Former Senator, occasional actor, and potential GOP presidential contender Fred D. Thompson recently delivered a radio address titled “Gandhi’s Way isn’t the American Way” (mp3 here; transcript here).
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To Be or Not To Be, That Is the Question |
..At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”
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p designtimesp=”10563″>There’s an old saying that had the Brits been Nazi’s, Gandhi would’ve been a lampshade. Macabre as the humor might be, it underscores a key reason for Gandhi’s success with passive, non-violent resistance – it depends on your opponent’s moral code as much as your own. The problem here however, paraphrasing Thompson, is that Gandhi’s enemies aren’t America’s enemies.
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p designtimesp=”10565″>Still, Gandhi’s direct statements about the Jews was a bit startling to me and worth some googling around…
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p designtimesp=”10567″>Another They’d be dead but at least they’d have the moral high ground…guy who was also likely surprised by Gandhi’s determination to prescribe his strategy to the bitter end (well, for the Jews at least) was one Louis Fisher. He asked Gandhi to clarify his position which he did rather unequivocally –
Louis Fisher, Gandhi’s biographer asked him: “You mean that the Jews should have committed collective suicide?”Gandhi responded, “Yes, that would have been heroism.”
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If Nature made it, it’s gotta be Good, right? “Charles Darwin found the grisly life histories of Ichneumons incompatible with the central notion of natural theology…“ |
They’d be dead but at least they’d have the moral high ground? That’s comforting. Clearly we’re speaking of a rather different brand of “heroism” than the 300 Spartans – it’s not death that separates the two but rather, the preceding act of physical surrender.
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p designtimesp=”10586″>It’s clear that when considering the age old problem of mind-body duality, Gandhi entirely favors the mind at the expense of recklessly discarding the body. Sticks and stones may break his bones but homey’s still not gonna give you the time of day and that’ll make you, his enemy, sad. Eventually. But perhaps only after 6 millionth casualty. Or if you run out of sticks & stones.
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p designtimesp=”10589″>”Evil” in his sense thus comes from too much application of volition via the body and not enough going with the flow of nature. And in this orgy of nihilism, Gandhi found nobility and a “joyful sleep” which he implored the Jews to partake in –
…suffering voluntarily undergone will bring [Jews] an inner strength and joy….if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving..to the godfearing death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.
Lest we accuse Gandhi of anti-semitism we must first note that, in a manner echoed by our modern day Mel Gibson’s and Michael Richards‘, Gandhi assures us that not only does he sympathize with the Jews, but that some of his best friends are Jewish –
My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution.
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…didn’t believe Ichnuemons existed in Human Nature too… |
Further, his commitment to lying prone at the wolf’s maw wasn’t unique to the Jews — he had a similar prescription for the whole of continental Europe engulfed in WWII –
“I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions…“If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”
Oh yeah. Let the Gestapo torture & kill you but refuse to owe them allegiance. That’ll show ’em. Needless to say, you can put me on Fred Thompson’s side on this particular debate.
Still, the world does occasionally need Gandhi and his modern-day sign-toting adherents…. Putting aside their well-intentioned blinders towards human nature, I agree that peace more than has its place as does a firm aversion to the carnage of war. I just wish they’d put more energy into getting their message in front of these guys first.
I do not know where you belong, who you identify with, who taught you history, or by what age you have acquired your worldview only to defend it with a nagging consistency for the rest of your life; but please use the ‘we’ sparingly, and talk about yourself only.
Hint: Bose was an Indian, and he was supported by Indians, not just Bengalis.
Anyway, I don’t think you deserve any conversation, and this one is off-topic anyway. I only wanted to react because I thought silence would mean granting you some sort of legitimacy. I do not even hate you. I ignore you, and I leave you with the turmoil of your brain.
