Book: Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America Chapter: Pacifism as Pathology: Notes on an American Pseudopraxis Author: Ward Churchill Published: 2017 / PM Press
This essay was originally published in 1986.
In relation to another book (which Ward likes, but I think it's because of how easy it is to read your own understanding into it), it's kind of easy to see where it came from upon reading this essay. It's got the provocative vibes, but it feels like they're better utilised in the structure of this essay.
I don’t deny the obviously admirable emotional content of the pacifist perspective. Surely we can all agree that the world should become a place of cooperation, peace, and harmony. Indeed, it would be nice if everything would just get better while nobody got hurt, including the oppressor who (temporarily and misguidedly) makes everything bad. Emotional niceties, however, do not render a viable politics. As with most delusions designed to avoid rather than confront unpleasant truths (Lenin’s premise that the sort of state he created would wither away under “correct conditions” comes to mind), the pacifist fantasy is inevitably doomed to failure by circumstance.
While also disagreeing with pacifism, it does this. It places the desire for it within a context of being understood while the author recognises that they view it as a delusion.
I also don't disagree with Churchill here. It would be nice if we could all just get along and make all this pain go away, but the people inflicting that pain don't want to stop because they benefit from it. We have to fight in whatever ways we can. But I do think it's interesting that, while there are people who try to coerce pacifism on others (“coercive pacifism” would've been a useful phrase), the conflation of nonviolence (undefined in most places) with coercive pacifism remains an issue.
Will that be an issue for the rest of this essay? We'll see.
I do need to say, though, that this essay is so far worse (not terrible) for not having included the context that was written in the 2016 introduction. Having that context, it's easier to position myself within what's being discussed. But if I read this essay as is, that lack of context still makes aspects of this feel... like he's conflating things. (But it's also still way better than something else, and the format is uh... Well, I see where someone got his structure, and I guess Ward isn't bothered by that.)
Bettelheim describes this inertia, which he considers the basis for Jewish passivity in the face of genocide, as being grounded in a profound desire for “business as usual,” the following of rules, the need to not accept reality or to act upon it. Manifested in the irrational belief that in remaining “reasonable and responsible,” unobtrusively resisting by continuing “normal” day-to-day activities proscribed by the nazis through the Nuremberg Laws and other infamous legislation, and “not alienating anyone,” this attitude implied that a more or less humane Jewish policy might be morally imposed upon the nazi state by Jewish pacifism itself.
I'm not going to comment on this section as a whole. It's discussing the role of Jewish passivity in the Holocaust (and does have some interesting footnotes that I'd like to look into more later—many of them are Jewish people who are commenting on the action that Jewish people took; for my own notes, there's also a footnote showing that this essay was sent off, even in the 80s, to be read by different Jewish groups). As a note, part of why I'm not going to comment on that section is that I feel ill-equipped to do so; I don't know many of the references that are used.
However, I'm putting this near-final paragraph of the section here because it reminds me... deeply of things I've been watching now in 2026. And it's also not only of the people actively being oppressed but also people who view themselves as being on the side of the oppressed. The persistent desire of “returning to normal.” The constant push to be “reasonable” or “responsible” in the face of people who are neither reasonable nor responsible but control our lives on so many levels... You could swap out some terms, and a lot of the same feelings would still exist.
Hence, while the Mahatma and his followers were able to remain “pure,” their victory was contingent upon others physically gutting their opponents for them.
I'm dropping this line here because this is a critique that I have made repeatedly, in response to something that (somehow) Ward sees as good... Because it's a critique that Ward makes (and it's a correct one) that someone else just glides right over because he's not looking at how coercive pacifism or coercive nonviolence operates as a mechanism to silence and remove dissent.
