Session III: Defeating Coups Through Nonviolent Struggle
Session III
DEFEATING COUPS THROUGH NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE
PURPOSE OF THIS SESSION: (1) To understand what nonviolent struggle is; (2) To explore the advantages of using nonviolent struggle to combat a coup d’etat; (3) To understand the “weapons” of nonviolent struggle that people can use to combat coups.
MATERIALS NEEDED: (1) Flip-chart stand; (2) Magic markers; (3) Pad of newsprint; (4) Enough copies of “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” to hand out to all participants.
INTRODUCTION (Trainer’s talk- 5 minutes)
- Plotters of coups want to make two things happen:
- Bring off the coup QUICKLY so the opposition does not have time to mobilize.
- NEUTRALIZE OPPOSITION so that no one blocks their way to establishing effective control over the state apparatus and society.
- To defeat a coup, resisters must make two contrary things happen:
- Move QUICKLY to oppose the coup so that it cannot become consolidated. • Inspire WIDESPREAD OPPOSITION rather than letting opposition be NEUTRALIZED.
- In simplest terms, the resisters need to find quick, effective ways to say “NO!” to the coup. The essence of opposition can be expressed in one word: “NO!”
- How can resisters say “NO!” most effectively?
- One way is through armed struggle, violence.
i. If this were a workshop on VIOLENT opposition to coups, we would be studying MILITARY MEANS of resistance.
ii. We would be discussing what weapons would be needed to counter the weapons of the plotters, where to store them, and how to set up a military command structure. How to organize for violent battle.
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- But we believe NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE is a more effective and more morally consistent way to resist and defeat coups.
i. We assume you agree, since you invite us to lead a workshop on NONVIOLENT means.
ii. Therefore, we will be talking about how to utilize NONVIOLENT WEAPONRY and how to organize for NONVIOLENT BATTLE.
WHAT IS NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE? (Trainer’s talk and group exercise – 40 minutes)
- GROUP EXERCISE
- Trainer asks groups: “What comes to your mind when you hear the word “nonviolence”?
- Other trainer writes replies on newsprint. Some possible comments from participants may be: “Not being violent” “Passivity” “Pacifism” “Non-resistance”
- What is nonviolent struggle? (Trainer’s talk)
- Many misconceptions about nonviolence. Many people think it implies:
i. Passivity
ii. Simple lack of violence
iii. Weakness
iv. Cowardice
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- We see nonviolent struggle differently. Here are two possible definitions of nonviolent struggle: (Trainer writes the following definitions on the newsprint):
i. Philosophical or Religious: A MEANS OF STRUGGLING FOR HUMAN LIBERATION WHICH, WITH GOD’S HELP, RESISTS AND REFUSES TO COOPERATE WITH EVIL OR WRONG OR INJUSTICE, WHILE STRIVING TO SHOW GOODWILL TOWARDS ALL OPPONENTS, AND BEING WILLING TO ACCEPT SUFFERING RATHER THAN INFLICTING SUFFERING OR VIOLENCE ON OTHERS
ii. Pragmatic or Sociological: A MEANS OF WAGING CONFLICT TO ACHIEVE AN OBJECTIVE BY DOING UNEXPECTED ACTIONS OR REFUSING TO DO EXPECTED ACTIONS IN RESISTANCE TO ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY WITHOUT THREATENING OR INFLICTING DIRECT PHYSICAL HARM ON HUMAN BEINGS
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- Note the elements of the definitions.
i. It is a means of STRUGGLE, as is armed struggle.
ii. It is not PASSIVE – it resists.
iii. UNLIKE violent struggle, however, it shows goodwill toward opponents and does not respond to their violence with counter-violence.
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- Religiously or sociologically based?
i. For many great practitioners, such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, their nonviolence came out of a deep RELIGIOUS FAITH.
ii. For other great practitioners, it was simply the MOST EFFECTIVE way to struggle and had nothing to do with religion.
iii. If you are a person of faith you may find great strength by seeing nonviolence in relation to your faith. For example, Jesus, who taught, “Love your enemies” is perhaps the greatest practitioner of nonviolent struggle.
iv. If you are not a person of faith, you may find great strength in seeing nonviolent struggle as part of a long history of people who used this method as the most effective means of fighting for their liberation or the liberation of others.
- GROUP EXERCISE
- Trainer tells group to reflect on discussion about coups so far. What are some examples of nonviolent methods that citizens have used to resist coups?
- Other trainer writes answers on newsprint under the following categories (taken from the first definition of nonviolence above):
i. “RESISTS AND REFUSES TO COOPERATE” or “RESISTS”
ii. “WHILE STRIVING TO SHOW GOODWILL” or “GOODWILL”
iii. “BEING WILLING TO ACCEPT SUFFERING” or “SUFFERING”
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- When the group has listed all the examples it can think of, the trainer:
i. Compliments the group for its examples.
ii. Notes that, as we have alluded to earlier, Russian citizens organized effective nonviolent resistance against the attempted coup of August 1991. The trainer writes examples from this resistance on the newsprint:
iii. Instructions: On the newsprint write only the underlined phrases below, but read and explain the idea of each sentence.
