Political repression

“ The cumulative effect of well-conducted and successful political defiance campaigns is to strengthen the resistance and to establish and expand areas of the society where the dictatorship faces limits on its effective control. ”

“ However, the downfall of these dictatorships has minimally lifted much of the suffering of the victims of oppression, and has opened the way for the rebuilding of these societies with greater political democracy, personal liberties, and social justice. ”

“ The time was one, indeed, in which, on both sides, there were manifested the passion which is born of political excitement, and the violence which springs from terror. Timid people might be excused if, in such a mad world, they clung with desperation to existing authority as the only protection to society against revolution and anarchy. ”

“ A demoralization of public sentiment more than ever fatal to public justice and eventually to public order and peace; unscrupulous struggles for the possession of power to be used in the exploitation of opportunities without regard to the rights of the defeated—that is, alternating despotisms. ”

“ No man insisted more strenuously that the participants in the rebellion must be punished and stripped of all political power and social influence, and that the government of the States, as well as of the Nation, must be confided exclusively to the tried and ever-faithful friends of the Republic. ”

“ When a long series of civil dissensions, of frauds upon the public, of treasons against the parties, of perjuries to principles, have mixed up men and things, blotted out the 'line between political groups, and confused all ideas, politics must become a genuine chaos. ”

“ It has stirred up all the bitter contests of the last thirty years, and plunged the country into the bloodiest civil wars, and it will do so again unless we at last cut out and eject this prolific abomination from our political system. ”

“ Local sentiment has been invoked to hold in check the wrathful outpourings of United States senators, legislatures have held in check rampant governors, and cities have cried out against the acts of legislatures imposing repressive measures not warranted by local conditions, things that signify that repression sends to the front men whose tendency is to lower rather than advance civilization. ”

“ What kind of power can the democratic opposition mobilize that will be sufficient to destroy the dictatorship and its vast military and police networks? The answers lie in an oft ignored understanding of political power. ”

“ Those who were most impressed with the evils which existed, the waste of the national resources, the corruption and jobbery in all departments of the public service, the pressure of taxation, the reckless conduct of the war, the repression of all attempts to improve the moral and intellectual condition of the people, were the most convinced that no essential change could be effected whilst the whole power of government remained in the hands of a limited class, to every member of which a share in the spoils of corruption seemed within reach. ”

“ In consequence of the progress made by public opinion, and the happy subsidence of revolutionary agitations, the excessive governing has already diminished, and the disposition to it is rapidly declining. The annoyances inflicted by the political police are fast disappearing. ”

“ And these men, with the reckless habits of slave society, with all their pent-up wrath, their violent resentments, their wild vindictiveness, excited to fever heat by the promise of victory, and the prospect of undivided power, these are the men to take into their hands the counter-revolution in their own States, and to unite with the most unscrupulous class of Northern demagogues in the control of the National Government. ”

“ Some persons are inclined to look upon the evils following the war—dissolute legislation, moral turpitude, and political party profligacy, as neutralizing much if not the entire national benefits acquired at the enormous cost of the Rebellion. ”

“ This dark, swelling, muttering mass along the social horizon, gathering strength with education, and ambitious to rise, will grow increasingly restless and sullen under repression, until at length conscious, through numbers, of superior power, it will assert that power destructively, and, bursting forth like an angry, furious cloud, avenge, in tumult and disorder, the social law broken against it. ”

“ But half a century elapses and this free government is ruled by a despotic interest; the Republic sinks into the mire of slavery and corruption, sinks deeper and deeper, and the hope of humanity sinks with it. ”

“ Everybody considered that Government as the enemy of the people. Extreme Monarchists and Socialists, the united nobility, labour groups, Grand Dukes and half-educated soldiers—all were of the same opinion. I do not intend to examine the activities of the Government which led to the Revolution, its struggle against the people and against representative institutions. ”

“ Under the severe pressure of despotism the people rise in their fury, and snap their chains asunder. A republic follows; degenerating first into a rude and wild democracy; and thence into a cruel and more turbulent anarchy. ”

“ They carry us forward by hasty strides, to the last stages of corruption; a period that every benevolent man will deprecate and endeavor to retard. This circumstance, the difference in the stages of our political existence, should make us shun the vices which may be politic and even necessary in older states; and endeavor to preserve our manners by being our own standards. By attaching ourselves to foreign manners, we counteract the good effects of the revolution, or rather render them incomplete. A revolution in the form of government, is but a revolution [pg 087] in name ”

“ Democratizing effects of political defiance In contrast to the centralizing effects of violent sanctions, use of the technique of nonviolent struggle contributes to democratizing the political society in several ways. ”

