(February 17, 2017 at 10:24 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: How did the believers in nonviolent action win out? Was it just a separation of those who could not commit to nonviolent resistance into other groups? And did those more violent groups play an important role as 'bad guys' that made MLK's group look preferable?
Based on my observations and studies, I would say that face-saving is a distinguishing feature of non-violent resistance. For example, practitioners of non-violent resistance, such as MLK, did not dehumanize their opponents nor frame societal problems/conflicts in an 'us vs them mentality' (which can be observed in many forms of protest): they framed things via an 'us against the problem' mentality (free from blame, guilt, and judgement, which IMO, takes tremendous self-discipline), which invites the other side to join in the problem solving/brainstorming process and save face. In addition, another thing that set MLK (and others like him) apart from his more violent counterparts is that he was able to get out of the pain and hatred of the past and continually keep his eye on the prize of obtaining a more constructive future for all of humanity and not just a particular group of people.