TRAINER’S EXAMPLES FROM SOVIET RESISTACE:
1) “RESISTS AND REFUSES TO COOPERATE”
a) Citizens carried signs ridiculing the coups’ leaders.
b) People distributed leaflets calling for civil disobedience.
c) TV personnel refused censorship orders. They allowed Mayor Sobchak in Leningrad to get on TV and call for a national political strike and an all-city protest meeting in Palace Square.
d) An enormous protest meeting was held in Leningrad’s Palace Square.
e) Some newspapers published with blank spaces, protesting censorship.
f) When the coup leaders tried to impose a curfew on Aug. 20, ordinary citizens violated it by appearing on the streets and drivers of public transportation kept their vehicles running.
g) When the coup leaders issued an order prohibiting strikes, workers in various parts of the country held protest work stoppages.
h) When the coup leaders sent tanks and armored personnel carriers in the direction of Yeltsin’s “White House” office, citizens massed on the streets in front of them. They threw up barricades and linked arms, standing in front of the tanks in spite of the danger of being shot and though soaked with rain.
i) Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank and called for a general strike.
2) “WHILE STRIVING TO SHOW GOODWILL”
a) People approached tanks, knocked on them, and tried to talk to the soldiers. Yeltsin climbed up on the tanks and shook the soldiers’ hands.
b) Women gave soldiers cakes, food, kisses, and cigarettes and asked them not to kill their mothers, brothers, and sisters.
c) One person brought a lot of roses and distributed them to soldiers with a hug saying, “Don’t shoot, be kind to people.”
d) People encouraged one another: “Don’t hurt the soldiers; they are our sons and brothers; we are trying to win them over, not hurt them.”
e) An orator in front of the White House told the crowd: “Our only weapon is kindness, words, and smiles.”
3) “BEING WILLING TO ACCEPT SUFFERING”
a) Leaders like Yeltsin and various pacifists, democratic, and religious groups called on people to refuse violence.
b) People climbed on the barricades and faced tanks even though they believed an attack was coming and that they might well be killed.
c) Women linked arms and created a “sisters and mothers chain” in front of the tanks with placard saying: “Soldiers, don’t shoot at your mothers.”
d) Three people were killed in confrontation with tanks.
4) Trainer notes that the above discussion helps us begin to understand the nature of nonviolent struggle and how it can be used effectively to counter coup d’etats. After the break, we will ask the question: “Why choose nonviolent resistance?”
BREAK (30 minutes)
WHY CHOOOSE NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE? (Trainer’s talk and group exercise-25 minutes)
1. GROUP EXERCISE
a. Trainer asks group to call out: “Everything you can think of IN FAVOR of using nonviolent methods to resist a coup, and everything you can think of AGAINST using nonviolent methods to resist a coup.”
b. Other trainer divides newsprint with a line down the middle and writes the answers under the words: “IN FAVOR OF” “AGAINST”
2. Advantages of nonviolent methods (Trainer talk)
a. Trainer affirms the points the group has made.
b. Trainer will add his/her own ideas on the ADVANTAGES of nonviolent means of struggle, including answering any “against” comments that have been made. Trainers undoubtedly will have their own best arguments for the advantages of nonviolent methods. The following way of organizing the arguments is simply to give trainers a possible way to present the advantages of a nonviolent approach.
c. Advantages
i. Advantages of resistance and non-cooperation
1. Nature of power
a. Power to govern rests to a significant degree on the cooperation – willing or coerced – by the governed.
b. The film, “The Sorrow and the Pity,” shows how most of the French population cooperated with the German occupation after the Nazis defeated the French army. Marshall Petain’s collaborationist government kept the bureaucracy running smoothly. French police helped the Gestapo track down and arrest French resisters. Some French actors even went to Germany to make films.
c. People wishing to wield governmental power must be able to direct the behavior of other people, draw on large resources (human and material), apply sanctions, and direct a bureaucracy to administer their policies. • They depend upon the cooperation and obedience of many groups and institutions, special personnel, and the general population they wish to rule.
d. To the extent this obedience and cooperation is withdrawn, the rulers’, or aspirant rulers’, power is diminished. Total non-cooperation leads to total disintegration of rulers’ power.
2. In nonviolent resistance willing collaboration is withdrawn. In a thousand different ways throughout the whole society, people defy the coup, refuse its legitimacy, dramatize their disapproval, and maintain allegiance to their pre-coup way of life.
