itting next to me at a cafe was a purple-haired gentleman with a guillotine earring having a high-level discussion of historical fascism with a woman in her late fifties. As a Mennonite activist, I had just come from a book discussion of nonviolence, and I was sitting with my two kids. Fascism was, as usual, on my mind.
So I introduced myself and struck up a conversation. The woman was a professor of Latin American history, and the man a professor of Russia and Polish history. They were discussing the savage turn against academics: forty colleagues at a Florida university were being pushed out of their institutions after calling for revolution, as they put it.
I immediately produced my copy of “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, which is a statistical survey of all violent and nonviolent secessionist, anti-regime, and anti-occupation movements from 1900-2006. Chenoweth’s conclusions, based on this data, is that nonviolent movements are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones, nonviolent movements with a violent “flank” are twenty percent less likely to succeed than those without a violent flank, and that if three point five percent of a population is willing to engage in sustained, disruptive, repeat civil disobedience, no nonviolent campaign in the sample set failed to achieve its goal of either secession, regime change, or expulsion of the occupying force.
The Latin American history professor objected, and said she was afraid that only a violent revolution would work in the United States, in this political condition. “Stay thy hand, oh avenging angel,” I said to this late-fifties academic. I, myself, am a vigorous man of forty with a small dad belly. If violence were to erupt, and arms were to be carried, as a veteran of prison for social justice and a former punk rock scrapper, I would make an excellent sergeant for a leftist brigade of young men. So there is irony in me asking her to stay her sword. Because if swords were drawn, I would be drafted to wield them, not her.
And this relates directly Chenoweth’s central hypothesis: that nonviolent movements are more successful because people of all ages and abilities can participate, whereas the guerrilla fighters in a violent movement must be a people who have given up their ties to community and are highly dedicated as well as very fit.
I responded, “In a single day at Antietam, fifty-thousand men died.” (This is a mix of two facts: in the three days of fighting at Gettysburg, there were 50,000 casualties, while at 3,650 died in a single day at Antietam.) “Can you imagine that type of death toll civil war would produce? Not to mention that state has all the tanks, planes, machine guns, and soldiers. And the white supremacists have all the weapons stockpiles. Let’s first exhaust all our options for nonviolent struggle. Even if ten thousand were to die in peace, mowed down by Trump’s marines, we’d still not come close to the violence of a single day of the Civil War. This is history. You all are historians. You exist to remind people like me of these facts, and we need you now more than ever.”
She talked about retiring, which I can appreciate. They both said they’d continue to teach the same things, regardless of pressure. But I asked them: please teach nonviolence struggle and historical tactics in your classes. You can teach both sides, for balance, and to protect yourselves. But please, I implored, we need you and your memory more than ever. As Milan Kundera put it, “The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
In “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite” Musa al-Gharbi traces out the ways that cultural capitalists, i.e., academics, have been pushed into waves of virtue signaling their radicalism in various historical periods. When the backlash comes as a result of their increasingly strident rhetoric, they are able to duck their heads back down again, while the backlash rolls out against marginalized black, brown, trans, poor, and queer people, and against the activists that stand in the way.
Now, I have felt the same pull towards absurd radicalism that these professors have felt, as whenever I post anything moderate on social media, my friends call me out. According to Jaron Lanier, the algorithms specifically bubbles up conflict as a way of using anger to fuel engagement. We are currently seeing the fruit of this as we look to civil society for true leadership: there are few authentic, responsible voices.
And to be clear, it is absurd and irresponsible for aging academics to call for violent revolution, even while I support their right to free speech. Are they going to teach weapons classes? Begin an elite workout routine, and practice mountain foraging? No. The calls for revolution are purely performative. These calls take up air time when we should be preparing ourselves for nonviolent direct action. And, if these calls were to be answered, they’d make nonviolent solutions in the fight against fascism harder. When violent tactics are used, or even when tactics perceived as violent are used, Judy Bari explains, “People who put their bodies in front of the bulldozer are depending on prevailing moral standards and the threat of public outrage to protect them from attack. Unfortunately, prevailing public opinion in the country […] is that if sabotage is involved, they have a license to kill. Until that changes, mixing civil disobedience and monkey-wrenching is suicidal.”
As Christians and Trump license violence to avenge the death of Charlie Kirk, as ICE agents swarm all over Chicago arresting people for being brown, it is all the more important for us as Christians to remember that Christ’s cross is not a call to empire and empire’s violence, but a call to be in and among those suffering, and to be willing to suffer and die, not to kill, for the power of love. Whenever we talk about revolution, let us remind our listeners that we are calling for nonviolent revolution that is fueled by the power of love and recognizes the humanity of the oppressor.