The Color of Alternatives? Rethinking Nonviolent Actions in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This article argues that nonviolence in the twenty-first century would increasingly be moving towards the color gray by addressing three related questions. First, given the way in which the media reported the news, how can the twentieth century be remembered especially in relation to what has taken place at the dawn of the twenty-first century? Second, how should “unusual” nonviolent protest actions – throwing shit, blood, and shoes at people – be construed from the perspective of nonviolent alternatives? Third, as more parties become interested and consequently nonviolent actions become widespread, are they becoming less of an alternative and more of a normal course of action? As a result of the mainstreaming nonviolence trend, has anything been taken away from it? Confronting these questions as a way to critically examine the prospects for nonviolent actions at present, the paper concludes with a philosophical argument in favor of gray as the color of nonviolent alternatives in the twenty-first century.

From November 2013 until the time of writing (March 2014), Thailand has encountered unprecedented political conflict concerning the legitimacy of the government. The present government's claim to legitimacy is based on electoral democracy. The opposing force, calling themselves the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), led by Suthep Thueksuban, a former deputy prime minister of the Democrat party which came to power after the 2006 coup ousted the popularly elected government of the corrupted Thaksin Shinawatra, has taken their fight to the streets. They claim that the election was fraudulent and corrupt and that the government has ruled abusively.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this conflict is that the government as well as its allies and its opponents have maintained that primarily they have engaged in the conflict nonviolently.¹ Since its beginning, PDRC has engaged by and large in nonviolent actions as methods of protest, which include street demonstrations, whistle blowing, demands for the public to delay their tax payments, and dispersing marches to occupy government buildings, among others. The government, on the other hand, has shown incredible patience in not unleashing the force at its disposal on the protesters. Nevertheless, despite the clearly nonviolent tone of the conflict, from November 30, 2013 until March 11, 2014, 730 people were wounded and 20 were killed in sporadic attacks mainly against the protesters by the elusive “men in black.”²

At the beginning of the protest on November 28, 2013, anticipating a dangerous conflict, I wrote a letter publicly addressing the leader of PDRC discussing what could or could not be considered nonviolent actions and civil disobedience. In the letter, among other things, I pointed out that delaying tax payment, blowing whistles, mass demonstrations, as well as occupying government buildings are different methods of nonviolent actions widely practiced around the world. One day later, a young and noted anthropologist from Thammasat University wrote a thoughtful rebuttal criticizing my widely circulated letter, which had been used to justify the actions of both conflicting parties.³

His four main critiques/questions concerning what constitutes nonviolent actions are both common and relevant:

1. 1. Must those who claim to use nonviolent actions believe in the principle of nonviolence?

2. 2. Can nonviolent actions, generally understood as weapons of the weak, be used by the powerful?

3. 3. If by using nonviolent actions, democratic institutions are undermined, will those nonviolent actions continue to be considered legitimate?

4. 4. If by using nonviolent actions, the users provoke violent reaction, or expect to engender something inherently violent such as a coup, would their actions still be considered nonviolent?

What is interesting is that these questions can also be raised about other nonviolent protests presently taking place in the world. Very similar and contemporaneous to Thailand is the case of Ukrainian resisters who have protested against the elected President Yanukovych by setting up barricades and tents, occupied city hall, and blockaded government buildings in Kiev since late November 2013. One can also ask whether someone with past links to neo-Nazi parties in other parts of Europe such as Oleh Tiahnybok, head of the Svoboda (Freedom) party, could become a protest leader who led the charge to nonviolently occupy Kiev city hall on December 1, 2013 (Judah, 2014: 18).

In fact, the most controversial part of my letter to the PDRC protest leader was my accepting that occupying government buildings, and blowing whistles against opponents,⁴ among other things, can be considered nonviolent action. For example, the action of blowing whistles used by the PDRC is physically blowing whistles to symbolically signify an act of disapproval of the person the protesters choose to blow whistles at. When protesters saw the former wife of the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a Bangkok department store, they blew whistles at her, forcing her to leave the premises. As a matter of fact, the whistles have become most visible as the PDRC protesters’ “nonviolent weapons,” while considered violent or at least coercive among supporters of the government. As someone working in the field of nonviolence study and practices, given the different nonviolent tactics used, not only in Thailand but around the world, it is getting increasingly difficult to see whether an action is or is not nonviolent.

