Nonviolent People and the International Political Situation: What to Do?

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 10 Mar 2025

Antonino Drago - TRANSCEND Media Service

7 Mar 2025 – We, nonviolent people, are interested in the highest system of politics, the world one, not for intellectual interest, but to have a role in it, even though we are an infinitesimal part of that system.

But to have a collective political role it is necessary to have an analysis of the political situation (unless there is a creativity that belongs only to enlightened persons). Only by having an analysis can we choose precise objectives and a strategy to achieve them.

Today we live in a time that since 1989 has declared “the end of ideologies”, both the classical liberal one and the socialist-Marxist one. But, in fact, this time is also that of the birth of a full historical consciousness, because for the first time there is a group, the nonviolent people, who are no longer blinded by wars, they do no longer believe that they are God’s will to make humanity grow; because, as Tolstoy showed in War and Peace, the outcomes of wars are largely random (now it is also demonstrated mathematically!).

In particular, we nonviolent people are heirs of a clear analysis of the world situation, begun by Gandhi and continued by Lanza del Vasto (LdV). Gandhi’s analysis forcefully posed the problem of colonialism as the first problem of justice between peoples; and proposed the alternative to the Western State: a federation of village-communities (Gandhi 1909). Having managed to involve the Indian people (10% of humanity at the time), in 1947 he solved the problem of India’s national independence; and with this event he opened the way to the end of colonialism in history, an end that occurred right away within forty years.

LdV posed as the first problem the survival of humanity faced with the threat of nuclear war between the two superpowers of his time (USA and USSR) that were armed with the nuclear bomb and were guided by two ideologies that for a century had been exclusivist. On the basis of Revelation 13 he condemned this bomb as the greatest possible structural evil and showed that their ideologies were false (QF 1959, chap. v, 1-24); as an alternative he proposed the Gandhian community also in the Western world, qualifying it as a new model of development among four possible ones (called by him: sovereignties; QF 1959, chap. iv, par. 60).

His political analysis was confirmed resoundingly by the non-violent revolutions that took place in 1989 and immediately after. By bringing down a superpower (USSR) those revolutions put an end to the threat of nuclear destruction of humanity and scaled down the socialist-Marxist ideology, so much so that today it no longer attracts people.

But, starting with the Indian one, the peoples who carried out nonviolent revolutions were not able to rebuild the State in a new way (even if Gandhi had indicated it). So the whole world remained under the military, legal and economic structure of the only remaining superpower, the USA. Europe, which the nonviolent revolutions of the peoples of the East had miraculously saved from the prospect of 200 million deaths at the first nuclear strike, not only was not grateful towards the nonviolent policy of its peoples who had demonstrated the strength of that policy, but cynically chose to compete with the US superpower in the policy of domination over humanity and for this purpose to rely on a bureaucratic verticism that took authoritarian decisions: to maintain the nuclear weapons of France and England; the construction of a Great Germany; the creation of the euro as a currency competing with the dollar; the extension of NATO military pact to the ex-communist peoples in order to subjugate Russia; the economy of domination over the natural resources of the world; a neocolonial politics in Africa.

For its part, the US superpower, which attributed the end of the Cold War to its military power, launched the globalization as an economic domination of the world and as a domination of nature; and, although there were no more military adversaries, after a few years of doubts it again chose as its first policy the war against someone (now terrorism). Meanwhile, the small minority of nonviolent people in the world remained divided by different definitions of what nonviolence is, despite the great intellectual advances of Johan Galtung on peace and structural nonviolence. Gene Sharp’s distinction prevailed: in opposition to the non-violence he called “of principle”, he promoted the “pragmatic” non-violence; which he aimed at fighting dictatorships in the world; that is, a set of nonviolent techniques to be repeated obstinately according to a strategy that is chosen by the leaders, in the light of a national political analysis based on the vague concept of “centers of power”. So without a spirituality and without a political analysis of the international structures.

Without a common definition of nonviolence and without a structural analysis of reality, the non-violent people mostly have fallen either into the objectivity of techniques to be used at the right time or into subjectivism (a spirituality without attention to the social). The structural alternative of the community and the non-violent development model has become an optional and has moved away from their horizon.

