Back in the Day...

 “Pacifism as Pathology – Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America” by Ward Churchill and Michael Ryan; Preface by Ed Mead; Forward by Dylan Rodriguez; 1986 / 2017

This book reflects the after-glow of the anti-colonial revolutions, urban ‘guerrilla’ groups and the Vietnam War, all events that have receded into the past.  Ryan admits the book’s archaic nature in his bit.  It has funny takes on the pathetic spectacle of ritualized protest performances and how pacifists need ‘reality training’ administered by a radical psychology therapist.  It does not come from a Marxist point of view, but closer to revolutionary anarchism in its approach.  Back in the day it might have been called “Third Worldism.”  In this text the issues of the working class, capitalism, class, Marxist formations and fascist groupings are not really addressed. The state is the enemy, labor actions are not on the agenda, poor people are the main actors and violence is the ultimate tactic. 

Mead used to be in the George Jackson Brigade, did long jail time and says their resort to armed actions was premature.  Rodriguez thinks ‘white’ people are the main problem related to pacifism.  Ryan is a Canadian Maoist of some kind.  Churchill was involved with AIM, VVAW and the BPP’s Rainbow Coalition and is a professor.  The main target of the book is ‘revolutionary pacifism’ – a current that barely exists, certainly not anymore.  Most pacifists are reformists or sub-reformists of some kind. 

In his newer intro Churchill embraces the early BLM protests around Trayvon Martin and in Ferguson over Michael Brown, along with the pipeline standoff at Standing Rock, but knows the modern police, military and surveillance state is far more lethal and powerful than in the 1960s-1970s.  This might be one reason for the general success of its pacification program.

Churchill thinks the draft evaders who went to Canada paid no price – though becoming a refugee and leaving your family and home is more than just dealing with loneliness.  He laughs at the small number of draft resistors who actually went to jail and ignores those who were forced into public service. He chides most civil disobedience, though praises some who took larger personal risks.  He later admits that non-violence is one tactic to be used, but it is not an overall strategy. His action ideas seems to jump from letter writing to marches to military action, with nothing much else.  Most of his ire is directed at the arrogant moralists championing pacifism like Dellinger, Chomsky, Berrigan, Lakey, Spock, Baez, Near, Lynde and Muste, who vociferously insulted and attacked non-pacifist tactics, strategy and people – what we today call ‘canceling.’ 

Churchill targets the myths about successful pacifism – noting that without the threat of violent and radical leftism in India, the U.S. and Vietnam, Gandhi, MLK and the U.S. anti-war movement would have not been able to gain any success. Governments like Britain and the U.S. would rather deal with ‘moderates’ than actual leftists and they cultivate these groupings if necessary, as Johnson did with MLK, the British did with Gandhi and the Democrats did with McCarthy.  Though eventually they had to assassinate MLK as he moved to the Left.

Many of the issues discussed still dominate the progressive movement – ritualized protests, staged events, the use of marshals to control participants, pro-forma and cooperative arrests, ‘bearing witness’ picket lines, candle-light vigils, exhausting long marches to wear out protesters, letter writing to Congress people, endless chanting and various other forms of pathetic opposition.  Yet it was only when the Third Precinct burned down in Minneapolis that anyone took the George Floyd protests seriously.  When the police for the most part abandoned streets to the anti-racist crowds, you knew something else was up.

Churchill uses the ‘business as usual’ attitude of the leaders in the Jewish community in Germany and Europe in the 1930s as a touchstone.  The leading rabbis, Zionists and businessmen ignored the path of the Communist Party and other leftists and instead preached accommodation and obedience to the Nazis.  Yet Churchill does not mention the Left in Germany, which was physically fighting the Brownshirts in the streets before the 'democratic' takeover and later led the anti-fascist underground.

Churchill considers pacifism to be a moralistic anti-praxis which has never succeeded on its own in making radical changes. “Speaking truth to power” is actually the message of the powerless.  His psychological and therapeutic solution for pacifists is to have them realize they are probably not for revolution or overturning the system; to have them live in a poor neighborhood or third-world country and, third, to have them become familiar with guns and bombs. He presented this at the Midwest Radical Therapy Association, which is probably now defunct. This 'therapy' seems to be a sophisticated version of trolling.  At one point he praises mass civil disobedience that might shut down a city, then chides the 1971 May Day Tribe as if they didn’t do that in D.C. - which they did.  In his slight promotion of the Weather Underground, he denounces the pacifists for opposing them, yet plenty of Marxists saw them as ultra-left - not from pacifism but from a class struggle viewpoint. 

Ideological pacifism is clearly a middle-class and religion-based attitude.  Churchill contends it also reflects the practitioners’ fear of ever being hurt or paying a price for their performative resistance.  He notes that some pacifists know that guerilla warfare, defensive violence or armed self-defense are appropriate for ‘third world’ countries but not for the U.S., which he sees as an elitist and ‘magical’ attitude. Yet he knows that a peaceful society where violence is absent is a goal of all revolutionaries, even for him.

This book is a reflection of its time, which is why it is surrounded by a more modern preface, forward, introduction and afterword.  It presents a leftist but ultimately futile false dyad between ‘violence versus pacifism,’ when the real praxis is class struggle in all its variations, based on a clear theory and goal.  That clear theory is not here.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Non-Violence Protects the State” (Gelderloos); “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” (Malm); “Passages of Rebellion” (Shor); “Daydream Sunset” (Jacobs); “Soldiers in Revolt,” “Ragged Revolutionaries,” “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now” (C Johnson); “Hippie Modernism,” “The Way the Wind Blew” (Jacobs); “No Fascist USA!,” “Annihilation of Caste” (Ambedkar); “The Plot to Kill King” (Pepper); "The German Communist Resistance."

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / October 27, 2024