As identifying actions in resistance movements as nonviolent becomes more problematic, my question is: what would be the color of nonviolent alternatives in the twenty-first century? Colors have generally been found to relate to various political ideologies – red for communist or socialist parties, blue for conservatives, black for fascist or neo-fascist parties, among others. They are especially useful for mnemonics when voters’ illiteracy is prevalent (Kumar and Joshi, 2007). But more importantly, primarily color is about spectacle conditioned by time and space in the relationship between the spectator and the subject under his/her gaze. It tends to deliver a powerful subliminal communication which could enhance, reinforce, or negate the message delivered, and in this case might help illuminate the actions in question themselves.

The thesis of this paper is that nonviolence in the twenty-first century will increasingly be moving towards the color gray. I shall organize this paper by discussing three related questions.

First, given the way in which the media reported the news, how can the twentieth century be remembered especially in relation to what has taken place at the dawn of the twenty-first century?

Second, how should “unusual” nonviolent protest actions – throwing shit, blood, and shoes at people – be construed from the perspective of nonviolent alternatives?

Third, as more parties become interested and nonviolent actions become widespread, are they becoming less of an alternative and more of a normal course of action? As a result of the mainstreaming nonviolence trend, has anything been taken away from it?

Confronting these questions as a way of critically examining prospects for nonviolent actions in the twenty-first century, the paper concludes with a philosophical argument in favor of gray as the color of nonviolent alternatives in the twenty-first century.

Reclaiming nonviolent histories, anticipating nonviolent stories

On September 29, 2000, Tibet's government-in-exile published a 45-page report which is the first document of its kind since its establishment in 1959. The title of the report was China's Current Policy on Tibet. The document argues that Beijing's human rights violation combined with its refusal to recognize the Dalai Lama as the leadership with a moderating influence on the Tibetan movement, would lead to “a headlong collision course with an angrier form of Tibetan nationalism”. The headline of this news report reads: “Tibetans get serious.” Its sub-headline is “No-violence policy likely to be reviewed” (Bangkok Post, September 30, 2000).

In this case, the “no-violence policy” seems to be negative and passive in tone which is fundamentally different from the positive and active nature of “nonviolent policy” advocated all along by the Dalai Lama. In addition, this “no-violence policy” has not been considered a serious response to the Chinese control of Tibet. It implies that an “angrier” or “unrestrained confrontation” would be a more serious response than nonviolence. Perhaps because this “not-so-serious” “no-violence policy” has been tried and found to be unsuccessful in changing the Chinese government's policy and behavior towards Tibet, it is therefore likely to be changed.

Given the media's perception of nonviolence as in the Tibet case, the first question is how can the twentieth century be remembered? It is not difficult to paint a bloody portrait of the twentieth century with its two World Wars, several genocides, numerous violent conflicts, and astonishing number of people who fell victim to violence, both direct and structural, around the world (Eckhardt, 1992). But then it depends on how war, and by extension violence, is seen: as an interruption of peaceful behavior or as the essential dynamics of history where peace becomes an occasional aberration? It could be argued that peaceful pursuits – sowing, reaping, producing, learning, or falling in love represent somewhere between 85% to 95% of human activity throughout civilizations (Boulding, 1995: 82). After identifying episodes of nonviolent action shaping the twentieth century, Galtung writes: “To write the history of this violent century, and to explore its politics without also exploring its nonviolence, is to malign the century even further” (1996: 118).

Summarizing lessons learned from nonviolent conflicts in the twentieth century, Ackerman and Duvall (2000: 505) conclude:

People power in the twentieth century did not grow out of the barrel of a gun. It removed rulers who believed that violence was power, by acting to dissolve their real source of power: the consent or acquiescence of the people they had tried to subordinate. When unjust laws were no longer obeyed, when commerce stopped because people no longer worked, when public services could no longer function, and when armies were no longer feared, the violence that government could use no longer mattered – their power to make people comply had disappeared.