“ The thoughts in this examination of political defiance or nonviolent struggle are intended to be helpful to all persons and groups who seek to lift dictatorial oppression from their people and to establish a durable democratic system that respects human freedoms and popular action to improve the society. ”

“ Social dissolution is accelerated by provincial revolts against central authority; by survival struggle between the empires which were coordinated and consolidated into the civilization; by revolt in the subordinate and dependent segments of the civilization; by rivalry and conflict between racial, cultural and political sub-groups forced into the civilization, held there by coercion, policed by armed force and taking the first opportunity to win political independence and self determination. ”

“ The discontent gradually grew so general, the storm of petitions so violent, the repugnance of the people to the police-despotism so menacing, that the old parade of the absolute kingly power would no longer suffice, and some new step in the direction of liberal innovations seemed imperatively necessary. ”

“ Twenty years of ruthless repression has not been able to crush it. Scathing denunciation by the renowned public leaders has not been able to arrest its steady growth. The movement stands mightier today than what it was before. ”

“ They have calmed disturbing political elements;—the press is purified, the politician disarmed, the civil service well regulated. Hurtful partisanship is passing away. Since the people as a whole will never willingly surrender their sovereignty, reactionary movement is possible only in case the nation should go backward. ”

“ For thirty-four years the republic has existed. Communistic fires, always smouldering, have again and again burst forth—demagogues, fanatics, and those creatures for whom there is no place in organized society, whose element is chaos, standing ready to fan the flames of revolt: with Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, ever on the alert, watching for opportunity to slip in through the open door of revolution. ”

“ We can well understand and appreciate how, in a country ruled by a despot, whose heel of oppression and tyranny is ever on the necks of the down-trodden people, the masses, desiring some measure of free action and equality, would revolt against these conditions, and seek a reorganization of society. ”

“ Slacken the reins of the Revolution for a moment, and you will see military despotism seize upon it, and overturn the maligned national representation; a century of civil wars and calamities will desolate our country, and we would die for not having seized the moment marked by history for the founding of liberty. Aye, we would deliver up our country to calamities without number, and the people's maledictions will fall upon our memory, which should remain dear to the human race.... ”

“ We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. ”

“ Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations; but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have, more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism. ”

“ We have reason to dread the political refinements of ordinary men, when we consider that repose, or inaction itself, is in a great measure their object; and that they would frequently model their governments, not merely to prevent injustice and error, but to prevent agitation and bustle; and by the barriers they raise against the evil actions of men, would prevent them from acting at all. ”

“ At the beginning of a new campaign to undermine the dictatorship, the first more specifically political actions may be limited in scope. They should be designed in part to test and influence the mood of the population, and to prepare them for continuing struggle through noncooperation and political defiance. ”

“ I hope it will bring them to look at the regularity, the order, with which we carry on what, if the word were not so much abused, I would call our glorious representative system of popular government. Its principles will stand the test of this crisis, as they have stood the test and torture of others. They are exposed always, and they always will be exposed, to dangers. There are dangers from the extremes of too much and of too little popular liberty; from monarchy, or military despotism, on one side, and from licentiousness and anarchy on the other. ”

“ It is not a reform in our government that we need, but a revolution — an overthrow of the present one, and the establishment of a new one. Supposing a few individuals should be hung as traitors, would not that create a sympathy for us among the governments of the old world? ”

“ In this recurrence to the past, and estimation of the present, however we may regret the persecution of wealth, the destruction of commerce, and the general oppression, the most important and irretrievable mischief of the revolution is, doubtless, the corruption of manners introduced among the middle and lower classes of the people. ”

“ The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people’s ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. ”

“ They were dominated by leaders who were altogether evil.
They corrupted the courts, the juries, the newspapers, the legislatures, the congresses, the ballot-boxes and the hearts and souls of the people.
They formed gigantic combinations to plunder the poor; to make the miserable more miserable; to take from those who had least and give it to those who had most.
They used the machinery of free government to effect oppression; they made liberty a mockery, and its traditions a jest; they drove justice from the land and installed cruelty, ignorance, despair and vice in its place. ”

“ That a handful of men, free themselves, should exercise the most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation;—in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism unmatched in all the histories of the world? What is the end of all government? ”

“ The jarring interests of the states and of individuals, and their dissonant opinions of forms and modes of government might prevent the adoption of the best that could be suggested and create jealousies and ferments that might terminate in domestic confusion and war, until anarchy or despotism should succeed. ”

“ From time to time questions affecting the whole wealth of the nation must be passed upon by the people. These repressionists have shown that there is no interest so vital but that they will smite it hip and thigh if by so doing they may advance the policy of repression. You are confronted therefore with a power that bids you to become repressionists or stand subject to onslaughts whenever the fancy obtains that a lick at your interests will do their cause good. ”