The Political Efficiency of Non-violence

There are many schools of thought concerning revolution, how it works, and how to make it work better. I will discuss two of these, because I put them ahead of anything else you might upon that subject.

First, consider Malcolm X, who famously remarked that "there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution". He was right. Any revolution at all requires violence in the form of violation, meaning a discontinuity which violates a system of understanding or authority. Discontinuity is the operative term because it implies a sudden change of state. First you are A, then all at once you are B. There is nothing seamless in the transition from A to B, and that's what revolution is all about. To arrive at B, you must violate A.

Any revolution worth the name involves, more or less, a paradigm shift from A to B. More to the point, a revolution violates a paradigm by breaking out of it. For example, the American revolution violated the paradigm of the British Empire by breaking out of it.

So how do you break out of a paradigm? The same way you break out of anything else -- by breaking something! And it is violent to break things, is it not?

I admit that Malcolm X could have meant "violence" as a layman would understand it, meaning down-and-dirty physical violence or the threat of such. If nothing else, a confrontation where voices are raised, emotions run high, and somebody finally backs off while somebody else prevails. So as you might conclude, "violence" covers quite a spectrum -- but it always has something to do with violation. 

Next, consider Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence who certainly tried his hand at revolution, although he did this too soon to benefit from Malcolm X's 1963 wisdom. Gandhi faced his share of violence, and violence finally ended his life. Yet he did pull India out of the British Empire by violating the paradigm of that empire. I think it is safe to call this a revolution.

But again, Malcolm X was right -- there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution. Not only are establishments notorious for never giving up their power without a fight, but revolution would not be revolution in the first place if the element of violation were missing.

You must break eggs to make omelettes. 

How did Gandhi make his revolution happen non-violently? The answer is that he didn't, or at any rate, not precisely. Let's look again at Malcolm X's precept. He says there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution, but what are we entitled to conclude from this? I would say, only that no revolution can occur without the admixture of violence somewhere along its timeline.

However, that says nothing about the source of the violence. It does not stipulate that the dissidents should be violent against the establishment, only that violence should occur somewhere in the mix of events. So it could just as well be the establishment cracking down on the dissidents  - that too would count as violence, and would stamp the character of violence upon the revolutionary process.

The non-feminist revolution, like any other revolution, will entail violence because it will entail violation. The ruling cultural paradigm, that of feminism, is to be booted out of our lives -- and that is surely a violation of intellectual protocol, if nothing else. Those on the receiving end (the feminists themselves) will feel this as a wrenching change -- rather like a quantum jump, owing to its discontinuity.

Events at the University of Toronto, in Canada, have been revealing. On three separate occasions, speakers were scheduled to give public lectures on matters pro-male or critical of the feminist establishment. Each time, anti-male crowds greeted the event with behavior that could be described as violent. Their purpose was manifestly political: to block open expression, within the academic community, of ideas that could undermine the accepted ground of intellectual authority within that community. 

Simply put, Toronto was a turf war. The anti-male rioters perfectly understood the critical nature of the conflict. They of course understood the symbolic significance of the occasion. But further, they knew that if the non-feminist side could proselytize unmolested in what they (the rioters) consider "their" territory, it would be a game changer, signalling that the non-feminist side has gained institutional legitimation.

So the anti-male rioters were repelling an attack upon their shore, preventing the enemy from gaining a beachhead that would ease the way to incursions further inland. Their naked fear was evident.

The greatly outnumbered non-feminist group acted with coolness, and did credit to itself. Nothing in their comportment hinted at physical violence. And yet, a rarified form of violence -- a purely cerebral kind -- was at least implicit. It may have lacked noise, blunt force or other such drama, but it was profoundly a violation. A paradigm was openly challenged, and the enormity of this challenge provoked a wildly outlandish reaction.

What prompted all the fuss and feathers? A pair of staid middle-aged writers were making a speech about a serious social problem, namely misandry: the pervasive hatred of men and maleness in the culture at large.

Now surely we ought to look into something like that, and if possible, remedy it. I would certainly think so. Furthermore, I would salute the authors, Nathanson and Young, for their active moral conscience, and I would encourage them to give public lectures every chance they get.

