about violence and non-violence

ok, this one's just a little controversial, but hey, what's a blog for if not to challenge it's readers...

below are excerpts from this article by radha d'souza. radha has a link with nz, in that she worked at the law school of the university of waikato for some years, her field of specialisation being human rights law. she was one of the four researchers who conducted the major project on protection orders (completed in 2008, i think), along with dr ruth busch.

i'm not going to add any commentary to radha's words, she's pretty eloquent after all. the context is her responding to a television interview she had seen about maoist violence in india, featuring dr binayak sen, a civil liberties campaigner:

Dr. Sen tried, heroically, to make the point that one third of the people of India suffer from chronic malnutrition, that over 50% of the Adivasis and 60% of Dalits are bordering on starvation (dear readers, put these numbers in perspective by bearing in mind that India is one-sixth of humanity), that over 50% of India (1/12th of world population) is undernourished, and that state policies that create and sustain the conditions for this mass starvation fall within the definition of “genocide” in international law....

At the heart of the controversy over Maoist violence is an issue that is foundational to modern societies... : the difference between institutional and individual violence. Only human beings can make ethical judgments because only human beings have a psyche capable of moral differentiation. For that reason in criminal trials, for example, intention is decisive. Institutions are not human beings, they are literally “mindless”. Institutions are complexes of laws that structure society and allocate people their places within it. When an institutional system is founded on violence, violence becomes the necessary condition for the continued existence of those institutions, in other words, the institution cannot survive without violence, it becomes like the proverbial vampire that will die if it cannot suck blood. This type of violence is fundamentally different from individual and group violence. However brutal, or obnoxious, or vicious it may be, individual violence is still human violence, it involves the mind, rightly or wrongly, and it invariably invites contestation over ethics in society. Institutions founded on violence, on the other hand, will collapse if violence is taken away. Individuals in charge of institutions must, therefore, continue to engage in violence if they are to save the institution from collapse....

Imagine by some miracle if a total pacifist were to occupy the White House. It is estimated that sixty percent of the American economy is directly or indirectly dependent on defense. Corporate America: the Lockheeds, the Boeings, the Northrops, will collapse like a pack of cards, taking with them the thousands they employ. Most technological innovations of the West that invest their institutions with so much power and capabilities are the result of militarism. Even banal things like food packaging, gyms and exercise regimes, dietetics, aging research, are driven by militarism. The internet and the communication technologies were military innovations. The incorporation of civilian and military uses of technologies through dual-use policies makes the intermeshing of militarism and economy virtually inseparable. The entire society is organized in a “warlike way” to use Marx’s phrase. In such a military-industrial-finance-media complex waging war becomes a necessity for survival of those institutions...

Our messiah of peace in the White House will have to reorganize life in America, bottoms-up, get people to plant potatoes and cabbages, run their own local communal power plants, dismantle the supermarkets and get them to preserve and cook their own food, and turn them into a community of people affiliated to land, instead of a community of interest groups affiliated to different types of market institutions. The messiah of peace will, without doubt, be branded a trouble maker, a revolutionary, a terrorist, even a Maoist perhaps, who knows. He will without doubt be liquidated before long. Only the people of America can undertake such a task, and that too only when they feel so committed to building a non-violent society that they are prepared for the sacrifices, and violence and bloodshed the task will necessarily invite.

The Indian armed forces are the fourth largest in the world. Unlike the United State, the Indian military has been used primarily against the Indian people: against Kashmiris, Nagas, Assamese, North-eastern peoples, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, or… Maoists. This is a fundamental difference between capitalist nations like the US, and India. The Indian state must colonise its own people to remain affiliated to the military-industrial-finance-media complex that rules....

The Maoists are desperate to get the message across to a nation besotted with the vampire, and they do it using desperate means. Are we going to shoot the messenger because we do not like the message, or, ostrich-like, bury our heads in the sand because we do not want to know about the message?

The message will not go away because we do not like how the message is delivered. If anything it will feed the vampire institutions with more blood.... The message and the desperate messengers are part of the same problem, the problem of the political economy of violence. Paradoxically, the institutions founded on violence, the military-industrial-finance-media complexes, are the ones that preach the ideology of non-violence in unequivocal terms; and those who advocate peace with justice end up advocating violence. How are we to understand this paradox? We cannot say it is because the institutions are hypocrites because, if institutions are mindless, they cannot be hypocrites.


i really recommend reading the whole article. certainly a lot of food for thought.

A right to kill?

A while ago, this article caught my attention. It's about the British Ministry of Defence reviewing its ban on military women in close combat roles, in which soldiers are required to kill the enemy face to face.