Yet, there seems to be a strange blindness among many when it comes to “seeing” nonviolent examples throughout history. At a recent discussion/debate on “Nonviolence as a Way Out for Thai Society” held at a progressive book club in Chiangmai, Northern Thailand, I answered a question about the meaning of nonviolence/nonviolent action by saying that while “violence” works on the idea of “to kill for”, nonviolence centers on a fundamental idea of “to die for”.⁵ Thailand's noted historian, an interlocutor at the talk, and most of the audience did not seem to accept this answer. I kept wondering why it has been so difficult for people to understand what nonviolence means, at least from a minimalist notion of abstention from killing and/or physical harm to others (Paige, 2007).

This phenomenon is not uncommon, however. In Persécutions et entraides dans la France occupée, Jacques Semelin recently argues that from 1942 to 1944, the numbers of Jews murdered by the Nazi in France were far fewer (25%) than those killed in Belgium (50%), Norway (50%), and the Netherlands (73%) because of the assistance by French individuals along with voluntary organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, grounded in a generally supportive public opinion. A distinguished reviewer questions his “broad” notion of assistance by linking Semelin's understanding of assistance with his earlier notion of resistance where he wrote that “petits gestes” were more effective than armed resistance against Hitler. He implicitly points out that Semelin's broad notion of resistance is a result of the fact that Semelin is “simultaneously a scholar and a militant proponent of nonviolent resistance to dictatorships and to mass-based genocide” (Paxton, 2014: 40).

I would argue that one of the reasons why the idea of nonviolence is difficult for many is precisely because it is a radical thought in the sense that it calls into question foundational ideas underlining some dominant beliefs, especially killing and dying. Take nationalism as an example. Patriotism is considered by most as a virtue. To be a nationalist at a time of foreign invasion has become an almost sacred duty. It is important to note that nationalism is connected to an honorable duty conventionally based on the twin ideas of both “to die for” and “to kill for”. “Stories” that do not fit such master narratives have generally been misinterpreted or erased from collective memory, buried beneath nationally eulogized violence, commemorative rituals of glorified death, martyred heroes, and romanticized violent insurrections (Bartkowski, 2013: 2).

Nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, can be used to fight foreign invasion by asking fighters to lay down their lives while refusing to “kill for it”. In trying to “recover” these hidden stories in the twentieth century, covering case studies in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique), North Africa and the Middle East (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Palestine), Asia and Oceania (Burma, Bangladesh, West Papua), Europe (Hungary, Poland, Kosovo), and the Americas (US and Cuba), researchers have identified episodes, periods, and specific campaigns of nonviolent resistance that at particular points in time constituted either a dominant or a sole ingredient behind a national liberation struggle. Taken together, they constitute “hidden stories” in the making of nation states in the last century from a nonviolent paradigm of those willing to die for their nations, but not to kill for them (Bartkowski, 2013).⁶

Not only is reclaiming nonviolent histories significant for a more even understanding of nationalist histories as well as theoretical appreciation of the complexity of the advent of a nation state during its moment of independence, it is also crucial for making sense of events presently transpiring in the life of a country such as Egypt. While some argue that Egypt, similar to many other Arab societies, was weakly organized, repressed, lacked organization density with a weak opposition and fragmented civil society (Weyland, 2012), those interested in reclaiming Egypt's nonviolent histories point to a century of Egyptian nonviolent resistance during the process that led to the advent of its becoming a nation state (1805–1922). In struggling to end the British protectorate of Egypt in 1919, Egyptian resisters from all parts of society engaged in determined nonviolent actions which included gathering of signatures, student demonstrations, workers’ strikes, and citizen protest, among many others. Importantly, the strategic choice of nonviolent resistance used in 1919 was replicated during the 2011 revolution which put an end to more than two decades of Mubarak's authoritarian regime using a similar repertoire of nonviolent methods (Abdalla and Arafa, 2013).

