To Fight w/o Fighting

[Dennis R Redmond]

Apropos the thread on non-violence, it's too simple to claim that NV is
for woolly-headed liberals with too much time on their hands. Erik
Erikson's really extraordinary psychobiography of Gandhi, "Gandhi's
Truth", points out that NV is a poor translation of "soul-force", a kind
of resistance or mobilization which is as powerful as any military
mobilization. The Viet Cong, on this level, were Gandhi's children: 
patient persuasion, cultural mobilization and the admonition that "We
Vietcong are not your [the peasants'] father; rather, you are our mother" 
are what won the war, and they are all direct applications of NV. Vietnam
might have experienced a Gandiesque liberation, but France sent attack
airplanes in 1930-31 to slaughter peacefully protesting peasants in
Central Vietnam. 

And yes, the header is from a Bruce Lee movie (a much later, but not
unrelated form of anti-colonial resistance).

-- Dennis