The Political Efficiency of Non-Violence

There are many schools of thought concerning revolution, and how it works, and how to make it work better. I will discuss two of these, because I consider them superordinate to anything else you might usefully say upon the subject.

First, consider Malcolm X, who famously stated that "there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution". He was right. Any revolution at all harbors violence at least in the sense of violation, meaning a discontinuity which violates a ground of understanding or authority. The operative term is discontinuous, and this postulates an abrupt change of state. There is nothing seamless about revolution.

Any revolution worth the name involves, more or less, a paradigm shift. More to the point, it involves violation of a paradigm in the form of a breakout. And 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?

But I admit that Malcolm X could have meant "violence" in a layman's understanding of the term. That is, down-and-dirty physical violence, or threat of such, or anything approaching the boundary of such. If nothing else, a confrontation where voices are raised, emotions run high, and somebody eventually backs off while somebody else prevails. So as you might conclude, "violence" embraces quite a spectrum.

Next, consider Mohandas Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence who certainly tried his hand at revolution, although he did this far too soon to benefit from Malcolm X's 1963 wisdom. Well Gandhi certainly faced his share of violence, and violence ultimately ended his life. Yet he did pull India out of the British empire. Didn't he? I think it is safe to call that a revolution.

As I said, 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 it did not entail a violation. That is what "violence" means: violation.

You must break eggs to make omelettes. 

So how did Gandhi make his revolution happen non-violently? The answer is, that he didn't. Or at any rate, not precisely. Let's take another look at Malcolm X's precept. He says that 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 correctly so-called can be effectuated without the admixture of violence somewhere along its timeline.

But 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 easily 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 being unceremoniously 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 experience this as an abrupt, wrenching change -- almost like a quantum jump, owing to its discontinuity.

Recent events at the University of Toronto, in Canada, have been revelatory in the field of revolutionary violence. On three separate occasions, speakers were scheduled to give public lectures on matters pro-male or critical of the feminist establishment. And each time, anti-male partisans greeted the event with behavior that could well be classed as violent. Their purpose was manifestly political: to block open expression, within the academic community, of ideas that could undermine the accepted paradigm of that community -- that is, the accepted ground of understanding or authority. 

Putting it simply, 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. It would signal that the non-feminist side has "come up in the world" and gained institutional legitimation. So the anti-male rioters were repelling an attack upon their shore, to keep the enemy from gaining a beach head that would ease the way for incursions further inland. Their naked, hysterical fear was quite evident.

The greatly outnumbered non-feminist contingent acted with restraint and coolness, and did credit to itself. Nothing in their comportment hinted at violence. And yet, a rarified form of violence was undoubtedly present, or at least implicit. I mean violence of a purely spiritual or cerebral kind. It may have lacked noise, physical impact or other such dramatic elements, but it was a violation of the most profound sort. A paradigm of understanding and authority was being openly, if non-physically, called into question, and the implications were of such enormity as to summon a reaction that might seem wildly disproportionate.

What prompted all the fuss and feathers? A pair of staid middle-aged authors 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 the situation. Don't you think so? I would certainly think so. Furthermore, I would commend the authors, Nathanson and Young, for their active moral conscience, and I would encourage them to give lectures at every possible venue.

But as we have seen, it is no easy thing to make an openly pro-male speech on a college campus. Many people in such settings simply do not want the possible reality of misandry to be referenced in any way, and if you try to do this they will try to shut you up by force. In other words, by violence. They clearly hate to be told that man-hating exists at all. Their screaming paroxysms and their 'Lord of the Flies' stick-poundings bear eloquent 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 male human rights, and the mere concept 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 very 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 paradigm 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, amounts to nothing but the violence of a pinprick which ends the life of a balloon. Even so, the principle holds true that no revolution happens without violence or violation in some form. Feminism, with its genius for playing the victim, seems to have imbibed, in a perverted way, the spirit of Gandhi. Feminists will use every trick imaginable to reverse the narrative in their favor, and either provoke actual violence from their opposition, or elaborately lie about it. Such is the art of the threat narrative, of which the feminists are past masters.

I have concluded that 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 revolutions. 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 hold themselves in check, 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, and so they gave our side valuable publicity while giving themselves absolutely awful 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 pro-male groups to operate on "their" campus. They figured they had to make some kind of gesture, and so they did, but they did it very discreditably. In the end, they showed the world just how much they hated 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 espouse the principle of non-violence, and reiterate this regularly in a way that the broader public will undoubtedly hear it. And when you form a non-feminist organization or co-movement of any kind, you should state this principle in your manifesto in no uncertain terms. Run that manifesto, as it were, up the flagpole, so that you need only point to it and say, "THAT, right there! That is what we stand for!"

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

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

Fidelbogen. . . .out.