Tag Archives: Mohandas Gandhi

Resisting the Gatekeepers of Hell: Gandhi, ‘Vaccine Passports’ and the Great Reset

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By Robert J. Burrowes

In 1906, in response to the British Administration in the Transvaal, South Africa passing the Asiatic Law Amendment Act designed to enforce registration of the colony’s male Asian population, Mohandas K. Gandhi led a group of fellow satyagrahis (nonviolent activists) to defy the just-introduced ‘pass law’: they publicly burned their passes. In the seven year campaign that followed, thousands of Indians were jailed (including Gandhi himself) and activists were flogged or even shot for striking, refusing to register, burning their registration cards, or engaging in other forms of nonviolent resistance. Nevertheless, the campaign was eventually won.

More than 100 years later, citizens the world over (not just in one country or region) are already being required, or will be shortly, to carry a ‘pass’, this one ostensibly signifying vaccine status but, beyond this, to be used as part of a sequence of measures designed to track movements and control behaviours. Given its role in the package of measures launched as part of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’, including those critical to implementation of the fourth industrial revolution along with the associated measures in relation to transhumanism, cyber polygon and eugenics, the ‘vaccine passport’ threatens an intrusion into the lives of citizens vastly more heinous than the passes the Transvaal government intended and to which Gandhi objected so strenuously.

Hence, national societies and the international community currently lurch rapidly towards a world in which individual identity, freedom, rights, privacy and even volition are destroyed as the Global Elite implements its long-standing plan to create a New World Order in which the very meaning of the word ‘human’ is under threat. Moreover, we have been promised that, by 2030, we will own nothing and we will be happy about it! See ‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy’.

So why isn’t everyone vigorously resisting the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ and its related measures?

What Is Happening?

Misunderstanding what is happening around the world at the moment is understandable. Misrepresenting what is happening through misunderstanding it is also understandable.

However, it certainly makes it difficult to get the truth out there when blatant and persistent lying is being used by relevant international organizations (notably including the World Economic Forum, the United Nations and the World Health Organization), national governments, the pharmaceutical and medical industries, and the corporate media to terrorize people into believing that a ‘virus’ that has never been isolated and proven to exist – see ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’, ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’ and ‘No Record Found: FOIs reveal that health/science institutions around the world (137 and counting!) have no record of SARS-COV-2 isolation/purification, anywhere, ever’ – is killing substantial numbers of people and that we need several experimental gene-altering injections (that are, in fact, killing substantial numbers of people), for the rest to survive! See, for example, ‘The Truth about the Covid-19 Vaccine’, ‘A Final Warning to Humanity’, ‘COVID Shots to “Decimate World Population,” Warns Dr. Bhakdi’,  ‘Finally! Medical Proof the Covid Jab is “Murder”’ and ‘Abstract 10712: Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning’.

As Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945 noted: ‘If you tell a lie, tell a big one.’

Of course, on the surface it may appear that it is simply ignorance of the evidence and relevant data that has most people unaware of what is really happening. But this is only true in the most superficial sense.

After all, given the monumental nature of what has taken place over the past two years – with virtually everyone’s life profoundly upended, ostensibly because this was necessary to combat a ‘virus’ – claiming that people submitted to government direction out of ignorance and/or trust in the relevant authorities is to miss something fundamental.

People who are being deceived by the elite-driven narrative almost two years into this crisis are, in fact, terrified. This terror is invariably unconscious: that is, it is suppressed below conscious awareness. But it is the true explanation of why a narrative that is so fundamentally flawed, with extensive evidence available to those who seek it, continues to maintain its dominance over the truth.

So why are so many people so terrified of investigating what is really happening, and responding accordingly?

The Dysfunctional Psychology of Victims

Because each human being is unique, the individual is born with a powerful evolutionary gift: Self-will. This means that the individual has an incredible range of tools, including the capacity to apply sensory perception (sight, sound, touch…) to observe what is happening, the emotional capacity to feel what this means (is it satisfying, enjoyable, frightening, infuriating…), to consider evidence and think for themself about the significance of it, to compare and contrast it with relevant memories, to gauge it against one’s conscience and so on until an integrated sense of how to behave in response is formulated and then acted on.

If a person is doing this then we might describe them as ‘Self-aware’. And they are, truly, an individual.

However, in the name of ‘socialization’, parents terrorize children into obedient submission to those people identified as ‘authorities’ and this ranges from the parents themselves as well as teachers and religious figures in the child’s life to those institutions that will later play vital, if largely invisible, roles in profoundly shaping the adult life of every individual: international organizations, governments and corporations (including corporate medicine and the corporate media), as well as legal systems, all of which are controlled by the global elite.

As just one outcome of this terrorization – which I have elsewhere labeled, with comprehensive explanations, ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence: see ‘Why Violence?’ – the individual who can genuinely think and investigate for themselves, critique society in any meaningful way, engage emotionally with the ramifications of what they learn, and then act to resist injustice courageously and strategically is all too rare.

In fact, because of the experience of childhood terrorization, virtually all children are compelled to surrender the essence of these various capacities, and hence their Self-will, by a very young age. In these circumstances, the child becomes a malleable instrument, easily transformed into a victim who is now devoid of the capacity to look deeply within themselves to make sound judgments about what is taking place and to behave powerfully in response.

Instead, they simply obey the will of another: parent, teacher, religious figure, employer, corporate executive, political leader…. and act more out of habit than consideration. Given the endless violence (usually labeled ‘punishment’) that is inflicted to ensure that children are obedient to others, rather than allowed to follow their own self-will, it takes an extraordinary child to survive with even a semblance of the potential with which they were born.  As a result, most human behavior lacks consideration, conviction, courage and strategy, and is simply driven compulsively by the predominant fear in each context.

