Uncomfortable truths

The Lie :

"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding." - The Current Crisis in Race Relations, Martin Luther King, 1958

In the Little Red Book (1964), Mao Zedong succinctly said, "Political power comes from the barrel of a gun." (Original: 枪杆子里面出政权). The persistency of military dictatorships masquerading as democracies suggests that force may be used unilaterally to crush civilian opposition. This is as long as the civilian opposition has little ability to withstand sustained military force. From sporadic protests by civilian opposition in Burma, Iran, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Thailand, we have recently witnessed how militaries act as levers of political power in the post-colonial world. Violence does not beget violence, as long as compliance is ensured by sufficient and continued force.

This maxim operates even to civilian protests. After Gaddafi had banned channels of peaceful nonviolent protests in Libya, protestors turned to arms struggle(supported by the United Nations). Presently, the rebels looked poised to succeed. This follows a long tradition of popular protests succeeding through the use of force. In the book, "The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence", Martin Meredith chronicles how time and time again, rebels against the oppressor of the day, buttressed by guns and popular support, ascend to power.

"We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence." - Nelson Mandela, statement from the dock of 1964 trial