From D to D, Chapter 5: Exercising Power

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. Their strategic method has been to disenfranchise as many people as possible in order to cement the control of the "chosen few." Donald Trump was one of the choice instruments by which these sought to promote and enforce white supremacy and the aims of the Global Far Right.  Even though Trump has lost his bid for another Presidential term, the Republican Party is actively planning measures for further disenfranchisement of the poor and the nonwhite who live in the United States. Therefore, it is up to us who are not counted among the "chosen few" to learn to organize ourselves in order to thwart the power of the few and to ensure the emergence of a world which is shared equally by all of its peoples.  It's time to organize or die.

Today we are considering Chapter 5 of From D to D, titled, "Exercising Power" - an appropriate topic for our consideration, given the fact that our opponents do not care at all whether their cause is morally right.  Their only concern is the extent to which they can exercise raw power over the rest of us.  What kind of power can righteously and effectively resist the power of our opponents?  According to Gene Sharp, the answer is the power embodied in strategic nonviolent resistance, which he calls "political defiance" in From D to D.  Chapters 3 and 4 of Sharp's book deal with some of the necessary groundwork that must be laid in order to build effective nonviolent power.  Chapter 5 begins to describe what that power looks like in action.  To quote Sharp, effective strategic nonviolent resistance "has the following characteristics:

1. It does not accept that the outcome will be decided by the means of fighting chosen by the dictatorship.
2. It is difficult for the regime to combat.
3. It can uniquely aggravate weaknesses of the dictatorship and can sever its sources of power.
4. It can in action be widely dispersed but can also be concentrated on a specific objective.
5. It leads to errors of judgment and action by the dictators.
6. It can effectively utilize the population as a whole and the society's groups and institutions in the struggle to end the brutal domination of the few.
7. It helps to spread the distribution of effective power in the society, making the establishment and maintenance of a democratic society more possible."

Note, however, that these characteristics do not automatically arise whenever a group of unarmed people come together to resist oppression.  In order for these characteristics to characterize a particular nonviolent struggle, there must be a set of corresponding characteristics of the nonviolent struggle group, as noted below:

• The struggle group uses a variety of tactics to wage the struggle, instead of fixating on only one or two methods.  This is one key ingredient which makes a successful struggle hard for the ruling oppressive regime to combat.  Note that Gene Sharp identified 198 methods of nonviolent action which can be used and which have been used historically in nonviolent struggle.  And Sharp himself admitted that there were many other effective methods of nonviolent action which he had not included in his list.
• The tactics of nonviolent struggle are chosen according to a wise grand strategy of liberation, a strategy with strategic goals.
• The struggle group maintains high ethical and moral standards in its conduct, standards which enable it to present a stark contrast between itself and its the oppressors who are its opponent.  Among these high moral standards are the commitment to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," because "no lie is of the truth."  This leads to the commitment to live in truth, as Vaclav Havel pointed out in his writings.  This choice to behave according to high moral standards also puts the oppressor into a dilemma whenever he or his agents try to shut down the struggle group.
• As part of maintaining high ethical and moral standards, the struggle group maintains nonviolent discipline even when facing a violent opponent.  In other words, the struggle group refuses to take up arms, to engage in violence against human beings (including retaliatory violence), or to destroy property.
• As part of the display of high ethical and moral standards, the struggle group operates very much in the open.  Secrecy and conspiracies are rejected.  Instead, the group openly declares its aims and methods.  This shows both the opponent and the general population that the struggle group has nothing to hide, because it is not engaged in anything that is immoral.

A struggle group which structures itself according to these principles can wield great power.  That power can be aimed at the oppressors themselves as is the case when nonviolent resisters try to convert members of the oppressor group through the witness of their lives and the espousal of their right principles.  However, it must be noted that many oppressors cannot be converted.  Consider people such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, for instance.  These men cannot bring themselves to acknowledge anyone else's will or anyone else's rights, since to do so would be an intolerable affront to the identity which these men have chosen for themselves.  Yet this unrepentance and un-convertibility are not an obstacle to skillful nonviolent resistance, because such resistance is able to change an oppressive society by fundamentally altering the balance of power in the society in such a way the the oppressor's power is disintegrated.  Slobodan Milosevic and Ferdinand Marcos found this out the hard way.

