Principled nonviolence must underlie the resistance
- joannathurmann
- Mar 23
- 6 min read
The Gandhi Team has recently conducted a series of online and in-person de-escalation training sessions and deployed peace teams amid the flurry of protest and resistance actions aimed at Elon Musk and the Trump administration, from People’s March and 50501 events, to TeslaTakedown and organized coalitions like Hands Off.
The good news is that it's working (Resistance to Trump is everywhere — inside the first 50 days of mass protest) as evidenced by mass refusals to cooperate, boycotts, walkouts, and thousands of regular Americans bravely pushing back.
This is strategic nonviolence at work and there are plenty more of the 198+ methods of nonviolence action that movement organizers will employ in the coming months (and years). It will take many groups and concerned individuals to remain focused on preventing the further rise of authoritarian force in the US, according to Pro-democracy Organizing against Autocracy in the United States: A Strategic Assessment & Recommendations, co-authored by Zoe Marks and Erica Chenoweth.1 Nonviolent non-cooperation is the key to preserving our democracy.
But as much as social movements are building and organizing, so is the opposition. Many of these nonviolent actions have drawn counter-protestors, infiltrators, and agent provocateurs whose aim is to provoke the crowd and incite violence in order to incriminate the event organizers or individual protestors and discredit the cause. Several of them have turned up at various Tesla protests in the Bay Area. They sometimes infiltrate the protest, first pretending to be in support of the action by carrying signs and denouncing Trump and Musk. Later, they turn against the protestors using megaphones to aggravate and amplify their message. Several of them are right-wing social media influencers that livestream the events in real time to their subscribers. We are continually asked about the proper response.
Start with de-escalation skills and nonviolent communication, of course. And that starts with calm and active listening (see CLARA method) and our other de-escalation resources. This is the focus of our trainings for Peace Ambassadors who help to ensure the safety of public actions and serve as a buffer between counter-protestors and event participants. They know how to assess a conflict situation and can guide the right response. For the most part, that means keeping the event participants from being triggered into engaging with the counter-protestors.
Remember, few opinions have been swayed through a yelling match, with or without a bullhorn. This is especially true today in America. According to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Why We’re Polarized, Americans are divided into two sharply contrasting groups rooted in partisan identities. If, for the last eight years, you haven’t been able to get through to your Uncle Joe at the Thanksgiving table or your neighbor Trudy down the street, you’re even less likely to convince a determined MAGA counter-protestor in a few minutes of truth-telling exchange. The reality is that both sides believe, deeply, that they hold the Truth. And both sides are highly motivated to act on those beliefs, perhaps even to the point of violence.
So what do we do when mobilized agent provocateurs yell in our faces through a bullhorn? How do we respond to their taunts that Musk, Trump, and DOGE are doing a great job? When they call us a libtard, Bengay, or some other derogatory name?
Once again, the easiest answer is definitely not to escalate. This means the goal of a safety person (peace ambassador) is usually to focus on the crowd and get them to keep calm and ignore the agitators. Perhaps have them cross to another street corner or get them to sing. Remember, that the right to free speech applies to both sides. We cannot call the police simply because we don’t like their message or because they’re getting on our nerves. If no punches have been thrown and no property damaged, then threats and taunts are just that; no matter how loud they are yelled and for how long. Sure, once violence erupts, call the police. This is sound advice in any setting.
But the real answer is not a magical list of responses or tactics that will get the opposition to agree with you or at least stand down and walk away.
It's principled nonviolence, a force more profound and powerful. Principled nonviolence is the power of the greats, from Jesus of Nazareth to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and many in between and after.
We are followers and teachers of Gandhian nonviolence. Much rarer is the individual who chooses to commit to our 15-week study of nonviolence than the hundreds willing to take an hourlong course on de-escalation. And yet, the former is what has transformed the hearts, minds, and souls of individuals and nations throughout the centuries. A core principle of Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy is “Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love.” Jesus put it simpler. “Love your enemies”.
The moment we sense our blood boiling at the anticipation, let alone the sight, of a right-wing agitator at a TeslaTakedown protest with a megaphone is the moment we must take action. In our mind’s eye, we turn the image of a MAGA radical into the image of a beloved brother returning from faraway. He is worthy of human dignity and respect, and our love and attention. We introduce ourselves. We talk to him. We offer him cookies. We pray over him. We thank him for caring about our other brothers and sisters as much as we ourselves do. We win him over with our kindness, our peace, our joy, our conviction that all of us are a part of something greater than we can ever imagine. That all of us are part of ourselves.
Carl Sagan summarized this beautifully from the perspective of Earth as a very small stage in a vast cosmic space. “Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
To win against the current regime or any other authoritarians in power, we must think, mobilize, and respond differently.
We must wage peace, within ourselves first, and then with those we encounter. True, this requires courage and sometimes sacrifice. That is the law of redemptive suffering.
Courage and disciplined love wins trust, and that opens hearts and minds.
At a recent Tesla action, one of our Gandhi Team peace ambassadors engaged directly with one of the far-right agent provocateurs and won their respect. And that’s even more profound than temporary de-escalation. She listened deeply. She connected on a human level. They even laughed. They were surprised that we act in a non-partisan capacity. They were even more surprised that many of us are Christians or, more adequately put, disciples of the nonviolent Jesus of Nazareth. What a fabulous win for our cause!
We are always looking for the few to continue the nonviolent study with us. One practitioner of principled nonviolence can be far more powerful than a thousand well-meaning but quickly triggered activists. Join us at nonviolence.gandhi@gmail.com.
1 Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan also authored a study of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns between 1900 and 2006 in their groundbreaking work Why Civil Resistance Works. They found that nonviolent civil resistance is two and a half times more likely to succeed than violent resistance because it attracts broader participation, is more likely to cause defections, and is less likely to be met with violent counter-attacks.
