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Some people consider nonviolence to be pacifism. That, of course, misses the historical reality of nonviolent victories. Masses of Serbs caravaned to the capital, Belgrade, in October of 2000 to overthrow the dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. Film of that day shows the huge crowd massed up around the Parliament building and the movement leadership exhorted the crowd to remain nonviolent, which they did--and they won. The police and military abandoned their enforcement actions and stepped to the side of the people. Milosevic was done.
Serb society was not previously known for its nonviolent civil society campaigns; indeed, it was the opposite, with a robust vendetta culture that kept hate and grudges alive quite literally for centuries and was still in the throes of many levels of violence[1]in Kosovo, the horrific massacre at Srebrenica, and the relentless slaughter in Bosnia and Herzegovina and more. But the 2000 revolution, led by college students, was 100 percent nonviolent and a reasonable observer of that region would estimate the percent of pacifists in the huge crowd on the day of deposing the dictator to be shy of one percent.
Many view nonviolence as a pipedream that only privileged classes can practice. They argue that calling for nonviolent conduct is arrogant elitism. That is an ahistorical assertion when we think about the early nonviolent victories and the decades of them--e.g., India's liberation from the British in the 1940s, decolonization in Zambia, Ghana, and Tanzania in the 1950s and early 1960s, the US civil rights victories in the Deep South from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, the defense of democracy and stopping a civil war in 1986 in the Philippines, the successful end to apartheid in South Africa in the late 1980s, the complete victory for the Anishinaabe treaty rights in the same period, and then we reflect on the truth--that each of these victories were achieved by people of color, and that mass nonviolent civil society power was created by people of color for the most part, in resistance to white oppressors. Nonviolence is the most gain with the least pain[2], used by wise resisters who understand that the best way to both advance a social agenda and keep people as safe as possible is clearly the use of nonviolent methods of struggle. In truth, throwing a soda can at a cop and then not being shot dead is an act of supreme privilege that people of color know they do not likely have.
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