Wait! MLK and Gandhi Were Wrong About Non-Violence?

Violence is awesome now? Yay violence?

There is a buzz going around America right now that makes a spurious claim — that the only reason people are paying attention to the protesters is because of the looting, thereby insinuating that violence and mayhem should be condoned. Maybe even encouraged. Otherwise nothing will change.

That is an interesting idea, but hard to prove. Are people that make this claim sure that non-violent protests for a week all over the country would have made no impact? I don’t know. Maybe they’re right, but violence seems to be a very fishy thing to condone as you are trying to protest…violence.

This morning I was especially shocked to read, right here on Medium, an article claiming that MLK had “changed his mind about violence” toward the end of his life.

It was right here, the first article on my Medium homepage today after all the violence of the past few days. Was that a conscious decision by human beings at Medium or was it an unfortunate accident of the algorithm? I suspect the former.

I won’t get into the specifics of the claim, which is made based upon some comments that MLK made about riots and looting being a special kind of violence.

But in the quotes MLK never said he condoned the violence, just that he understood it.

Medium putting that article in my face today, though, makes me wonder why would you want to promote this article? Because you want to undo the powerful idea of non-violent protest? Gees, I don’t know if you really want to do that. Non-violent protest is kind of a beautiful thing. And Gandhi and MLK are considered modern day saints for their promotion of it.

Why would Medium want to make this claim?

I don’t know. But in order to find out for myself if the beautiful philosophy of non-violence really is impotent and stupid the way the author characterized it, I decided to do some research on my own. This is what I have discovered so far.

— Apartheid in South Africa was ended after years of non-violent protest.

— The Soviet regime was overthrown in Russia and all over Eastern Europe by non-violence.

— Um…the biggest empire in modern history was overthrown in India by non-violence.

So, I was really uncertain if non-violence really is the ineffectual pussy that this writer makes it out to be.

I’m just a little old Medium comedy writer though, what do I know? I mean, if I were to practice my craft of satire I might write a satirical piece here about how MLK and Gandhi decided late in their lives to team up as a tag-team WWE duo.

“I have a dream…of being a professional wrestler!” announced Dr. King. “Because I’ve changed my mind about violence. WWE is a special kind of violence that is entertaining and fun.”

But I am not going to write that article, because I have lost my sense of humor this week, as have many of us. It’s all too much — first the COVID. Then Floyd George is suffocated for 8 minutes until he dies.

I’m sure that the powers that be in Medium have a good reason for putting defenses of violence on my homepage

Especially this week.

While out of the other side of their mouth they are shocked and appalled at…what…oh yeah…violence.