For elaboration of this explanation, see ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’, ‘The Psychology of Victimhood: Obama, Cameron, Netanyahu, Clinton, Kissinger’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

A primary outcome of this childhood terrorization experience in materialist cultures is that the child learns to suppress their awareness of how they feel by using food and material items to distract themself. By doing this, the child rapidly loses their emerging self-awareness and learns to consume as the substitute for this awareness. Clearly, this has catastrophic consequences for the child, their society and for nature (although it is immensely profitable for elites and their agents whose Self-awareness is non-existent). For a fuller explanation, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

In essence, a victim is utterly terrified and powerless. These feelings are unconscious to the victim, which is why they are incapable of intelligently seeking out and personally assessing evidence (such as that in relation to Covid-19 and how it is being used) and they simply submit without protest once told to obey.

An equally important outcome for the victim is that they have little, if any, capacity to see beyond themselves or their immediate concerns (which might include an activist preoccupation). They are incapable of perceiving and considering the wider ramifications of what is taking place – the ‘big picture’ – such as the impact on those millions of people who are experiencing mental health problems, sexual and/or other forms of violence, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, starvation or even being killed outright by official responses to the non-existent pandemic. Any sense of a ‘wider self’, of human solidarity beyond the most superficial kind, is incomprehensible to them.

Moreover, among those who can penetrate the elite-driven delusion in relation to the injectables, the most significant effort is dissipated in petitioning and lobbying governments as well as protesting against governments, as the elite intends. Of course, governments, elected or otherwise, are simply the tools the elite uses to control the various national populations (either by deluding most people into believing that they live in a ‘democracy’ or simply by subjecting them to dictatorship) so effort directed at governments is the equivalent of treating the puppet as the puppetmaster: virtually always, a complete waste of time, as the historical record demonstrates. See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

Of course, it is this terrified submission to authority that the elite is relying on to compel the bulk of the human population to submit to the ‘death needle’, given its crucial role in implementing their depopulation agenda. See ‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape Our Future’.

However, for those left alive, the intention is to use their submission to turn them into transhuman slaves who are even more readily monitored and controlled. See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

Hence, as the global elite progressively implements its agenda to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and turn the bulk of those left alive into transhuman slaves, it can rely on those who are submissively obedient to act as its agents against those who are not. And this is crucial for its agenda to be achieved.

Why?

Simply because, in the end, it is not just the technological measures at its disposal now or in the future that will enable the comprehensive surveillance and behavioural control they desire to be achieved. It is because the Global Elite can rely on those too terrified to critique what is happening, and to act powerfully in response, to monitor and try to control the behaviour of those around them. Whether by requiring businesses to have us wear masks, register QR codes, prove vaccine status, pay with plastic cards and not cash, and so on, governments are effectively using certain sections of the population to control the others. And, often, unwillingness to do so is neutralized by threat of financial penalty or imprisonment for non-compliance.

Even more deeply, governments are requiring members of families to discriminate against each other on the basis of vaccine status.

And this is how it has always been. Just ask the Nazis in Germany in World War II whose relative lack of technological means was no impediment to social control. Managing how people’s fear is projected is always the key, just as elite propaganda is used to project people’s fear to support deployment of the US/NATO war machine against an endless sequence of ‘enemies’.

Jews, ‘Gooks’, Muslims, a virus, unvaccinated… it doesn’t really matter what. Just identify where the fear is to be projected and use propaganda to focus it. There are plenty of unconsciously terrified people out there who won’t challenge the narrative.

Unfortunately, then, those around us, ranging from family members and friends to our employers and the businesses we visit, become the gatekeepers, effectively deciding who can visit whom, and who can or can’t go about their daily routine. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell would be impressed with how easily their dystopian visions have been realized.

And this will jump a giant notch upwards with the introduction of ‘vaccine passports’, far more intrusive and controlling than the ‘passes’ that Gandhi found so objectionable more than a century ago. Hence, ever more draconian measures by governments will ensure greater levels of submission by those who are terrified: The gatekeepers of hell.

So What Can We Do?

Fortunately, among those who are more courageous, there is considerable resistance already. However, we need to expand this and also get it onto a more strategic footing so that it functionally undermines the power of the Global Elite to conduct this coup. And don’t assume that the Global Elite will back off. It is criminally insane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

So, once again, our liberation strategy must thwart those key measures of their coup that would give them the control they want. This will not be easy because we must mobilize millions to act strategically. Mass mobilizations, like most of those that have been conducted so far, can have no impact against the Global Elite unless they are used to identify and inspire strategically-focused acts of nonviolent resistance that are ongoing.

For an integrated strategy to defeat the elite coup, see the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign, which has 29 strategic goals for defeating the coup including meaningful engagement with police, military forces and mercenaries to assist them to understand and resist, rather than support, the elite agenda. If you want to read more detail, you can do so at Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

But for a simpler presentation, see the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ 7 Days Campaign to Resist The Great Reset. One-page flyers in English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian and Spanish, outlining essential nonviolent actions that we must undertake, can be downloaded from this link. Other languages are being added as they become available.

The Telegram group is here.

In addition, it will be invaluable if you make yourself increasingly self-reliant as the mechanisms that you have been seduced into becoming dependent upon are progressively and rapidly being taken away. See ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

And if you have the chance to ‘talk’ to someone about what they think is going on, try listening! See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

Conclusion

We have a choice. We can choose to resist, strategically, now, while we can still make choices.

