Non-Violence: A History Beyond the Myth

Chapter 1: The Myth of Non-Violence

In the opening chapter of Non-Violence: A History Beyond the Myth, Domenico Losurdo challenges the idealized, romantic image of non-violence often propagated by modern liberal democracies and mainstream historiography. He begins not by dismissing non-violence, but by exposing the contradictions, silences, and selective memory that surround its narrative—particularly when applied to figures like Gandhi and movements in the West.

1. The Forgotten Tragedies of Non-Violence

Losurdo invites the reader to consider not only the tragic consequences of violent revolutions and wars but also those that have accompanied the non-violent ideal. He underscores that the non-violence tradition is not free of betrayals, disillusionments, and complicities. Just as wars for liberation or justice have sometimes led to terror and repression, so too have non-violent movements at times served to legitimate domination or suppress revolutionary urgency.

2. Tolstoy and the “End of Violent Revolution”

The chapter explores Tolstoy’s pacifist Christian vision, especially his belief—expressed in the early 1900s—that violent revolution had become obsolete. Losurdo notes the irony that, shortly after Tolstoy’s prophecy, the 20th century became an era marked by unprecedented violence: from World Wars to decolonization struggles. Tolstoy’s ideals, while noble, were historically invalidated by events such as the Russian Revolution and global anti-colonial conflicts.

3. Liberal Democracies and Mythic Non-Violence

Losurdo criticizes how liberal democracies co-opt the legacy of non-violence. Figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are celebrated, but only selectively. Their radical critiques of imperialism, racism, and capitalism are sanitized or omitted, while their moral commitment to non-violence is amplified—framing them as safe icons within a liberal narrative.

This depoliticization of non-violence, Losurdo argues, allows states to appear morally superior while continuing structural violence, such as economic exploitation, racial segregation, and imperial domination. For instance, the United States honors King as a hero of racial harmony while downplaying his opposition to the Vietnam War or his critique of American capitalism.

4. Violence as a Structural Reality

Losurdo insists that violence is not only physical or spectacular—it is structural, legal, and economic. Laws upholding slavery, segregation, and colonialism were enforced “non-violently” through institutions. Thus, the liberal state may claim peacefulness while perpetuating systemic forms of domination. This challenges the simplistic dichotomy between violence and non-violence.

5. Instrumentalization of Non-Violence

Another major theme is the instrumental use of non-violence by ruling elites. Losurdo shows how non-violence can serve as a tool of pacification: a way to maintain order, suppress insurrections, or preserve the status quo. He references how calls for non-violence were sometimes made to deflect or delegitimize more radical demands—especially those from colonized or racially oppressed peoples.

For example, in colonial India, British authorities preferred moderate reformist elements like the early Gandhi to more militant anti-colonial actors. The appeal to “non-violence” becomes less about ethics and more about neutralizing revolutionary momentum.

6. The Need for a Historical Approach

Throughout the chapter, Losurdo calls for a historical materialist re-reading of non-violence. Rather than treating it as a timeless moral truth, he sees it as a social and political phenomenon shaped by context. Who advocates for non-violence? In what conditions? Against whom is it deployed? Who benefits from it?

For instance, Gandhi’s evolution from an advocate for equal rights of Indian settlers in South Africa (at times emphasizing their Aryan lineage) to a broader anti-colonial figure, is not linear or pure. Likewise, Martin Luther King’s radicalization in his later years is often overlooked in favor of a pacified image of him as a dreamer of racial harmony.

Chapter 2: From Pacifist Abolitionism to Gandhi and Tolstoy (Expanded)

In this chapter, Losurdo excavates the intellectual and political genealogy of modern non-violence, revealing its roots in Christian abolitionism and its evolution through the writings of Leo Tolstoy and the activism of Mahatma Gandhi. Far from being a timeless doctrine, non-violence emerges as a historically situated practice—subject to internal tensions, racial hierarchies, and instrumental use by both reformers and ruling powers.

1. Abolitionist Pacifism: The Case of Garrison

Losurdo begins with William Lloyd Garrison, the American abolitionist whose unwavering commitment to pacifism coexisted with his fierce opposition to slavery. Garrison rejected all forms of coercion and war, including the American Constitution, which he called “a covenant with death.” He advocated “moral suasion”—converting public opinion against slavery through conscience, not violence.

