Gandhi as divine violence
example · historical/political ·
retold in 3 talks
Gandhi advocated nonviolence in the sense of not killing, yet his tax boycotts and civil disobedience campaigns were structurally extremely violent toward the British colonial state, we have ideologically forgotten this violent dimension.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“what he was organising in india was definitely not only protest these were very violent acts in the sense that through all those tax evading boycotting and so on he wanted very brutally to prevent the normal functioning of the english state”
“yes in a way you are terrorist in the sense in which as i like to repeat Gandhi was a terrorist”
“mahatma gandhi, an anti-jacobin if there ever is one, says in some of his writings the same thing. the lesson is, in a really tough situation of choice, there is no neutral position.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Lazar Carnot1Camille Desmoulins1Rudolf Elmer1Judith Miller1Bill Keller1Daniel Ellsberg1Henry Louis Taylor1Michael Palin1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Gandhi advocated nonviolence in the sense of not killing, yet his tax boycotts and civil disobedience campaigns were structurally extremely violent toward the British colonial state, we have ideologically forgotten this violent dimension., illustrating divine violence,ideology softening radical figures,objective violence
Gandhi was a 'terrorist' in the precise sense that he interrupted the normal functioning of the British imperial state in India; WikiLeaks similarly interrupts normal information circulation, making the accusation of terrorism a philosophical compliment., illustrating WikiLeaks radicalism,reframing terrorism,rules of transgression
Žižek invokes Mahatma Gandhi, paradoxically described as 'an anti-Jacobin if there ever is one', as sharing the Jacobin insight that in truly tough situations there is no neutral position; not taking sides is already taking sides., illustrating not taking sides is already taking sides,political commitment,neutrality as complicity