The only problem I see with that philosophical approach is that the state is usually willing to up that anti and answer the violence with violence. Hence the all to common development of quasi-state sponsorship of death squads. Esp common in Central and South America.

True, but I haven't really heard of any other way. If you are getting beat up in the playground, its seems you either have to fight back or get your big brother to step in for you.

The only exception I can think of are democracies, but that is still rare.

gandhi was non-violent, and he still was probably the biggest factor in getting rid of the british...
true, after partition millions died, but that wasnt the revolution that was the partition.

Gandhi .... Mandela .... can anyone think of any other successful non-violent revolutionary leaders? Martin Luther King rates a mention as an also-ran. Any more?

I've always had a soft spot for Che Guavara. I think he was ruthless and violent, but then he was trying to overturn a ruthless and violent enemy. He was a fascinating and charismatic man, very clever. To point at him and say he was extreme is to ignore the extremities that created his mission. Nobody had clean hands. I admire his courage and determination.

In truth, Sundae, I think the Che has a mixed image here. There are plenty of Che t-shirts and he is still something of an icon to the left...but not an uncomplicated one. I think he is admired for what he tried to do, dared to do. But people are rarely pure heroes or out and out villains. I think even for those who admire him, or see in him the symbol of continued struggle, they also see the ruthless killer. He is seen as both a revolutionary and a terrorist. I don't think he's viewed as negatively here as in the States. There's more of an air of tragedy to his image here.

One man's Freedom Fighter is another man's Terrorist. Same could have been said about any person or group who used violent means to overthrow a sitting government. It just depends on who you choose to support whether or not you choose to ignore or downplay the violent acts and elevate and glorify the "courage and determination". Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mugabe, Pancho Villa, Osama Bin Laden, Pervez Musharraf, Ho Chi Minh, the history is endless. But of course you know this as a history major.

The more I hear about that subject the more I think we hear a biased version just like thinking that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Supposedly economic factors had a much larger part, which is much more realistic. But either way, Gandii, MLK, etc changed the system from within in a democracy, which is possible non-violently, not overthrew a system, which isn't.

"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow...."

don't you know it's gonna be alright?

During the Cuban missile crisis he got mad at the Soviets for not letting him bomb NYC with the nukes they so helpfully provided.

This is an idiot low-level mobster who died by the violence he so loved. Who loved revolution, but avoided the leadership that transforms a nation into something that lifts humanity up, instead of re-tearing it down in the name of a new boss running things.

Get rid of the old assholes, install new assholes who are worse and get glory from being a cutting figure. There's nothing "revolutionary" about it, really, it's just gangsterism.

SamIAm, give thought to Latin America's manner of colonization, contrasted with North America's. Here you will find a great deal of root cause, all of it predating the nineteenth century to say nothing of the early twentieth.

North America got a flood of smallholders and working-class types and young apprentices, out to have a small to fairish (occasionally vast) piece of land of their own and to carve out their bit of what became the American Dream. All these smallholders, all roughly similar in their resources and likewise similar in both their stake in the society they made and the political power they possessed, ended up with a penchant for the general equality. What is the result? A working Republic, downright bursting at the seams with functionality.

From Mexico southwards, there wasn't a flood. There was a sparse settlement instead by wealthy aristocrats, impoverished aristocrats brimful of personal ambition, and adventurers of similar ambition but socially humbler antecedents. These were united in pursuit of grandee status and condition, and damned little else mattered for long. So what they did was recreate the latifundian, plantation economy of late medieval Spain. Given who they were and what society they sprang from, it is hard to imagine them doing anything else -- it was what they knew. So there you are: a latifundian economy in a colonial relationship with developing Europe, exporting raw materials and importing finished goods, a very small minority of gentlefolk owning the entirety of the land and the exploitable resources, and everybody else is hired labor, landless, resourceless, and hapless -- and the teensiest middle class you ever saw, if indeed it were visible to the naked eye at all. Damned little in the way of small employers or self-employers. And in the end, not enough of these. Latin America's systemic problem is it lacks a middle class. A large middle class would have solved the systemic problem and likely it can yet, for it is doing so now. But it was the nature of the colonization of this continent that engendered the troubles seen since, right down to, as the joke has it, "thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute" -- most of them just enough to be typical but not so prolonged as to get boring.

Look into it further, Sam.

Very well said.

Any fool with a big enough hammer can smash a house down in a few days. It takes many months of skilled work to build a new one.
The same principle applies to governments, systems, societies.

Mandela was non-violent, the ANC certainly weren't.
I never supported the ANC. Despite the provocation - which I appreciate was a horrendously unfair system - it stuck in my throat to support terrorists.