Despite the radicalism of his language, his commitment to non-violence led him to disavow not only physical rebellion by enslaved people but also political action through institutions that could end slavery.

Losurdo sees in Garrison’s case the first great contradiction of modern non-violence: the tension between moral absolutism and political efficacy.

2. The Ethical Maximalism of Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, rejects not just war or revolution but any form of institutionalized coercion. He advocates a complete break with state institutions, capitalist society, and modern civilization itself, all of which he associates with systemic violence.

Tolstoy’s non-resistance to evil by force is rooted in a literal interpretation of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: “Resist not evil.” But Losurdo critiques Tolstoy’s vision as ethically pure but politically impotent. His philosophy works only where oppressors have the luxury of being moved by conscience.

Tolstoy’s lack of engagement with colonialism and economic exploitation also reveals a Eurocentric detachment.

3. Gandhi’s Synthesis: Between Tolstoy and the Masses

Mahatma Gandhi admired Tolstoy but dramatically revised his ideas. Gandhi developed satyagraha, or “truth-force,” a form of mass non-violent resistance that combined moral appeal with organized civil disobedience.

However, Gandhi’s early political career in South Africa was racially hierarchical. He invoked “Aryan” identity to claim superiority over Black Africans and sought Indian inclusion in the empire—not universal liberation.

In India, Gandhi’s non-violence became a disciplinary mechanism, curbing militant nationalist tendencies. Movements were called off after violence broke out, even if provoked by British repression.

4. Non-Violence and Political Control

Gandhi’s doctrine served not only ethical ends but also internal policing. Non-violence became a condition for political legitimacy, while revolutionary figures like Bhagat Singh or Subhas Chandra Bose were marginalized.

British authorities often preferred working with Gandhi over more radical currents, as his moral strategy posed less threat to imperial order.

Thus, non-violence functioned as a limiting framework—both for the aspirations of the oppressed and for the forms of resistance deemed acceptable.

5. Abolitionism Revisited: Violence and the Civil War

Despite the moral force of pacifist abolitionism, it was the Civil War that ended slavery in the United States. Figures like Frederick Douglass moved from pacifism to supporting armed struggle, seeing it as the only effective response.

For Douglass, freedom required force. He supported Black enlistment and praised Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

This shift reveals a recurring tension: when moral appeals fail, can violence be justified as liberation?

6. Who Is Allowed to Be Violent?

Losurdo highlights the unequal moral judgment of violence. State and imperial violence is seen as rational or necessary, while resistance violence is framed as irrational or dangerous.

This double standard is a mechanism of ideological domination. By defining legitimate resistance as only non-violent, dominant powers preserve their monopoly on force.

In this light, non-violence becomes not an ethical ideal, but a disciplinary doctrine used to marginalize insurgent tactics and reinforce power hierarchies.

Chapter 3: The Collapse of Reformism and the First World War

In this chapter, Losurdo investigates the response of the socialist and liberal movements to the cataclysm of the First World War. He reveals how the outbreak of war not only exposed contradictions in pacifist and reformist ideologies but also led to a profound crisis within the movements that had previously aspired to social transformation through peaceful means.

1. The Betrayal of Internationalism

Socialist movements had long proclaimed international solidarity and opposition to imperialist war. Yet in 1914, socialist parties in Germany, France, and Britain largely supported the war effort. They voted for war credits, joined governments, and justified participation as national defense.

This marked the collapse of internationalism. Reformist socialism fused with nationalism, revealing a deep contradiction between proletarian solidarity and state loyalty.

2. Liberalism and Imperial Hypocrisy

Liberal thinkers like Woodrow Wilson promoted pacifism and democracy, but in practice endorsed imperial domination and military intervention. Their pacifism was racially coded—meant for Europe, not the colonies.

This contradiction revealed liberalism’s dual role: reformer at home, conqueror abroad. Non-violence was celebrated in domestic politics but ignored or rejected when it came to maintaining imperial power.

3. The Crisis of Ethical Pacifism

Ethical pacifists such as Filippo Turati or Beatrice Webb attempted to reconcile moral principles with political necessity. Many eventually endorsed war, arguing it was defensive or redemptive.

