Gene Sharp’s Pragmatic Nonviolence

In last week’s post about opposing the Trump administration (which kind of went viral, much to my surprise), I mentioned Gene Sharp, who, as I said, literally wrote the book — or rather, books — on nonviolent resistance. In a piece profiling Sharp that appeared on the Scientific American blog network last November, John Horgan noted something that’s very important about Sharp’s point of view: his nonviolence isn’t born out of principle; it’s pragmatic. Violence, “even in the service of a just cause, often causes more problems than it solves, leading to greater injustice and suffering. Hence the best way to oppose an unjust regime is through nonviolent action.” Sharp doesn’t advocates nonviolence because it’s kinder, gentler, more compassionate or otherwise better; he advocates it because it works. (Photo: Albert Einstein Institution)