Commenter Court: Nonviolent Communication (Robert Wright & Wonderment)

[Eli Lake]

And to meet your bird Shanti. I learned a lot about where you are coming from when you critique me. You are a very committed Gandhian pacifist. For me, I admire Gandhi as a tactician and strategic thinker. But his overall philosophy, in my view, requires adherents to be essentially passive and neutral in the face of evil. Gandhi's advice for Jews during the holocaust was to offer themselves to the butcher's knife. That said, Gandhi was brilliant in pioneering non-violent techniques for achieving social change. I think in this respect Gandhi should be seen as a man whose non-violence did great violence to the British colonial system.