3. Even if the plotters punish people with arrest, torture, or death, they remain firm.
4. They will NEVER obey the plotters.
5. The plotters NEED millions of people who make the society work. They cannot run the society by themselves. Through nonviolent resistance, the resisters REFUSE this necessary acquiescence, and make it impossible for the plotters to gain legitimacy or to consolidate their rule. f) Support for this view of the relationship between power and obedience was found after the failed Soviet coup of August 1991. Two months after the attempted coup, First Deputy Chairman Anatoly Oleinikov released an internal KGB investigation which stated: “[The coup planners] counted on the factor of obedience…but the people who were supposed to implement it refused.” (As reported in Associated Press, 10/26/91)
ii. Advantages of rejecting violence and showing goodwill
1. Coup is relying upon soldiers and soldiers know how to deal with violence.
2. Nonviolent struggle is different:
a. Seeks to disarm the opponent, not by overwhelming him with superior firepower, but by making him unwilling and unable to use his.
b. There are hundreds of historic instances where well-armed soldiers or police have refused to fire on nonviolent crowds. (During 1917 Russian Revolution, the Volynsky Regiment was one of several which, at first, fired at unarmed demonstrators, then mutinied and refused to fire.)
c. It is much easier for soldiers to kill if they believe others hate them and want to kill them. It is much harder to kill unarmed people who are showing you goodwill, as did the Russian mothers at the tanks in August 1991.
d. “Moral jujitsu” – A soldier is thrown off balance when he does not meet the violence he has been trained to expect, does not feel threatened, and does not see comrades falling around him. He may find it hard to justify violence when it does not seem brave or manly to kill defenseless people. He may develop respect, even sympathy, for people who are willing to suffer for their beliefs, and may begin to doubt the propaganda he has been fed by the plotters.
e. Nonviolent resistance may give resisters the power to undermine soldiers’ morale, make them mutiny, or at least not follow orders.
f. This happened in Russia, August 1991:
i. At the Moscow Military Institute of the Ministry of Defense, 101 students barricaded themselves in their barracks, refusing to participate in the coup.
ii. Six tanks ordered to seize the White House defected, hanging Russian flags on their antennas and turning their gun turrets 180 degrees away from the White House.
iii. Troops flown in from Odessa to put down street resistance sat down and refused to proceed to the city upon being told in Moscow airport of their mission.
iv. When ordered to attack the crowd in Moscow, the KGB unit that attacked the TV tower in Vilnius and killed 13 civilians, refused, saying: “We were formed as an anti-terrorist unit. In Vilnius we killed innocent people. We will not do it again.”
iii. Advantage of Mass Involvement
1. If resisters choose VIOLENCE to fight the coup, their numbers are LIMITED by the number of people willing and able to use guns, Molotov cocktails, etc.
2. In NONVIOLENT resistance, nearly EVERYONE can have a role. The whole population can practice non-cooperation and say “No!”
3. Nonviolent methods can be used by old and young, men and women, city and rural dwellers, educated and uneducated, the strong and the weak, factory workers, farmers, bureaucrats.
4. Thus the possible number of resisters is vastly increased.
iv. Advantages of building democracy
1. Military means of struggle typically require centralized, top-down decision-making by military leaders and unquestioning obedience by followers. This structure trains people in authoritarian mentalities rather than in participatory democracy.
2. By contrast, nonviolent struggle is based on large-scale, voluntary, democratic participation of the populace. Although it requires leadership, it allows and encourages a much wider participation in decision-making by participants than does the military. Those using it find that it can build democracy among the people while fighting to defend democracy in the people’s institutions. It is a way to fight for democracy with democratic means. The means are inherent in the ends. This gives nonviolent ways of resisting coups a strong advantage over military methods.
3. Nonviolent struggle also contributes to a democratic spirit by its attitude of goodwill toward opponents, its refusal to kill them, and its commitment to building community. This basic attitude mirrors democracy’s profound respect for human dignity. It contrasts sharply with military approaches that necessarily depend on killing or threatening to kill enemies. After the battle for control of government is over, the two sides, which normally are part of the same nation or state, have to find a way to live together. If they have been trying to physically destroy one another, the hatred set loose can undercut the task of building a common civil society. If, on the other hand, one side has been stressing goodwill, non-retaliation, and the goal of what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the beloved community,” then that community of mutual respect becomes more attainable.
DISCUSSION AND QUESTIONS (10 MINUTES)
Trainers take any questions or comments on the above presentations. Is everything clear so far? Does anyone have anything to add, especially from his or her own experiences?
THE “WEAPONS” OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE (Trainer’ talk and handout – 10 minutes)
- Trainer’s talk
- We have been talking about the power of nonviolent methods to undercut the power of those plotting the coup. We have mentioned various methods of nonviolent action that people have used.
- If workshop was on military means of resisting coups, we would talk about an array of weapons available to resisters. Many people do not realize that non-violent struggle also has an array of weapons.
- Handout Trainers hand out the paper, “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” (click here). Then:
- Review for the group the main categories of “Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion,” “Social Non-Cooperation,” etc. Comment on some of the specific methods that have come up in the above discussion.
- Tell the group to keep this sheet. We will be discussing it in future sessions.