But on the post-1989 period, both Gandhi and LdV and also Galtung have launched prophecies. Gandhi wrote (Gandhi 1909, end of chap. 9) that it was enough to wait to see the end of Western civilization. LdV dedicated a long speech to the “tragedy of the Western hero” because of his active fatalism, that is, his unconscious commitment to self-destruction, just as Oedipus did according to the original myth of Western civilization (QF 1959, chap. V, par. 18-24). Galtung (who in 1970 had predicted the end of USSR within ten years) in 2002 predicted, on the basis of a dozen socio-economic-political parameters, “the fall of the US empire” by 2025 (Galtung 2006). In fact, this US superpower, which in order to dominate the world, bases its international policy on wars, since 1970 has instead lost all the wars it had launched, up until the disastrous defeat in 2021 in Afghanistan (the country that was the tomb of all the empires in history).

After 1989, the US and Europe, in order to keep Russia in humiliating subjection, have expanded NATO (which is a falsely defensive military pact) to the maximum, provoking an unfortunately warlike reaction from Russia. But today, while Europe blindly insists on wanting a victory on Russia at any cost, its military arrogance has backfired on them: Russia was able to overcome economic sanctions and win in Ukraine. Furthermore, the USA has given bombs at will to Israel (its gendarme on Middle Eastern oil), to carry out a scurvy massacre of the population of Gaza; which massacre, however, has shown the world that the Israeli Zionists do not have the religion of Abraham, but that of Lamech: a seventy times revenge (Genesis 4, 24) and so they have estranged themselves from the assembly of peoples linked to the progress of international law (in particular the UN).

Today we see that the prophecy of the non-violent is coming true. For half a century the Western hero has been doing disastrous harm to himself. But in the meantime, since he does not accept to come to terms with reality, he is causing terrible havoc in the world, while the people seem powerless to stop his fury.

Without being dazzled by his fury, let us ask ourselves: where does his fatalism come from? On this point too, Gandhi and LdV’s analyses are valid. The Western hero is fascinated by his great intellectual construction which is superior to any other social construction in history: the machine, or better Science and Technology (S&T), to the point of making it a political fetish. To obey the wishes of this fetish, that is, its unpredictable autonomous development, the West has forced society to follow its development at any human cost.

In fact, when in the 1990s the USA chose to remain a superpower which alone dominates the entire world, they believed they could do so because they had the utmost confidence that the progress of S&T would give them both superior military progress, such that they believed they could win wars against all possible enemies; and superior economic progress, which, without ideological barriers, would cover the entire world market (globalization); both a superior cultural progress that at that time was based on a deadly acceleration of S&T: from progress external to the person (telephone, radio, automobile, airplane, TV) S&T has passed to that internal to the person (computer, internet, artificial drugs, fertilization of all types, sex transformation, cloning, genetic hybrids, etc.); so much so as to impose a sudden anthropological transformation that has also profoundly upset even traditional spiritual life.

This is the “time of persecution” of non-violent people, which LdV had foreseen (AAVV 1978, Constitutions, “Difficult Times”).

So today, when the prophecy of Revelation 13 has come true (illustrated by LdV QF §§. 19-28: the world is dominated by two Beasts that make themselves worshipped), what to do?

First, the personal response. LdV suggested: “Of course, social life often traps us in a progress that does not allow alternatives. But, you DON’T BELIEVE IT!” That is, don’t be like those who have S&T as a fetish of their life.

At the community level, the answer has already been suggested, experimented and tested: the Gandhian community and that of the Ark.

At the national level, it has already been said that the peoples of Eastern Europe (and the hundred peoples who in the last century) have liberated themselves with non-violent revolutions have not been able to change the type of State on the spot (in the past the communists tried by quickly founding the USSR, but they fell into blind dictatorships). To grow politically from communities to a State takes time, great commitment and great inventiveness.

And at the international level? The arrogance of the USA and Europe has accelerated an alternative, the BRICS. Will they be able to drastically reduce the USA so as to end the agony of the Western hero? Will we have the ability to reform the UN into an effective and wise organism?