The Egyptian revolution which exploded on January 25, 2011 had been preceded by political protests against rigged elections in 2005/2010, the women's rights struggle which was severely suppressed on the Black Wednesday of 2005, and workers’ strikes such as the April 6, 2008 textile mills strike of Mahalla-al-Kubra, which included occupation of the city after Mubarak's bloody repression, giving rise to the 6 April Youth Movement, with a new weapon of resistance characteristic of the twenty-first-century – Facebook and other cyber activities (Castells, 2013: 53). Castells powerfully argues that the Egyptian revolution happened without warning or strategy because “fear had been overcome by large numbers” when ordinary people, motivated by outrage and hope, came together both on the internet social networks and in the urban networks formed in the squares (2013: 80–81).

It could be argued that the Egyptian revolution in particular and the Arab uprisings in general were spontaneous processes of mobilization that emerged from calls from the internet and wireless communication networks – made possible by the technology which emerged with the advent of the twenty-first century, on the basis of the pre-existing social networks. Importantly, digital networks and occupation of the urban space provided the platform for autonomous organization and deliberation on which the uprisings were based, and created the resilience that was necessary for the movements to withstand ferocious assaults from state violence (Castells, 2013: 106). The ways in which nonviolent actions have been mobilized through twenty-first-century communication technology give rise to its new shape.

Half way into the first decade of the twenty-first century, Gene Sharp (2005: 523) wrote:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we have reached a new stage in the development of nonviolent struggle. It is now possible to refine this technique, to make it more effective, to increase the chances of success while reducing casualties, and to adapt it for use in meeting types of acute conflicts that we have identified.

But is it possible that once nonviolent actions have been used by more and more people around the world with different motives, the methods might have become increasingly problematic especially in terms of identifying them or accepting them as nonviolent actions? Defending the use of nonviolent actions in the struggle for democracy, for example, has become increasingly complicated due not to nonviolent techniques per se, but the end promised by its use. Take the Egyptian case as an example. While there seems to be less difficulty accepting nonviolent actions used to topple the Mubarak regime in 2011, when civil resistance was used to unseat the democratically elected Morsi government and the struggle ended with the return of the military establishment, the case turns out to be extremely problematic. The same could be said about the current Ukrainian crisis where the protesters fought primarily with nonviolent action against the Yushenko elected government, which has recently ended with the secession of Crimea to reunite with Russia. The difficulties engendered by these conflicts result from the fact that the notion of democracy itself has become contested when its electoral source of legitimation has been seriously called into question by its oftentimes authoritarian performance in relation to liberal persuasion and/or respect for civil and minority rights.

But whatever the ends sought, as more people are using nonviolent action and it becomes more common, it is nonviolent action itself that has become increasingly problematic and needs to be critically addressed.

Nonviolent action today: shit, blood, and shoes

A Muslim man with his two young children walking along a street in a city of New Jersey saw a sign saying: “Muslims and 9/11! Don’t serve them, don’t speak to them, and don’t let them in.” The daughter asked: “What does it mean, papa?” (Waldron, 2012: 1) From a nonviolence perspective, obviously the directives not to “serve them”, “speak to them”, or “let them in” are classic nonviolent actions. But such a sign can loosely be regarded as “hate speech” not unlike racist graffiti, burning crosses, and anti-Semitic posters like “Jews and Dogs Prohibited” (Waldron, 2012: 2). If such nonviolent sanctions are seen as “hate speech”, would it continue to be defined as “nonviolent”? Can it?

To elucidate the complexity of this question, consider the following case. On August 12, 1999, José Bové led a crowd of farmers, activists, and union members to dismantle a McDonalds restaurant in Millau, in the southwest of France. Then they loaded the rubble onto trucks and tractors, and drove it through town before dumping it outside the town hall. Bové claimed that the objective of this material destruction, provoked by the Americans’ decision to tax French Roquefort was “to have a nonviolent but symbolically forceful action, in broad daylight and with the largest participation possible” in order to put globalization and the WTO on trial.⁷

At a trial on June 30, 2000, the judge teasingly asked Bové how he could call an attack using tractors, crowbars, and chainsaws nonviolent. He told the court: “Gandhi dismantled a British installation in the cause of peaceful resistance to British rule in India. Our action was nonviolent resistance by citizens . . . against American provocation.” The most interesting feature of this struggle is not Bové's justification but his explanation that his nonviolent method of dismantling is similar to Gandhi's and that The Times of London called him “a French Gandhi” (Bremner, 2000).⁸