Or we can watch as homo sapiens continues to be decimated and those left alive lose those very qualities that define humanity.

There is no third option.

Gandhi and his fellow activists resisted passes far less intrusive more than a century ago. Are you going to resist these now?

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Related Video:

https://odysee.com/@dawnofpeace:5/EGN—The-Origin-Of-Violence—Robert-Burrowes:f

Biodata: Henna Maria Vermeulen is an activist, speaker, writer and practitioner of ancestral healing arts, which she learnt apprenticing with the Shipibo tribe in the Amazon rainforest. She is also a student of Natural Law and the Essene Way. In 2019 Henna founded Dawn of Peace, a creative community and peace organisation. Her activism focuses on educating people about the spiritual reality of life, human and animal rights, medical freedom and self-sovereignty. In 2021, Henna founded the international movement Police for Freedom – educating police and civilians about our natural rights in order to rehumanise our societies and restore trust between the security forces and the people.

Humans Love Violence: Gandhi and the World Economic Forum

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By Robert J. Burrowes

As we approach the 72nd anniversary of the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi on 30 January 1948, it is worth reflecting on one simple fact that he did not realize. His efforts to teach humanity that conflict, including violent conflict, could be resolved without violence were based on one fundamentally flawed assumption: that at least some humans were interested in, and committed to, seeking out and using nonviolent strategies for dealing with conflict in each and every context.

Unfortunately, as his own experience taught him and he showed clear signs of realizing towards the end of his life, the fundamental truth is that humans love violence and it is this love of violence that will ensure the extinction of Homo sapiens in the near term absent a profound response that shows no sign of emerging yet. See Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’.

This love of violence, reinforced by the enormous fear associated with resisting it, is generated by the violent parenting and education models that we have long been using and which inflict enormous ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence on all young people throughout their childhood and adolescence in the name of ‘socialization’. See ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

These violently dysfunctional parenting and education models ensure that virtually every child emerges into adulthood as an unconsciously terrified, self-hating and powerless individual. This individual has been terrorized into surrendering their unique Self and accepting the ‘socially constructed delusional identity’ they have been given to participate in society as a submissive student, worker/soldier and citizen. ‘Powerful’ is not a word that can be used to describe the typical human being.

This ‘individual’, among a vast range of other violent and dysfunctional behaviors, chronically over-consumes (as they have been taught to do) to compensate for their inability to feel their deeply suppressed feelings including their fear, (emotional) pain, anger, sadness, love and joy. Unfortunately, of course, this over-consumption cannot make someone psychologically whole and that is why virtually all humans who are in the circumstances to do so, chronically over-consume and chronically accumulate in an endless but futile attempt to satisfy deep but unmet emotional needs. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

As a result of this socially-approved psychological dysfunctionality, we are now confronted with an interrelated series of military, nuclear, ecological, economic, geoengineering, 5G, biodiversity and climate crises that are not being contained in any way because virtually everyone is deluding themselves about the drivers of these interrelated crises – on two distinct levels – and what must be done about them.

Most fundamentally, as briefly identified above and elaborated in the references cited, to the extent that some humans are even interested in tackling this multifaceted crisis in our biosphere, they are failing to identify their own psychological dysfunctionality and its causes as the primary driver of this crisis. And secondly, therefore, they are attempting to resolve the crisis without understanding its cause.

As a result, virtually all people end up powerlessly begging the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – or its compliant government agents, to fix this crisis for them rather than taking the necessary strategic action (in one or more of a range of ways) themselves.

This was classically illustrated at the recent World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, which had no problem co-opting the usual range of concerned high-profile individuals to participate in (and thus add a veneer of legitimacy to) its annual forum despite its extensively documented role in killing and exploiting fellow human beings and plundering the Earth while obscuring and ‘greenwashing’ its violence using the corporate media. See the WEF’s delusional ‘How to Save the Planet’ which obviously does not even mention the wars, grotesque inequality – see ‘5 shocking facts about extreme global inequality and how to even it up’ – and other violence it helps to generate and maintain, let alone mention what is actually necessary if we are to tackle this multifaceted crisis and avert human extinction. For one brief exposé of the World Economic Forum’s central role in elite violence, exploitation and destruction, see ‘Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite’. For more detail, see Giants: The Global Power Elite.

Needless to say, the co-opted individuals are politically naïve, to put it mildly, and have no understanding of how the world actually works. For a brief outline of this latter point, see ‘Why Activists Fail’.

So what are the functions of elite-sponsored gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos?

In essence, its functions are to deflect attention from elite violence, exploitation and destruction and to delude people into believing that its intention is to act in the best interests of humanity and the biosphere. This is done so that people continue to focus their efforts on lobbying the elite (and their government agents) rather than taking effective action themselves. How is this done?

At elite fora of this nature, there are always two agendas. The public agenda is designed to delude the gullible public: it is designed to pay lip service to selected problems at a superficial level using a panel of high profile speakers to distract our attention. But the deep agenda is undeclared and is only discussed by key groups of elite individuals who meet secretly to plan, organize and strike deals regarding their ongoing violence, exploitation and destruction. Some of these individuals might even appear at the public forum so that their presence is noted; many will not be seen at all. But none of them is paying attention to what is spoken at the public gatherings because it is irrelevant to them.