But above all, after Western civilization, what? In his book Galtung is optimistic, he foresees a new, better civilization. Because clearly what is at stake is to build a civilization that is no longer that of a single continent (first Europe, then America), but global, in which all peoples can find themselves recognized, without being crushed by hierarchical scales of power (e.g. between those who have the nuclear bomb and those who do not) and in which all peoples can contribute to fundamental decisions without racist, cultural and religious separations. This is the global political polycentrism, the typical one of non-violent people; because they do not want to prevail over those who are different, but to agree with them on a common policy.

The birth of this civilization is imminent because the current support of Western civilization, the global fetishism for S&T is about to collapse; because this is the discovery of our time: they have an alternative within them! We have already seen this in the 70s with the planning of national energy production: against the one based on nuclear physics that leads to the production of nuclear energy, the one based on thermodynamic physics was born, which leads to the use of soft energies (solar, wind, biomass, etc.). Furthermore, in the 80s, the organization of national defense based on nuclear bombs was opposed (theoretically and in fact) by the organization of non-violent popular defense, based on politically wise solidarity. Finally, pure science has also split between the dominant one (which however the education system perpetuates) and the alternative one of

1. non-classical logic,
2. constructive and computer mathematics,
3. thermodynamics, special relativity and algebraic quantum theory; etc.

In conclusion, what political role can the non-violent people have today in international politics?

1. First of all, rediscover the source of one’s own spirituality according to the millenary wisdom of the sacred texts;
2. Denounce the fetishism of S&T.
3. Strengthen the policy of forming communities (of the Ark), that is, the cells of the new model of non-violent development.
4. Spread non-violent analyses of current political reality; therefore translate the texts of 100 (Gandhi) or 60 (LdV) years ago into simple syntheses which can be easily disseminated.
5. Study the current reality of a nascent world civilization to obtain new syntheses that update and detail those of the past; in fact, in social political life there is an intellectual struggle to be waged that is no less important than the political one, because the former one pre-constitutes the latter one; therefore, even an agricultural community must carry out its own theoretical elaborations; in addition to manual labor, singing and dancing, study is also needed.
6. Prepare the future non-violent State with institutions that are intermediate between community and national organization and that are self-reliant (schools, cooperatives, alternative markets, civil service, etc.).
7. Perform exemplary actions to inspire or accompany movements (such as the week-long collective fast at the UN in New York organized by some members of the Ark against the US war on Iraq in February 2003).
8. Direct political efforts first and foremost to eliminate what is, according to LdV’s analysis, the principal evil in the world and in fact the greatest danger for humanity and the cause of the greatest political injustice among nations: nuclear weapons, today condemned by Pope Francis even in their possession and banned by the specific UN ban (TPNW, ratified by 73 out of 194 countries).

References:

Johan Galtung: The Fall of U.S. Empire. And Then What?, Transcend University Press, 2009.

M.K. Gandhi: Hindi Swaraji, Amhedabad, 1909, banned (‎ Rajpal & Sons, Delhi, 2016).

Lanza del Vasto: Les Quatre Fléaux, Denoël, Paris, 1959 (QF)

Lanza del Vasto: L’Arche Avait une Vigne pour Voilure, Jaca book, Milan, 1978. (AAVV)

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Prof. Antonino Drago – Member of the TRANSCEND Network, formerly at the University of Naples. Allied of Ark community, he teaches at the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU: I have a Master degree in physics (University of Pisa 1961), I am a follower of the Community of the Ark of Gandhi’s Italian disciple, Lanza del Vasto, I am a conscientious objector, a participant in the Italian campaigns for conscientious objection (1964-1972) and the Campaign for refusing to pay taxes to finance military expenditure (1983-2000). Owing to my long experience in these activities and also my writings on these subjects I was asked by the University of Pisa to teach Nonviolent popular defense in the curriculum of “Science for Peace” (from 2001 to 2012) and also Peacebuilding and Peacekeeping (2009-2013); then by the University of Florence to teach History and Techniques of nonviolence in the curriculum of “Operations of Peace” (2004-2010). I was the first President of the Italian ministerial committee for promoting un-armed and nonviolent civil defense (2004-2005). drago@unina.it.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 Mar 2025.

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