Losurdo shows how moral absolutism collapses under the pressure of total war. Pacifism proved fragile, easily overwhelmed by nationalist and militarist ideologies.

4. The Contradictions of Socialist Reformism

The socialist commitment to reform through legal, institutional means led to complicity with the state—and thus, with war. Reformists like the German SPD sacrificed their anti-militarist stance for patriotism and respectability.

Losurdo critiques the illusion that the capitalist state could be peacefully reformed. In wartime, the state revealed its true character: a servant of militarism, capitalism, and empire.

5. Revolutionary Responses: Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Lenin

In contrast to the reformists, revolutionaries upheld internationalism. Liebknecht opposed war credits. Luxemburg denounced the war as a betrayal of socialism. Lenin called for transforming imperialist war into civil war and revolution.

The Bolshevik Revolution validated this position. It was a break from reformist accommodation and a reaffirmation of revolutionary anti-imperialism.

6. The Moral Ambiguity of Violence and Non-Violence

Losurdo challenges the moral binaries that demonize revolutionary violence while excusing systemic violence. Reformists who supported the war became complicit in mass slaughter. Revolutionaries who opposed it were cast as extremists.

Which is more violent: resisting with force or enabling a war that kills millions? The chapter forces a reevaluation of what ethical action means in a world structured by domination.

7. Empire, Race, and the Limits of Reform

Colonized peoples had long endured imperial violence. Yet European pacifists and reformers rarely spoke out against colonial oppression. Their silence revealed the racial limits of their ethics.

Non-violence was celebrated in Europe and denied in the colonies. This selective morality helped preserve empire while masking its brutality.

Chapter 4: Martin Luther King and the Limits of Non-Violent Emancipation

This chapter traces the rise of non-violence in the American civil rights movement, especially through the figure of Martin Luther King Jr., and interrogates the theoretical and political contradictions of this strategy when applied to racial liberation in the United States. Losurdo contrasts King’s strategy with other voices—especially Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon—and evaluates the co-optation, containment, and radical critiques of King’s legacy.

1. King’s Christian Universalism and Non-Violent Philosophy

Martin Luther King Jr. drew on Christian theology and Gandhian ethics to develop non-violent resistance grounded in moral appeal, civil disobedience, and redemptive suffering. His goal was integration and reconciliation, not rupture. This made his vision radical in method, reformist in goal, anchored in a belief that American democracy could ultimately deliver justice.

2. A Strategy for the Spectacle

King’s approach worked partly because it created moral spectacles: peaceful Black protestors facing brutal repression on camera. This imagery galvanized national and global opinion. However, Losurdo notes that this also meant Black suffering became central to the movement’s strategy, often overshadowing assertions of power or agency.

This reliance on visibility limited the movement’s forms of resistance and made Black rage or militancy appear illegitimate, even when state violence continued unchecked.

3. The Liberal Embrace—and Sanitization—of King

King was later embraced by the liberal establishment—but only after being sanitized. His later opposition to the Vietnam War and his critiques of capitalism and racism were erased. The state-friendly version of King turned non-violence into a national redemption story, rather than a radical critique.

This co-optation illustrates how non-violence can be depoliticized, used to affirm the moral superiority of liberal democracy while downplaying the systemic injustices it perpetuates.

4. Fanon, Malcolm X, and the Militant Rebuttal

Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X rejected King’s pacifism. Fanon saw colonialism as inherently violent and believed that counter-violence was necessary for liberation. Malcolm X emphasized self-defense and Black dignity, critiquing the idea that the oppressed must always be morally superior.

Losurdo uses these voices to show that non-violence is not universally applicable. In many contexts, it becomes a tool of containment, forcing the oppressed to obey rules made by their oppressors.

5. Violence, Legitimacy, and the Politics of Respectability

State violence—police brutality, war, poverty—is rarely moralized. But Black militancy is instantly condemned. This forces movements into a respectability politics where only calm, “civil” protest is acceptable.

Non-violence becomes a performance of innocence, demanded of the oppressed but not of the powerful. It risks becoming a disciplinary code rather than a tool of liberation.