Hmm, didn’t we go through this a few years ago on a SM thread about Churchill and the Bengali famine, when (cough yours truly cough 🙂 brought up this Gandhi quote? Great men are still only men and therefore fallible; I remember saying that you had to judge the men by their times and what they were trying to do. That’s why phrases like, “What would Gandhi do?” or “What would Reagan do?” are really just short-cuts to thinking and not good ones, either. Gandhi is a man, not a secular-god, but then the Code-Pinks of the world aren’t exactly the most subtle of thinkers. Or thinkers at all.
I just read Thompson’s piece again. There is absolutely no accustion, implyed or otherwise, of Gandhi being an anti-semite. He even states explicity that Gandhi would never advocate violence in any sitution, not just ones involving jews:
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OK. You’re right GB. And Vinod is being a very bad boy. I guess he gave into the temptation of wanting to call Joe McCarthy a communist, if you catch my drift. But I read him as being toungue in cheek. Saheli, on the other hand seems earnest in her view that Thompson’s implying Gandhi’s an anti-semite. But falsely labling someone a McCarthyist is McCarthyism too.
I don’t think anyone here worships Gandhi as a god, or is unaware of his weaknesses. I am irked that the “resistance” part of noviolent resistance is so easily ignored, and that nonviolence continues to be seen as evidence of cowardice, stupidity and/or suicidalism. You don’t have to worship Gandhi, or be rigidly idealistic, or insist that nonviolence is appropriate in absolutely every situation, to acknowledge that nonviolent resistance is a good idea.
Nina P – I don’t think anyone here worships Gandhi as a secular god – what I mean is that reverance of a historical figure can go too far. I know this crowd is not going to take criticism of an idea as a personal attack on the public figure espousing the idea, past or present. Slogans are fine, but what have they to do with life as it is lived? When is non-violence a good idea and when is it not? Gandhi’s advice to the jews takes non-violence too far, which is pretty much the consensus here, and is a pretty obvious conclusion. Code Pink is asking what would Gandhi do and Thompson is pointing out that non-violent resistance can lead to a lot of violence. How far is non-violent resistance going to take you against a chlorine-filled car bomb? Violent resistance is a means to a political end in Iraq and while I wish that non-violence were the currency of the jihadists or sectarian militias, I don’t think they are on message with Code Pink in this arena.
HMF: What?
And while we are at it, what’s up with International ANSWR and the anti-war movement? Those pro North Korea creeps are just stone cold wierd. If I have to see one more of those ugly ANSWR (?sp) flags up here in Boston…..ugh. Always some white haired retiree waving flags in the middle of the street and everyone ignores the poor things. They always try to hand me some ridiculous literature. I only once spoke to one of the protestors and his grasp of current events, or indeed the day or time, were shaky. Look, I know lots of intelligent people who are against the war and actively involved in the protest movement. Why don’t you get better fronts? These guys are not doing you any favors.
MD:
I am pointing out that people like to selectively criticize and applaud non-violence, stating things like, “It’s success depends on the nobility of the enemy” and other such nonsensities. I guarantee you Thompson staunchly supports Dr. Kings efforts of non-violence as the method of civil rights acquisition.
You ask what good can nonviolence do against a chlorine filled bomb?
what good can it do against a high power firehose that strips bark from trees? what good can it do against dogs being sicked on you by a state police force? what good can it do against being hanged for walking on the same side of the street as a white woman?
If non-violence is going to be dismissed as an ineffective tactic, then it should be done so whole heartedly and not selectively.
This is a really ridiculous post that decontextualizes statements, reduces a complex political ideology to a few easily-skewered decontextualized statements, and relies on really offensive innuendo (Gandhi = Mel Gibson? Ugly). Bill O’Reilly or Michael Moore could have written it. I expect better from this site.
Haha man. “Decontextualized!” say it again. I should have previewed that, my bad.
Thompson’s analogy is completely nonsensical as well. Do you really think al-Qaeda presents the same threat to us as the Nazis did to the Jews? That’s insane.
Although hey, considering how well non-violent resistance in the Guantanamo Bay torture camp has gone, maybe you’re correct that the utility of non-violence depends on the morality of your opponent.
