I Have No Enemies: Vinland Saga and the ethics of political nonviolence

Content Warning: State violence, PTSD, racism, assassination, slavery

Spoilers for all of the Vinland Saga anime

At the end of Vinland Saga’s first season, Thorfinn loses everything. His enemy defeated by another, he is captured as he attempts to reclaim his revenge. His knife, given to him by his father—who taught him “you have no enemies”—falls to the ground, and in its reflection he sees all that has come before: all of the violence, all of the cruelty, all of the lost possibilities to change, all of the terrible choices he made to continue to commit the atrocities of war. All of it revealed in a moment to be meaningless. All of it rendered kuu, or empty.

This is, as the story tells us, “The End of the Prologue.” All of the violence and loss does we not define Thorfinn, but in its emptiness, reveals the path forward. Stripped of the meaning of his life, he must strive to find a new project outside of being an agent of state violence. He can no longer hide from accountability, nor lie to himself any longer. The music swells. It bursts, in fact, with triumph. Thorfinn will be made new, and to do so, he must leave violence behind.

For a long time, I have struggled with nonviolence as a political project. As a Buddhist, I am drawn to it as a matter of my own moral awakening. I have spent many years suffering because of a sense of rage that I have found ineffective for sustaining real activism—and have found the practices of nonviolence articulated by Buddhist activist Thích Nhất Hạnh and Martin Luther King Jr. instrumental in my own moral development situated very particularly in my practice as an educator. After all, I cannot bring a spirit of righteous fury to a classroom full of children and expect good things to happen.

Simultaneously, nonviolence can feel almost laughable in the face of ICE agents shooting mothers, foreign leaders getting illegally kidnapped, the literal concentration camps being opened on US soil, the scale of mass incarceration, and every other iteration of state violence. Why, one might ask, would we allow the government to maintain its monopoly on violence, since ending state violence is at this point not a demand that can be realized? Even as I am influenced by Thích Nhất Hạnh and Martin Luther King Jr, I am deeply aware that Hạnh’s pressure on Kibg to speak out against the imperialist Vietnam War likely contributed to him being killed.

Vinland Saga seems deeply aware of this tension between the power of nonviolence as a political project and the absurdity of it in the face of the overwhelming brutality of the state. It is tempting to dodge the questions of morality and nonviolence by talking about it as merely a tactic rather than a full moral philosophy of resistance. Vinland Saga stridently resists this. Vinland Saga textually situates its character’s actions within quite explicit ethical and religious frameworks, exploring through imagery Norse mythology’s engagement with violence and Christian theologies of love as nondiscrimination. On a metatextual level, a Buddhist lens can help elucidate Thorfinn’s moral transformation, particularly when looking at the relationship between Buddhist and Christian philosophies of nonviolent resistance as bodhisattvas and (unwilling) martyrs. In this way, Vinland Saga is a penetrating and valuable text for us to think through our own relationships with nonviolent resistance as members of a collective struggle for a world free of state violence.

Universalism and Roots of Non-discrimination

Core to the philosophy of nonviolence in Vinland Saga is the critique of love as discrimination. Thorfinn spends the entire anime learning the lesson his father Thors taught him: “I don’t have any enemies.” This is an idea that is woven throughout Vinland Saga, articulated by many different characters and which ultimately gives Thorfinn the clarity to be able to fully embrace a practice of nonviolent resistance.

Williband, the Christian priest, most powerfully articulates this vision of the world. Williband is largely a figure of comedy, a man who becomes an alcoholic to cope with the stress of being taken prisoner and spends almost every moment onscreen drunk. This does not mean that we aren’t supposed to take what he says seriously, however—his framing largely mirrors the view of the Vikings around him, who jeer at him and mock him for his religious beliefs. Once Prince Canute comes to him, seeking solace after the death of his guardian Ragnar, we see Williband as the Christian Canute sees him: a wise and humble mentor. Williband tells him something quite disturbing: that Ragnar did not love him, that the feeling Ragnar felt was discrimination. He describes discrimination as the act that allows a person to “fawn over a king while whipping a slave”—the willingness to be cruel to one person while protecting and prioritizing another.

Discriminatory love is the language of the carceral state. When society decides a group of people is disposable, whether they are undocumented immigrants, people in poverty, Black people targeted by the carceral state, or trans women forced to the margins of society, it is often with the framework of protection. We must protect American jobs from undocumented immigrants. We must protect hard workers from those who want to steal their taxes to use for welfare payments. We must protect the good white people from the scary Black criminals. We must protect the good “real” women and children from the pedophile trans women. These are all the discourses of a society that is decadent, stricken, and dying.

Yet, of course, the violence that is done to some will be done to all as the rich and powerful consolidate their power and repress the rest of us in the imperial boomerang: Alex Pretti, who possesses none of the identities usually labelled disposable, was shot dead because he did not agree to the disposability of his neighbors. Discriminatory love is a form of delusion.

