By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 12, 2025
For any supposed case where good intelligent people should supposedly side with massive violence, one has to consider five questions.
1) Is it worth the support being given in the longterm to the war machine? Supporting the war machine when there are alternatives to doing so means gratuitously supporting the single biggest impediment to global cooperation, the single biggest waste of badly needed resources, the single biggest destroyer of the natural environment, the cause of the nuclear threat, the justification for government secrecy and surveillance, and so on.
2) Does the evidence not show that a nonviolent approach would be more likely to succeed? I think that, even in the most extreme cases, it clearly does.
3) Is it worth the wide variety of damage and destruction and killing — and what it would do to you to have supported such evil for an unlikely victory that is likely to be shortlived?
4) Are you sure that pride, machismo, anger, resentment, and/or frustration are not making you imagine something is a good idea that is actually a really bad idea?
5) Are you sure you’re not giving the other side exactly what it wants, giving Israel exactly what it wants by shooting missiles at it? Giving Trump exactly what he wants by attacking his troops in a U.S. city? Giving NATO exactly what it wants by invading Ukraine? Are you sure you’re not being played for a sucker by the weapons dealers arming both your side and the other side?
Answer those five questions and then tell me I should support violence.
7 Responses
Well said❗️
We shall…
…We MUST overcome❗️ peacefully 🕊️
The five questions tell me we should eschew all talk of supporting any war. Refuse war and support peaceful negotiations in all cases.
The problem with the list of non violent actions is that there was also considerable violence. Non violence does not exist in a vacuum, it exists as one branch of the resistance to the current situation.
Ukraine is in to position of encouraging anti Russian peaceful protest but jails those protesting war
Canada regularly uses vicious violent repression of indigenous protests, denying protesters access to defensive weapons, so it could be argued that they have only peaceful means to resist the military state and in many cases listed, the protest has no option but to be peaceful because state repression and control of arms gives them little or no access
The purposes and payrolls of peaceful protesters must be taken into account – links to NATO, EU, CIA, FSB, where a international agent creates systemic unrest (common US tactic in S and Central America, Middle East), this is coupled with pressure on the government, cutting funding, arms shipments etc.
In the mid 19th Century, the English banned firearms from public sale because the government feared an armed uprising. This gave the power to the state over the people and, as with much of Europe, resistance by situation has to be non violent because of the absence of weaponry.
There is also a more fundamental point however.
Even in the military, over 90% of soldiers (and pilots) shoot to miss (less prevalent with guided munitions). The military have conducted various experiments to turn soldiers into psychopaths but none of been successful for long (acts of genocide and the communal ecstasy of mass murder are another topic)
In conclusion, the normal and natural method of resistance is peaceful; humans might be violent but they do not have an tendency for murder as a societal norm.
Humans over many many generations have not succeeded/survived because we are the strongest, it’s because we cooperated with each other.
‘Turn the other cheek’, it says in the Bible. I wish it were so straightforward. I know from experience, my own and other’s, that turning the other cheek to a bully results not in peace but in more and worse bullying.
I agree with you, and the Bible, in principle. And: I support any bullied person, place or nation with the courage to stand up to their bullies.
Gratuitous and formalized violence is irrelevant — always has been, and always will be. But rather than just “rational” arguments, let’s look also at the brilliant and creative responses currently showing up in Portland — a naked bike ride, a plethora of frog and other critter costumes standing opposite the bemused — and impotent — National Guard. And some of the more creative work of the Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace, with costumes and rituals. It’s time to move beyond “rational arguments” and use imagination and metaphor to show up the absurdity of using violence to get one’s way.
What if 500 citizens — of all ages, sexes and backgrounds — just simply lay on the ground in front of the soldiers? Just lay there with smiles on their faces? A few pictures like that would go round the world.
And my imagination is poorly developed, I’m sure — others could be far more ambitiously creative than that.
The only way to peace is through peaceful means.