Technology for nonviolent struggle

Nonviolent action thus can be effective in winning the loyalty of two key groups: the participants or potential participants in the nonviolent struggle and the soldiers on the other side. It is also effective in winning the loyalty of a third group: people elsewhere in the world, especially those in the country deploying the troops against an unarmed population. Killing of unarmed civilians is a cause for outrage; military action against a population using only nonviolent methods is likely to stimulate the creation of an opposition movement. The intifada quickly won the sympathy of people around the world for the plight of the Palestinians, something that years of terrorist activity by the PLO had never achieved. The massacre of civilians at Sharpeville in South Africa in 1960 generated enormous opposition to apartheid throughout the world. By contrast, killings of far more people in the course of guerrilla warfare seldom lead to any attention or concern at all.

There are numerous historical examples of the use of nonviolent action, some of which are mentioned in later chapters.[11] For the purposes here, it is only necessary to note that nonviolent struggle is a possible alternative to armed struggle. Rather than using violence to subjugate or destroy the enemy, nonviolent struggle works by building the will to resist and by undermining the will of the opponent.

Nonviolent methods are widely used in social struggles. One famous example is the civil rights movement in the United States, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Campaigns by environmentalists, feminists and many others are almost entirely nonviolent, though sometimes violence is used against them.

It is possible to imagine organised nonviolent action as an alternative to military defence. When a community makes systematic plans and preparations to use nonviolent action to defend itself against aggression or repression, this can be called social defence, nonviolent defence, civilian defence, civilian-based defence or defence by civil resistance.[12] Social defence can be considered to be a special application of nonviolent struggle, namely to defend a community against military aggression or repression. The community could be a town, an ethnic group, a country or a transnational organisation.

In reality, no sizeable community has ever introduced social defence, so discussions about how it would operate are based on what is known about actual nonviolent struggles. There are some important differences in the way that nonviolent defence is conceived. Some see it as a functional replacement for military defence, focussing on national defence, with the rest of society pretty much unchanged. This orientation is often associated with the name civilian-based defence.[13] A different orientation, indeed almost a different definition, sees social defence as virtually any form of nonviolent action against governments, and aims at major social change through nonviolence. This orientation is adopted by many grassroots activists.

My preference is to define social defence as an alternative to military defence, but not restrict “defence” to defence of the state. Rather, defence of “community” is the key, leaving considerable ambiguity in the term community. This is compatible with the grassroots orientation to social change but retains an emphasis on defence against military aggression and repression.

Whatever the definition, there are some important differences between military defence and social defence, as suggested by the following table.

	Military defence	Social defence
Means of struggle	Violent action	Nonviolent action
Participants	Mostly professional soldiers, especially young fit men	Potentially everyone
Thing defended	The state; ruling class	Community; a way of life
Method of organisation	Bureaucracy; chain of command	Network, consensus and/or bureaucracy
Characteristic technologies	Weapons	Network communication and community self-reliance

Why use nonviolent methods?

For those who do not have armies or sophisticated weapons, nonviolence is likely to be more effective than violence.[14] Groups that oppose a military dictatorship, for example, have no chance of matching the firepower of the state. Militaries have planes, tanks, missiles and advanced surveillance technologies. Guerrilla opponents often have little more than guns, and also usually far fewer soldiers.