Of course, the elite-owned and controlled corporate media will dutifully report the public gatherings with high profile speakers begging the elite to take some form of action to address one or other of our crises. But the corporate media well understands that it must make no reference to the many secretive gatherings held throughout the forum where the real action takes place. A fine outcome for everyone involved: the concerned public is deluded into believing that because its spokespeople have spoken (and been given prominent media attention) that their concerns have been heard, and the elite has deflected all attention from the further violence, exploitation and destruction it has planned.

So this charade, played out routinely throughout the year in a variety of elite-controlled fora where it is intended – but in stark contrast to the strict secrecy surrounding other elite gatherings such as those involving the Group of Thirty and the extended executive committee of the Trilateral Commission which perform the core policy-planning for the global elite – masks the most fundamental problem of all.

Which, in essence, is this: Who wants to address their own psychological dysfunctionalities and/or who wants to reduce their own consumption? It is far easier to delude oneself about the cause (anything but our own psychological dysfunctionalities and over-consumption), blame someone or something else (such as capitalism) and beg someone else (such as elites and their governments) to fix it. And then powerlessly complain when nothing happens.

This is why the obvious lack of interest in even understanding, fundamentally, what is driving violence in each and every context is such a glaring omission from the scholarly literature. Of course, there are plenty of attempts to explain violence in particular contexts, ranging from those supposedly explaining the cause of domestic violence to those supposedly explaining the cause of war or the climate catastrophe, but these are always incredibly simplistic because they do not understand what is causing violence per se (and hence driving it in each and every context). And if we do not understand the fundamental cause of violence – see ‘Why Violence?’ – then it cannot be addressed, as our incredibly violent world – with humans now on the brink of precipitating their own extinction – clearly demonstrates. (Of course, as more than 50 years of experience has taught me, there is no funding to undertake research to understand violence nor any funding to work to end it: Obvious symptoms of our love of violence.)

So let me illustrate just some of the ways, apart from chronic overconsumption and chronic accumulation, in which this human love of violence manifests.

Most obviously, humans love profiting from violence and the larger the scale at which the violence is conducted the better. So, for example, the shareholders, executives and staff of weapons corporations – particularly Lockheed Martin (USA), Boeing (USA), BAE Systems (UK), Raytheon (USA), Northrop Grumman (USA), General Dynamics (USA), Airbus Group (Europe), United Technologies Corporation (USA), Leonardo (Italy), Thales (France), Almaz-Antey (Russia) – make enormous profits or simply earn a salary/wage by manufacturing and selling weapons to kill people all over the world whom they do not even know.

Needless to say, these shareholders, executives and staff are devoid of a conscience or moral compass in any form, as well as the capacities for love, empathy and compassion in any meaningful way. ‘We make weapons to defend our country’, they might claim. Which only proves they are devoid of the capacity for critical analysis as well, given the real reason that military violence is inflicted around the world – see Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and ‘Understanding NATO, Ending War’ – and the myriad ways that conflict can be resolved without violence provided one has the intellectual, emotional and moral capacities to do so. See ‘Human Intelligence or Human Awareness?’ and ‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’.

Similarly, shareholders, executives and staff of fossil fuel corporations – see a long list of key corporations in ‘Strategic Aims’ – love profiting from the exploitation of resources that, when burnt, are destroying Earth’s climate. Like their counterparts in the weapons industry, these people are so psychologically damaged that they are simply devoid of capacities such as conscience, love and compassion as well as that for critical analysis too.

But the list of humans who simply love profiting from violence is endless. Consider those involved, from politicians and bureaucrats to military officers and soldiers, who authorize, organize, plan and conduct war as well. Not to mention taxpayers, of course, who happily (or fearfully) pay for it all.

Or consider those in the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries who are intent on destroying our damaged minds even more completely – see ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry’ – or those involved in the many other industries that also profit from inflicting, financing and/or promoting violence in one or more of its myriad forms, whether against humans or the biosphere.

These industries include the following: the major asset management corporations (such as BlackRock and J.P. Morgan Chase), the major banks and their ‘industry groups’ like the International Monetary Conference, the large investment firms, the major financial services companies, the big technology corporations, the major media corporations particularly including the three global news agencies (Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Thomson Reuters), the large marketing and public relations corporations, the major agrochemical giants, the huge biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations, the major mining corporations, the nuclear power corporations, the major food multinationals (selling processed, poisoned, genetically mutilated and/or junk food) and water corporations. For the names of key corporations in each of these industries, see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Of course, there are many other industries which do nothing but inflict violence too, such as the police, legal and prison systems. See ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ and ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

But separately from the manifestations of violence illustrated above, which fall mainly into the domains of direct (biological and physical), institutional (socially endorsed), structural (such as capitalism and imperialism) and ecological violence, there are several other domains of violence each of which has its own manifestations too. These include violence that is labeled cultural (‘those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence – exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics) – that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence’ in the words of Professor Johan Galtung) and psychological (‘lies, brainwashing, indoctrination of various kinds, threats, etc. that serve to decrease mental potentialities’), for example. For a fuller discussion of these categories of violence, see ‘Ending Violence, Exploitation, Ecological Destruction and War: Creating a Culture of Peace’.

However, to reiterate what I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the fundamental driver of all of this violence is our violent parenting and education models. See ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

So, unless we address this fundamental cause of violence, there is no prospect of ending violence generally and human extinction, at our own hand, is inevitable and will now take place in the near term. For further documentation of this point, see ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’, ‘Doomsday by 2021?’ and ‘Extinction in 2020?’

Ending Violence

So if you share Gandhi’s passion to end violence, then we must do many things.