Dismantling a restaurant without physically harming anyone is “material destruction” (Sharp, 1973: 65), or “destruction of property” by which physical possessions are ruined using any means (Sharp, 2012: 116). In discussing the term “sabotage”, Sharp maintains that only when targets such as bridges or trains are demolished and the act could endanger persons and risk loss of life, would such an act “clearly (be) an act of violence” (Sharp, 2012: 258–259), because violence is “direct infliction of physical injury or death on persons by whatever means, or the threat to elicit such harm” (Sharp, 2012: 307). Bové's action of dismantling McDonald is therefore not violent. But is it nonviolent action? In analyzing forms of action in conflict, Sharp himself distinguishes “material destruction only” from “nonviolent action” (Sharp, 1973: 65). Can one surmise then that according to the most distinguished theorist of nonviolent action, the French Gandhi's action is neither violent nor nonviolent? This complexity indicates a dire need to examine some examples of perhaps equally problematic nonviolent actions used in different struggles around the world such as throwing shit, blood, and shoes.

Throwing shit

Some years ago I was conducting nonviolent action training for a people's group in Thailand: the Assembly of the Poor, an experienced network of people's organizations who have been victims of the cruel development direction undertaken for more than three decades by successive Thai governments (Pintobtang, 1998). This is a large group of people who have tried all kinds of nonviolent methods, symbolic and otherwise, to fight for governments’ attention, compensation from relevant state agencies, and alteration of policies regarding megaprojects. Frustrated with so many disappointments, one of them asked: “Is throwing human excrement at someone a violent act?”

In the 1970s classic Rules for Radicals, Arlinsky proposed an action to disrupt a Rochester's symphony concert by giving a hundred tickets to the symphony to a hundred African Americans. (He called them “blacks” in the book.) But three hours before attending the concert, they were to be treated to a dinner consisting mainly of baked beans and nothing else. Allowing nature to take its course, he writes: “Imagine the scene when the action began! The concert would be over before the first movement!” (Arlinsky, 1972: 139). Such nonviolent action, though he did not use the term in this context,⁹ is the tactic that falls outside the experience of the establishment and will certainly disable the law since there exists no such law to ban natural body functions. There is nothing the police could do.

Something rather similar took place in Northern Ireland. After the 1969 Irish riots, many Irish Catholic Nationalists from the Irish Republican Army were arrested and put in prison. They attained the status of “political prisoners” after the famous hunger strike in 1972 but lost it in 1976. In order to regain the status of “political prisoner” which gave them special privileges, they staged a most unusual protest – resisting wearing prisoners’ uniforms, staying in their cells rather than using the lavatory, using their excrement to make cell walls and floors dirty. The prisoners’ protest materialized assumptions about the “dirty Irish” generally depicted as “savages” by the British. The prisoners, however, turned it around, using their dirty protest as a critique of British civilization and successfully exposed the savagery of state policies (Aretxaga, 1995: 137).

Both farting and the use of excrement to smear the walls and floors are different from throwing human excrement at a human opponent. If throwing tomatoes is considered nonviolent, then why would throwing human excrement be any different? This is where the cultural content of nonviolent action assumes importance. In some cultural contexts which consider honor and shame more important, the act in question could be considered worse than cutting someone with a knife. In a gradation of objectionable actions, the act that undermines the opponent's honor and puts him/her to shame could be considered worse – i.e. more violent – than other physical attacks. Throwing human excrement is problematic from this angle, though it will neither kill nor wound the person targeted.¹⁰ The Red Shirt Thai protesters, on the other hand, after contemplating throwing faeces as a way of protesting in calling for the government to dissolve the House in 2010, considred human excrement to be a symbol of dirt, potential pollution, and a health risk (Cohen, 2012: 232). They decided, instead, to use their own blood in their 2010 protest.¹¹

Throwing blood

In September 2006, the Thai military staged a coup, supported by a large segment of civil society, to oust the popularly elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Since then, his supporters and those who disagreed vehemently with the coup joined forces to protest against the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, formerly the opposition Democrat party, which many believed to have come to power under the aegis of the Thai military.

