I’m sitting here looking at a book, it’s a book that I’ve read several times over the years and one that I will re-read again when I’ve finished my current ‘to read’ stack. The book I’m talking about is ‘Freedom at Midnight’ by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre and its subject is the events leading up to India’s independence from Britain in 1947. It is a fabulous book and is history written as thriller and it grips from beginning to end.
This book moved me profoundly when I first read it. I learned much of the personalities of the major individual players in the struggle for Indian independence such as Mahatma Gandhi, Lord Mountbatten, Nehru and Jinnah. This book also taught me about aspects of Indian history and India’s independence from Britain of which I was previously only vaguely aware. This book also gave me a useful insight into the political campaigning methods of one Mohandas K Gandhi.
Now Gandhi was an odd character with some habits that today we would frown upon, such as sleeping between two young naked women to test his ability to resist temptation. He was also all too human and made both good and bad judgements in his political and personal lives. Gandhi is one of those people whom I may agree with in some areas but disagree with in others. I admire some of what he did but and said but dismiss other parts of his life and work as not so admirable. But it was his campaigning, and his desire for non-violence as a method of campaigning, that I wish to speak about in this piece.
I think that there is little doubt that Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent protest and non-violent direct action (NVDA) had an impact on India’s path to freedom. He had a huge following among the poor and downtrodden in India and focussed his campaigns on issues that highlighted the oppression of these groups. His famous ‘Salt March’ in 1930 took aim at an unfair and crippling tax on salt imposed by the British Indian administration in a land where, because of climate, salt is an essential for life and survival. The response by the British to the Salt March also showed the world the brutal way with which British and British aligned forces were treating those who were only asking for reasonable and affordable access to salt. The large amount of support that Gandhi gained in India prior to World War II meant that it was almost certain that Britain would quit India after the war. This was not only because decolonisation was in current political fashion, but because administering this fractious colony was draining Britain of resources that were already depleted because of paying for a World War. India had been brought to the brink of ungovernability by calls for independence, protest and indeed Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent direct action.
One reason for this seemingly long textual diversion into mid 20th century Indian history is to show that Gandhian non-violent direct action (NVDA), despite being dismissed as useless by some, helped to fell an empire. Another reason is to ask whether the sort of tactics espoused by Gandhi and other proponents of NVDA has any place in fighting for patriot and counter-Islam causes in Britain today?
Before I go into the question:’Is NVDA any use?’, I’d like to state where I think that NVDA would not have worked. I don’t believe that it would have worked against the worst of the monsters of the 20th century. I don’t think that Stalin or Hitler or any of those of similar levels of psychotic brutality would have been moved in anyway by NVDA protests, those who did undertake such protest mostly ended up either dead or in concentration camps or Siberia. NVDA would not have prevented the Gulags or the Holocaust and neither would it have been of any use to the Chinese under brutal Japanese occupation. There are some enemies of humanity for which NVDA is a weapon that is worse than useless. There were of course those in the Soviet Union for example, who did practise a form of NVDA by refusing to comply with government instructions to abandon their Christian religion, but although their resistance is inspiring and moving to read today, they had little effect on how the Soviet Union was governed.
However there is one form of government that can be affected by well-planned, well-thought out acts of NVDA and that is the form of government that exists in those nations that are built on the concept of ‘the rule of law’. NVDA could also be effective where the cultures lean towards the idea of fairness and justice inspired in them by their Judaeo-Christian heritage. I speak here especially of those nations that have their roots in Common Law, such as the United States and Great Britain.
There is, in my opinion, not much need for NVDA in the United States, since they already have ample freedoms to speak, to organise, to protest, for the individual to have the means to protect themselves and to be protected from the capricious power of the State. I find it both interesting and informative that it is really only the Left in the USA who want to use NVDA and then only to bring down the governmental system that guarantees freedom and liberty for Americans. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, are not so lucky. We do not have the right to speak freely or to organise or protest effectively about some of the things that afflict our nation and in particular to protest against Islam. We do not have adequate means to defend ourselves against the more violent adherents to this Islamic ideology and neither can we have that much confidence that the leadership of our police forces will protect us from assault or harm, when that assault or harm comes from Muslims. British subjects are also, as we have seen in the Tommy Robinson case, subject to the arbitrary power of the State, a state which also too often gaols people for little more than using words that some people find ‘offensive’.
It is in Britain therefore, because of the lack of safety valve freedoms, such as those enjoyed by the Americans, where NVDA could be a most useful tool for patriots to highlight the problems caused by the importation of Islam into our society. It is also useful to highlight the quislings who pander to Islam in our political and administrative spheres and the malign influence of various
Islamic groups on the life of the ordinary Briton.