Most fundamentally, we must nurture children so that they have the capacity to live by their conscience, the intellectual capacity to critique society and the courage necessary to resist elite and other violence strategically and fearlessly, while living sustainably despite the entreaties to over-consume. See ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

If your own intellectual and/or emotional functionality is the issue and you have the self-awareness to perceive that, and wish to access the conscience and courage that would enable you to act powerfully, try ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If we are to resist elite violence effectively, in a great many contexts, we must campaign strategically to do so. Whether you are engaged in a peace, climate, environment or social justice campaign, the 12-point strategic framework and principles are the same. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. And, for example, you can see a basic list of the strategic goals necessary to end war and halt the climate catastrophe in ‘Strategic Aims’.

If you want to know how to nonviolently defend against a foreign invading power or a political/military coup, to liberate your country from a dictatorship or a foreign occupation, or to defeat a genocidal assault, you will learn how to do so in ‘Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy’.

Given that substantially reducing consumption is imperative if we are to survive, we will also need to become largely self-reliant. You can learn how to to do this in a way that has strategic impact by participating (preferably now using a substantially accelerated timeframe) in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a simple plan to systematically reduce your consumption by at least 80%, involving both energy and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding your individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas.

And if you want to be part of the worldwide movement committed to ending all violence, consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if the options above seem too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not buy rainforest timber
  8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Human beings love violence. This love of violence is the inevitable outcome of parenting and education models that are designed to destroy the ‘Selfhood’ of each child and turn them into a ‘socially constructed delusional identity’ that readily participates, as a submissive student, worker/soldier and citizen, in their society on the promise that they can over-consume as compensation for surrendering their unique Self.

This over-consumption requires extraordinary levels of violence in its many domains so that the nature and extent of the violence is largely obscured from the attention of most people.

Nevertheless, the simple reality is this: If enough of us reduce our consumption and increase our local self-reliance, capitalism will fade away, wars and other military violence against resource-rich countries (in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Central/South America) to steal resources on our behalf will cease, and the enormous pressure on our biosphere will be decreased. Of course, we can accelerate this outcome by acting strategically on several other fronts at the same time, as noted above.

But we need a global movement – and soon – for this strategy to succeed. Mind you, no other strategy has any prospect of succeeding.

While the global elite is destroying the biosphere to produce the goods we all buy, it does not need to respond to our entreaties no matter what form they take. In essence, if you fly and drive, the elite will make sure the war economy extracts the raw materials to make your aircraft and your vehicle, and the fossil fuels (or equivalent) to fuel them. If you don’t fly and drive, the elite won’t destroy more of the biosphere (often destroying countries, killing people and inflicting other atrocities in the process) to produce these commodities for you. Your personal choice (for good or bad) makes a vital difference, including because of the example you set for others.

As Gandhi, already wearing his own homespun cloth, noted more than 100 years ago: ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed.’ This is something that those attending the World Economic Forum are too psychologically damaged to understand.

And you?

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

 

Learning from Gandhi

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By Robert J. Burrowes

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869: 150 years ago this year.

There will be many tributes to Gandhi published in 2019 so I would like to add one of my own.

This reflects not just my belief that he gave the world inspiration, ideas and powerful strategies for tackling violence in a wide range of contexts but because my own experience in applying his ideas has proven their worth. This included his awareness that led him to declare that ‘If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history. We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors.’ and his encouragement to reflect deeply and listen to one’s ‘inner voice’: ‘you should follow your inner voice whatever the consequences’ and ‘even at the risk of being misunderstood’.

In essence, we can productively learn from history but we can build on it too. And, vitally, this includes dealing more effectively with violence.

So how did Gandhi influence me?

Shortly after midnight on 1 July 1942, my Uncle Bob was killed when the USS Sturgeon, a U.S. submarine, fired torpedoes into the Japanese prisoner of war (POW) ship Montevideo Maru. The ship sank immediately and, along with 1,052 other POWs, Bob was killed.

Apart from his older brother, my father’s twin brother was also killed in World War II. In Tom’s case, he was shot down over Rabaul on his first (and final) mission. He was a wireless air gunner on a Beaufort Bomber. See ‘The Last Coastwatcher: My Brothers’.

My childhood is dotted with memories of Bob and Tom. The occasional remembrance service, war medals and the rare story shared by my father.

In 1966, the year I turned 14, I decided to devote my life to finding out why human beings kill each other and to work out how such killing could be ended. The good news about this ‘decision’ is that, at 14, it all felt manageable! But I wasn’t much older before my preliminary investigations proved that even understanding why humans are violent was going to be a profound challenge. And I intuitively understood that I needed this understanding if any strategy to end violence was to be effective.

In any case, as one might expect, my research into violence and strategies for addressing it led me to nonviolence. I came across virtually nothing about nonviolence during my own studies at school and university but was regularly presented with news reports of people participating in activities – such as demonstrations and strikes – that I later learned to label ‘nonviolent action’.

In 1981 I decided to seek out materials on nonviolence and nonviolent action so that I could learn more about it. I had not been reading for long when the routine reference to Mohandas K. (or Mahatma) Gandhi, about whom I had heard a little and knew of his role in leading the Indian independence struggle, forced me to pay more attention to his life and work. So I sought out his writing and started to read some of his published work. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth was an obvious and early book but there were many others besides. I also read many books about Gandhi, to get a clearer sense of his life as a whole, as reported by his coworkers and contemporaries, as well as documented by scholars since his death. And I spent a great many hours in a library basement poring over The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.