In the course of intractable conflict, the Red Shirts movement, the protesters opposing the Abhisit government, decided to protest with their own blood. On March 15, 2010, they proposed collecting 1,000 litres of blood from 100,000 protesters, but actually were able to collect 300 litres from 70,000 people. The “donors” went through standard blood donation procedure – with physicians measuring blood pressure and heart condition. Then the blood was stored in plastic bottles and containers. On March 16, a few hundred litres of blood were splashed on the four gates of Government House and over the headquarters of the ruling Democrat party in a cursing ritual aimed at bringing down the government. On March 17, some protesters went to splash the blood at the private residence of Prime Minister Abhisit as well.

Identifying this Thai blood protest among the top ten unusual protests which include PETA's members putting themselves in a cage and members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society throwing butyric acid at a Japanese whaling ship, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the protesters with their trucks playing loud music faced the police in their black protective gear with plastic shields and disinfectant, but no weapons. After some negotiations, a small group of protesters were allowed to ritually splash blood on and over the wooden fence in front of the Prime Minister's house. In this case, “… it was blood freely given, vial by vial, not shed in violence” (The Christian Science Monitor, March 17, 2010¹²).

This unusual deployment of blood as a symbolic means of political protest clusters around two contrasting visions.¹³ The protesters celebrated blood as a pure symbol of unity with a bond of brotherhood/sisterhood not unlike ancient warriors. The government, on the contrary, saw blood as a dangerous polluting substance, unclean, infectious, and ultimately wasted by the protesters for public attention instead of its proper medical use. For the protesters, the power of the blood protest is derived from its symbolic meaning; for the government – using medical discourse – the blood protest was void of any symbolic significance (Cohen, 2012: 232).

In another time and place, the Serbian students used their own blood to fight the dictatorship. During their nonviolent protest in 1996–1997 to unseat the dictator Slobodan Milosevic, Mira Markovic, his wife, who was also a leader of the Yugoslav United Left Party, threatened to use violence against the protesters. She announced that “a lot of blood had been shed for the introduction of communism into Yugoslavia and that (the party) would never go without blood”. In response, the student protesters set up a blood transfusion campaign to collect blood. Then they went to the party headquarters with the collected blood, and mockingly asked “if the party could please go now that they had their blood?” (Sombatpoonsiri, 2010-2011: 18).

But the Red Shirts’ blood protest also took place with a twist in Chiangmai, Northern Thailand. On March 16, 2010, a senior Buddhist monk who is an abbot at a temple in the North led some 80 Red Shirt protesters to a military camp with the intention of smearing blood on the statue of the city's legendary founding monarch. The military in charge refused the monk entry. The monk, with a plastic container full of human blood, threw blood at the officers’ faces and bodies. Then he went to pour some blood into the two joss stick pots in front of the statue. The military let the monk and the protesters complete their protest without further intervention (Krungthep Turakij, March 16, 2010). I would argue that there is a difference between pouring or smearing blood at the gate of a building and throwing it at a human. As a bodily fluid with possible health risks, blood could very well be used as a weapon when thrown at another human being. While the Bangkok protest by the Red Shirts could be seen as a powerful symbolic and bloody nonviolent protest, the Chiangmai monk's throwing blood at the soldiers renders such nonviolent action highly problematic.

Throwing shoes

Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, George W. Bush travelled to Baghdad for the last time as US President on December 14, 2008. During his press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister, Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist working for the independent Iraqi television station Al Baghdadiya, who was only 12 feet from the US President, threw his shoe at Mr Bush's head while shouting in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” After his first shoe missed President Bush's head, he threw another one crying: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” For this shoe throwing, although both missed Bush's head, he was arrested and jailed for 9 months, while he became a sensational hero in the eyes of many around the world who disapprove of the Iraq war (The New York Times, September 15, 2009).

