Ward Churchill outlines how pacifism

in the US is connected to a practice

that poses no threat to the status quo

It gives the illusion that the state

gives a damn about liberal activism

- candlelight vigils, protest marches

and symbolic arrests

The more radical you think you are,

the more you need to reconsider

The Black Panther Party was founded in late 1966,

at the genesis of the Black Nationalist movement,

before the notion of “Black Power” had

fully replaced the theory of non-violence.

The liberal/social democratic complacent legions

of mostly well-educated middle and

upper middle class activists are "delusional"

Not only in the ineffectual tactics

and strategies they pursue

(which the ruling elites are only too happy

to accommodate as per a well-scripted minuet),

but in the belief that they are

actually performing revolutionary acts

Review of Pacifism as Pathology | By Ward Churchill

This short book outlines how pacifism in the US is connected to a practice that poses no threat to the status quo.

And gives the illusion the state gives a damn about candlelight vigils and symbolic arrests; that actively undermines people doing effective organizing and action against the state.

Ward Churchill underscores the urgency of situation today: the American empire sustaining its rule by exploiting and dominating the world, abroad and at home.

Understanding that, how can we categorically foreclose even the idea of the use of violence? And how can we blame the victims of state violence for being too militant?

This is a small but indispensable volume for anyone seriously interested in social change, and who sooner or later may have to consider the place of violence in the general scheme of things.

As the title implies, and wasting little time in preparing the audience for what will surely be a disturbing argument to many, the author lays out his case against white progressives.

Or, to be precise, the liberal/social democratic complacent legions of mostly well-educated middle and upper middle class activists.

They are deemed "delusional" not only in the ineffectual tactics and strategies they pursue (which the ruling elites are only too happy to accommodate as per a well-scripted minuet), but in the belief that they are actually performing revolutionary acts...

The crux of Churchill's argument—pretty hard to refute—is that mainstream liberals, and a sizeable contingent of self-defined "Leftists" (read here mostly social democrats) will do anything except assume actual risk in opposing the system.

And that, being mostly interested in practicing "comfort zone" politics, they will almost invariably indulge in essentially worthless "cathartic" posturing instead of solid opposition, all the while vociferously denouncing and browbeating those who would dare suggest more confrontational tactics, including general strikes, active resistance, and so on.

Thus the core of his polemic comprises two arguments:

1. That American pacifism has insinuated itself as the only and pre-eminent choice for social change and for oppositional strategies to the empire.

2. That such a strategy invariably leads to the cul-de-sac of liberalism:

American pacifism seeks to project itself as a revolutionary alternative to the status quo.

Of course, such a movement or perspective can hardly acknowledge that its track record in forcing substantive change upon the state has been an approximate zero.

[Hence]...a chronicle of significant success must be offered, even where none exists...

For proponents of the hegemony of nonviolent political action within the American opposition, time-honored fables such as the success of Gandhi's methods and even the legacy of Martin Luther King no longer retain the freshness and vitality required to achieve the necessary result.

As this has become increasingly apparent, and as the potential to bring a number of emergent dissident elements (.e.g., "freezers," antinukers, environmentalists, opponents to saber-rattling in Central America and the Mideast, and so on) into some sort of centralized mass movement became greater in the mid-80s, a freshly packaged pacifist "history" of its role in opposing the Vietnam war began to be peddled with escalating frequency and insistence.

Seeking to drive a stake through the heart of middle-class pacifism, Churchill goes on to detail (and rebuke) some of the main claims made by the peaceful legions.

Particularly, the almost universally accepted notion that it was the protests and demonstrations in the US that finally forced US policymakers to order a withdrawal from Vietnam.

Churchill refutes this conceit by noting that the war was lost in the field, which is undeniable, as the humiliating images of Americans escaping Saigon from the rooftop of the US embassy amply demonstrated.

Therefore it was first and above all a military defeat inflicted on the imperial armies (and their puppets) by the Vietnamese people that created the necessary conditions for a "pragmatic rethinking of the war" by its architects back in the imperial capital. Haven't we seen this terrible movie before?

The reason for the book thus lies in the utterly deformed political landscape presented by contemporary America, where the left, unlike any other in the developed capitalist world (except for the anglo-cultural zone nations that resemble it) has apparently adopted pacifism as the one and only method of "opposing" the empire.

Consistent with the pervasiveness of this view, and to justify such narrow policy, many US progressives have embraced a literal idolatry of nonviolence.

They have elevated the tactics and accomplishments of figures such as Ghandi and Dr. King to near infallibility, and believing (wrongly in the eyes of the author and this writer) that moral persuasion alone is capable of liquidating well-entrenched institutionalized violence and inequality.

Churchill believes that such extrapolations between entirely different cultures and historical epochs are wrong, since they fail to take account of the role played by defensive and revolutionary violence in history.

"The people in arms" both protect the masses and their leaders from the establishment's repression, or in securing its prompt departure from the scene once the tipping point has been reached.

The Clash of Change

Social change does not come cheap. Social change—real social change— is not a tidy affair, a "black-tie dinner" as Mao suggested, and yes, at this stage of our moral evolution as a species, power still issues from the barrel of the gun.

In the process things get messy, they get out of hand, awful mistakes are made on all sides, and eventually, if humanity is lucky, a good outcome claws its way to the surface.

It's the result of irrepressible forces clashing in millions of places at once, and acting out their contradictions until a new social synthesis is obtained.

And, in what some may regard as the ultimate irony, much of this process may escape the conscious choices made by the main actors.

In a grotesquely imperfect world riddled with hypocrisy, institutionalized violence, and the abuse of power, defensive force cannot be ruled out a priori as a rectification tool.

Especially, as history (most recently in Iraq) has repeatedly shown, the abusers, those who would rape a country or a society for their own gain, have no qualms in applying torrential amounts of violence on often defenseless populations.

A point that is often lost on rigid pacifists: the violence of the oppressed is not the moral equivalent of the violence of the oppressor.

Aggressor and victim are not in the same category. Even though when engaged in combat they may be superficially similar, they inhabit different universes. Wrap your mind around that, if you can, and some of the death grip, the self-inflicted paralysis attending this topic, may begin to relax.

I could go on, but if you're a liberal I'm afraid the lessons of history will matter far less than attachment to convenient fantasies. Patrice Greanville @ Cyrano's Journal