The thing that struck me immediately about Gandhi was that his own interest in tackling violence had a comprehensive ‘feel’ about it. That is, he was not just interested in the violence that occurs when nations fight wars or one person kills or injures another. He was interested in addressing the violence that occurs when individuals and nations exploit other individuals/nations (such as when British imperialism exploited India and Indians) and the violence that occurs when a structure (such as capitalism or socialism) exploits the individuals within it. In his words: ‘exploitation is the essence of violence’. He was interested in the violence that occurs when members of one social group (say, Hindus) ‘hate’ the members of another social group (such as Muslims). He was interested in the violence that occurs when men oppress women or caste Hindus oppress ‘untouchables’. He was interested in the violence that occurs when humans destroy the environment. And he was interested in the violence that one inflicts on oneself.

This comprehensive interest resonated deeply with me because, apart from war, my own childhood and adolescence had revealed many manifestations of violence ranging from the starvation of people in developing countries to the racism in the United States (highlighted by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s) to the destruction of the environment, each of which had gradually but deeply embedded itself in my consciousness. Tackling violence was a far bigger task than the large one I had originally imagined. Violence is everywhere. Most importantly, it seemed to me, there was enormous violence directed against children in the family home but little was spoken or written about this.

So how did Gandhi explain violence and what was his strategy for addressing it?

Gandhi on Conflict and Violence

For Gandhi, conflict was a perennial condition. He also viewed it positively and considered it desirable. For him, it is an important means to greater human unity precisely because their shared conflict could remind antagonists of the deeper, perhaps transcendental, unity of life, which is far more profound than the bond of their social relationship.

He viewed violence differently, however. And, as might be gleaned from the many configurations of violence that concerned him, as noted above, he considered that violence was built into social structures and not into people.

Fundamentally, as Leroy Pelton characterized it, Gandhi understood that the truth cannot be achieved through violence (‘which violates human needs and destroys life’), because violence itself is a form of injustice. In any case, violence cannot resolve conflict because it does not address the issues at stake.

To reiterate then, for Gandhi there was nothing undesirable about conflict. However, Gandhi’s preoccupation was working out how to manage conflict without violence and how to create new social arrangements free of structural violence. The essence, then, of Gandhi’s approach was to identify approaches to conflict that preserved the people while systematically demolishing the evil structure. Nevertheless, he firmly believed that structural purification alone is not enough; self-purification is also essential.

In other words, in Gandhi’s view, resolving the conflict (without violence) is only one aspect of the desired outcome. For Gandhi, success also implies the creation of a superior social structure, higher degrees of fearlessness and self-reliance on the part of both satyagrahis (nonviolent activists) and their opponents, and a greater degree of human unity at the level of social relationships.

Two Key Questions

Despite the enormous influence that Gandhi had in shaping my own conception of conflict and the precise conception of nonviolence that should be used in dealing with it, I nevertheless remained convinced that two questions remained unanswered: What is the psychological origin of the violent behavior of the individual who perpetrates it? And what theory or framework should guide the application of nonviolent action so that campaigns of all kinds are strategically effective?

The first question is important because even if someone is trapped within a social structure (such as the class system) that is violent, the individual must still choose, consciously or unconsciously, to participate (as perpetrator, collaborator or victim) in the violence perpetrated by that structure or one must choose, consciously, to resist it. Why do so many individuals perform one of the first three roles and so few, like Gandhi himself, choose the role of resister?

The second question is important because while Gandhi himself was an astonishingly intuitive strategic thinker (whose 30-year nonviolent strategy liberated India from British occupation), no one before him or since his death has demonstrated anything remotely resembling his capacity in this regard.

Hence, while nonviolence, which is inherently powerful, has chalked up some remarkable successes, vital struggles for peace (and to end war); to halt assaults on Earth’s biosphere; to secure social justice for oppressed and exploited populations; to liberate national groups from dictatorship, occupation or genocidal assault; and struggles in relation to many other just causes limp along devoid of strategy (or use one that is ill-conceived). So badly are we failing, in fact, that humans now teeter on the brink of precipitating our own extinction. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

Anyway, having studied Gandhi extensively and learned from his strategic approach to nonviolence (elements of which I was progressively including in nonviolent campaigns in which I was involved myself), I resumed my original research to understand the fundamental origin of human violence and also decided to develop a strategic theory and framework for addressing violence in the campaign context so that Gandhi’s strategic thinking could be readily copied by other nonviolent activists.

It turned out that developing this strategic theory and strategy was simpler than the original aim (understanding violence) and I have presented this strategic thinking on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Despite my preliminary efforts in the 1990s to encourage fellow activists to use this framework, it soon became clear that only the rarest of activists has the capacity to think strategically about an issue, even when presented with a framework for doing so.

The Origin of Human Violence

Consequently, the vital importance of understanding the origin of human violence was starkly demonstrated to me yet again because I knew it would answer key supplementary questions such as these: Why to do so many people live in denial/delusion utterly incapable of perceiving structural violence or grappling powerfully with (military, social, political, economic and ecological) violence? Why is it that so many people, even activists, are powerless to think strategically? How can activists even believe that success can be achieved, particularly on the major issues of our time (such as the threats of nuclear war, ecological devastation and climate cataclysm), without a focused and comprehensive strategy, particularly given elite resistance to such campaigns? See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Hence, in an attempt to answer questions such as these, Anita McKone and I went into seclusion in an endeavor to understand how our own minds functioned so that we might better understand the minds of others. I hoped it would take a few months. It took 14 years.

So what is the cause of violence in all contexts and which, depending on its precise configuration in each case, creates perpetrators of violence, people who collaborate with perpetrators of violence, people who are passive victims of violence, people who live in denial/delusion, people who are sexist or racist, and activists who cannot think strategically (among many other adverse outcomes)?