6. Non-Violence as Strategy vs. Moral Doctrine

Losurdo distinguishes non-violence as a tactic from non-violence as a dogma. When strategic, it can be powerful. But when moralized, it can silence other forms of resistance.

A historical materialist approach recognizes that resistance takes many forms, and that non-violence, like any tactic, must be evaluated in its specific context—not treated as an ethical absolute.

Chapter 5: Ethics and Resistance — Bonhoeffer, Luxemburg, and the Tragedy of Action

In this chapter, Losurdo deepens his critical genealogy of non-violence by exploring the responses of various intellectuals and activists to fascism and totalitarianism. He interrogates the moral and political dilemmas faced by those who—while recognizing the ethical weight of non-violence—came to see violent resistance as necessary in the face of genocidal regimes and militarized state power. The chapter engages key figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and others, examining how they reconciled—or failed to reconcile—ethical pacifism with political responsibility.

1. The Bonhoeffer Paradox: Non-Violent Faith and Tyrannicide

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian pacifist, joined a plot to assassinate Hitler after concluding that inaction meant complicity in genocide. Though he believed violence was morally wrong, he accepted guilt to resist greater evil.

Bonhoeffer illustrates that non-violence, when absolutized, can become complicit with radical evil. His example shows that ethics must consider historical function, not just abstract intention.

2. Rosa Luxemburg and the Dilemma of Reform vs. Revolution

Rosa Luxemburg criticized both terrorism and reformist socialism. She warned that rejecting revolutionary violence could allow reactionary regimes to triumph, as reformists had done in World War I.

Her murder in 1919 by proto-fascists confirmed her insight: the refusal to resist can enable repression. Her commitment to mass democratic struggle included a recognition of the tragic necessity of confrontation.

3. Simone Weil and the Ethics of Force

Simone Weil, though sensitive to the corrupting nature of violence, acknowledged that refusing to fight Nazism would be worse. She believed violence, though tragic, is sometimes unavoidable to resist systemic evil.

Weil’s contribution lies in her tragic moral philosophy: one must act to stop injustice, even if the act scars the soul. Ethics, for her, meant accepting guilt without self-righteousness.

4. Political Action and Moral Responsibility

Losurdo argues that ethical action in history is rarely clean. Political responsibility may require violence, not out of malice but necessity. Pacifism, when made into a moral dogma, can lead to paralysis or complicity.

The true ethical challenge lies in accepting ambiguity, acting despite imperfection, and refusing to offload guilt onto those who resist tyranny.

5. The Rejection of Heroic Pacifism

Losurdo critiques “heroic pacifism”, which values moral purity above human lives. This worldview may admire non-resistance but ignore the structural violence it permits. It often demands the oppressed suffer quietly rather than resist.

Thinkers like Bonhoeffer, Weil, and Luxemburg embraced a tragic ethics of responsibility, where action is necessary despite moral cost.

6. Marxism, Violence, and the Struggle Against Fascism

Losurdo situates this debate in Marxist tradition. Fascism is the militarization of systemic violence. In such cases, revolutionary violence is not aggression but self-defense.

Marxists viewed violence as instrumental, not idealized. Their goal was to dismantle the structural violence of capitalism and empire—not to replicate it.

Chapter 6: Fanon, Gandhi, and King — Between Catharsis and Co-option

In this chapter, Losurdo brings three towering figures into dialogue—Frantz Fanon, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.—to dissect the different roles violence and non-violence play in the psychology and politics of emancipation. Through their theories and practices, he interrogates how violence functions as catharsis, how non-violence risks becoming a tool of control, and how liberation movements confront the dual task of confronting external domination and internal alienation.

1. Fanon: Violence as Psychological Liberation

Fanon argued that colonialism was not only physically violent but psychologically dehumanizing. Violence, in response, became a means of restoring agency and breaking colonial fear.

Losurdo clarifies that Fanon did not glorify violence but saw it as historically necessary under certain conditions—particularly when all other forms of resistance were suppressed.

2. Gandhi: Non-Violence with Limits

Gandhi’s ahimsa was both spiritual and strategic. He promoted non-violence as a powerful moral force, but also acknowledged that violence may be preferable to cowardice.

Losurdo underscores that Gandhi was often misrepresented—he was not a naïve idealist but a disciplined organizer, who understood the dangers of abstraction and the limits of pacifism in real-world struggle.

