Reply #19: There's a caveat to that. Non-violent action works on weakened authoritarian regimes. [View All]

[Selatius]

In Gandhi's case, the British Empire was already bankrupted by WW2 and was then pushed into granting formal independence.

In Martin Luther King's case, the institution of segregation was further and further confined to the rural south, and social attitudes would never have accepted extreme violence to put down Dr. King or the Civil Rights Movement because it was gaining more and more popular support from the people.

The same situation applied to Nelson Mandela, and don't for a moment think the African National Congress was above violence against the pro-Apartheid regime.

Non-violence works up to a certain extent, especially in cases where the government is hesitant to resort to outright slaughter, but in regimes that are not afraid to bring out swords, the pacifists simply get gunned down like Tiananmen Square. In Myanmar, the military dictatorship has proven that it was more than willing to violently crush peaceful pro-democracy protests over the last several years.