Mainstreaming Nonviolence Toolbox: Building a World Where Everyone Matters

 This blog by Ken Butigan highlights ideas, books, videos, websites, projects, campaigns, organizations and individuals offering new directions for mainstreaming the power of nonviolent change.  Click here for more about mainstreaming nonviolence.

March 23, 2010:

Former Cold Warrior Pulls Back Curtain on Empire

I am a latecomer to Chalmers Johnson.  It was not until I read John Dominic Crossan’s book, God and Empire (HarperCollins, 2007) that I learned about this long-time Cold Warrior who had undergone a profound metamorphosis and has produced a series of books peeling back everything that hides the truth about the imperial musculature of his country. 

The Damascus moment for Johnson (who had served in the US military during the Korean War, was a consultant to the CIA,  authored numerous books, and rose through the ranks of academia to become a department chair at the University of California at Berkeley) was his awakening after the USSR collapsed.  He was stunned to see that, instead of demobilizing its forces, the US strengthened them, and has carried on with one war after another since then. 

Mainstreaming nonviolence must be grounded in a deep spiritual transformation – what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning

His intellectual honesty being what it is, he had to re-think everything.

The result is a trilogy of books that outline that the US empire is not rooted in colonies but what he names a “base world” – at least 750 bases around the planet that function to establish and maintain US military, political, and economic preeminence.  He is somber about the karma this entails – the equal and opposite reaction this base world sparks and the whirlwind it will reap.

Hence the weight and meaning of his three books: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire; The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic; and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

I have named “mainstreaming nonviolence” as the long-term process of creating a culture of justice, peace and well being for all using tools of nonviolent change.  It is not the process of creating a utopia.  Instead, it is a slow construction of an environment – a human “family system” – that entertains the nonviolent option as the default.

Building such a culture entails political, sociological, psychological, and artistic work.  But these must, in turn, be grounded in a deep spiritual transformation – what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning.  This is why I regard Johnson’s work as a critical step in a required existential therapy of our time.  It brings the reality with which we must contend into focus.

For Gandhi, Johnson’s chilling analysis would lead, first, to the question: In what ways have I propped this up?  What implicit or explicit consent?  What is it inside that has helped keep this going?

How are we supporting this?  And how do we loosen those chains inside – so that we may remove the pillars of support that keep such a policy in place?

Chalmers Johnson invites us to glimpse the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.  Gandhi then invites us to explore all the ways we have consented to and supported this macabre chirade.  It is through the uncomfortable but crucial work of untangling this that mainstreaming nonviolence begins.

Chalmers Johnson: Biography and Work

Chalmers Johnson: Article in The Nation

Chalmers Johnson: Video interview

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