I’ve been hearing how Gandhi harboured racist sentiments against black Africans when he was living in South Africa but in my off and online research of his writings have not yet been able to find any evidence for such. Is this something downplayed in “Gandhian culture” by his enthusiasts, or is it completely made up?
I could imagine that for someone coming from an early 20th century upper-caste, orthodox-veg-Hindu cultural background, the general lifestyle of financially struggling and marginalized black South Africans may have been a shocker for Gandhi, but then someone coming from such a sheltered background would be more or less shocked by any culture that did not resemble their own – white, black or whatever.
My experience with global racism is that it is really “behaviourism” or “culture-bias” — people appear to behave in ways different from us, coming from different cultures and having different habits, and thus a bias is developed. It’s not really the color of the skin that irks us about the individual or persons, but rather the way they act.
I have never heard anything like that. My impression was always that his efforts in SA were focused on the evils of apartheid generally, rather than just for Indians. But I’d be interested in reading any contradictory information if you find it.
I have trouble seeing Gandhi as a racist, frankly. Even Thompson’s characterization, contrary to the ugly reductionism in this post, was about his perceived naivete rather than any anti-Semitism. Gandhi may have generalized too much, and assumed that his experience of brutal, racist colonialism would apply to the Germans, but it’s a stretch to turn that misunderstanding of the situation into some sort of generalized antipathy for Jewish people.
But, sadly, Gandhi’s legacy has entered American politics, so apparently it’s time for us to shit all over it in order to support whichever axe we want to grind at the moment (and I’m referring to the original here, not your post, MoS).
Neal, here’s just one of many writings regarding the issue that I found just now via google.
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/gandhi/hunt.html
To ground this rather depressing and largely hypothetical thread somewhat, let’s take a look at what modern-day Ghandians have been doing in India and abroad regarding the 22-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Hunger_strikers_removed_from_venue_in_Bhopal/articleshow/1775765.cms
http://www.bhopal.net/blog_pr/archives/2007/03/bhopal_hunger_s.html
It’s true that the terms and methods of resistance need be couched in the “ground rules” at least tokenistically respected by the oppressor. And yes, many of Ghandian principles assume a “larger morality” of humanity that will ultimately intervene following revelations of moral failure by the oppressor. That doesn’t apply in much of the world, yet many of us strive to hope, feeling that the alternatives (largely Hobbesian solutions) are ethically inferior to more Ghandian solutions.
That said, I have mixed feelings about the method of hunger strike, and the victories on Bhopal/Union Carbide/Dow Chemical have been depressingly far and few between over the years. But it’s still a remarkable thing that sometimes these methods yield such wonderful results, in the face of all odds logically pointing towards failure.
Gandhi was from a rich family, not “upper caste” – i have seen many people assume that, dunno why. he was from vaishya or merchant caste actually.
the brits tourtured children, gandhi harboured racist sentiments…but don’t call him an anti-semite, ho chi min practiced non-violent resistence, non violence works…except against america, gandhi is like kramer, the US is like the nazis, but al quaeda is not. Vinod has turned the world upside down. He’s bad that way.
If you truly believe in the simplistic reduction that non-violence is doomed to failure unless one is dealing with morally enlightened/”liberal pussy” foes like Brits or Americans, you start running into some painful contradictions (eg: the relative indifference to the Guantanamo hunger strikes/suicides). Gandhi believed non-violence always worked. He was wrong. But consider: the alternative view is that taking up arms is the ONLY logical response to oppression. Every oppressed group sees its oppressor as The Worst Possible, so this attitude is one that simply calls for total war. We see that line of thought in much of the world today, and it has tragic, often avoidable consequences. The world would be a lot safer today if disaffected Palestinian youth were hunger striking rather than throwing rocks, wouldn’t it?