When later asked, President Bush said “I don’t know what the guy's cause is …” (Hindustan Times, December 15, 2008); al-Zaidi, on the other hand, claimed that he was compelled to act because of “the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot …” To those who reproached him for the act,¹⁴ al-Zaidi said: “Do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated” (Hsiao and Lim, 2010: 322).

From a cultural perspective, it is commonly understood that throwing or striking someone with shoes is a grave insult in Arab culture (Greene and Goodrich-Dunn, 2014: 127).¹⁵ If other conditions prevail, such as the force of the thrower, the type of shoe thrown (wooden or a stiletto), and the distance between the thrower and his/her target, throwing shoes at someone could cause a serious wound. In this sense, is throwing shoe(s) at a person a nonviolent act? Interestingly, shoe throwing is closely related to the act of sabotage. Sharp (2012: 259) wrote that “the term ‘sabotage’ came into general use around 1897 after a disgruntled French workman threw his wooden shoe (sabot) into the machinery of his employer”.

Nonviolent actions have become increasingly widespread. It should be noted that while the Thai villagers wanted to know if throwing human excrement at an opponent is or is not a nonviolent act, some government agencies have been struggling to learn more about nonviolent actions used by the villagers and the appropriate course of action for them to take (Satha-Anand, 1999). To determine what is, or is not, nonviolent action is not only a legal-theoretical question but also a cultural one, as discussed above. In some cultures, throwing human excrement at a person hurts more than attacking him/her with a gun or a knife. In some other societies, the sight of splashing blood at a person's home could easily turn a nonviolent demonstration into a bloody riot. Suffice it to say that there is no easy answer to the question of what is or is not nonviolent, even for a minimalist notion of nonviolence.¹⁶

Into the twenty-first century: Nonviolence, no longer an alternative?

From a critical theoretical perspective, it could be argued that lacking “an emancipatory ontology and methodology”, contemporary peace research has become traditional and increasingly irrelevant, focusing primarily on mainstream international relations research (Patomaki, 2001). But nonviolence research, in trying to find alternatives to political violence, with its commitment to finding alternatives to violence for victims, is emancipatory by nature. Due to its action-oriented tendency, nonviolence research is grounded in multi-layered realities which render it both complex and practical at the same time. I began my work on nonviolence three decades ago with the aim of positioning nonviolence research and study firmly in the academic landscape at a time when it was relegated to marginal importance. Conflicts in Thai society as well as elsewhere abound and it seems that nonviolent action is presently needed by all sides, while institutes and study programs on the subject expand significantly. But in becoming more accepted, does nonviolence lose its capability as an alternative? If the task of nonviolence research and practice is to call the normality of violence into question, would nonviolence continue to serve as an alternative once violence as normality is demythologized and nonviolence itself becomes normalized? Does it mean that nonviolence is losing itself and is being tamed by mainstream power?

I would argue that nonviolence could retain its “alternativity” into the twenty-first century for the following reasons. First, it goes without saying that for nonviolence, violence is the problem. Since violence exists in different layers – direct/actor-oriented, structural, and cultural, nonviolence needs to keep reexamining the actions, the sources and legitimations of violence. As violence shifts, so does nonviolence in its attempt to counter and move beyond violence. Second, as civilizations undergo changes spearheaded by modern technology, among other things, so does violence become both more obscure and remote. It is obscure in that it is “removed from sight and other human senses” and emerges as “targets through a tortuous signifying chain”. It is remote in terms of the meanings it has for the attackers as well as the audience/viewers of the attackers (Shapiro, 1997: 94). This is the situation of those who watch wars from television screens. These hostile and distanced violent actions could be seen as a peculiar modern condition.

