As children walked to their elementary school in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in September, anti-mask protesters showed up to protest the school’s mask mandate. Following a trend seen across the country, they harassed the students, calling them slaves and Hitler Youth.
This is just one recent example of the use of nonviolent action by the political right in the United States. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a global rise in the use of nonviolent action by members of the far right across a range of issues, including opposition to immigration, abortion and gun control, as well as mask mandates and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. This raises important questions: First, is there a qualitative difference in the use of nonviolent action by those on the political right? And, second, should we see their use of nonviolent action as legitimate, given that civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance are often linked to social justice causes?
My recent research project “The Dark Side of Nonviolent Action: Right-wing Populism and the Use of Nonviolent Action,” attempted to answer this very question by examining three case studies. One was the recent right-wing movement under Donald Trump that led to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. The other two were international examples, including the 2/12 Islamist-led movement in Indonesia and the anti-immigrant youth Identitarian movement in Austria. Both of these latter two movements engaged in highly public nonviolent actions. In the case of Indonesia, the movement used mass demonstrations to topple the popular Christian mayor of Jakarta. Meanwhile, in Austria, the Identitarian movement engaged in a series of publicity-generating nonviolent actions that contributed to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment.
Through my research, I discovered three key tensions that illustrate the problematic features of right-wing use of nonviolent action. Understanding these tensions help us better gauge the legitimacy of those actions, as well as the phenomenon of right-wing populism that fuels the right-wing movements behind them.
From dissent to political disobedience
When we discuss nonviolent action in democracies, we can distinguish between three different modes of nonviolent action: dissent, civil disobedience and political disobedience. Dissent is part of normal democratic political contestation. Democracies usually allow for nonviolent action — such as vigils, marches and strikes — if they stay within certain rules. Given that most democracies are imperfect, these actions contribute to the health of democracies.
Far-right actors often punch down when engaging in nonviolent action — meaning they target socio-economically or politically “weaker” parties, in particular minorities.
Meanwhile, when people break laws they see as unjust through civil disobedience, they step out of the confines of regular dissent. They accept the legitimacy of the political structure and/or political institutions but resist the moral authority of the resulting laws and are willing to bear the consequences of their actions.
Political disobedience is the most radical use of nonviolent action, as it challenges the legitimacy of the state — often rejecting the political system as a whole. While political disobedience against dictators has proven highly effective, it is questionable whether political disobedience is legitimate in fully democratic systems, and thus it is usually seen as illegal and subject to repression by the state.
My research found many parallels among the different right-wing movements and their use of nonviolent action, some of which can be explained by looking at the phenomenon through the lens of populism. Right-wing populism has a distinct tendency towards political disobedience, as it often questions the legitimacy of liberal political elites and institutions that — in its view — do not sufficiently represent the will of “the people.” Populists are also impatient with procedures and often look for a quick way to achieve their political goals without going through the courts or the ballot box. In many instances, they are therefore flirting with political disobedience, which — the case studies show — triggers repressive responses by governments. This repression can in turn be used again by the movements to mobilize sympathy from supporters.
Means versus ends
Actors on the far right have become more astute in applying nonviolent tactics in recent years. The Identitarian movement in Austria, for example, has studied nonviolent theory and applied a wide array of nonviolent methods. So, while many of its actions technically follow the nonviolence playbook, they are being used to foster an anti-immigrant platform.
There are clearly many issues that are strongly contested in democracies, and nonviolent action can be an astute tool for nonviolent conflict resolution. Nevertheless, we should question if we can call nonviolent action legitimate if it does not have justice-seeking ends. Concerning many of the issues pushed by far-right actors, these ends are highly questionable — from trying to stop the certification of U.S. election results to pushing for the weakening of public health measures that mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
A further problem linked to the question of ends is that far-right actors often punch down when engaging in nonviolent action — meaning that rather than target the authorities or big corporations they target their nonviolent action at socio-economically or politically “weaker” parties, in particular minorities. The Austrian Identitarian movement, for example, has often targeted asylum seekers — once counter-occupying a church in Vienna, where several asylum seekers were performing a hunger strike highlighting the risks they would face if deported, in order to “claim asylum” for an imaginary white Austrian who was troubled by the number of immigrants. This punching down is a symptom of far-right populism, which often blames societal ills on minority groups and is clearly problematic in terms of legitimizing the use of nonviolent action.
Nonviolence versus violence
When looking at the use of nonviolent action by the far right, it is striking that a lot of its actions are stretching, if not crossing, the boundaries from nonviolence to violence. This boundary is of course blurry, and what some still see as nonviolent others would already regard as violent. While assaulting the U.S. Capitol clearly falls outside the confines of nonviolence, does that make the entire Jan. 6 rally a violent event? Is calling primary school children “slaves” and “Hitler youth” still nonviolent?
The issue with overstepping the boundary of nonviolence towards violence is based on the pragmatic approach that right-wing actors have toward nonviolent action. Since they see it as more of a tactical tool to achieve their ends — and not a moral commitment — it’s easier to slip into behavior that includes threats and intimidation. Many right-wing actors, such as parts of the Indonesian Islamist movement I researched, regularly engage in intimidation of minorities and have a tendency to do so when engaging in nonviolent action.
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DonateSimilarly, the U.S. right also has a long history of intimidation. One just has to think of how the anti-abortion movement has frequently engaged in heckling and insulting women seeking abortions, as well as threatening abortion service providers and their employees. Nevertheless, Gene Sharp’s list of 198 methods of nonviolence does include the haunting and taunting of officials and nonviolent harassment.
