Pacifism as Pathology
CHURCHILL, WARD with RYAN, Mike

AK Press
paperback
ISBN: 9781904859185
£8.00

Pacifism, the ideology of nonviolent political resistance, has been the norm among mainstream North American (and UK) progressive groups for decades. But to what end? Ward Churchill challenges the pacifist movement's heralded victories - Gandhi in India, 1960s anti-war activists, even Martin Luther King's civil rights movement - suggesting that their success was in spite of, rather than because of, their nonviolent tactics.

Pacifism as Pathology was written as a response not only to Churchill's frustration with his own activist experience, but also to a debate raging in the activist and academic communities. He argues that pacifism is in many ways counter-revolutionary, that it defends the status quo rather than leading to social change. In these times of upheaval and global protest, this is a vital and extremely relevant book.

Churchill's uncompromising and outspoken argument is a hugely useful tool in seeking to clarify your opinion on this emotive and vital topic. This edition includes a new preface by Derrick Jensen as well as the earlier one by Ed Mead and an essay from Mike Ryan.

This is clear intervention by the state. They want to provoke peaceful people into violence. I can see on Indymedia how much support Brian Haw has after he was punched by policemen. If Brian Haw was throwing petrol bombs he would not have any sympathy from people that count.

Once people are violent it makes perfect excuse for authorities to crack down on protest heavily. See how long it is before tear gas and water cannons are set loose. You cannot win using violence against the state, they have much bigger force. But however, win the hearts of ordinary peaceful people, only then will the state be defeated.

A meeting promoting violence at a Quaker house. Do the Quakers know that they are hosting someone promoting violence?

Anyway, unmandated violence is terrorism. What great social change has violence ever brought about in Europe? Every violent uprising was capitalised by a few and turnd to more of the same shit see.

I think it's good this debate is happening, but I think violence is hardly ever an appropriate political tactic in our context.

the bradford riots are perhaps the only time since the poll tax when there has been any value in it. unless it is rooted in and emerges from the wider society then it's just an expression of impotence. making the argument that we're all cogs in a violent system doesn't solve the major weakness of the movement: that we are not rooted in wider social struggles. the solution to that is better organising, and a better vision.

I've seen too many small activist efforts have to take place in two parallel even smaller efforts because of different attitudes to non-violence to think it's worth getting bogged down in this.

We must be prepared to defend the revolution, but revolutions do not start due to violence they start due to the will of the people. In Russia the February revolution in Petrograd-St Petersburg that happened before the Bolshevik revolution enshrined Lenins dictatorship in October was led by the people against the war&tsar. People used strikes & demos which were well defended, soldiers & police joined the succesful uprising.
In Spain the Spanish civil war & revolution happened because the Republic popular front had been voted in by people including the pragmatic CNT, Franco with some help sadly from MI6 got to N.Africa & raised a muslim-catholic army supported massively by Nazi Italy & Germany. Defence of the republic & revolutionary areas was v necessary & if Britain & France had no embargoed arms for the republic even Churchill admitted we could have stopped fascism there& then.

There is nothing wrong with self defence or overthrowing repressive regimes with people power, but the acts connected to anarchists at the turn of the last century such as the assasination of US presidents & european kings it can be argued led to state having more excuses for repression. In many assasinations anarchists were not involved like the Reichstag firestarter, but our movement was connected as there were those who supported it. The "anarchist" who shot President McKinley was a member of the Republican party & Emma Goldman denounced association.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed

The assasination of Aldo Morro & Bologna bombings were used in 1970's Italy to crack down on the revolutionary movements & its since been shown they were organised with help& or planned by the "anticommunist guerilla"black op, Gladio network run by NATO with ex Nazis.

Violent Propaganda of Deed is dumb!
Pacifism in the face of violence is often even dumber!
Self defence, strategic workers strikes are necessary, smashing windows of banks & mcdonalds on demos can be great for letting off steam, but its not v.revolutionary.

We need a takeover, to stop a corporate class prepared to keep pushing global warming & replace workers with clones & cyborgs for personal profit. Propaganda of the deed is not a sensible way of doing this.

