It is that war draws intelligent, rational, decent people ineluctably into mimetic violence. Before they realize it, they are themselves doing and condoning acts of utter barbarity and feel unable to act otherwise. Violent revolutionaries, winning through violence, proceed to outlaw and repress their opponents, thus fostering disrespect for law, leading to counterrevolution and more violence. Once, when Gandhi was in jail, his followers held a celebration congratulating the British on arresting him. Redemptive violence still tends to be the methodology of choice of those in power, especially in undemocratic countries.
Violence is never a win-win strategy.
Wink cites examples from the tough love, which causes a battered woman to pull free and submit her husband to the justice system or enables the peaceful turnover of the government under the dictator, Marcos, in the Philippines. But the ultimate goal, he insists, is not victory but opening an aperture for God. It may involve suffering for both sides, but the nonviolent revolutionaries try to absorb the evil and its violence into their bodiesand to avoid inflicting it on others. To use violence against the dominating forces is to join them in their evil,to capitulate in perpetuating the cycle of violence. The revolutionaries, fighting the beast, in turn,become the beast.