3. Martin Luther King Jr.: Between Gandhi and Fanon

King borrowed heavily from Gandhi but came closer to Fanon in his final years. He saw that legislation alone could not dismantle structural racism or economic exploitation.

King’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his support for the Poor People’s Campaign reveal a growing understanding that non-violence must challenge empire and capitalism, not merely segregation.

4. The Internalization of Violence (Expanded)

One of the most powerful insights shared by Fanon, King, and to some extent Gandhi, is that violence under systems of domination manifests not only externally, but also internally, in the psychic, emotional, and social life of the oppressed.

a. Fanon: The Psychological Wound of Colonization

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon explores how colonized individuals internalize racial inferiority, resulting in fractured identities, deferred dreams, and self-blame. In The Wretched of the Earth, he argues that anti-colonial violence restores self-worth, serving a therapeutic and symbolic function that helps break the internalized domination.

b. King: The Ghetto and Cycles of Despair

King noted that in the American ghettos, structural oppression led to self-destructive behavior. In Where Do We Go from Here, he argued that riots and unrest were the “language of the unheard,” expressing rage that had been socially repressed. Internalized violence, he insisted, was not cultural but systemic in origin.

c. Gandhi and the Ethics of Inner Discipline

Gandhi, while less focused on psychology, emphasized swaraj—self-rule—as both a political and internal process. Liberation required recovering inner strength and dignity, countering the spiritual erosion caused by colonialism. Non-violence was thus a form of personal and collective healing.

d. The Function of Internalized Violence in Systems of Control

Losurdo explains how internalized violence becomes a tool of elite rule. It suppresses resistance by redirecting pain inward—through addiction, fatalism, or blame. The oppressed come to see their suffering as deserved or inevitable, which weakens collective mobilization.

e. The Role of Resistance in Reversing Internalization

True resistance—whether violent or non-violent—must also target the psychological effects of domination. Non-violence rooted in dignity can be liberating, but if imposed dogmatically, it can reinforce passivity. Similarly, violence can catalyze empowerment, but must be connected to transformative aims or it risks becoming nihilistic.

Liberation, Losurdo argues, requires reconstructing the interior as well as dismantling the exterior.

5. The Risk of Co-option

Losurdo warns that non-violence is easily co-opted by liberal regimes. Gandhi and King were embraced only when their radical critiques were removed or neutralized.

Fanon, whose message cannot be domesticated, remains marginalized in mainstream discourse.

6. The Third World Dream

King and other radicals increasingly saw Black America as part of a global movement against empire. This “Third World dream” rejected assimilation and aimed instead at overthrowing global systems of domination.

Losurdo sees this shift as essential: liberation is not just inclusion—it is transformation.

Chapter 7: The Imperial Co-option of Non-Violence — Gandhi, Churchill, and the Weaponization of Morality

In this chapter, Losurdo analyzes the appropriation and weaponization of non-violence by imperial powers. He focuses on the British portrayal of Gandhi, especially by Winston Churchill, and explores how Western liberalism adapted the language of non-violence to discipline and discredit revolutionary movements, while hiding its own structural violence. The central argument is that non-violence was not only repressed but also rebranded—turned into a tool of imperial moral superiority.

1. Churchill’s Attack on Gandhi: Racism and Repression

Churchill famously called Gandhi a “malevolent fakir” and accused him of sedition and demagoguery. He saw Gandhi’s non-violence as subversive because it denied the empire moral legitimacy while denying it a pretext for repression.

Churchill’s response reflected colonial anxiety: a fear that moral resistance was more destabilizing than armed revolt.

2. The Inversion: Gandhi as Totalitarian

British elites framed Gandhi’s movement as totalitarian—arguing that it manipulated the masses with spiritual zealotry. This rhetorical move served to justify imperial repression and portray non-violent mass protest as dangerous and irrational.

Losurdo highlights how both violent and non-violent resistance were pathologized—any effective defiance was delegitimized.

3. The Liberal Rebranding of Non-Violence

After Gandhi’s death, Western liberals transformed him into a harmless saint, erasing his critiques of empire, capitalism, and industrial modernity. Non-violence was stripped of its radical content and turned into a symbol of moderate, gradual reform.

