Editing Nonviolence (section)

==Criticism==
[[Ernesto Che Guevara]], [[Leon Trotsky]], [[Frantz Fanon]] and others have argued that violence is a necessary accompaniment to revolutionary change or that the right to self-defense is fundamental. [[Subhas Chandra Bose]] supported Gandhi and nonviolence early in his career but became disillusioned with it and became an effective advocate of violence.<ref><!-- Thomas Lamont (2014) "Give Me Blood, and I Will Give You Freedom": Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, and the Uses of Violence in India’s Independence Movement-->{{cite Q|Q120845006}}</ref>

In the 1949 essay "[[Reflections on Gandhi]]", [[George Orwell]] argued that the nonviolent resistance strategy of Gandhi could be effective in countries with "a free press and the right of assembly", which could make it possible "not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary"; but he was skeptical of Gandhi's approach being effective in the opposite sort of circumstances.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi.html|title=Reflections on Gandhi|last=Orwell|first=George|author-link=George Orwell|website=orwell.ru|language=en|access-date=2019-11-22|archive-date=2019-05-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190502183840/http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Reinhold Niebuhr]] similarly affirmed Gandhi's approach while criticising aspects of it. He argued, "The advantage of non-violence as a method of expressing moral goodwill lies in the fact that it protects the agent against the resentments which violent conflict always creates in both parties to a conflict, and it proves this freedom of resentment and ill-will to the contending party in the dispute by enduring more suffering than it causes." However, Niebuhr also held, "The differences between violent and nonviolent methods of coercion and resistance are not so absolute that it would be possible to regard violence as a morally impossible instrument of social change."<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=http://www.colorado.edu/ReligiousStudies/chernus/4800/MoralManAndImmoralSociety/Section6.htm|chapter=Chapter 9: The Preservation of Moral Values in Politics|title=Moral Man and Immoral Society|first1=Reinhold|last1=Niebuhr|date=2015-09-23|access-date=2019-11-22|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923210703/http://www.colorado.edu/ReligiousStudies/chernus/4800/MoralManAndImmoralSociety/Section6.htm|archive-date=2015-09-23}}</ref>

In the midst of repression of radical [[African American]] groups in the United States during the 1960s, [[Black Panther Party|Black Panther]] member [[George Jackson (Black Panther)|George Jackson]] said of the nonviolent tactics of [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]:
<blockquote>
The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the existence of compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one's adversary. When this adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and compassion, his reaction can only be negative.<ref name="Jackson">Jackson, George. Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. Lawrence Hill Books, 1994. {{ISBN|1-55652-230-4}}</ref><ref name="Walters">Walters, Wendy W. At Home in Diaspora. U of Minnesota Press, 2005. {{ISBN|0-8166-4491-8}}</ref></blockquote>

[[Malcolm X]] also clashed with civil rights leaders over the issue of nonviolence, arguing that violence should not be ruled out if no option remained. He noted that: "I believe it's a crime for anyone being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself."<ref>{{cite book|author1=Malcolm X|author-first2=Alex|author-last2=Haley|title=The Autobiography of Malcolm X|page=366|publisher=Grove Press|year=1964}}</ref>

In his book ''How Nonviolence Protects the State'', [[anarchist]] [[Peter Gelderloos]] criticises nonviolence as being ineffective, racist, statist, patriarchal, tactically and strategically inferior to militant activism, and deluded.<ref name="Gelderloos">Gelderloos, Peter. ''How Nonviolence Protects the State''. Boston: [[South End Press]], 2007.</ref> Gelderloos claims that traditional histories whitewash the impact of nonviolence, ignoring the involvement of militants in such movements as the [[Indian independence movement]] and the [[Civil Rights Movement]] and falsely showing Gandhi and King as being their respective movement's most successful activists.<ref name="Gelderloos"/>{{rp|7–12}} He further argues that nonviolence is generally advocated by privileged white people who expect "oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement's demands or the pacifists achieve that legendary 'critical mass.'"<ref name="Gelderloos"/>{{rp|23}} On the other hand, anarchism also includes a section committed to nonviolence called [[anarcho-pacifism]].<ref name="Anarchism 1962">[[George Woodcock]]. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements'' (1962)</ref><ref name="ppu.org.uk">{{Cite web |url=http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad8.html#anarch%20and%20violence |title="Resisting the Nation State, the pacifist and anarchist tradition" by Geoffrey Ostergaard |access-date=2013-01-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514052437/http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad8.html#anarch%20and%20violence |archive-date=2011-05-14 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The main early influences were the thought of [[Henry David Thoreau]]<ref name="ppu.org.uk"/> and [[Leo Tolstoy]] while later the ideas of [[Mahatma Gandhi]] gained importance.<ref name="Anarchism 1962"/><ref name="ppu.org.uk"/> It developed "mostly in Holland, [[United Kingdom|Britain]], and the [[United States]], before and during the [[Second World War]]".<ref>{{cite book|author-link=George Woodcock|first=George|last=Woodstock|title=Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements|year=1962|quote=Finally, somewhat aside from the curve that runs from anarchist individualism to anarcho-syndicalism, we come to Tolstoyanism and to pacifist anarchism that appeared, mostly in the [[Netherlands]], [[United Kingdom|Britain]], and the United states, before and after the Second World War and which has continued since then in the deep in the anarchist involvement in the protests against nuclear armament.}}</ref>

The efficacy of nonviolence was also challenged by some anti-capitalist protesters advocating a "[[diversity of tactics]]" during street demonstrations across Europe and the US following [[1999 Seattle WTO protests|the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington in 1999]]. 

Nonviolence advocates see some truth in this argument: Gandhi himself said often that he could teach nonviolence to a violent person but not to a coward and that true nonviolence came from renouncing violence, not by not having any to renounce.  This is the meaning of his quote "It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Gandhi|first1=Mahatma|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AIrLed2w1lkC&q=Impotence|title=Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-violence in Peace and War (Page 37)|last2=Gandhi|first2=Mohandas Karamchand|date=1965|publisher=New Directions Publishing|isbn=978-0-8112-0097-4|language=en}}</ref>

Advocates responding to criticisms of the efficacy of nonviolence point to the limited success of nonviolent struggles even against the Nazi regimes in [[Rescue of the Danish Jews|Denmark]] and even in [[Rosenstrasse protest|Berlin]].<ref>[[Nathan Stoltzfus]], ''Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany'', [[Rutgers University Press]] (March 2001) {{ISBN|0-8135-2909-3}} (paperback: 386 pages)</ref> A study by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that nonviolent revolutions are twice as effective as violent ones and lead to much greater degrees of democratic freedom.<ref>''Why Civil Resistance Works, The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict'', New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.</ref>