On bashing special interests
How labelling opponents as “boogeymen” may help win the next battle of ideas, but ruin the chance of a subsequent peace.
George Orwell once wrote that there was something inhuman about Mohandas Gandhi’s capacity to love the soldiers who bashed in the heads of his independence-seeking followers.
Nowadays, it sometimes requires all of one’s moral strength to refrain from gratuitously bashing (in words) the special interests warping our democracy, ruining our environment, gobbling up and hoarding the world’s wealth, oppressing women and people of color, and more.
Yet, now more than ever, I’m trying to resist the temptation.
This isn’t to say I won’t sharply criticize the actions of, well, the usual suspects. I won’t shy from speaking truth to power, naming names, spelling out consequences in gruesome detail, and publicizing vile motives when they’re accidentally leaked.
But I won’t put words in their mouths. I won’t tar them with a broad brush they don’t deserve. I won’t assume guilt by association where there’s insufficient evidence of cooperation.
In other words, I won’t do boogeymen.
Given that I work for an organization (The Public Interest Network) whose name defines it as a contrast to special interests, why won’t I cast them as darkly evil?
In large part, it’s because of what I long ago learned from the tension between the thoughts and deeds of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (with some Christian Sunday School and Buddhist philosophy thrown in) and those of Orwell and Malcolm X.
Through books and films, Americans have come to know Gandhi as the apostle of “civil disobedience” (with an emphasis on “civil”) as a means to win rights for oppressed people around the world. He wrote “[t]here must be no impatience, no barbarity, no insolence, no undue pressure. If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.” Instead, love conquers hate.
George Orwell was not a particularly tolerant man. The author of Animal Farm considered himself a “man of the independent left” who made his living largely by writing harsh critiques of both the left and the right. He was no pacifist, having fought as a volunteer on the front lines in the Spanish Civil War. But he also chose not to shoot a Fascist officer in clear sight in the opposing trench who “was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran”. As he wrote in “Looking Back on the Spanish War”, “I had come here to shoot at ‘Fascists;’ but a man who is holding up his trousers isn’t a ‘Fascist,’ he is visibly a fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t feel like shooting at him.”
Orwell’s essay, “Reflections on Gandhi”, delineates the contrasts and similarities between the two men. It was written in late 1948, soon after Gandhi’s assassination and while Orwell was putting the final touches on his dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
His analysis of Gandhi is fascinating and familiar.
Gandhi, he wrote, “must have been a resourceful, energetic lawyer and a hard-headed political organizer, careful in keeping down expenses, an adroit handler of committees and an indefatigable chaser of subscriptions.”
As a “seeker after goodness,” Gandhi’s “cardinal point” was that “there must be no close friendships and no exclusive loves whatever.”
Orwell added that Gandhi set “some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth” (the broth a reference to Gandhi’s vegetarianism).
However, Orwell believed that “[t]his attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which — I think — most people would give to the word, it is inhuman.”
“The essence of being human,” he wrote, “is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.”
I think that Gandhi would largely agree with that statement. (As Orwell acknowledges, Gandhi never claimed sainthood.) Indeed, it was Gandhi’s recognition of the imperfect humanity of those who had the power to oppress and to liberate, to unleash attack dogs and fire water cannons (or worse) and to open jails, that made his strategy of “love thy opponent” possible.
Gandhi called his strategy “Satyagraha.” While it had much to do with lifestyle choices and religious beliefs, it was also, as Orwell described it, “a sort of non-violent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing hatred.”
Most of us have been taught that Satyagraha means “passive resistance.” But that’s not what Gandhi meant by the term. In his native language, it translates to “appeal to, insistence on, or reliance on the Truth.”
Orwell recognized that appealing to the humanity of one’s opponents did not mean Gandhi took “the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins.”
Nor do I.
Ultimately, Gandhi won Orwell’s respect and appreciation, which was no small accomplishment.
As Orwell wrote, “if, as may happen, India and Britain finally settle down into a decent and friendly relationship, will this be partly because Gandhi, by keeping up his struggle obstinately and without hatred, disinfected the political air?… One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf… one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi’s basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!”
How better to describe one’s overall objectives?
To win monumental social change — such as a fully democratic society powered by 100 percent renewable energy.
To create the conditions for a world in which bitter enemies settle down into a decent and friendly relationship, a lasting, satisfying peace.
With a steadfast commitment to truth, a tolerance of those who oppose us, a willingness to eat dirt to achieve our goals, and a large dollop of good fortune, we will not only “win the country” and save our environment, countless lives, and our democracy.
We’ll also leave a clean smell behind for our descendants.
