The Real Power Behind Nonviolence. By Eric Smith

As I've said numerous times, Dr. Lawrence Carter, Dean of the King Chapel at Morehouse College in the 1980's and a disciple of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told me more than once that Dr. King believed that "that one cannot be nonviolent without the capacity for violence." Now what does this mean? It means that pure pacifism; the kind of pacifism without the threat of violence looming in the background is suicide. What ultimately turned the tables in Mohatma Ghandi's favor in India, in Dr. King's favor in the United States, and Nelson Mandela's favor in South Africa was not so much a moral awakening on the part of their oppressors as to the evil they were perpetrating but rather a belated recognition on their part that nonviolent resistance offered their final lifeline; their last chance to avoid being annihilated by those they oppressed.

This was what ultimately spurred these changes; a recognition that the oppressed were not going to be oppressed forever; that as Dr. King said "those who make nonviolent resistance impossible make violent revolution inevitable." It doesn't matter how committed to nonviolence each of these men were they were smart enough to recognize & accept that human nature being what it is, that the oppressed were sooner or later going to do whatever they had to do to liberate themselves. Therefore those pure pacifists who believe that violence is never the answer and should always be disavowed under any and all circumstances are not living in the real world; they are divorced from reality and fundamentally ignorant of human nature and human history.

The genius behind the use of nonviolence on the part of Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mandela was that they used nonviolence as a weapon; as a means to literally beat some sense into their adversaries. Nonviolent resistance met violent retaliation largely because those who were being assailed by it knew it was being used as a weapon; they knew they were being attacked and they came to know with time that this was merely a prelude to the physical violence that would inevitably be visited upon them if they did not ultimately yield. Again it was a fear of physical annihilation rather than a moral awakening as to their evil conduct which finally caused the oppressors in India, the United States, and South Africa to give way.

So long as they felt that they were immune from violent retaliation they continued their oppressive ways. It was the use of nonviolence in the manner that it was used; as a weapon and as a final warning to the oppressors to get their act together before it was too late for them, that finally got things to change. In other words it all comes down to what Dr. Carter told me in the beginning that "one cannot be nonviolent without the capacity for violence." In other words nonviolence without the threat of violence behind it is suicide; pure & simple and something that Ghandi, Dr. King , and Mandela knew all too well.