{"id":5716,"date":"2009-06-17T10:08:53","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T10:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5716"},"modified":"2009-06-17T10:08:53","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T10:08:53","slug":"self-limiting-popular-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5716","title":{"rendered":"self-limiting popular politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this remarkable video from Italian TV, Iranian motorcycle police attack a group of peaceful protesters. The protesters respond with stones and manage to turn at least one motorcycle into a flaming wreck. You can then see them escort the lightly wounded police officer to safety and give him water. The informal rule that seems to have developed is: Hurt the machines, love the human beings.<\/p>\n

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This is a great example of what I wrote recently in connection to the Palestinian cause<\/a>. Social movements must limit themselves or they are likely to spin out of control and destroy their own purposes and their own people. Perfect nonviolence is one example of self-limitation, but it is not the only one. Destroying motorcycles is violent (and could certainly harm the riders), but it can be done in a limited way. As Bhiku Parekh writes in his book Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction <\/em>(p. 60), “Gandhi’s satyagraha <\/em>has much to be said for it, but it cannot be a catholicon. Although Gandhi insisted otherwise, violence need not be accompanied by hatred to ill-will or be uncontrolled. Like non-violence it too can be restrained, measured, born out of love for both the victims and perpetrators of injustice, and used to arrest human degradation.” There couldn’t be a better illustration than this video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this remarkable video from Italian TV, Iranian motorcycle police attack a group of peaceful protesters. The protesters respond with stones and manage to turn at least one motorcycle into a flaming wreck. You can then see them escort the lightly wounded police officer to safety and give him water. The informal rule that seems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}