This post just reduces a very complex issue into a desire to score points by bashing a well-respected historical figure. There is no evidence that Mohandas Gandhi bore any particular animosity towards Jews (even the linked information about racism above is really iffy, IMHO — there’s not even a bibliography attached, and “James Hunt” of “Shaw University” isn’t a household name to me). Bad advice is not anti-Semitism.
Finally, I really believe Vinod is missing the point when it comes to Gandhian strategy when he says this:
The whole point of the strategy was asymmetrical warfare, albeit in a political sense. You cripple the economy and force the enemy to compromise his morals. This advice probably wouldn’t have helped the Jews in Nazi Germany (but would the military version of asymmetric warfare, terrorism, have been any better?), but the ideology is not the silly symbolic gesture Vinod pretends.
the brits tourtured children, gandhi harboured racist sentiments…but don’t call him an anti-semite, ho chi min practiced non-violent resistence, non violence works…except against america, gandhi is like kramer, the US is like the nazis, but al quaeda is not. Vinod has turned the world upside down. He’s bad that way. sigh! .nice way to completely miss the point of each and every post linked….I am not going to correct such frankly sophomoric (and perhaps willful) misunderstanding. Only one advice/hint: perhaps reading more carefully would help.
Just as a minimum, V, as I’ve asked for years, please identify your sources’ biases. This post is rife. Just a “(conservative)” would suffice. Thought-provoking otherwise, nice find.
the ultimate source is Gandhi. His bias is towards nihilism.
The only options are apparently unthinking use of violence and “nihilism”.
Personally, I think all this talk of anti-semitism is quite indicative of western, and in particular American societies tendency to assume any mention of Jewish history, and the Jewish holocaust not in the most apologetic, tear-gushing, and gut-wrenching fashion is somehow tantamount to the most vile anti-semitism. This is how pervasive the white Jewish perspective (notice, you never hear about the non-white Jewish victims of antisemitism) has infiltrated our media and even our ethos as an American society.
So quote a Gandhi archive rather than National Review, Belmont and ‘neo-neocon.blogspot.com.’ Else the quotes are auotmatically suspect. American wingers have been aiming at Gandhi for decades. In Massachusetts they tried to take down a statue, calling him a hippie.
I might conclude that too had I read only the sources quoted.
That’s what I meant by upper-caste.
Damn those white Jews!
Gandhi’s view on rape always bothered me;
Gandhi wrote that women “must develop courage enough to die rather than yield to the brute in man.” Gandhi claimed, if women are fearless, “However beastly the man, he will bow in shame before the flame of her dazzling purity.”
Sati-Savitri type complex.
I’ve read alot more but now I can’t find it.
He was also against the use of contraception and promoted celibacy as an ideal for married couples. Come on! How realistic is that?
His views on sexuality, from what I read in his auto-biography, were also very male-centered.
There were different laws in place in South Africa for different groups. Whites, coloreds, blacks and indians all had different laws. They were all fighting a different set of laws. Gandhi’s struggle was for indians. According to the link i provided above he did not join hands with black activists or network with them. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary i’d like to see it.
Just to be clear, the apartheid codes came into force in South Africa in 1948, the year Gandhi was murdered in India. His activism in South Africa was from 1893-1814. At that time, the equation was not equal rights for non-white people but giving Indians the same rights as other British subjects–like India, South Africa was for most of that time British colony (it later became a dominion). The National Party (dominated by Dutch Afrikaners) in 1948 enacted the apartheid laws, which were a long collection of statutes that changed over time. The status of Indians during apartheid changed, as color codes were refined and political issues evolved.
This is not to say that racial issues were not operative during the time Gandhi was in South Africa, but Gandhi didn’t have anything to do with apartheid. He wasn’t campaigning for general civil rights but to protect a small minority of workers, British subjects, who enjoyed more freedoms and protections in another British colony (India).
It is true, however, that Gandhi’s legacy–not just his philosophy but his community organizing and activism–were consciously part of the anti-apartheid movement, and there were Indian activists jailed on Robben Island with Tutu and Mandela (it’s interesting to note in today’s climate that Mandela was sentenced to prison on a terrorism charge).