In maintaining that life is sacred or precious, however, nonviolence seems to operate on a different epistemological foundation constituting self than the dominant one. In the Cartesian paradigm, “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) affirms the existence of the self on the basis of a solitary function or activity: thinking. This could easily lead to Schmitt's dangerous view of the “political” which divides the world into friends and enemies. In fact, it could be said that for Schmitt, the epistemological foundation for being is not “cogito” or “I think” but “distinguo ergo sum” or “I separate (from my enemies) therefore I exist” (Lilla, 1997: 40). I would argue that nonviolence begins from a totally different ground of being. Religious wisdom from Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, or Islam suggests breathing, coming from God or otherwise, as essential to the constitution of life. In Christianity and Islam, God breathes life into an entity made from clay which then turns into a human being. Life therefore is sacred from a religious point of view. Relying on religious wisdom, existence of the self comes from breathing. Perhaps, “spiro ergo sum” or “I breathe therefore I am” could serve as an alternative epistemological foundation for nonviolence theory and practices. Unlike “thinking” (cogito) or “separating” (distinguo), “breathing” (spiro) is not a solitary act precisely because it is joining the self with others, from microbes to other humans. This alternative epistemological foundation would, in effect, strengthen the alternativity of nonviolence.

Third, because nonviolence theory underscores praxis, it is forced by existential conditions to keep on reexamining itself in the domain of problem solving which, in turn, requires alternative thinking in a world where problems become increasingly complex.

Fourth, if violence is the problem for nonviolence, and this problem needs to be solved, then it is highly likely that nonviolence researchers and activists would view the world from a victim's perspective. This would require some levels of empathy with victims of violence, which could engender more relevant alternative solutions.

These conditions are crucial if nonviolence is to remain an alternative well into the twenty-first century. But then what would these nonviolent alternatives look like?

Conclusion: Gray, the color of nonviolence in the twenty-first century?

Given the above discussion on the spread of unusual nonviolent actions, what would they look like? What would be their color? Some might suggest that rainbow is the color of nonviolence. But this answer is based on differences of sociological groupings of those participating in nonviolent actions. A more critical answer to the question of color requires a different perspective. To remember and recognize nonviolence in the history of the twentieth century does not mean that one has to forget the trails of violence that have taken so many lives. To find it difficult to identify what action is or is not nonviolent in a world marked by different contexts does not mean that it is impossible to act in them. To be successful in fighting violence does not mean that nonviolence is losing its alternativity.

In relation to the confusion which has emerged from different actions considered to be nonviolent at present as discussed above, I would argue that if nonviolence in the twenty-first century were to have a color, it would be gray because the problems facing nonviolence protagonists are no longer black and white.

Hegel wrote at the end of the Preface to his Philosophy of Right in 1820: “When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk” (Hegel 1967: 13). Hegel's tone reflects a sense of sadness at the impossibility of rejuvenation. There is only the quest for philosophical understanding.

But then the symbol of philosophy as a search for wisdom is the owl of Minerva. According to Homeric Hymns, the eyes of Pallas Athena are gray; so are her owl's eyes. In the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche maintains that the color which is a hundred times more vital than blue (the color of the idealist) is gray because it exists in reality (Nietzsche, 1969: 21).¹⁷ In real life, a former political prisoner from Northern Ireland, imprisoned for 13 years for the killing of a Catholic man at the Long Kesh Prison Camp, painfully recounts his experiences on the road towards reconciliation. He is now trying to “live with the ‘greyness’ that exists in my world. This ‘greyness’ causes me ongoing pain and within this context, I attempt to work at the ongoing process of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not and cannot be black and white. Reconciliation is a process that is continually redefined by people who live with shades of grey” (Little, 2001: 5). Taken together, these philosophic-experiential reflections indicate that the color gray is symbolic, yet grounded in reality where black and white shade into each other. It also anticipates the philosophic mission since it could be argued that philosophy comes into its own not when things are clear and straightforward, but when they become dark, difficult, and blurred (Midgley, 2005: x).

At the personal level, the first time someone notices a gray hair on his/her head in the mirror, it could be taken as a warning of the impermanence of life and things. Becoming aware of this impermanence could be a frightening experience yet it could also be liberating. In another sense, a gray area is a nexus between black and white. It is an area without clarity which means one has to be careful, perhaps to do the work with humility. A gray area is also a space for ambiguity and this means freedom. After all, for nonviolent actions to serve as an emancipatory force against violence in all forms, it needs freedom to be dynamic enough to cope with challenging problems. But this freedom of nonviolence in gray is far from being license since it is well grounded on humility, respect for the lives of others, and the continuation of questioning.