There is opposition to the possibility of women combatants from within the military. One officer is quoted as follows:

"The reason [for the ban] is not because women are not capable. It comes to the dynamics of units of 18-year-old soldiers ... they would be fighting for attention." He added: "It is all about unit cohesion, not the capability of the soldier."

So women shouldn't be allowed to participate because men can't control their behaviour? Where have I heard that argument before? And these same men who can't control themselves around female fellow soldiers are expected to abide by the conventions of war, including appropriate treatments of civilians? Hmmmm.

That aside, I'm interested in how feminists should respond to this possibility of 'equal opportunity'. I for one, don't want to kill people up close and personal. I don't want to kill them from a distance. In fact, I don't really want to kill people at all. Most women are socialised to have an aversion to violence - but I've no doubt that some of us can and do kill people proficiently, and fancy making a career of it.

I'm trying to separate my own distaste for violence, and my cynicism about the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, from the issue of what women should and shouldn't be able to do. I'm not a fan of the military as an institution - but so long as we have it, should feminists fight for women to be able to participate in all aspects of it on the same grounds as men? Or is this just fools' gold, masquerading as women's liberation?

Lest we forget

Some thirty years ago, my dad got chatting to a very old man. In the course of the conversation, the old man remarked that he'd been his mother's favourite son. He then added, 'But the other four were killed in the war'. Four bleak telegrams, each telling a mother that the child she'd raised and loved was gone.

I'm one of those who sporadically attend the Dawn Parade. I do it because I want my children to understand what happens when the world goes crazy, casting aside morality and sense in favour of mindless nationalism and militarism. That's the one and only lesson I'm able to draw from World War One.

I was horrified one year, when the Dawn Parade speaker took the opportunity to talk about how New Zealand must be ever-vigilant, poised to enter international military conflict. I had the same feeling again a couple of years ago, when a group of women were derided for commemorating the sexual and other violence against women during wartime. The feeling returned last year, when Australian veterans refused to allow the children and grandchildren of deceased veterans to march with them, wearing the medals of their fathers and grandfathers. (Following an outcry, the Aussie vets backed down, allowing the descendants to join the parade.)

These three examples have a common theme. Each understands war as a story of heroism, with room in the cast for only one group of actors: the men who served. And I understand why they feel this way. By acknowledging the cruelty and injustice which is an inevitable part of any war, for civilians and military alike, they feel that the enterprise in which they suffered and lost friends is lessened or even mocked. So, too, is their service.

I don't believe that admitting the horrific nature of war, and its impact on civilians, diminishes the individual men who've gone to war. I may not believe in the principles for which these men served, but I acknowledge that it takes courage to go to the other side of the world and face harsh and brutal conditions, knowing that it might be a long time before you see the people you love once more. To take the stance that war is undesirable is not an attack on those who served.

I have a fear that some people are attracted to ANZAC day celebrations by a combination of romanticism and nationalism. Discussions of Gallipoli often end up with the trite observation that WWI camaraderie between kiwis and Aussies exists to this very day, in the form of good-natured rugby rivalry. Forgotten amongst the glib media-packaged nostalgia is the cynicism of war: the facts that dispensable Antipodean men were sent into the Gallipoli campaign in the service of an indifferent empire; and that Turkish casualties, military and civilian, far outweighed those of the ANZACs.

War is not a simple tale of noble men serving high principles. It's a far more complex story of wealth and territory; kids who grow up without dads; women who raise families alone, unsure whether their partners will return; conscientious objectors; torture; deprivation and cruelty against civilians; a number of men who return home, physically and psychologically broken, to families that don't know them; and some men who don't make it home at all.

The theme of ANZAC day is 'Lest we forget'. If we treat war as some romantic, nationalistic boys' own adventure, then we've already forgotten.

voluntary military service

you may have heard about the proposal for a military gap year for school leavers being discussed in the media recently. apparently one of the benefits of such service would be the salary earned by students, which could be put towards their study expenses. to which the tertiary education union has the best response:

“It’s outrageous that the government has seemingly given up on the widely accepted goal that tertiary education should be accessible to all on the basis of ability rather than wallet size”, said Ms Riggs, in response. “If the government really wants more people to study, then why not pay for it directly rather than telling people they should first spend a year or so in the military?”

i have deeper concerns about our young people going into the military. first of all, it doesn't appear to be an enviroment that is particularly woman-friendly, although it has no doubt been improving in recent years. no doubt some of the skills gained would be useful, but it would be much more useful to take up volunteering in the community (link is to a discussion on radio nz). it's a better way to build up community spirit and a sense of belonging, while helping those in need.

i'm just not a fan of military service, although i know that some people have to do it. i'd much rather we got our population to do peace studies than military service. how about we train everyone in the arts of mediation, negotiation and conflict resolution instead.