The image of Gandhi as universal peacenik is a much later development.
Just to add to that, the ANC had a military wing that did carry out acts of violence on a pretty regular basis (again, I’m not making a normative statement here). Actually the popular perception of the anti-apartheid movement in S.A being mostly non-violent is mistaken. It was pretty violent at times, and Mandela (who was the ‘political face’, in addition to being the leader) was imprisoned as being responsible for the acts of the military wing of the ANC.
Did anyone else hear “ba-ba-ba-bennny and the jets” playing when they read the title of this post?
In fact, the contrary. Applaud them. I certainly do.
i assumed you were under the mistaken impression he was a brahmin, as i have encountered many who think the same. ps: upper caste usually means brahmin…
“Pervasive.” “Infiltrated our media.” Infiltrated?
HMF, this is straight up racism and, yes, anti-Semitism.
Man, this site has gotten ugly.
Mr. K:
Touche, bad choice of words, I agree.
What I really meant was, “…entered the public consciousness in far greater proportion to their population..” or something like that. Call it anti-semitism if you wish, but even the word “anti-semitism” used to descibe anti-Jewish diatribe is a testament to exactly what I’ve said.
The word Semetic is derived from “Shem” a biblical figure, and was used to describe a class of languages, including, “Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ge’ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Tigre and Tigrinya” [link]
Semetic doesn’t mean Jewish. But somehow, it does.
Isn’t this the whole point of Sepia Mutiny, too? Indians are “infiltrating” everything these days–the media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, the convenience stores where you can’t walk in without an accent and get your gas pumped by Mr. Gandhi. What’s the world coming to?
Heh
“are “infiltrating” everything these days–the media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, the convenience stores where you can’t walk in without an accent and get your gas pumped by Mr. Gandhi. What’s the world coming to? “
I agree, because much of how we perceive the world and it’s dynamic subtleties, in fact the very schema of our thought processes is so closely correlated with where and how we buy a Nestle Crunch.
TV, news, online news sites, radio, print, movie production? bah! that’s nothing.
What I really meant was, “…entered the public consciousness in far greater proportion to their population..” or something like that. Call it anti-semitism if you wish, but even the word “anti-semitism” used to descibe anti-Jewish diatribe is a testament to exactly what I’ve said.
Whats wrong in the view point entering in far greater proportion than the population of that view point peddlers?
Whats concerning is when that viewpoint of ‘Holocaust changed everything’ is used to de-humanize victims of Israeli crimes, mostly Palestinians.
Absolutely nothing, in theory.
But what sometimes might happen, is it tends to edge out other perspectives that are parallel but in entirely different space. So as I’ve commented before, I learned about the Jewish holocaust when I was 10, I learned about the Massacre at Nanking nearly 15 years later (on my own), I was lead to believe the Black holocaust and Native American holocaust on US soil didn’t even occur, or at the very least, shouldn’t be classified as such.
I agree with your statement as well. Anti-Zionism and Anti-“Semitism” are not the same thing.
Like the representation of “muslim” in the media that reaches public consciousness is that of arabs, when in reality, arabs are a minority in the worldwide umma. There are more African muslims far outnumber Arab muslims.
Not only did he have such an outcome for the Jews, he also wanted the Hindus to let themselves be killed by Muslims.
http://agneya.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/saving-hinduism-by-killing-all-the-hindus/
African muslims can also speak arabic, for example, the muslims in tunisia. But what is your point?
I have often been the black sheep in my extended family for openly criticizing Gandhi. Some of the sanctimonious hogwash he preached to Hitler’s victims about “offering themselves to the butcher’s knife” was obscenely preposterous. Had I been a relative of those Hitler murdered, I’d probably want to kill Gandhi as well as Hitler for preaching such outrage.