Because the skillful exercise of nonviolent power can accomplish so much, it is only natural that dictators, autocrats, and leaders of other oppressive regimes would have taken a great interest in this means of struggle.  Their interest quite naturally arises from a desire to find ways to make strategic nonviolent resistance ineffective.  Their strategy of neutralization has consisted of things such as these:

• To try to make the practitioners of nonviolent struggle resemble the oppressor as much as possible by adopting the oppressor's means of fighting to the greatest extent possible.  This shifts the struggle onto a ground in which the means of fighting are chosen by the dictator, and thus the struggle is easy for the oppressor's regime to combat.
• To redefine the concept of strategic nonviolent resistance in such a way that the moral and ethical advantages of would-be resisters are erased.
• To reduce the popular conception of nonviolent resistance into a small set of activities that can be easily controlled, outlawed or hijacked - for instance, by defining resistance solely as mass protest rallies and marches.  Note that Russian lawmakers have been busy passing a number of extremely restrictive laws against mass protest.  Perhaps Putin's regime is feeling a bit insecure, no?  And yet mass protest can be fairly easily neutralized or hijacked, as was demonstrated during some of the many Black Lives Matter protests this past summer.

The strategies by which the powerful seek to neutralize strategic nonviolent resistance deserve some consideration.  We will consider those strategies in the next post in this series, God willing.

The Defeat of the Violent Flanks

In two of my most recent posts I wrote that protest is not a good method of nonviolent resistance in the age of Trump, because oppressors know how to inject violence into nonviolent protests in order to discredit the protests and legitimize violent crackdowns on protest. But it looks like I’m going to have to eat my words based on the reports I’ve been reading over the last 24 hours concerning the protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

Believe me, I’m quite happy to eat my words just now. Some of the things that are now being reported are wonderful. It now appears that the leaders of the protests have figured out how to separate their protests as far as possible from the violent infiltrators who are coming from the Antifa, the Boogaloo Boys, and other violent white extremist groups. Because the protest leaders and the relatives of those African-Americans recently killed by police violence are insisting that the protests remain peaceful, the protests have gained increased legitimacy among the general public. Because the protest leaders have sought to promote strict nonviolent discipline among the protesters, the protest leaders have been able to get police and National Guard personnel to join with the protesters in showing solidarity with the victims of racist violence, as seen in the many recent media pictures of National Guard troops laying down their shields in support of the protests and police kneeling with the protesters to show their solidarity with the cause of the protests. (See this, this, and this.)  In some cases, police can be seen not only kneeling with the protesters, but holding hands with them and marching with them in solidarity. (See this also.)  And in one case, police who knelt with protesters joined with them in reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

This has made it much harder for Donald Trump to justify sending the U.S. military in to stop the protests. In fact, former President George W. Bush released a statement affirming the right of Americans to protest injustice and calling on Americans to build a society which is just and fair for all. Even televangelist Pat Robertson has spoken against Trump’s call to send in U.S. troops against U.S. citizens. And the U.S. defense secretary has stated that he will refuse any orders by Trump to attack American citizens.  It appears that Trump’s pillars of support are dissolving!

Lastly, it appears that the protest leaders have discovered some of the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance. One of the protest leaders spoke of the triumph of “people power.” The phrase “people power” was used by Filipinos to describe their nonviolent overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos back in the 1980’s. Trump is now starting to look like Marcos, or like Slobodan Milosevic just before OTPOR overthrew him in Serbia's own nonviolent revolution.  The protesters against racism in America have powerfully succeeded in making oppression backfire on the oppressor.

I wonder what Putin’s Russia thinks of all of this, since it is clear that the Russian government has been behind the rise of many far-Right national leaders (including Trump) over the last several years.  It must be hard for him to see that all the work he did to mess up the United States seems now to be going up in smoke. Maybe a people power revolution will come soon to a town near him!

One warning: though there is much good news coming out of the re-emerging movement for racial justice, we can't yet claim victory.  Trump is still President.  Therefore, we must remain vigilant, stay on the offensive, and make ourselves as smart and resourceful as possible.