Nonviolence

[Lightkeeper]

Do you think an attitude of Nonviolence is something man is capable of? Or is it more normal for us to fight for what we want? What do you think of Nonviolence as a viable option for world peace?

 

[Sunstone]

Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others have proved that under certain circumstances nonviolence is an effective means of challeging oppression. But I think there are few people, including Ghandi and King, who would advocate nonviolence in all circumstances. For instance, I recall Ghandi is on record as having somewhere said that he did not advocate nonviolence towards Hitler, because nonviolence would be ineffective in dealing with Hitler.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Nonviolence is particularly effective when the alternative would be suicidal. Whatever King might have believed, the nonviolence of the civil rights movement was always tactical.

 

[dan]

Nonviolence is particularly effective when the alternative would be suicidal. Whatever King might have believed, the nonviolence of the civil rights movement was always tactical.

Perhaps, but Ghandi's efforts were not.

 

[Feathers in Hair]

I think that nonviolence, in a perfect world, would be the perfect solution to all problems. As a number of people have pointed out, though, this is the world we live in, and we must deal with it.

I get frustrated, I'll admit, when I think of the how the world watched in such situations as Ghandi and King, and the worlds' concience was forced to deal with it, but that nobody seems to be dealing with freeing Tibet from China. I was further horrified to realise that the US is probably the only country that could swing China's descision, and that they probably won't want to risk offending that government, due to financial reasons. That just raises the hair on the back of my neck.

 

[linwood]

For instance, I recall Ghandi is on record as having somewhere said that he did not advocate nonviolence towards Hitler, because nonviolence would be ineffective in dealing with Hitler.

Actually I heard the exact opposite thing.

Just heresay though..something to go check out.

I get frustrated, I'll admit, when I think of the how the world watched in such situations as Ghandi and King, and the worlds' concience was forced to deal with it, but that nobody seems to be dealing with freeing Tibet from China.

I know what you mean, for me personally the horros going on in Sudan have me completely baffled.
I don`t understand how the rest of the world seems unwilling to simply put a stop to it.

I truly don`t think it would be that difficult to stop the killing, at least on the scale it is running now.

Putting the place back together..yes..difficult but I still don`t know why no one seriously attempts to.

 

[linwood]

Do you think an attitude of Nonviolence is something man is capable of? Or is it more normal for us to fight for what we want? What do you think of Nonviolence as a viable option for world peace?

I would love to think it possible.
Sadly it isn`t self-righteous intolerance cannot be stopped any non-violent way.

 

[linwood]

It would seem gahndi did advocate Jewish nonviolence against the Nazis.

You can`t be right all of the time I guess.

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon. I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. if one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them and inner strength and joy, which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even of Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany; they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by the way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

Wriitten in 1938

http://www.alshindagah.com/jan2001/9a.html

Although he does say war against Germany would be justified he states he cannot advocate it

 

[dan]

I was in a concentration camp in Austria called Mauthausen a few years ago and I read an inscription someone had carved into one of the solitary confinement walls. It read: "If there is a God He will have to beg for my forgiveness." It made me shudder.

 

[Sunstone]

Passive resistence against a Hitler??? Ghandi really called that one wrong!

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

if one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them and inner strength and joy, which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can.

Bone chilling stupidity.