This reflects what Losurdo calls liberal de-fanging—a process of appropriating resistance icons while neutralizing their revolutionary edge.

4. A Tool for the Moral Superiority of the Empire

Non-violence became a geopolitical litmus test. Western powers embraced movements that used it safely and discredited those that did not. This selective embrace allowed them to appear morally superior while continuing to exercise global dominance.

Liberal states thus used non-violence as an ideological weapon—not to dismantle injustice, but to preserve control.

5. The Colonial Echoes of Moral Framing

Losurdo stresses that imperial powers always framed their violence as discipline, while casting resistance as fanaticism. Even Gandhi’s peaceful tactics were depicted as threatening to “order” and “civilization.”

This reflects a broader imperial pattern: moral superiority as a mask for systemic domination.

6. When Non-Violence Is Not Enough

Despite Gandhi’s success, Indian society remained stratified by caste, class, and religion. Liberation movements that embraced non-violence often struggled to achieve material justice if they lacked transformative goals.

Losurdo cautions that non-violence, if disconnected from structural change, can serve as a brake on revolution rather than a path to it.

Chapter 8: Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and the Imperial Politics of Non-Violence (Expanded)

In this chapter, Losurdo turns his critique of Western pacifist discourse toward the global fascination with Tibet and the Dalai Lama. He argues that the Western celebration of Tibetan non-violence is not rooted in a genuine commitment to peace or emancipation, but in Cold War strategy, orientalist nostalgia, and ideological opportunism.

1. The Cold War Recasting of Tibet and the Dalai Lama

After the Chinese Revolution and Tibet’s integration into the PRC, the West framed Tibet as a spiritual utopia under siege by communism. The Dalai Lama, following his exile in 1959, became a symbolic weapon in the Cold War, used to contrast “peaceful religion” with “violent atheism.”

This framing ignored historical reality, elevating Tibet to moral myth and denying the complexities of its society.

2. Erasing the History of Feudal Theocracy and Serfdom

Pre-1950s Tibet was a feudal theocracy marked by serfdom, clerical dominance, and brutal social hierarchies. The majority lived as bonded laborers under monastic and aristocratic rule.

Western narratives erased this past to cast Tibet as a paradise lost, allowing imperial powers to present themselves as defenders of civilization against communist barbarism.

3. The Dalai Lama’s Western Transformation

The Dalai Lama became a global moral icon, stripped of political complexity. His past ties to the CIA, nationalist claims, and internal Tibetan conflicts were all obscured.

His image as a non-violent sage was politically useful: it allowed the West to criticize China without challenging the global order or supporting revolutionary alternatives.

4. Orientalism and the Infantilization of Tibet

Losurdo draws on Edward Said’s concept of orientalism to show how Tibetans are framed as innocent, spiritual, and apolitical. This reduces them to passive subjects, aestheticized for Western audiences, and excludes their right to political self-definition.

Militant or radical Tibetans are marginalized; only pacified resistance is acceptable.

5. Comparing Tibet to Other Liberation Movements

While the West praised Tibet, it demonized revolutionary movements in Algeria, Vietnam, and Latin America—labeling them terrorists despite fighting real oppression.

This reveals the double standard of Western pacifism: it supports non-violence when it is geopolitically useful, and suppresses it when it challenges global power.

6. Human Rights as a Depoliticized Narrative

Tibet’s struggle has been absorbed into a depoliticized human rights discourse. The focus on religious freedom and moral dignity often obscures questions of land, class, and social justice.

Non-violence is praised as long as it doesn’t demand structural transformation or confront Western-backed inequalities.

7. The Danger of Symbolic Pacifism

Losurdo warns against symbolic pacifism: a politics that aestheticizes suffering and grants the West moral legitimacy without confronting its own imperial violence.

By embracing the Dalai Lama, liberal democracies cleanse their image—while continuing to support authoritarian allies and pursue militarized foreign policies.

Chapter 9: “Non-Violence,” “Color Revolutions,” and the Great Game

In this chapter, Losurdo shifts his critique of pacifism to the post-Cold War world, focusing on so-called “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. These uprisings—characterized by mass mobilization, youth protests, and symbolic appeals to democracy—were often presented as the triumph of civil society and non-violent resistance. But Losurdo argues they were deeply embedded in Western geopolitical strategy, guided by ideological manuals like Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy, and supported by a web of NGOs, intelligence operations, and media networks.