Here, again, the questions of ends and of punching down come to the fore. In his book, Sharp cites harassing slave-hunters as a case study of nonviolent harassment. Haunting and taunting should also target officials and not mask-wearing children or ethnic or religious minorities.
Are they illegitimate?
These tensions in the far right’s use of nonviolent action make many nonviolent actions undertaken by far-right actors highly questionable in terms of legitimacy or even legality. While one can see why right-wing actors might want to reap the tactical benefits of engaging in nonviolent action, their lack of commitment to principles of nonviolence taints much of their use of it.
Nevertheless, given that there are many issues on which we can have strong reasonable disagreement in democratic societies, the trend of far-right actors using nonviolent action cannot be seen as fully negative. If actors at the political fringes choose to engage in nonviolence rather than use violence to achieve their ends, this might actually be a positive trend. Still, this engagement should stay within the confines of dissent or civil disobedience, should not cross the boundary of violence, not punch down and be scrutinized in terms of its ends.
Daniel,
Very interesting article, thank you. My approach has been to distinguish between ‘strategic’ nonviolence, where it’s used only as a tactic or strategy as in your article, and ‘principled’ nonviolence, which springs from a concern for the well-being of the opponent while rejecting her/his injustice. In PNV you have a complete consistency of means and ends, thus qualitatively greater and different power.
Those two terms have fallen out of use, but I find them a handy distinction.
Most of the time non violence means physical hurt/killing. However real nonviolence means no hurt/injury in one’s thought, words and actions.
Thoughts: Intension should be pure of unity, love, justice and equality
Words: No haunting/taunting/belittling/blaming ,etc. in speech/words
Action: Physical actions of hurt/pain/killing, etc.
Political disobedience is not defined in this article.
Nor is non-violence.
Gandhi (and Jesus) taught his followers to love, and even suffer for, their enemies.
Dear Michael, Thank you very much for your kind words and your suggestion. In the paper I actually use this distinction and the term principled nonviolence.
The right-wing movements are having a lot of impact through widespread non-cooperation, e.g. with masking requirements. They are also disrupting public meetings, often using tactics that could be considered non-violent (or at least not-violent) such as shouting down speakers. Where I live, at least, they have faced little in the way of the legal consequences that nonviolent movements expect and prepare for. I’d like to see additional considering in WNV of how to respond.
I’d point out that a lot of civil disobedience isn’t about “unjust laws”.
The civil rights era is so important because it did challenge law. Sit at a lunch counter, and you may get to eat lunch. If not, you likely see the full force of segregation, which in turn may cause change.
Albert Bigelow sailing into a nuclear test zone in the late fifties wasn’t breaking an unjust law, but trying to block something bad.
But it’s harder when climbing a fence at a nuclear power plant, or blockading the missions to the UN in 1982. You are hoping to stop something, but it’s not a challenge of trespass laws.
I’d argue that Greenpeace is trying for publicity, the laws broken merely a means to out those banners up, the fines probably paid.
You can invoke a justified need for blocking a road that accesses a plant that builds guidance systems, but it’s removed from breaking an unjust law.
I would argue that nonviolence is not passive. Having those marshalls at a disarmament rally weren’t so much to police the masses, but part of a process of defining a nonviolence to the march. And it informs you, saw when the crowd starts to run, you don’t follow. It’s really easy for things to flip.
Nowadays, so many want to be spontaneous, and nobody has takes responsibility.
There’s a difference between “breaking the law” and trying other things to provoke a response. Even if you think nonviolence is a tactic, at least you know that any violence is from the other side. If you get wrapped in “I have a right” or “they started it”, it may sound good to blame the cops, but there’s no clarity.
If that hospital worker slugs you because you are heckling and blocking them from their job, you really can’t invoke “repression”
Non-Violent Action is for those who do not use the physical weapons of war or the physical means to physically destroy something with violence, however these terms are defined by the user and subject to the several discussions here views. I consider Gene Sharp as one who has defined what is what, but others will disagree as they will or should. But then, the definitions should be of a dictionary quality for them to have any meaning. And this goes to one of the issues for these times we are in – What is Truth if not what is objective reality of what is seen and is in the world.
This current political struggle in the USA is over truth of what is and what will be our foundation. A foundation is what we build from to achieve what we want for our future goals. Addressing past wrongs needs great clarity in defining Truth of what was.
My specifics are one who learned of nonviolent struggle / action in 2011 from “How to Start a Revolution” and I’ve embraced it with a passion, for at that time Obama was the evil to bring down for his regime was everything but peaceful.
Anti-establishment and liberalism were mantras embraced over 100 years ago, with liberalism going to openness and free thinking. Now the left and political progressives have become all that was railed against since at least the 1960s. This Biden Regime is wrong for all – be it left / right / up or down.
As the the ‘right’ using NV means, so what ? It’s the tool for all when faced with authoritarian dogmatic forces who indoctrinate others with nonsensical ideas such as CRT, the 1619 project, and health concerns based of morbid fears stoked by MSM fear mongers. Since there are no rational discussions with both sides refusing to listen to the other to the point of our now ‘liberal / progressive’ federal government dictating through authoritarian means of fascism – a shocking truth – Non-Violent Action is fair game to those who wield it.
Freedom must have Responsibility so that outcomes are mutual, and all who force something on others should stop and consider Mutualism.
“Where I live, at least, they have faced little in the way of the legal consequences that nonviolent movements expect and prepare for. ”
But now we have federal forces trying to intervene in this local struggle. Imagine, we see the left using the tools of unjust repression against those concerned about their children’s health and indoctrination.
These roles of left and right are reversed from my youth – Imagine the irony !