Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Ummm, I am ignorant on this topic...

re: Ummm, I am ignorant on this topic...
Tom Brosz — (archived)

There is, as alcaray says, some ambiguity here. The England that is postulated in "V" is almost a duplicate of Nazi Germany, with death camps, elimination of minorities, secret police, and absolute state control of the economy, media, and everything else. To try and draw an analogy with America during McCarthy is a bit silly.

Pacifism is useless in most totalitarian societies. The America of the Civil Rights movement, and even India in Ghandi's time, were relatively civilized nations. Ghandi's career would have been a lot shorter and a lot more obscure if he had used his tactics in a nation occupied by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany instead of Britain.

The fall of the Eastern Bloc might be more appropriate analogies for non-violent change. Apparently the Soviet Union simply got tired of suppressing such things, or feared what the response of the West would be to tanks rolling into Poland.

Even so, these were exceptions. Make a list over the past thousand years of the fall of various totalitarian empires or nations, and see how many did not involve violence.

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