Do We Ever Have a Moral Right to Violence to Achieve a Political Goal?

[Secret Chief]

Today's insurgent is tomorrow's heroic freedom fighter.

Mandela was a terrorist, Thatcher said so.

 

[Heyo]

Today's insurgent is tomorrow's heroic freedom fighter.

And vice versa, depending on who gets to write the history.

 

[Valjean]

Yes, such as resistance to the Nazi regime, the slave-owning or Jim Crow South, or apartheid South Africa. When a government dehumanizes part of the population and does not respect basic human dignity, it is permissible to overthrow that government by force in my view. Non-violent resistance only works if the forces you're resisting respect that principle in the first place. The Nazis just killed non-violent resisters so that didn't work.

This is a good point. I'm partial to Ghandi's Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, myself. It got the British out of India and was effectively used by Martin Luther King in the American civil rights movement. It relies heavily on generating popular support of a cause and shaming the opposition. Where applicable it can be extremely effective, but as Arundhati Roy points out, it needs an audience, without which it may prove impracatible. Arundhati Roy on the Naxalites, Gandhi, and Non-Violence

Gandhian non-violence in some ways needs an audience. It’s a theater that needs an audience. But inside the forests there is no audience. When a thousand police come and surround the forest village in the middle of the night, what are they to do? How are the hungry to go on a hunger strike? How are the people with no money to boycott taxes or foreign goods or do consumer boycotts?

They have nothing. I do see the violence inside the forest as a ‘counter-violence’. As a ‘violence of resistance’. I do feel terrible about the fact that there is this increasing cycle of violence – that the more weapons the government arms the police with, those weapons end up with the Maoist PLA. It’s a terrible thing to do to any society. I don’t think that there is any romance in it. However, I’m not against romance. I do feel it’s incredible that these poor people are standing up against this mighty state that is sending thousands and thousands of para-military. I mean, what they are doing in those forests against those people with AK-47s and grenades?

 

[Valjean]

Today's insurgent is tomorrow's heroic freedom fighter.

And the next day's tyrant...

 

[Shadow Wolf]

This is a good point. I'm partial to Ghandi's Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, myself. It got the British out of India and was effectively used by Martin Luther King in the American civil rights movement.

Gandhi embraced it, but many other Indians didn't and their violence was pressurimg the English even before Gandhi showed up. And Dr. King himself even did give support in a later speech of his, lending validity and support to riots when the conventional means have failed and the cries of the oppressed are unheard. (but of course we are supposed to believe it was all peaceful, because thats easier to manage and suppress than rioters tearing up the oppressors stuff. It's really just better for them that we forget all this violence stuff and just accept minorities cannot not amd have never achieved equality and liberties through violence. I'm hard pressed to think of a truly non-violent protest that did gain these rights for minorities.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

This is a good point. I'm partial to Ghandi's Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, myself. It got the British out of India and was effectively used by Martin Luther King in the American civil rights movement. It relies heavily on generating popular support of a cause and shaming the opposition. Where applicable it can be extremely effective, but as Arundhati Roy points out, it needs an audience, without which it may prove impracatible. Arundhati Roy on the Naxalites, Gandhi, and Non-Violence

Yes, Gandhi and MLK's tactics would not have worked against the Nazis, Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, etc. The pacifist White Rose Movement in Germany against Nazism was made up of very courageous young men and women who gave their lives for justice and freedom but it didn't work.

 

[Sunstone]

It would depend on the grievance... (I don't like the speed limit) vs "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Ding! Ding! Ding! Looks like we've got a winner! First person to allude to the use of violence in founding America. I was wondering how long it would take.

 

[Sunstone]

I was going to quote the same thing.

Violence should be a last resort, but it is a valid tactic when needed changes have been consistently ignored.

So, yes, absolutely, in a state that is oppressive it can even be a moral requirement to fight against that state. I think of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. Those that fought against the establishment and continuation of those states, even using violence, usually did so for moral reasons which I would support.

Of course, the next lines are also relevant:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

(emphasis mine)

Yet another winner! Quite important qualifications.

 

[Thief]

If a group has a legitimate and long-standing grievance against a government, and peaceful appeals for redress have not worked, does the group have a moral right to resort to violence directed at compelling the government to redress its grievance?

Russian revolution?

 

[Deidre]

If it were considered to be in self-defense, like during WWII, Jewish people rising up to revolt against the Nazi regime for example, a case could definitely be made.

 

[Ponder This]

If a group has a legitimate and long-standing grievance against a government, and peaceful appeals for redress have not worked, does the group have a moral right to resort to violence directed at compelling the government to redress its grievance?

Sometimes Yes and Sometimes No. The problem with the question is it doesn't establish either necessary or sufficient conditions.

1. A legitimate long-standing grievance and a failure of peaceful appeals for redress may not be necessary to justify violence.
2. A legitimate long-standing grievance and a failure of peaceful appeals for redress may not be sufficient to justify violence.

So any yes or no answer is incorrect. You are wrong no matter which way you answer the question because you were tricked by the framing of the question into thinking that there was a yes or no answer to it.

 

[Tambourine]

I think framing this as a "right" is misleading. A government that is tyrannical will not acknowledge such a right, and a government that would acknowledged such a right generally wouldn't try to give people a chance to invoke it, either.

People will rise up in protest when they cannot see any other avenue working to their benefit, regardless of whether somebody with authority says they have a "moral right" to do so or not.

What's important is the authorities' reaction to such protests. And it is at this point when we see the mask of democracy and decorum slipping, and the authoritarian nature of police and government assert itself, nearly every time.