To resist these delusions is a foundational belief to both Buddhist philosophies of love and Christian liberation theologies. Thích Nhất Hạnh, who Buddhists affectionately refer to as Thay, talks in his writing about how once we learn to see ourselves in others, the path of peace becomes inevitable, because the self does not exist as a separate entity–this is the meaning of kuu, or emptiness. When we harm others, we harm ourselves. In fact, an embrace of emptiness leads to a critique of nationalism itself: “If America is made only of non-American elements, then the American citizen is made up of non-American elements…There’s no such a thing called an American self.” 

This critique of nationalism led Thích Nhất Hạnh to create Engaged Buddhism and become one of the most prominent anti-war activists during the Vietnam War. Thay was exiled from his native home of Vietnam because of his refusal to support the war, even as he believed profoundly in Vietnam’s need for independence. Thay also corresponded extensively with Martin Luther King Jr., exchanging ideas on the power of nonviolence and socially engaged religion to be a force for social justice in the world. These conversations and King’s resulting public denunciation of the war in Vietnam helped to turn the tide of public opinion against the war.

Thorfinn’s father, Thors, resists discriminatory love when an escaped slave arrives on his doorstep. He chooses to buy the slave’s freedom in spite of the largely impractical cost. His act in this moment parallels Lief Erikson’s search for Thorfinn, where he repeatedly buys slaves named Thorfinn and adopts them even when they turn out not to be our protagonist. He and Thors both understand that no person deserves to be enslaved, and so any act of resistance to enslavement they can afford is worth doing.

Thorfinn becomes the inheritor of this legacy, deciding to create a place where all those who are rejected and oppressed by an enslaving, violent, colonial society can be safe and secure. He confronts Canute about his embrace of discriminatory love, reminding him that while many may be protected by his rule, some will inevitably be cast out and thrown to the margins of society or enslaved. To create a true beloved community, no one can be cast out or left behind. Thorfinn’s is an abolitionist vision, of a world without some being sacrificed at the mantle of the prison, enslavement, or endless conquest to create stability and order.

Martyrs and Bodhisattvas: Nonviolence, Self-Sacrifice and Leadership

Nonviolence often functions as a provocation. Martin Luther King Jr. stated that its goal is to make life so stressful for the oppressor that they have to change policies, or else society itself will grind to a halt. 

This is the nonviolence that blocks a bridge in Selma, Alabama, knowing full well it will provoke the state siccing its dogs on you. It is also the nonviolence that says “So what?” when the police put one in prison for one’s activism. It uses one’s own brutalization as a sort of reverse-propaganda of the deed by making a spectacle of one’s principled refusal to cede ground even when being brutalized by police, at threat of firebombing, or being put in prison. It is intensely self-sacrificing, all with the intent to show the world the brutality of the oppressor and the principled strength of the person making demands.

Thorfinn’s final act in Season 2 of Vinland Saga is a case study of this approach. Refusing to leave and taking up the army’s mocking offer to take a hundred blows to speak to Canute, Thorfinn uses all he has learned as a hardened warrior to take the blows with as little injury as possible. His astonishing strength and resolve, even as he is being brutalized, at first draws mockery and incredulity. However, eventually his attacker becomes exhausted and can no longer continue to punch him. At a certain point, the forces of state violence become exhausted and demoralized.

At first, his friend Einar is shocked at Thorfinn’s choice to not fight back. He questions if this is an approach that one can take for the entirety of one’s life, constantly “enduring” and not fighting back. I take Einar’s questioning very seriously. To continuously endure terrible, performative suffering to even have a seat at the table is of ambiguous dignity depending on one’s perspective. There is a dignity in no longer allowing the state to maintain a monopoly on violence, to reclaiming the full spectrum of one’s humanity rather than forcing one’s self to be a martyr or a Christ-like figure. 

The show seems deeply aware of the possibility for those who labor for a less violent world to be killed brutally and spectacularly in a way that is ultimately empty of any inherent meaning. Thorfinn’s father is killed in front of him for the crime of deserting the viking forces, and his death ultimately drives Thorfinn to extreme measures of cruelty that Thorfinn must spend his entire life unlearning. The spectacle of brutality can very well not radicalize one towards liberation, but towards learning the tools of the oppressor.

There is a questionable power to the spectacle of one’s self being brutalized–there is a disturbingly high chance that the spectacle of violence could easily fall prey to what Saidiya Hartman calls “precariousness of empathy and the uncertain lines between witness and spectator.” To bring it to a US context, our country has made the many deaths of completely innocent Black people, even children, at the hands of police–and those who would self-deputize themselves into a killing squad–as ubiquitous as a lynching postcard. Brutality, when made spectacle, arguably becomes normalized or even made a site of libido. We see with the many disturbing white conservative reactions to the death of Renee Good, seeming to relish in the murder of a white lesbian woman who they could imagine as their annoying SJW sister or aunt, or the woman who denied them sex because they are too off the deep end.

Because of his father’s death, Thorfinn knows very well the danger inherent in his choice to take one hundred blows. Though his father became a martyr, Thorfinn intends to be what we call in Buddhist philosophy a Bodhisattva: somebody who is dedicated to the path of liberation and enlightenment for all sentient beings, often putting off their own full entrance into nirvana until all others have attained enlightenment.

