{"id":82459,"date":"2016-11-07T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82459"},"modified":"2016-11-05T14:14:52","modified_gmt":"2016-11-05T14:14:52","slug":"the-kapp-putsch-and-modern-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/the-kapp-putsch-and-modern-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kapp Putsch and Modern Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nagler-michael\"<\/a>Nonviolence in Today’s USA
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

5 Nov 2016 – <\/em>On March 13, 1920, right-wing elements of German society along with some military units, particularly the Freikorps, <\/em>or volunteer corps, smarting from the humiliating conditions imposed by the victorious allies at Versailles, and alarmed by the mildly democratic policies of the year-old Weimar government, staged a Putsch <\/em>(coup) in Berlin, led by Wolfgang\u00a0Kapp\u00a0and Walther von L\u00fcttwitz. The\u00a0Kapp-L\u00fcttwitz\u00a0Putsch\u00a0was a resounding failure \u00be in one respect.<\/p>\n

Kapp quickly declared himself Reichskanzler (sound familiar), but the Weimar leadership, already partly in exile, called on all Germans to strike.\u00a0 The resulting general strike was so effective that the putschists simply could not rule the country. \u00a0In three days they themselves were in exile, or prison.\u00a0 The successful resistance has long held an important place in the canon of successful nonviolent actions catalogued by Gene Sharp in his pioneering works on nonviolence. \u00a0Though it was marred by some fighting (and had a violent aftermath, as communists and labor unions tried to take over) it was in fact a classic example of the power of civil resistance to protect a democratic order from takeovers or invasions.<\/p>\n

But that was not the end of the story.\u00a0 One putschist who had been flown in to Berlin to participate keenly watched the chaotic events unfold.\u00a0 His name was Adolph Hitler.\u00a0 He admired the energy and ruthlessness of the Freikorps,<\/em> with their swastika-marked helmets, and noted the putsch leaders\u2019 mistakes (including timing).\u00a0 Before long he set about appealing to the same anger Kapp and the others had manipulated, only more effectively, and played heavily on the ruthlessness.\u00a0 By 1935 he could triumphantly declare, Ich habe in f\u00fcnfzehn Jahre die Deutsche Nation geretted, durch meinen fanatischen Wille: \u2018<\/em>I have rescued the German nation in fifteen years through my fanatical will<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

There are two lessons from these chaotic events that we, too, can learn; in fact, we ignore them at our peril.<\/p>\n

One. <\/strong>\u00a0It definitely can happen here.\u00a0 While our democratic institutions are far more robust than those of the fledgling Weimar republic, which itself had been installed by a recent revolution, they are weakening under attacks now from all sides.\u00a0 If Donald Trump fails to win the presidency next week, by the grace of God, he has nonetheless gained shocking support, and done so by appealing to precisely the same unspecific\u00a0 indignation, xenophobia, scapegoat logic and inflated egos as Kapp and his \u201cconservative\u201d backers \u00be not excluding the same dark hints of violence.\u00a0 If our democratic institutions are stronger than those of the fledgling German republic, our general culture is if anything more violent, thanks to the development (and abuse) of modern mass media \u00be and the flood of weapons.\u00a0 Trump is failing at least in part, maybe entirely, because he is not the fanatical, ruthless, inhumane personality Hitler was \u00be but who\u2019s to say such a maniac could not appear next?\u00a0 We have had the shot across the bow of our democracy.<\/p>\n

Two.\u00a0 <\/strong>Nonviolence is the way out.\u00a0 But nonviolence cannot simply mean you wait for the putsch to happen, then rush out into the street and non-cooperate.\u00a0 That is a stopgap \u00be if it works.\u00a0 It has to mean a complete overhaul of the cultural factors that have led to our putting more fellow citizens in prison per unit population than any comparable democracy, having more guns than people and a higher rate of murder or suicide by orders of magnitude, a larger military budget than most of the world\u2019s countries put together<\/em>, and a foreign policy apparently incapable of any response but endless war.\u00a0 Throw in an addiction to media violence that indoctrinates the minds of children from the earliest ages, and the picture is not reassuring.<\/p>\n

What is <\/em>reassuring is that nonviolent alternatives to all these factors are already present, across the board.\u00a0 \u00a0Economically and socially alternative communities are springing up all over, along with a sprinkling of \u201cpublic benefit\u201d corporations that work to a far more humane and inclusive bottom line and often are democratically owned, or at least managed, like Berrett-Koehler publishers, like Kickstarter<\/a>, to mention two examples.\u00a0 Nonviolence is slowly being recognized as a subject for research and education (189 U.S. schools at various levels have peace studies programs, at last count, and thousands have at least one peace\/nonviolence course).<\/p>\n

Civil resistance is being more often and sometimes more accurately practiced, as we\u2019ve seen here from Occupy to Standing Rock, with many episodes in between that are not cited by the media. \u00a0As nonviolence scholar Erica Chenoweth told me recently, \u201cnonviolence is the technique du jour <\/em>for uprisings now.\u201d \u00a0And not just uprisings.\u00a0 A worldwide institution called Unarmed Civilian Peacemaking (or Civilian Protection, in any case UCP), descended from Gandhi\u2019s concept of a Shanti Sena<\/em> or \u2018peace army,\u2019 is operating in some of the most dangerous pockets of global violence \u00be yes, including Syria \u00be and to very good effect.\u00a0 UCP has been seriously discussed at the UN and received substantial support from some European governments (not American).<\/p>\n

And for the long term, perhaps this may be the most important of all: freethinking media, like what you\u2019re reading right now.\u00a0 We should be learning about and supporting all these inspiring developments. \u00a0What they\u2019re up to, and why it\u2019s working, has to be far better known and far more systematically developed; otherwise we might be heading for a particularly nasty case of history repeating itself.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Professor Michael N. Nagler is the President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and the author of <\/em>The Search for a Nonviolent Future.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nonviolence in Today’s USA – Nonviolence cannot simply mean you wait for the putsch to happen, then rush to the street and non-cooperate. It has to mean a complete overhaul of the cultural factors that led to our putting more citizens in prison than any other democracy, having more guns than people and a higher rate of murder or suicide, a larger military budget than most of the world\u2019s countries put together, and a foreign policy incapable of any but endless war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonviolence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}