We need more organised protests against & exposure of the corporate classes private & undemocratic meetings like the Trilateral Commission set up a year before the G8, the global sister organisation of the caucasian EU-US Bilderberg group. They hold the real power over corporatism's stockmarkets,banks & federal reserve, not governments.

When people act in a concerted, committed and cohesive manner, then violence is unneccessary. The muscle of the people, united, is far greater than that of the STATE.

A million people, acting together, supporting each other, could bring all the war bases in the UK to a complete halt, without any violence.

A million people acting together could close Parliament, and no amount of police or military force could sway them if they so chose nor would the STATE (those in Government) attempt to do that in the light of such a determined action by that many people - for that would be their death-knell. They and their sponsors, the elites would be swept aside. The people will NOT ever allow the state to go that far.

The STATE knows this, and that is why they always have and always will seek to 'stimulate' violence via covert operatives, when there are marches, or other actions, to undermine the argument of those protesting and to dissuade others, who might help, from taking up the work of change; that is why they seek to divide movements that emerge, and that is why they seek to hand control of media etc to fewer and fewer entities.

They are happy that there's a climate change movement and a stop war movement - two seperate groups who do not see that their aims are essentially the same.

STOPPING THAT WHICH CAUSES HARM.

The STATE and the ELITES rule in EUROPE, at least, if not mostly elsewhere, by smoke and mirrors. The days of violent Kings with bloody mercanaries to force rule upon people have gone forever in Europe.

That is why the GOVT. also are slowly chipping away at civil liberties, and why the GOVT. and CORPORATIONS have been slowly driving the UK people into DEBT over the past 25 years or so. That is why the GOVT. and CORPORATIONS destroyed the Trade Union movement.

To ensure that a mass ofpeople could not unite, peacefully and exercise that huge muscle.

The argument about violence/non-violence is divisive.

The discussion we need to have is about how to unify all the various groups into one people, one family seeking to protect each other, and each others children? How can we see that our needs, our concerns, our futures are so interdependent and linked that we act together, that we will take the blows for each other, if they come?

Thats the discussion that will put the shits up the ELITES. That is the discussion that will excite the youth.

for all of you giving out about Peter Gelderlooses tour/ book. I suggest you go to his info evening near you and hear what he had to say and read his book
I saw him speak twice in Holland last year and have read his book, and find his Ideas brilliant, and to be exactly what the global anti capitalist movement needs at this moment if we are to ever over throw the State(s)

This book is not well researched. Many of it's examples of the failure of Nonviolence are not investigated.I wrote th eforward to the authors book on consensus and trie dto get the publisher to ask him to see that he missed the boat on some of the basic consepts of consensus. He may mean well but he is misguided. For example Voting is Never part of the process of consensus. Falling back on voting to speed up the process can disempower the group and makes it less likely that the out come will reflect the true feelings of the group.

I have been involved in radical social change for over 30 years. The state wants our movement to believe that violence works so they can fight us on their terms. Nonviolent direct action is much more empowering then armed resistance. The state wants us to start using violence so our movement will start infighting and maybe even start killing each other because of the perinoia it creates. On the other hand the state wants us to take violent action.

I know from direct experiance the power of nonviolent resisitance and the folly of using violence. I worked with the Weather Underground and in coalition with the Black Panthers. (Consider watching the movie "Weather Undergound" to get a good idea of the folly of using violence.) There is nothing more disempowering then using violence for political ends drawing violent attacks by the state against your friends and seeing your co-activists sit decades in prison. I have had friends killed by the state. I have also experiance the change possible through taking nonviolent direct action.

In 1978 and 79 I worked against the draft in Boston. A small group of members talked about armed resistance at every meeting. At first I thought it was funny but after a few months our meetings went from 50 or more participants down to six of us. We called the people who dropped out worried that the group would die. We were told the focus on armed resistance turned them off. We tried to save the group by suggesting we stop talking about armed conflict. At the next meeting 20 new members attended and voted to call for violenec against local post offices and against a policy to tone down they talk of violence at meetings. After that meeting the police arrested me. (SEE BRIAN GLICK'S The War at Home.) The remaining five started to claim I was in the FBI. A few months later the group was finished and not long after that we discovered the remaining five were FBI agents themselves. The founders of Food Not Bombs learned two big lessons. Voting made it possible for the FBI to take over the group so we started to learn consensus and we saw again that talking about taking violent action drove people away. At the same time we started to hear that some of our friends were going to take over an amory and bring m-16s to our protest at Seabrook Nuclear Power Station. It didn't happen but the movement was demoralized. The media made us out as terrorists and we lost lots of public support. Several years later we learned from FBI documents that of the four peple who attended the meeting to steal M16s from the armory three were FBI agents and the one person that soke out against it was not an agent.