But as we have seen, it is no easy thing to make an openly pro-male speech on a college campus. Many people in those settings simply do not want the possible reality of misandry to be referenced in any way, and if you attempt they will try to shut you up by force.

In other words, by violence. They hate to be told that man-hating exists at all: their screaming paroxysms and their 'Lord of the Flies' stick-poundings bore witness to this.

The anti-male "Femistasi" group in Vancouver was whipped into a similar rage by the statement that men's rights are human rights. Evidently they don't approve of human rights for half the population, and the bare idea of such a thing makes them rabidly angry.

Friends, it looks like we are on the side of Ralph and Piggy. That's the sort of revolutionaries we are.

So again, revolution is a violent process, meaning that violence is involved at every level.

First comes the violence of intellectual audacity needed to break out of a paradigm.

Next, any form of violence meted out by defenders of that paradigm.

And finally, any form of violence meted out by the attackers of the paradigm in response to the defenders.

Such is our template of revolution as extrapolated from Malcolm X, and it is a true vision. It comports with the facts of the world. 

Malcolm X stated the facts, but Gandhi astutely put them to work. He apparently understood that violence in a raw, dramatic form comes at a cost because it can easily make you look like the bad guy. He also apparently understood that abstention from violence virtually never makes you look like the bad guy. He understood that if you confine your violence to only the most rarified forms of violation, you would drive your opponent into an untenable position -- to either inflict raw, dramatic violence at the risk of discrediting himself, or to do nothing at all and leave you free to move your plans forward unmolested.

Gandhi's method, if ideally practiced, is the miniscule violence of a pinprick which ends the life of a balloon: the main violence is the loud bang that follows!

So the principle holds true that no revolution happens without some manner of violence or violation. Feminism, with its genius for playing the victim, seems to have imbibed the spirit of Gandhi in a perverted way. A feminist will use every trick in the book to invert the narrative in feminism's favor, either provoking actual violence from the opposition or elaborately lying about it.

 Such is the art of the threat narrative, and the feminists are past masters of this art.

I think our best plan is to out-Gandhi the feminists. In principle, this is not difficult. We have seen how morbidly sensitive they are, when any threat to their paradigm looms on the horizon. That is when they "lose it", and do unwise things, and make fools of themselves.

And this happens right readily, for the tree of feminist folly is heavy with fruit and need only be shaken. A threat to their paradigm, even a subtle one, is a pinch they will keenly feel -- and keen too, will be their reaction.

Thus far, their reaction has consisted of yelling, pounding, ripping, lying and journalistic smearing. These operations attain a certain point on the violence spectrum, though not, I grant you, the utmost. But as matters predictably escalate, so too will the level of violence.

Such is the nature of revolution. We ought to be on the lookout for this, and what's more, we ought to be careful that none of that revolutionary violence comes from our side.

Let THEM be the violent ones -- that is, let them be the ones who look like the bad guys. They have already damaged themselves plenty, by their behavior, and we know that if we only push their buttons in the right combinations, they'll repeat the performance. They can barely restrain themselves, and not for long.

If the anti-male rioters had been wise, they would have stayed home and let the scheduled events take place in peace. But they were not wise, so they gave the non-feminist side valuable publicity while giving themselves horrendous publicity.

Of course, they were in a bind and they knew it, for if they had stayed home they would have symbolically surrendered the field and admitted the right of non-feminist groups to operate on "their" campus. They knew they had to make a gesture of some kind and so they did, but they made a hash of it and discredited themselves. In the end, they showed the world exactly how much they detested the idea of male human rights.

A word to our side. All who see themselves as part of the pro-male, non-feminist vanguard should openly endorse the principle of non-violence, and reiterate this in a way that the broader public will undoubtedly hear it. And when you form a non-feminist co-movement of any kind, you should state this principle near the top of your manifesto. Nail that manifesto to the wall, so you need only point to it and say: "THAT, right there! That is what we stand for!"

We should repudiate all physical violence apart from what self-defense requires, and we should stand quietly with our arms folded while the other side comes slowly to a boil. Let the world bear witness to this. If there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution, then let theirs be raw, dramatic violence, and let ours be merely intellectual violation that we direct against the feminist establishment and its cultural paradigm.

From such a strategy we can only gain, and they can only lose.