The Value Of A Clean Shirt

Pardon my recent talkative streak, but the events of the last week have me on a roll.  Those who are regular readers of this blog and of my essays on strategic nonviolent resistance know how I have stressed the vital importance of maintaining nonviolent discipline among the members of a social movement.  I have also stated how the introduction of violence into a movement drastically increases the likelihood that the movement will fail.  These insights did not originate from me, but they are the result of years of painstaking research and analysis by such social scientists as Jamila Raqib, Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth, Maria Stephan, Srdja Popovic, and others.

The violent attempted takeover of the U.S. Capitol by white supremacists and white evangelicals proves my point.  The violence which was instigated by Donald Trump has spectacularly backfired against him.  As a result of national revulsion and disgust over last week's rampage, Mr. Trump is on the verge of losing everything as the businesses that propped up his commercial empire abandon him and criminal prosecutors begin to surround him.  The Republican Party is now reeling from a number of self-inflicted wounds that have resulted from their support of Trump.  And many members of Trump's white supremacist base have begun to turn on him, showing less that they actually believed in him than that he was, rather, merely the convenient vehicle for their unjustified grievances.  He functioned, as it were, merely as a telephone pole that was cut down to make a convenient battering ram.  Now that the pole is cracking, a growing number of his supporters are ready to kick him to the curb.  

But these supporters - sworn to violence as their chosen means of political change - are beginning to discover firsthand the weaknesses of political movements that rely on violence and lawlessness.  These weaknesses include the need for secrecy and conspiracy, the danger of backfire, and the risk of infiltration.  The dawning awareness of these risks is driving these people into an increasing paranoia which will greatly increase their difficulty in acting.  

None of this means that the next several months will be easy for the people who have been historical targets of oppression in the United States.  However, it does point out how the building of a nonviolent movement for social change - a movement both principled and strategic - can result in something much more powerful than that which thugs are able to build.  Hopefully, this weekend I will be able to continue my series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  We'll see how it goes.  Unfortunately, some valuable time was eaten up today when I had to take one of my cats to the vet...