If non-violence were universally effective, the police would be using it right now

[Recursion]

It's a particular tactic that works in particular situations; Gandhi and King were both very clear about that. It is a tactic, not a principle. And it's not effective in every situation.

[G_j]

1. MLK Jr. called them principles

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/lesson-activities/six_principles_of_nonviolence.pdf
Just sayin’

SIX PRINCIPLES OF NONVIOLENCE
1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding. The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people. Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform. Nonviolence willingly accepts the consequences to its acts.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate. Nonviolence resists violence to the spirit as well as the body. Nonviolence love is active, not passive. Nonviolence love does not sink to the level of the hater. Love restores community and resists injustice. Nonviolence recognizes the fact that all life is interrelated.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.
From The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

[Recursion]

2. He also owned more guns than Malcolm X

And Gandhi outlined the principles of ahimsa. But non-violence having principles is not the same as non-violence being a principle. It's a tactic, adopted for a specific situation.

[G_j]

4. not sure how to see this then..

1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.

[bigtree]

6. he wasn't a pacifist

...fully believed in defending himself and his young family.

Non-violence, however, was a political strategy intended to garner the support of enough white moderates to push his civil rights initiatives forward. It was largely successful, because the movement had a political agenda at its head, specific political goals which had MLK and Johnson huddling several times in the WH before their eventual success in the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

It was a strategy King never abandoned, as he pressed forward with his 'Poor Peoples' Campaign.'

[Celerity]

7. Often humans run into threats so great that non-violence alone simply ends up w/ you dead in a ditch

or wearing the yoke of chattel slavery in various forms

this has occurred throughout the hundreds of thousands of years of collective human history

[Celerity]

3. Gandhi himself did not beleive in universal non-violence.

https://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm

Between Cowardice And Violence

I WOULD risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race.

Violence the Choice

I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.

But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier...But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature....
But I do not believe India to be helpless....I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature....Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
We do want to drive out the beast in the man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him. And in the process of finding his own status, the beast in him is bound now and again to put up his ugly appearance.
The world is not entirely governed by logic. Life itself involves some kind of violence and we have to choose the path of least violence.


snip


Self-defence by Violence

I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.

The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips, converted the hearts of their violent opponents.

Nonviolence cannot be taught to a person who fears to die and has no power of resistance. A helpless mouse is not nonviolent because he is always eaten by pussy. He would gladly eat the murderess if he could, but he ever tries to flee from her. We do not call him a coward, because he is made by nature to behave no better than he does.

But a man who, when faced by danger, behaves like a mouse, is rightly called a coward. He harbors violence and hatred in his heart and would kill his enemy if he could without hurting himself. He is a stranger to nonviolence. All sermonizing on it will be lost on him. Bravery is foreign to his nature. Before he can understand nonviolence, he has to be taught to stand his ground and even suffer death, in the attempt to defend himself against the aggressor who bids fair to overwhelm him. To do otherwise would be to confirm his cowardice and take him further away from nonviolence.

Whilst I may not actually help anyone to retaliate, I must not let a coward seek shelter behind nonviolence so-called. Not knowing the stuff of which nonviolence is made, many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one's life. As a teacher of nonviolence I must, so far as it is possible for me, guard against such an unmanly belief.

Self-defence....is the only honourable course where there is unreadiness for self-immolation.

Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.

[Recursion]

5. Yup. And he was awarded for bravery in the Zulu war (nt)