We need to build a mass movement and a global change in perspective. Blockages, boycotts, strikes and the many other actions we can use will build support for our effort.
In one chapter the author claims Gandhi failed and that the English fear of a small Islamic terrorist group was responsible for Indians freedom. While I agree working for nationalism was too small a goal did the small number of bombings really have a better out come or have anything to do with Engalnd leaving.
Please read Gene Sharps books on NonViolent social change. Talk to those of us who have exerianced the power of nonviolent social change.

While I don't believe the author is working for the state I am sure they are really happy his book is misdirecting people to a process they hope we will adopt.

Ten theses about violence in anti-capitalist demonstrations
Insurrection | Politics

This text was first published by the WOMBLES as part of a booklet distributed before and during the mobilisations against the G8 in Scotland in 2005.

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1. When anti-capitalist demos are described, the dominant social representation and social use of the concept/term 'violence' refers to a physical, aggressive form of violence - when you physically hit somebody, when you break something.

2. The main function, deliberate or not, of the dilemma 'violence' - 'non-violence' is to create a new field of debate and critique, a new ideological battlefield where everyone (journalists, politicians, protesters, etc) talk about; a new object for our attention is born, which marginalizes the most important aspect of every demo - the social struggle (as a whole entity) against the capitalist, authoritarian system (as a whole entity).

3. Both the 'never-violent' - 'always-violent' positions seek a symbolic and material impact during the demo; yet, in the present conditions of the broader social struggle, the expectations of a material impact are usually low. Rather, under the spectacular mechanisms of the media, a symbolic impact is perceived as more possible. The latter possibility can drive the two positions to be used merely for spectacular goals.

4. The 'always-violent' position uses violence as the only means to symbolise the confrontation with the powers of the state and capital, to symbolise the power of the social struggle. Thus violence becomes a self-goal and it is not treated as another means of the broader social struggle.

5. The 'never-violent' position achieves a small symbolic impact by being 'morally legitimate', by being compliant with the social value of 'peacefulness'. A much greater symbolic impact is achieved though, if the police attack; then the non-violent crowd symbolises 'the powerless society', 'the victim' and reveals the violent nature of the state. Under such conditions, the moral power of 'being a victim' is used to gain sympathy of the 'public opinion'.

6. When the 'never-violent' - 'always-violent' positions, become a repeated reality, they drive to easily predicted demos. They create well-established social expectations for the form and the outcome of the demos and stereotypical patterns of crowd action of the demonstrators.

7. Our intentions, as anarchists/anti-authoritarians, should not be fixated on any dogmatic and simplistic pole - 'always-violent' or 'never-violent'. Rather, we should try to make coherent analysis of the broader social context so as to identify the potential role of an active confrontation as a demo. The most important thing is to project a clear social-political meaning to the demo, whether we confront or not; a meaning connected with the broader social struggle against state and capital.

8. Moreover, even if the crowd (or part of the crowd) decides to actively confront (or not), it is specific social situation and mostly, the interaction between crowd and the police which determines what is really going to happen. The situation of the demo is constructed act by act and any pre-decisions are forced to fit in a fluid reality.

9. Any violence of the social actors in a demo is basically 'anti-violence'; a symptom, not cause, of the broader state violence. When the state responds with further repression of the social struggle, after an expression of anti-violence, it just reveals, with less 'tact' and more cruelty, what already is. Violence is at the heart of the state; it gave birth to the state and now it preserves it.

10. Instead of focusing on the 'violence' - 'non-violence' dilemma, we should make an effort to understand why the general, alienated violence which already exists in the social realm does not target against the state and the capital; why it does not become a multi-dimensional, active confrontation of authority. Self-critique of our movement is essential part of this process.

from the WOMBLES G8 2005 leaflet