Talk:Turn the other cheek

A new contribution adds: "Others counter this teaching can serve justice when used as the philosophy behind passive resistance as practiced by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King which the praciticer of this tactic turns other cheek in an effort to turn the aggressors' violence against them."

That's just not true. Gandhi never advocated non-violence, despite his false claims to the contray. Any reading of his full writings reveals that he publicly anbd repeatedly advocated the use of violence, which he knew would include killings, to advance his cause. He deliberately set up resistance which would provoke and cause beatings and killings, and he stated that hoped that the one-sided attacks of the British against the Indians would cause a lot of public outcry and sympathy. That's not non-violence; that a cynical manipulation of the stupid masses to use beatings and deaths to further one's political goals. (Goals that, as we now know, led to a massive war.) As for King, he publicly stated that he was not a pacifist, and that black people had the right to use force to defend themselves if they were atttacked. Many Christians may have later come to interpret these men as following "turn the other cheek", but neither did so in practice. RK 01:26, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not following your statements. It sounds like you are saying that Ghandi advised his followers to perform non-violent actions in such a context as to lead to them experiencing violence, with the purpose of the violence being publicized. Are you saying that (if I even have the first part correct) by advocating non-violence which was likely or certain to lead to violence, you therefore claim he did not advocate non-violence, but rather violence ? I can't quite follow this. If he is urging the soldiers to shoot, then he is advocating violence. If he is urging the victims to be shot, then he is advocating non-violence. No ? -- ll

You understand me correctly. He was urging Indians to piss off the British, in the hope that the British would beat and kill many Indians. Gandhi then used this to promote his political agenda. This is the creation of violence for politicial purposes. Gandhi understood the psychology of the European and American public; causing the killing of his own followers made many people more sympathetic to the Indian cause. Still some people (like me) are very uncomfortable with this. There is a reason that Gandhi has many published critics; this is one of them. RK

Ok, but, isn't this the classic method of non-violent change ? Perform non-violence in such a way as to make public the violence against you ? That is to say, even if person X advocates going out and laying down in front of bulldozers, I don't think we can fairly say that person X advocates crushing people with bulldozers. Especially if person X's major agenda is to stop the crushing of people with bulldozers, and he is advocating we lay in front of them so that we'll get crushed and the world will see how awful it is (b/c person X is going to make sure reporters are on hand), we can hardly blame the crushing of people on X; X is quite on the other side of the battle between crushers and crushees. I mean, person X isn't being terribly sneaky about it, I think, because really, this is the classic political way to use non-violence against the violent. It sounds to me like you want to charge X with the advocacy of violence. But in the argument, over whether it is good or evil to crush people with bulldozers, in my scenario, X seems squarely on the side of crushing people is evil. -ll

That was far too wordy, and not on the point exactly. My point (or most hope of one, I think) is that if I walk into a Nazi concentration camp, knowing full well that I will be vivisected, it is not morally just to condemn me for the practice of vivisection; the blame for doing the vivisection is not at all upon my shoulders; it remains entirely upon the shoulders of the vivisectionist. If I advise others to march to the doors with protest signs, probably to vivisectional doom, the responsibility for the vivisection still does not devolve upon me; that is too much like blaming the victim. It is like saying to the mayor, I have kidnapped your people, you must pay up or it will be your fault that I shoot the people. That, to me, is a deep misunderstanding of responsibility. Even if the Mayor knows that by not paying up, it will certainly lead to me shooting the hostage, yet still, he does not receive some of my blame for the shooting; I (as the kidnapper) still am the one who chooses to shoot, and the blame remains with me entirely. At least, so I would argue. {I've made a mess shifting around thru different examples; I hope you can follow what I'm trying to say.} -- ll

Defenders of the literal interpretation

Some have defended against this criticism by emphasizing pacifisim, arguing that this teaching can serve justice when used as the philosophy behind passive resistance as practiced by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., in which the practitioner of this tactic turns the other cheek in an effort to turn the aggressors' violence against himself.

This is just not true. King never preached "turn the other cheek", and he stated that Negros (now called African-Americans) have the right to use physical force to defend their lives. This was a point he stressed after his famous meeting with Malcom X. And while I am not a fan of the early or mid-life Malcom X, he was absolutely correct to say that Negros must not lie down and allow white racists to beat them and murder them. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not take the murder of anyone lightly. As for Gandhi, he publicly incited the mass murder of Indians in order to arouse public sympathy around the world. This is not "turning the other cheek". Only Gandhi's most syncophantic apologists can see promoting mass-beatings and mass-killings as "turning the other cheek." RK 22:07, May 8, 2005 (UTC)