In this interview ICNC speaks with Stellan Vinthagen, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Peace and Development at Goteborg University and University West in Sweden. He is also one of ICNC's academic advisors.  In this interview Vinthagen talks about how his family inspired him to learn more about nonviolent civil resistance and then begin engaging in this type of resistance himself.  He talks about how he blends his roles as both an academic and an activist and provides examples of actions that unite these two aspects of his life.  Lastly, he speaks about his experience working with and learning from the landless movement in Brazil and the various ways they have engaged in successful and strategic nonviolent civil resistance.

Interview:

Stellan Vinthagen (SV): I’m an associate professor of sociobiology and I think the sociological perspective with the theories within modern sociology today is actually a very good help for understanding civil resistance. In sociobiology we find a great field which is focusing on social movement studies and revolution studies. These things are very much of a benefit to us who are interested in civil resistance to connect to. They have insights that we could learn from, but also they need to understand nonviolent revolutions for example. Or nonviolent resistance as a strategy within social movements which is typically neglected within these fields. So I see all these possibilities within these areas. And I must say I like to be doing the combination of academic work and activist s work. Because I try to combine both.

How did you get involved with nonviolent resistance?

I think honestly I can say that I got drafted by my parents, my father was a conscientious objector. My grandfather was a soldier in the Swedish army and he went to prison because he was letting Jews into Sweden during the second world war and my mother has been hiding refugees within Sweden that are being threatened to be thrown out. So I normally blame my parents when I end up in prison for my different actions and I think the interest come from discussing Gandhi and nonviolent resistance from early childhood on. Actually my whole motivation to do academic work comes from my experience with activism. I’ve been involved in environmental movements and solidarity movement for refugees. In peace work against the Swedish weapon export, which is horrific, it’s one of the ten biggest in the world even though Sweden is often considered to be a peaceful country. And I’ve been working against nuclear weapons in former west German and in Britain. So I’ve been in prison for ovar one year in different countries.

How have you combined academic and activist work?

SV: So I was organizing a blockade at a nuclear base in Scotland, it’s the place where the British are having their nuclear Trident submarines. It’s one hour outside Glasgow. It was a blockade which was quite unusual I called for a conference where people would come from all disciplines, nuclear physics, sociology, anthropology, ecology, or whatever, to present their academic papers on their views on nuclear weapons Trident international relations and so on. But we didn’t have the conference at university in Glasgow, we had the conference on the street, in front of the base with people having name tags, we had a program, discussion groups, students taking part there were academics from about 50 countries around the world. And we were closing the base during our discussions of the nuclear weapons. So people were presenting their papers and standing on the street and we were discussing these analyses’ for example, depleted uranium, the use of depleted uranium in war and how that connects to the nuclear industry. There were other people presenting their papers on how civil disobedience has been helping to liberate countries from militarists and so on.

At the same time the police were around us not knowing what to do some of the police were interested in listening to the presentations but at the same time we were closing the base so they needed to take us away. So we got arrested while we were presenting our papers, or you could say scientific results. So in my view that was the perfect combination of academic analyzing and taking responsibility for the results of our research, taking it into action, that’s why I’m such a believer in the combination of being a scholar-activist because you have the privilege, and it is a privilege, you have the time to study and analyze but then also to go out in the world and practice it—use it.

Which nonviolent movements have inspired you?

SV: One of the groups that I really admire is the MST, the landless movement in Brazil. And they regularly have photos of Che Guevara in their homes and offices. But they know that if they take up arms they will be crushed and so they use civil resistance with very great success.

One of the things that I find really interesting that MST is doing is that they combine the two aspects that Barbara Denning was speaking about that nonviolence is a matter of using two hands, with one hand you say stop and with the other you say hello. So this combination of resistance but also to build up new relationships I think is a very powerful transforming tool.

So MST are struggling in a country as big as the whole of Europe or the United States it’s the most unequal place in the world together with south Africa today. If you look at the land distribution today it’s horrific, there are millions of people starving because of unfair land distribution some people own an incredible amount of land and not all of it is used. So what they do is bring together landless people to occupy the land as obvious resistance against an unfair unjust distribution of land. People that starve need land and the land is not used.

That’s the resistance to the structural violence of land distribution but what is then for me the most inspiring thing with MST is that when they occupy the land they’re not just satisfied with growing the land and using the land to get food which of course they’re interested in. what they say they do is try and build up the “New Brazil” on the land. So even if they’re being attacked regularly by the police or by the paramilitary groups from the land owners, and on average one person is killed every week and they are still peaceful for pragmatic reasons like I said. They immediately build in black plastic tents, schools for the children and they have a pedagogy which is different they want to teach them different things than what is being taught in Brazilian schools, and they try to grow the land in cooperatives, they use ecological methods, and they create a new way of creating development from below.

I visited them several times and this is so inspiring because you could say they use what they fight for, what they have as a vision, they use that as the tool to resist the injustice. So it’s not just sitting down on the land saying “we claim this land” it’s not just saying no to the injustice but saying yes to the vision. They are practicing the vision, and not just talking about it in a political program. But they materialize it on the ground with cooperatives, ecological farming, democratic decision making, all that. So for me, it’s such a strong way of doing civil resistance because you’re using what you’re fighting for in order to fight against the injustices.