Thorfinn came to understand through his struggles with PTSD that he cannot liberate himself while trying to distance himself from his past. He must recognize the karma of his actions and how his words create the “meaning and measure” of his life, and act accordingly. As we see in his PTSD nightmares, for himself to be liberated he must pull all those around him, especially those he killed, with him into liberation also. To kick others off of him as he drags himself out of the delusion of Ragnarok is to be cast back into it himself. To do this, he must survive, and incredibly skillfully, as if he should die now the balance of karma of his life would be distinctly negative. There is no salvation or forgiveness in death in Buddhist teaching, only accountability through karma. Thorfinn must act in this lifetime for his life to have the meaning he intends. Knowing the preciousness of the time he has, Thorfinn becomes a very particular model of Bodhisattva: a boatman carrying himself and others to liberation.

The scene of a hundred blows is a testament to his dedication to bringing everybody with him to enlightenment. Through his strength gained through all of his years of fighting, originally evacuated of meaning and rendered empty but given new understanding through his enlightenment, Thorfinn is able to show all those around him a path forward. Triumphantly, after receiving the last blow, he says to all those who dare listen: “I have no enemies.” In doing so, he forces the viking soldiers around him to recognize their complicity in brutality, and their fundamental weakness of spirit. In choosing people to cast out, kill, or enslave, they cannot be proud unless they cast somebody down. The delusion of Ragnarok, the delusion of liberation through battle, was for a moment dissolved enough for him to speak to King Canute.

Coda

We might understand that we do not have a choice between being a martyr and being a Bodhisattva. One can only think of the Episcopal priests told to prepare their wills before going to direct actions against ICE, or all those in Black nationalist movements who died during the bombings and shootouts with the police. We work in the struggle knowing that its full fruition will likely be beyond the time we are alive to see it.

When I got to meet and interview Matoko Yukimura, the creator of Vinland Saga, I was deeply suffering. Finding the will to continue fighting for liberation in the school system was draining me of all energy, of all will to continue struggling. At the time, I was enacting my liberation struggle unskillfully, erratically—almost daring the education system to do something to punish me, with little to show for it.

I’ve come to a place where I understand now the skill necessary to be a true Bodhisattva, largely through meditating on Thorfinn’s journey. I’ve thought over and over again of the image of him pulling himself and all those he killed out of Ragnarok. We cannot be cruel to those lost in the spell of delusion. Liberation for all means enlightenment for all sentient beings–nobody left behind.

Thích Nhất Hạnh, in one of his last conversations with Martin Luther King Jr., said to him: “Martin, do you know something? In Vietnam they call you a bodhisattva, an enlightened being trying to awaken other living beings and help them move toward more compassion and understanding.” Shortly after this, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Thay’s work over the course of years would become less radical as he became more and more invested in spreading Buddhism throughout the West through his Plum Village monastery in France—by focusing overmuch on oppressors forgiving themselves, he would lose much of his early works’ rigor as his audience skewed towards the very people who had colonized Vietnam. At times, his late writing often reads like he is admonishing oppressed people for holding any kind of anger, and turning nonviolence into respectability politics, condemning those who would consider militant resistance or decolonial war out of hand.

However, the spirit of radicalism that drove the early correspondences between Thay and MLK can be seen as of a kind with the friendships between Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X, or between Grace Lee Boggs and the Black Power movement: the building of solidarity through intentionality, always aware of the danger involved. The spirit of this radicalism is carried on in the work of many Black Buddhist practitioners, like Lama Rod Owens, whose work Love and Rage was one of the most important texts I read on my path towards healing.

The problem of nonviolence-as-respectability politics is ultimately a question of dignity: When one is already suffering, how much more suffering can one take on, even in the service of liberation? There are very real consequences to this expectation, as our work to protect and help our communities can easily be co-opted by the state, rending us into captive maternals whose labor and care work just buttresses the state we are working within and against for liberation. 

This is why disruption must be the heart of nonviolence. Nonviolence must be destabilizing, must confound and resist the functioning of the state that harms us. To pull everybody else into liberation is a process that requires constant struggle.

Each time I feel exhausted by the struggle for liberation, I think back to what Yukimura told me. After a long interview touching on our need to confront the violence within ourselves and embracing emptiness as a step towards liberation, I told him that his work, to me, is connected to the long lineage of nonviolent activists, and that his work has enriched and enlivened my understanding of nonviolence. He then said about the path of nonviolence: “I’ll do my best. Let’s do it together.”

On some days, that is all we can do, our best. We can work to move skillfully, resist meaningfully and notice when we are possibly encouraging voyeuristic pleasure at our suffering and when we are engaging in true disruption that forces witness, recognition of complicity, and principled action to end suffering. Nonviolence cannot be a balm or comfort–it must be one’s body thrown into the gears of state violence. Which, in a strange way, is its own comfort–that all of the ways we disrupt the violence of the state have karma, even if we don’t see it in our lifetime.