Each of these manifestations of human behaviour is an outcome of the adult war on children. That is, adult violence against children is the fundamental cause of all other violence.

How does this happen? It happens because each child, from birth, is socialized – more accurately, terrorized – so that they fit into their society. That is, each child is subjected to an unrelenting regime of ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence until they offer the obedience that every adult – parent, teacher, religious figure… – demands.

So what constitutes ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence?

‘Visible’ violence includes hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing a child which, sadly enough, is very common.

But the largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. For a full explanation, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

‘Invisible’ violence is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers, religious figures and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (for instance, by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (for example, by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for the biosphere because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

So what do we do?

Well, if you want to make an enormous contribution to our effort to end violence, you can make the commitment outlined in ‘My Promise to Children’. If you need to do some healing of your own to be able to nurture children in this way, then consider the information provided in the article ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you want to systematically tackle violence against the biosphere, consider (accelerated) participation in the fifteen-year strategy, inspired by Gandhi, outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. This project outlines a simple plan for people to systematically reduce their consumption, by at least 80%, involving both energy and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding their individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas, so that all environmental concerns are effectively addressed. As Gandhi observed 100 years ago: ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed.’

But, critically important though he believed personal action to be, Gandhi was also an extraordinary political strategist and he knew that we needed to do more than transform our own personal lives. We need to provide opportunities that compel others to consider doing the same.

So if your passion is campaigning for change, consider doing it strategically, as Gandhi did. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you want to join the worldwide movement to end all violence against humans and the biosphere, you can do so by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948. But his legacy lives on. You can learn from it too, if you wish.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford, Victoria 3460
Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Feelings First
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

Gandhi the Anarchist

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Editor’s note: Tomorrow marks the 67th anniversary of the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi. Society often celebrates such influential rebels while forgetting what made them great. Articles such as this help us avoid that trap.

By Jason Farrell

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

A complex man with a controversial legacy, Mohandas Gandhi remains one of the pioneers of civil disobedience as a political weapon and a giant in 20th century anti-colonialism. An individualist anarchist who motivated millions to fight to liberate themselves from British rule, his success showed a potentially powerful application of libertarian ideas during a major political crisis and the ability of those values to inspire positive, peaceful outcomes.

Gandhi’s principles of radical liberation existed within a moral framework that abhorred violence but empowered ordinary people, intellectually and spiritually, to prevail against oppressors and shatter a miserable status quo. According to the research of Erica Chenoweth, Gandhi’s template of non-violent resistance has been immensely successful for later generations around the world in creating lasting improvements in civil rights.

Modern activists and political thinkers shouldn’t discount the essential libertarian qualities of Gandhi’s philosophy, as they were among its most powerful and effective attributes. A commitment to natural law, self-determination, individualism and an abhorrence of government were core to his thinking and largely responsible for his success as an activist.

Gandhi’s Philosophy

Satyagraha, Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, which translates to “truth force” or “love force” carries with it some distinctly libertarian ideas. It incorporates elements of both the “knowledge problem” (applied in a moral sense) and the non-aggression axiom, although taken a step further into moral obligation to others — which is more than libertarianism demands. According to Gandhi:

In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.

Gandhi noted the purpose of Satyagraha was to “convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer.” Success is thus defined as cooperation towards a just end, rather than a political “win.” He also spoke of means and ends as inseparable, rejecting the use of violence or the “victory, by any means necessary,” mentality of some who have practiced passive resistance in the West. Gandhi knew using violent means would embed injustice in whatever ends are attained, exacerbating the cycle of violence that plagues so many societies. In this way, the practitioner’s authority is rooted in moral force instead of violence, and has the potential to reduce antagonisms within a society without harming the antagonists.

Gandhi developed a set of very particular rules and mores for Satyagrahis to follow, including mandatory spinning, chastity and abstinence from alcohol. With these we are unconcerned, since different disobedience movements employed different particulars in their belief systems. What is interesting and relevant is the commonality among them, and the parallels to libertarian beliefs: The notion of the moral abhorrence of coercion, and the acknowledgement of coercion’s role in perpetuating injustice; the belief in natural rights that oblige disobedience to unjust laws; finally, and most pertinently, the almost mystical ability of this approach to inspire entire populations to mass action is an historical fact.

Foundations of Indian Liberty: Satyagraha in Action

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919 (also known as the Amritsar massacre) has been characterized as the turning point in the history of British India, the event that lost Britain her ‘jewel in the crown’ and eventually her empire. The event, condemned by Winston Churchill, nevertheless produced an escalation of tension and insults against Indian subjects and shattered the notion that Indians were British subjects with the same rights as the British themselves, much in the way the Easter Rising created that same clarity for the Irish.

The Tribune of India described the massacre as a

[M]ilestone in the struggle for freedom which brought Mahatma Gandhi on the scene in his capacity as a leader of the masses whose presence inspired millions of people for three decades.

In the annals of our freedom struggle the Jallianwala Bagh massacre occupies an unforgettable place. Overnight, men and women resolved to defy the British might. For Gandhiji, the incident was a turning point. He became a ‘rebel’ and realised the futility of achieving freedom through British cooperation. The seeds of his ‘do or die’ movement were thus sown then and there.

Noted the Tribune:

History bears ample testimony to the fact that the ill-conceived and unwarranted 1919 military operation proved to be a catalyst for bringing the doom of the British Raj as it created an unbridgeable gulf between the British Government and the Indian people, leaving the British with no other option but to transfer power to the Indians.

