercations I’ve been in probably could have easily avoided with a bit more common sense and a little less alchohol with the loss of little other than an amusing story the next day. Although I did hurt someone’s feelings once.
To play devils advocate and take **MrDibble’s **side for a second:
The Holocaust / WWII hypotheticals are a bit abstract for my tastes.
Would you defend yourself if someone came over to kick your ass? Ok, so most of us would try to, but what’s the worst that would happen if he didn’t? He catches a beating and maybe goes to the hospital for a bit. I mean if some ultimate fighter champion came over to kick my ass, realistically what difference would it make if I fought back or not?
As for if he would kill another person or not to defend himself or his family. Most sane people would have a hard time even if they weren’t pacifists.
And maybe **MrDibble’s ** is just sensitive like that where he couldn’t bear the thought of having killed another human being for any reason. It’s one thing to say “ooo I want to stab a Nazi in the face.” It’s quite another to have an actual human being in front of you, not some abstracted monster.
And the defending against an invader scenario, I mean really. What I’m going to grab my hypothetical rifle and go shooting Canadians Red Dawn style? Most of us would probably lay low until things settled down one way or the other.
My point is, the pacifists who talk big are basically the other side of the same coin as loudmouth guys who join the Marines who think they are going to be Clint Eastwood, Audie Murphy and John Wayne all rolled into one. Everyone is a badass (or in this case a pansy-ass) until the first bullets start flying. Once you are forced to act, that is the true test of your character and your beliefs.
They would have been gunned down like cattle if it wasn’t for the threat of force from the Federal Government. You are conveniently forgetting that the people on the other side (Southern Whites, rich and poor, illiterate and college professors) regarded negroes as less than fully human. Slavery to them was the good old days.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/smedley_butler.html Here is a military hero from WW1 giving you his insight into war. Then follow up with Eisenhower and the idea that war is business and the military does its’ dirty work. The last 7 years should have brought home how wrong war can be.
Our system ruthlessly punishes those who go against the war machine.
Is this post aimed as a particular idea or poster? I don’t see anybody claiming that war is always just. You can even claim that war is never just and still not be a pacifist.
War is probably never just. But you don’t have a choice when it comes to you.
Wouldn’t that make it just? Maybe it’s a semantics argument. I just want to know if gonzomax was getting at anything in particular.
Are you purposely ignoring the likes of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, and their effect on the Civil Rights Movement, or do you just not know about them?
To say that the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was accomplished entirely non-violently and with no threat of violence is astonishingly naive.
Which tends to be my ultimate perception of pacifists in general.
Like I said before - I haven’t always lived in a Western democracy, but I’ve always been a pacifist.
I didn’t say the theory was utterly unproven, I said I had no evidence for the NAzi hypothetical - not the same thing. Plus, I’m not asking other people to lay down their lives, I’m explaining why I would.
Yes, it’s worked out just great so far. That’s why the entire world is free and happy, safe from any threat of violence.
This just is special pleading as to the monstrousness of WWII-era German civilians.
Well, how well do you think that worked out for the people in the Warsaw Ghetto?
No. Once again - people are responsible for the own actions. I’ve tried to emphasise this point.
I know about them, I just consider them a side-show and Johnny-come-latelies.
We just disagree on what the effective parts of the CRM were. That’s OK, I also disagree with some historians of apartheid on what the effective solution was here, too.
You know, I’ve managed to get through two of these threads without once calling my opposites a single name or pejorative unprovoked. It would really be nice if I was shown the same courtesy.
Give the Nazis some credit for brains. How would these non-violent resistors keep themselves from being dragged off, and then shot in some convenient place? Non-violent resistors in the US get dragged off also, not to be shot, but dragged off by people much less willing to use force. And don’t tell me people would be concerned about what happened to them. They weren’t in actuality.
But even if they were shot in the streets, do you think that many people would have been willing to organize support of traitors against the war? How far do you think it would get before the survivors would figure out it wasn’t a good idea. It’s a lovely fantasy, but it is still a fantasy.
The usual ways - numbers, chaining themselves to things, running…
…which is probaly why they let themselves get dragged off.
There’s an emotional difference between seeing Chaim the watchmaker shot in front of you, versus hearing about terrible, unspecified things happening in Poland. How many German civilians really knew what went on in Auschwitz?
The removal of Jews from society started years before the war.
Maybe far enough. It’s not like being merely passive, or resisting violently, got them anything different. I don’t know, and we can’t know, because it wasn’t tried.
I am extremely tired of this horse-shit notion about ever-escalating cycles of violence. This is not how the world has worked, works now, and will continue to work into the foreseeable future.
I know of no sane people who worry about a Japanese carrier strike on San Diego next week in reprisal for the sinking of the Shikaku 67 years ago, or Luftwaffe Panavia Tornados leveling New York tomorrow as payback for Dresden. Europe is more peaceful now that it has been at any time in recorded history largely because of the brutality of two World Wars.
Total war (such as seen most recently in World War Two, but with other precedents reaching back for millennia) produces one of two possible outcomes for the vanquished: extinction or surrender. Usually, both outcomes occur, because total extermination is rarely (though occasionally) in the conqueror’s interests.
Endless generational feuds (Israel/Arab neighbors, Catholics/Protestants in N. Ireland, India/Pakistan) tend to occur in situations where one or both sides are, ironically, constrained in the use of violence against each other.
The methods used to accomplish peace through force of arms may indeed be monstrous, but that does not mean that peace is not often the end result.
Chains can get cut. Running away may work, temporarily, but there goes the protest. I suspect the SS were a bit stronger and more numerous than any protesters anyway.
As for the relatives of the police seeing this, the way this is usually handled is to have troops from other parts of the country handle security. It’s not like Goebbels was going to put the shooting in the newsreels after all.
As for people rising up - so the protesters disappear. It’s not like they’d be the first. Plenty of Germans knew people who disappeared, and those who lived near the camps in Germany claim they didn’t know what was going on - but I think they at least suspected.
“We don’t know for sure it wouldn’t work” is not much of an argument, I’m afraid.