Gandhi was a well-intentioned dreamer. His ideas and tactics, to be sure, did have a fair amount of thought and merit. But that civil disobedience game can only last more than a few minutes under an oppressor with democratic due process of law. Moreover, non-violence is a myth. India only got free because Germany and Japan left Britain so militarily weakened that though she emerged victorious, she could no longer control her colonies by force. Gandhi weakened the British hold on India somewhat by non-co-operation, but simply does not deserve credit for India’s independence.
Non violence has not completely lost its importance in today’s world. OK, maybe we cannot use non-violence to fight Osama, but the Muslim world (PLO, Hamas, Fatah) can benefit immensely if they come together and come forward as a cohesive non-violent voice. I am pretty sure that international pressure will be on Israel to accede to the wishes of such a united, non-violent voice. Similarly, what has the LTTE achieved after years of non-violence in Sri Lanka? Could non-violent Satyagraha be a different viable solution? The Khalistan non-violent revolution in Punjab did not sustain itself.
I think it is inappropriate of Gandhi to suggest Jews to commit mass-suicide. However, had Hitler won (and he almost did), what would he had gained had the entire world not-cooperated with him, i.e not buy any of he goods that he trades.
In modern world, it is “war” that has lost its significance. Economics is the real thing. Consider Iraq. Bush declared “misson accomplished” on a fighter vessel, but he has still not won the war as he has to restore the economy (and trust among people) to pre-war eras.
Sometimes its more hard to be foolish & do what u preach (ahimsa) than to go with the natural instincts. This dichotomy is expressed beautifully in ‘Machhis’ [the solution is wanted now, not generations later & that ..only violence can achieve].But imagine how a violent freedom movement wud have manifested in future .. not at all in line with the ethos of peaceful India.
Prabhu asks what would a victorious Hitler have gained had all his conquered victims refused to buy his goods. That’s just it! Hitler was a racist-imperialist, not a capitalist-imperialist. He just wanted land and natural resources so those he classified as Aryan could expand. He would have simply and gradually mass-murdered all conquered people he considered subhuman. Except maybe for using their human fat to manufacture soap and human skins to make lampshades, Hitler had no economic use for “non-Aryans.”
My Uncle Krishna (God rest his soul) was a great Gandhi-believer, and tried to tell me that Hitler could never have killed 300 million Indians had they used non-violent disobedience. He was aghast and speechless when I told him of Tabun gas, a Nazi invention. Just one cannister could kill 100,000 people as it spread. Therefore 3000 cannisters of tabun — something Germany could easily produce —- would easily wipe human life off the Indian subcontinent.Uncle had no rebuttal for that!
Forget all that satyagraha and ahimsa bullshit! That only works against democracies, not Stalins or Hitlers. To devout Hindus or Indian nationalists, Mohandas Gandhi was “Mahatma”, or Great Soul. But there are others of Indian background who call him “Mohan Sundaas Gandhi.” Ask some other Indic person to tell you what “sundaas” means.
OK geniuses, so why did Jesus say love your enemy ?
For the early Christians, the Romans were the enemies and they were brutal.
“Loving them” was the only strategy since opposing them by force was not possible.
So for Christians, why is is Jesus right and Gandhi wrong ?
Perhaps Frederick Dalton Thompson the Christian GOP candidate can now explain why its OK for Jesus to become a “lampshade” by loving a brutal enemy ? While Gandhi’s position is so laughable ?
The answer is that Christian exclusivists and fundamantilists are scared of Gandhi..the idea that a extraordinary spiritual force can exist outside christianity is very disorienting to someone brought up from childood brainwashed with the idea that Jesus was the inventor of all things good.
I agree with those who say Gandhi was great for what he accomplished. But his attitude towards Jews was nothing personal. It was part of his overall philosophy which can get kooky at times. That is why one does not blindly follow leaders. You take what works from different leaders and adjust it according to the situation.
You could have substituted jews with some other group being oppressed and Gandhi would have the same inane ideas.
If you delve into many world leaders, you will find some weird stuff.