I wouldn’t say this is empty words but it is, to put it no higher than, a convenient argument. As an account of black people getting equal rights, it conveniently omits the Civil War. As an argument based on what works, it ignores the times non-violence did not work. As a moral stance, he doesn’t apply it to America’s response to 9/11.

But whatever one thuinks of Obama’s raising of it in this speech, there is an important discussion to be had about doing politics non-violently, not in Palestine and in some other Middle Eastern contexts, as well as more widely.