Gandhi capitalized on the anger against British rule with the first concerted civil disobedience campaigns, the non-cooperation movement that began in the 1920’s. The Salt March of 1930 was among his most famous successes. The march began with a mere 78 people, swelling to throngs of 30,000-50,000 as they marched through four provinces to protest the salt tax. Gandhi went to sea to make illegal salt, a highly symbolic and dangerous act that challenged British authority. The result was widespread support and media attention, and the building of a broad-based movement. That movement contributed to Indian independence from the British in 1947.

Gandhi’s Libertarian Ideology

Though Gandhi the monolithic figure is widely revered, his actual political philosophy is seldom discussed, perhaps because he was an anarchist who believed in a cooperative agrarian economic model that prevented stratification of classes and political power.

It is well known that Gandhi was motivated by a desire to see India gain independence from the British Empire. Beyond that, his experience with governments seemed to have led him to a deep abhorrence of the institution, and an embracing of individualism, self-reliance and spontaneous order, part of a moral system he called the Swaraj, which translates literally to “self-rule.”

According to Swaraj.org:

The call for Swaraj represents a genuine attempt to regain control of the ‘self’ — our self-respect, self-responsibility, and capacities for self-realization — from institutions of dehumanization. As Gandhi states, “It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.” The real goal of the freedom struggle was not only to secure political azadi (independence) from Britain, but rather to gain true Swaraj (liberation and self-rule).

Gandhi scorned the representative democracy due to its conflict with his deeply held reverence for the rights of the individual, noting “Swaraj will be an absurdity if individuals have to surrender their judgment to a majority.”

Gandhi recognized inequalities would persist. He was, however, deeply skeptical of government as a tool of social improvement:

I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor.

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.

Gandhi was a believer in spontaneous order as well: “We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day be the mass of people acting as if by instinct.”

Influenced by Western traditions in part due to the time he spent in Britain in his youth, Gandhi was also a believer in individualism, and the use of reason to underwrite a person’s morality. According to Professor T.N. Madan, Honorary Professor of Sociology at New Delhi University:

One of Gandhi’s outstanding contributions to social and political thought, I suggest, was the conception of altruistic individualism within a cultural setting that was generally considered group-centred … In regarding reason and moral sense as the primary sources of good conduct, Gandhi asserted the right of the individual to arrive at judgments and, if necessary, to defend them against collective opinion, whether traditional or contemporary. His excoriation of the practice of untouchability was not merely an assertion of his own individual right to make moral judgments — indeed he considered this an obligation  but more importantly the assertion of the moral worth of every single human being, irrespective of his or her ascribed social status. Such moral worth is the basic premise of good society; whether it is enhanced or eroded depends on the dialectic of social pressures and individual agency.

Gandhi not only believed in asserting individual rights against the coercion of the state, he evidently believed market processes and private property would best meet man’s needs and scorned the use of parliamentary systems in attempting to achieve social ends. He was hostile to centralized authority of any kind and believed strongly in individualism and self-rule. “If we become free,” he said, “India becomes free and in this thought you have a definition of Swaraj. It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.”

It is worthwhile to note the relevance of natural law in radical liberation. Like with most governments, the British claim that their colonies enjoyed rights as British subjects was farcical. Whenever conflict arose, those rights seemed to dissolve quickly into coercion and bloodshed as the British fought to maintain unquestioned supremacy. Gandhi, like the Sinn Fein and the American founders before him, used the notion of a higher “natural” law and an emphasis on self-rule to motivate the oppressed to seize their own freedom.

Gandhi angered some by extending his notion of power and Swaraj to the history of colonization. While acknowledging the British Empire’s cynical intentions in India, he placesthe responsibility for the disaster of colonization on the Indian people. “It is truer to say that we gave India to the English than that India was lost … to blame them for this is to perpetuate their power.” Because power resides in the people and they can only lose it by relinquishing it (often through coercion by others), petitions to the government get a new meaning with Gandhi. “A petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his slavery.”

Here again is a similarity with Sinn Fein’s embrace of natural rights — rights don’t come from government, but from within. Therefore, rights continue to exist when they cannot be openly expressed due to coercion. This is a crucial intersection for libertarians. Radical ideologies succeed in part by inculcating oppressed and apathetic populations with a sense of self-worth. The concept of natural rights was important during the colonial period, when colonized people believed rights were rare morsels tossed to them on the whim of their superiors. Gandhi’s philosophy sought to rob Britain of their power to determine the law as a sort of demystification of white rule.

Anarchic India of course, was not to be. Gandhi, not being able to realize his “oceanic villages” system with Indian liberation in 1947, settled on minarchism:

Gandhi recognized that there would be a national government, and his anarchic, oceanic circle would not yet be possible. Nevertheless, he used the terms of nationalism to move towards the ideal of Anarchy. He advocated for a minimal level of State organization to fund some education programs and to promote his economic concept of trusteeship. Hence, Gandhi was a compromising Anarchist.

Gandhi had to compromise his principles in some cases. But of greater import is the fact that his individualist principles caught fire and exploded in popularity in the face of severe oppression. Indian independence was a complicated endeavor, but in the end, Gandhi proved to be on the right side of history. The radical anarchist who had been repeatedly imprisoned, classified as a terrorist by the British parliament and derided as a threat to law and order, was described by former U.S. Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall as “a spokesman for the conscience of all mankind.” With the positive impact non-violent resistance movements have had in the last seven decades, he might also be considered a true political visionary.