Fashionable nonviolence

(Gandhi in London with Manchester women whose textile jobs were threatened by his call for spinning and khadi)
Looking at successful nonviolence you don't find many images of sinister, threatening, hard-edged individuals. Our image is usually soft, colorful possibly, and invitationally friendly. Even when we are most directly clashing with the opponent we have an undertone of humanity that suggests we are not a physical threat to the safety of anyone.

Thus, even though Gandhi's campaign for homespun cloth was hurting British textile manufacturers then unable to sell as much to Indians, Gandhi chose to stay in the workingclass neighborhood when he visited London following the 1930 Salt March and Salt Satyagraha. He was there in London to meet with Parliament, take an audience with the king, and negotiate in a Roundtable specially on the India question.

Gonsalves (2010) analyzes Gandhi's nonverbal communication in the context of his associated actions and finds a mutually reinforcing dynamic: "The very practice of satyagraha showed extreme media awareness. News coverage of the dramatic scenes of unilateral violence by the Government against submissive, nonviolent satyagrahis made extremely sensational stories for worldwide consumption" (p. 18).

What were the semiotics--the cultural meanings of symbols and signs--surrounding his choice of clothing?

They were nothing short of freedom.
(Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi on July 6, 1946)


Nehru was the one dubious about the efficacy of Gandhi's nonviolence and was impatient and scorned almost every Gandhian initiative--until they worked, at which point he participated. Nehru reluctantly went along with Gandi's nonviolence and his ambivilance can be seen in his dress choices--lingering British influences and less Indian commoner. Nehru didn't mind some khadi as long as he wasn't the spinner and as long as he could be stylin' between cultures.

Gandhi, on the other hand, was sure of the powerful imagery, strong connective fabric, and deep weave of his garments of liberation. His choices recruited the millions by instilling pride and showing humility and yet identification with the Indians who toiled and suffered under both the British and their Indian puppets.

Our symbols and signs--often reflected first in our dress--are our first impression and either recruit and reduce fear or alienate and draw repression based on fear (or the ability to manipulate the citizenry into fear). In the 1960s the hippies were nonviolent but Abbie Hoffman made it political and questionable, and the Yippies were attacked as violent subversives by police whose methods were rarely rejected by mainstream America. The playful dress of the Yippies seemed frightening to average middle Americans who had survived World War II and really just wanted a stress-free and comfortable existence. The wild side symbology of Yippie dress was too nervewracking for Americans and a violent response was acceptable. When Abbie Hoffman posed casually with a gun, all the buttons were pushed.


References
Gonsalvez, Peter (2010). Clothing for liberation: A communication analysis of Gandhi’s swadeshi revolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Yippies, yuppies and speed of change

Humor is so key. With humor, even the hard edge of opposition becomes softer. I watched the full version of Bill O'Reilly v Jon Stewart and in that light Stewart absolutely creamed him because he has a great sense of humor that O'Reilly--tough and smart though he is--utterly lacks. And to make it worse for O'Reilly, he called Stewart names, called those who work with Stewart names, labeled everyone, and was just arrogant and combative. Stewart met all this with humor and it was like the incredible hating Hulk v dancing Wu Li Master. Stewart allowed O'Reilly's power to just wash out, stepping aside to let the force of O'Reilly spend itself into a sort of ineffectual alluvial fan of insult and sneers. There are no better exemplars of the dysfunction of full frontal patriarchy than O'Reilly, who is the personification of finger-wagging, patronizing lecturing.

Some like that style (most white males--wonder why?) and cocoon themselves into the O'Reilly self-righteousness, purblind to any analysis other than a Manichean dualism that someone like Stewart can flatten by deflating the pomposity. So we continue in our Estado Unidense way...

Historical humor
The Youth International Party (Yippies) were really basically political hippies. We were in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. That was the first time I was almost arrested--and at that time talked my way out of it because I was simply not prepared. At age 17 I was just getting my sea legs as a member of various social movements and I was philosophically all over the map, as are most 17-year-olds. But the older ones, like Abbie Hoffman, were appealing to me because he in particular was always so funny. When he started getting hyper-confrontational, I loved that too, at my immature age.
I was drawn one week to nonviolence and the next week to working with the Black Panthers, which I did--though I never committed a single violent act, just approved of their self-defense (which turned out to be the most useless and dysfunctional approach, teaching me lessons that have stayed with me).

My generation was empowered by the Civil Rights movement and by the global decolonization movement, as well as the general disgust with the black-and-white attitudes of the corporate post-World War II generation, my parents. Still, most of us were coopted and became our fathers and mothers in most significant ways, losing our Yippie youth into the next youngish phase of the so-called Young Urban Professionals, yuppies. I chose a different hippie homesteader path, going after a solar cabin built in the north woods, but I was a weird one. The yuppies are aged baby boomers now, and we achieved little, in my estimation, so that is now passed along to youth to take it much further.

Rise up and achieve quick change
On the speed of revolution, do not make the error of assuming nonviolence is slower than violence. That is statistically not the case at all. Historical examples abound and the use of the counterfactual is helpful.

How long would it have taken for African Americans to wage war against the US and get Jim Crow segregation ended? Any such insurgency would have been mercilessly and totally crushed. A hint of that came about during riots, when all the casualties were on one side, but you just won't find the poor minority of 11 percent militarily prevailing on the most well equipped military on Earth. The paucity of, and incorrectness of the Che Guevaran triggering event theory has been shown to be generally completely useless and counterproductive. You don't have a riot leading to revolution, nor do you assassinate a George Bush--or Obama--and expect any outcome other than society reacting against you, radical leftists and teabaggers (respectively) notwithstanding. Mistaking wild enthusiasm for Sarah Palin from the woefully underinformed teabaggers at their convention for some kind of potential actual violent American Revolution2 is a radical rightwing fantasy of radically unrealistic delusion.

And apply the timeline question to Nashville, where Jim Crow segregation was the law from 1896 (Plessey v Ferguson) to 1954 (Brown v Board of Ed) in education, 1956 in city buses thanks to the Montgomery campaign, and then 1960 in Nashville. The college students looked at 64 years of 'legal' segregation in the winter of 1960, trained and did sit-ins, and won by Easter. That is fast. Violence would have been costly and worse than slow.



Or look at the Philippines in 1986. Four days of nonviolent People Power masses in the streets and they overthrew Marcos, who had successfully defeated violent insurrection for more than 20 years! Violence is fast? Not.

But that is counterintuitive. We are in a culture saturated with the idea that violence is fast. That is part of the bubble around it that needs to be punctured.