The core argument is that non-violence in this context was no longer the weapon of the oppressed, but a strategic tool of Western power projection. The chapter examines how “non-violent revolutions” were choreographed, the role of U.S. hegemony, and the illusion that these movements were spontaneous, grassroots expressions of democratic will.

1. Gene Sharp and the Manualization of Non-Violence

Losurdo begins by analyzing the role of Gene Sharp, whose book From Dictatorship to Democracy became a blueprint for opposition movements across the former Soviet bloc, including Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and beyond. Sharp outlined a form of “realistic non-violence”, which stressed strategic confrontation, institutional weakening, and the manipulation of media narratives.

But Losurdo points out that this form of non-violence explicitly includes economic warfare and psychological pressure, and sometimes even the threat or presence of military intervention. Far from Gandhi’s spiritual commitment to moral truth, this new doctrine was designed for regime change, backed by global military and financial systems.

2. The Contradiction of the “David vs. Goliath” Narrative

Color revolutions often depict themselves as small, idealistic Davids facing authoritarian Goliaths. But Losurdo flips this narrative: in many cases, these “Davids” had behind them the media, diplomatic, economic, and technological resources of the world’s most powerful hegemon—the United States.

He gives the example of Georgia’s Rose Revolution, where activists trained with Western NGOs and used symbols borrowed directly from the aesthetics of the civil rights movement and Gandhi. But this “non-violent” protest included the storming of parliament, and relied on external financial support and international political coordination.

Thus, what appeared to be grassroots democratic movements were in fact top-down political interventions, designed to produce governments more aligned with the Western geopolitical order.

3. The Problem of Coercion without Firearms

Losurdo insists that violence is not limited to guns and bullets. Economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, media manipulation, and regime destabilization can be equally violent—especially when they result in social collapse, economic hardship, and civil conflict.

These color revolutions, he argues, represent a new model of power projection: one that relies on the language of non-violence and democracy, but carries the same imperial logic as older forms of military intervention. Non-violence becomes a “weapon of the strong,” not the weak.

4. The Myth of Civil Society Autonomy

Western narratives frequently present civil society movements as independent from states, acting on behalf of “the people.” But Losurdo documents how many of these organizations are directly or indirectly funded by U.S. or European institutions—including the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, Soros foundations, and others.

He highlights the ideological contradiction: while the West denounces state interference in civil society abroad, it actively promotes and directs it when doing so serves its strategic interests. This is not grassroots non-violence—it is engineered soft power.

5. The False Juxtaposition with Gandhi

One of the symbolic pillars of these revolutions is the invocation of Gandhi. Losurdo critiques this as a fantasy projection. Gandhi was a revolutionary anti-colonial thinker whose mass movements sought not merely procedural democracy, but the radical transformation of empire, class, and modern civilization.

In contrast, Sharp-style revolutions are often about replacing one elite with another, within the same neoliberal global order. Losurdo writes that “to juxtapose Gandhi and Saakashvili [the leader of Georgia’s color revolution] is fanciful at best”.

6. The Tactical Use of “Non-Violent” Force

Non-violence in these revolutions is often strategic rather than ethical. Activists are trained in the optics of non-violence: using flowers, wearing symbols, staging photogenic sit-ins. But this does not mean the movements are peaceful in outcome.

Losurdo describes how some of these movements destabilized fragile states, led to authoritarian retrenchment, or provided justification for military responses and economic reprisals. In some cases, they triggered internal ethnic or political conflict. The consequences of these “non-violent” interventions were often violent and lasting.

7. From the Weapon of the Weak to a Tool of Empire

Losurdo concludes that non-violence, which once symbolized the resistance of the colonized, oppressed, and dispossessed, has now been partially appropriated as a method of imperial control. It is marketed as peaceful, but it is no less strategic, coercive, and violent in its outcomes.

By equipping opposition movements with this doctrine—combined with global media influence and economic pressure—Western powers can shape the political destinies of other countries without direct warfare, all while maintaining a rhetoric of democracy and peace.