It’s my belief that Gandhi succeeded with NVDA campaigns because he and his followers shamed the ruling classes and simultaneously informed ordinary working class Britons of the oppression that was being done in their name on the Indian subcontinent by British administrators. It’s also my belief that NVDA could work in a similar way today if it was practised right and practised effectively. In order to shame and embarrass the ruling political classes in the UK, these classes must be seen to be being oppressive and unreasonable, as was the case with the British administration of India. This aim can be accomplished by publicising some of the jackbooted idiocies that Britain suffers from and mocking mercilessly those who promote policies that are having the effect of destroying the nation that our forefathers fought for and built. This can include highlighting and mocking such legal and social abominations as people being convicted on highly dubious ‘hate speech’ ‘crimes’ for quoting a rap lyric in a memorial social media post, making true but pungently worded statements about Islam or even more laughably, possession of a ‘Nazi’ pug dog. The more people mock such oppressions, the less respect there will be for the fools and knaves who see gaoling people for opinions as acceptable or desirable. Back in the 1930’s the world saw the injustice of hitting Gandhi’s salt marchers with clubs and with a bit of effort we can show the world the injustice of imprisoning people for holding unapproved opinions.
But power in Britain does not lie completely with the subject, instead it lies with a political class that has become insulated both ideologically and practically from the lives of those they rule over. It is this class that needs to be embarrassed and mocked and eventually replaced. The bubbles that this class live in needs to be punctured. They need to know and be forcefully told that their views on matters such as Islam, multiculturalism and on ‘refugees’ are not the consensus view of the population. I don’t know how many of them can be embarrassed enough to realise that something is badly wrong with Britain, but I believe that some of our elected and appointed representatives can be made to face the negative effects of their policies. Ultimately though, our problems can only be solved by removing, via the ballot box, the political class that hates us ‘plebs’ with a passion that can only be found in a class-ridden society like the United Kingdom.
So, how to do this NVDA then? The first thing to remember is that violence only aids the enemy, it’s the thing that sells newspapers and gets clicks on mainstream media websites and this is something that we’ve seen following the various anti-Islam, free speech and Free Tommy protests. The MSM ignored almost completely or worse, lied about these protests, calling them ‘far right’, and only featured the minor levels of violence that occurred in connection to these protests. To be effective, NVDA needs to be well targeted, well planned and above all non-violent, otherwise you just hand the enemy a big stick with which to beat you. Violence from opponents is what the State wants, what the Left wants and it’s what the various Islamic groups want, as it gives an excuse for yet more oppression, yet more pro-Islam indoctrination and more leftist influence on our society.
NVDA, and especially physical NVDA, when we place our bodies on the line for our cause, needs to be well targeted. It is pointless for example having a sit down protest in front of a random London bus, as happened after the recent Free Tommy demo in the city. All that resulted in was a lot of inconvenienced Londoners and visitors and an opportunity for what in German is called the ‘Lugenpresse’ or lying press to do their thing and virtue signal over the fact that the bus driver was a Muslima. To my mind, such a sit down protest should be carried out on more deserving targets.
Imagine how effective and inspiring a sit down protest would be if it wasn’t just five or six people sitting down in Trafalgar Square but instead something a bit more well thought out and planned. Imagine if you will, a thousand or more people peacefully sitting down and surrounding or impeding the entrance to a known extremist mosque, or the offices of Quisling politicians or some slippery Islamic group with undue influence, to give but a few examples. This would have a very positive impact and would not only highlight the problems that we are having at present but would also galvanise others to fight back in this manner. This sort of action would be well targeted and well organised and would draw attention from beyond the mainstream media. I have little doubt that images of such a large number of angry but peaceful people standing up, or rather sitting down, against the unmitigated horror that we are being subjected to via Islam and its appeasers, would fly around the world. Such actions could also, provided that they didn’t inconvenience the general public, also cause those who are unaware of our current problems (mostly because they get most of their news from the BBC) to take more note of what is going on outside of their work, social life and relationship circles. To borrow an old phrase from the Left in the Sixties, NVDA in a counter Islam context can be used as a consciousness raising tool, it is a way of letting the average Briton know that they are being lied to about Islam and the nature of this ideology.
