Response to Paul Lewis: a conversation with Michael Nagler   

PAUL LEWIS ASKS WHETHER MOCKERY, EVEN OF DETESTED conservatives, should ever be a strategy of the Left. He defines the question as having two parts: first, is satire effective, and second, is it ethically defensible? Now I'll go on to explain why personal ridicule is not effective, and often counterproductive; but the underlying issue is that I don't think there are two parts to the question. There is a great tradition of belief, including Gandhi and on back to philosophers like Immanuel Kant, which holds that in the end there is no difference between what is ethically defensible and what is effective to create good results—at least in the long run.

This truth reflects the philosophy of principled non-violence, which is based on the idea that the relationship between you and your opponent is just as important as the issue you're disputing. So we always go for persuasion over coercion; that is, we always try to persuade our opponents to come around to our position rather than forcing them or using some outside inducement. If you force them, they will only be looking for a chance to get back into what you forced them out of—and at you!

In non-violence we sometimes have gray areas. For example, my students questioned me on the ouster of Chilean dictator, General Pinochet. Having seized power after a U.S./U.K.-supported coup launched on September 11, 1973, in 1984 Pinochet held a plebiscite seeking an unconstitutional third term in office. He was not persuaded to leave office; he was just voted out of power, and there is no question in anybody's mind that he was not persuaded of the rightness of the position. Was forcing him out the wrong thing to do? I say no, because there are situations of emergency in which you have to be content with not quite reaching your ideals. What you get is a good that is better than what you had, but not yet perfect. If they had waited until Pinochet was persuaded to give up power, tens of thousands more would have died.

So yes, there are gray areas, but that doesn't mean that ultimately there's a real choice you have to make between what's ethical and what's effective. Given the constraints of the situation, you may have to go with something that's not as effective as it could be, but much better than nothing. So I do not accept Lewis's argument that something could be politically effective but not ethically defensible.

Instead, the real distinction for evaluating political action is whether it is directed against the opponent themselves, or their behavior. One of the keys of principled non-violence is that you are never against a person or persons. That is to say you are never against their ultimate wellbeing. Whatever you're against is secondary to them as a person. The things you may oppose—behaviors, attitudes or even ideas—though they are intimate to us, they are not our ultimate wellbeing. Further—and here's where the practicality comes in—there is an inverse proportion here: the more I am aware of my opponent as a person and the more I am dedicated to his or her wellbeing, the more effectively I can counteract his or her agenda, opinions, or politics.

Gandhi is probably the best example of this. He truly believed in his heart that he was helping the British by prising them loose from the Empire and the death grip they held over India. Indeed, even some of his 'opponents' recognized this; it was the historian Arnold Toynbee who said that Gandhi made it impossible for the British to go on ruling India, but he made it possible to leave without rancor and without humiliation. That's precisely the distinction between the person and the person's agenda. With that distinction in mind, the question is reframed, and you're able to see the wellbeing of your opponent as separate from the obnoxious behaviors that they're exhibiting. You can be against the latter to the death, without compromising your desire for the wellbeing of the person.

So, the problem is not political humor, but humor directed against a person. Such ad hominem attacks fit in with the principles of "conservatives," who accept win-at-all-costs thinking and do not place ultimate value on persons (as opposed to institutions, nations, and, of course, corporations) but they are completely discordant with the principles of the Left, and particularly of spiritual progressives. An example would be the Moveon.org group, which had done so much good until recently. They then took out a full page ad in the New York Times, using almost $65,000 of peace-makers' money, only to run a play on General Petraeus's name, calling him "General Betray Us". It got trashed, deservedly (I would have to say); yet having learned nothing from it, they still have another ad, selling a 'flip' cell phone, with the message being to "flip off the Right". Such attacks are counter-productive, not only with the public at large, but because they create divisions within the Left itself, which is really a sometimes awkward mix of traditional leftists and new progressives.

Once again it goes back to Gandhi and his statement that when we humiliate another, we humiliate ourselves. It's simply inconceivable how a human being could enhance themselves by humiliating or degrading another person. Lewis is correct in saying that people are overly impressed with their leaders, but I say that rather than deflating those leaders, the answer is to empower the people. If people felt that they had independent judgment and a capacity to protect themselves, they wouldn't need a father figure to lead and protect them; this liberates them from their dependency on the leadership much more effectively than telling them that their leaders are no good. That ad hominem approach drives people into a defensive posture; they'll attack you in the name of patriotism, trying to defend their own commitment to their leaders. If you always look for the positive and constructive way, again, you can solve the problem more effectively by encouraging and empowering people to think for themselves. I've stopped contributing to Moveon.org because I just don't think they get it.

There's definitely a role for political comedy, and even satire, but that distinction between the person and their behavior has to be observed. It's something you have to judge on a case-by-case basis, and you'd have to know enough about your own motivations to make the right choice. Even flaws of character that do enter into politics, like the egotism of the President and his regime, can be rejected without rejecting the person. In practice what we do is we never ever humiliate another person, and never accept humiliation ourselves. So this distinction can be subtle, but it's very real and we have to be aware of it and frame it correctly. It's a distinction every parent should be aware of. If your child misbehaves, there are two attitudes that you can take; either say to the child, "there you go again", thus helping to imprint a negative self-image in the child's mind, or you can say "I'm surprised—this isn't worthy of you", thus helping the child to outgrow the behavior. It may seem a little insulting, but I think we are in a somewhat 'parental' position vis-a-vis the war-making right. There are some things of substantial importance that we understand, and they do not; our role towards them should be an educative one, and therefore we should never resort to personal invective.

Michael Nagler founded the Peace and Conflict Program at UC, Berkeley, and the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education. He is the author of The Search for a Nonviolent Future, and Our Spiritual Crisis, and has recently been awarded a major international prize for promoting Gandhian values. His website is www.mettacenter.org.