There’s loads that we can do in addition to sit down protests or similar activities. We can non comply with demands that we shut up about Islam, we can withdraw our children from Islamic indoctrination in their schools, we can refuse to support Halal and the money that it makes for jihad, we can tell the truth about Islam to our friends, family and acquaintances. In addition we can refuse to fund the organs of disinformation such as the BBC and the rest of the mainstream press, boycott the companies that are pandering to Islamic mores and we can refuse to go along with the ‘refugees welcome’ and pro-Islam policies promoted by our religious leaders. To give an example of that last type of action from my own life, I refused last year to give to a synagogue’s Yom Kippur charity appeal because it was going to fund the entry of some of the very same Syrian ‘refugees’ who are likely to be a clear and present danger to my family. I gave a donation instead to my local special care baby unit, something I consider more socially useful than importing yet another potentially explosive or rapey Syrian ‘refugee’. Not going along with the crap that we are fed about Islam, multiculturalism and the bogus and dangerous ‘refugees’ is another form of NVDA. Withholding our cash from campaigns like this not only deprives the campaign of a small amount of funds, but also can be used as an opportunity to make the point to those in charge just exactly why you are not contributing.
I saw with my own eyes at places like Greenham Common and Molesworth back in the 1980’s how a small group of anti-nuclear weapons activists could have an effect on public opinion and this was reflected by the growth in membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) at that time. High profile protests that saw little old ladies dragged along the ground by Ministry of Defence Police (Modplod) at the airbases where nuclear missiles were said to be based angered people and raised the profile of CND, which in turn got more people out onto the streets and even ended up influencing Labour Party policy of the time. Now although the political ideas of CND were hopelessly wrong, as later events showed that peace can only be achieved through having enough strength to deter your opponent from attack, their campaigning methods did to a certain extent work. Maybe it’s time for patriot, anti-jihad and counter-Islam groups to consider whether the sort of NVDA activities that the so-called Peace Movement of the 1980’s engaged in could be any use today? I think that it could be, at least as an adjunct to traditional protests and forcing change via the ballot box.
As in India in the 1930’s, there is just enough freedom left in Britain for NVDA campaigns to work. We are not yet at the stage where we have the sort of oppressions that were and are meted out by the great and terrible dictators of the past and of the present and that gives us a window of opportunity to protest and maybe undo some of the damage that has been done to our nation by our increasingly ideologically and socially remote political classes. Although I admire the practitioners of NVDA, I also know that it is not a method of campaigning that incurs no cost. Taking part in NVDA will probably end up with the participants being arrested and charged with either real crimes such as obstruction or be punished under fake ‘hate crime’ legislation but the cost of doing nothing may be much higher. The cost of doing nothing and taking the easy path may result in our children living in a Britain that will be a hell hole of Islamic and Leftist bullying and oppression. It is up to each and every individual person to decide for themselves whether to take part in patriot NVDA activities, to follow their conscience on this matter.
The only fly in the ointment that I can see in any NVDA campaign policy is a lack of leadership. I do not see any ‘Gandhi’s’ on the counterjihad scene at the moment. There’s nobody out there who I can perceive who has the cross class, cross belief and broad appeal that Gandhi had in India during the fight for independence. Any future British ‘Gandhi’ must have the respect and trust of as many decent people as possible and although I see political currents that have that respect and trust, I do not see any individual who could fill this role at present. Maybe such an individual will emerge soon or maybe such a person will step forth later when things start to get really bad vis a vis Islam? My own personal belief is that such a lead figure or figures will not emerge until there is a critical mass of public objection to the depredations forced on us by both Islam and those who appease this ideology. Maybe we as patriots can help to create this critical mass of public objection to Islam by using NVDA to push this issue of Islam and the lies that we are told about it, into the public consciousness?
To answer the question that I posed at the beginning of this article: Does Britain need a patriot NVDA /civil disobedience movement? I would say that the answer is a resounding ‘yes’ but it should be a movement that carries as many ordinary people with it as it can. If it is just made up of the usual suspects of the centre-right/right activist class then it is, in my view, doomed to failure.
Such a movement must be relevant to the concerns of the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus and must keep in mind these concerns in order to survive the assaults of the State, the Left and Orthodox Islam which will almost inevitably befall it. Morally and ethically grounded NVDA could be an important weapon against those who hate us, look down on us and who wish ultimately to destroy us.
So, what do you think? Let’s get a discussion going about whether NVDA in some form or another could be useful for patriot and counterjihad causes? I think that it could be useful if done right and I’d be interested to know what others think about this.
I will leave you with an excerpt from the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘Letter from Birmingham gaol’ of the 16th April 1963, which outlines his particular take on non violent direct action. Dr King said:
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored”
I must admit that we in Britain need to bring the arrogant State and the Islam appeasers to the negotiating table and get them to confront the problem of Islamisation. If such a policy was good enough for Dr King, then it must surely be good enough for other just and worthwhile causes?