I'd even go so far as to highlight something Ward says about dichotomies prior to this line:
Proponents of nonviolent political “praxis” are inherently placed in the position of claiming to meet the armed might of the state via an asserted moral superiority attached to the renunciation of arms and physical violence altogether. It follows that the state has demonstrated, a priori, its fundamental immorality/illegitimacy by arming itself in the first place. A certain psychological correlation is typically offered wherein the “good” and “positive” social vision (Eros) held by the pacifist opposition is posed against the “bad” or “negative” realities (Thanatos) evidenced by the state. The correlation lends itself readily to “good versus evil” dichotomies, fostering a view of social conflict as a morality play.
and also:
There can be no question but that there is a superficial logic to the analytical equation thus established. The Jews in their disarmed and passive resistance to German oppression during the 1930s and ’40s were certainly “good”; the nazis—as well armed as any group in history up to that point—might undoubtedly be assessed as a force of unmitigated “evil.” Such binary correlations might also be extended to describe other sets of historical forces: Gandhi’s Indian Union (good) versus troops of the British Empire (evil) and Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent Civil Rights Movement (good) versus a host of Klansmen and Southern cracker police (evil) offer ready examples.
In each case, the difference between them can be (and often is) attributed to the relative willingness/unwillingness of the opposing sides to engage in violence. And, in each case, it can be (and has been) argued that good ultimately overcame the evil it confronted, achieving political gains and at least temporarily dissipating a form of social violence. To the extent that Eichmann was eventually tried in Jerusalem for his part in the genocide of the Jewish people, that India has passed from the control of England, and that Mississippi blacks can now register to vote with comparative ease, it may be (and is) contended that there is a legacy of nonviolent political success informing the praxis of contemporary pacifism.
Neither of them (Ward or that other book) actually look at from where and from whom these narratives come from or how they pass on to others, which I think is detrimental to their argument. Ward is (or was) positioned within the academy, so I have to wonder if he saw how it was that the realm he existed in was part of the problem. As a teacher, it's hard not to notice that these exact structures are woven throughout everything we touch.
If someone spends any time at all with any history curriculum that children are exposed to over time, they will notice multiple things: It is incredibly sanitised and often removes hard discussions in favour of memorable facts; armed resistance is only acceptable in the face of another and perceived illegitimate state (in the US, this is why we're able to talk about the 'American Revolution' in a positive light without actually engaging with who was fighting and why they were fighting; this is applicable on a wider scale, but those moments of armed resistance are different depending on nation); the chosen “historical figures” that represent a moment and how they are positioned (e.g., MLK and Malcolm X and their common framings, particularly as being almost entirely oppositional and the former having “done things correctly” now that the dust has settled).
These lessons perpetuate in very hierarchical ways, and that needs to be addressed. Ward mostly does it (in what is feeling more round-about), but it still defaults to generic pacifists rather than focusing on the way that hierarchies want for people to be complacent and try to teach that complacency.
Walk into a church. The clergy doesn't want to be challenged or met with brutal take downs (hell, they can barely handle polite yet verbose challenges), thus many of the lessons people learn there? Reinforce some elements of passivity.
I think, also, they'd have to challenge all hierarchies to recognise how they all reinforce and encourages degrees of passivity, especially in light of how people challenging them are treated and the expectations of decorum by the oppressor class. (Which fits that above dichotomy.)
Although the effectiveness of their tactics is open to question, their courage and integrity certainly are not.
This comes after discussing Thích Quảng Đức (the Buddhist monk who immolated himself in Saigon in 1963), the Buddhist monks who followed suit, and also Norman Morrison (a US Quaker who immolated himself in front of the Pentagon in 1965).
Something I can appreciate about this essay is that, in challenging the effectiveness of the pacifist blue prints that he engages with, he still shows a degree of empathy and understanding for the people themselves. (And also, the fact that there's analysis of the events being described helps, too. It shows that empathy isn't just verbiage but is part of having either done the work of research or actually talking to people.)
The list of principled and self-sacrificing pacifists and pacifist acts could undoubtedly be extended and, ineffectual or not, these people are admirable in their own right. Unfortunately, they represent the exception rather than the rule of pacifist performance in the United States. For every example of serious and committed pacifist activism emerging from the normative mass of American nonviolent movements since 1965, one could cite scores of countering instances in which only lip service was paid to the ideals of action and self-sacrifice.
This also makes it clear that Churchill has engaged with this topic (along with previous paragraphs). He has shown he has engaged with that history in some fashion and that he is attempting to show that not all pacifism is the same.
The question central to the emergence and maintenance of nonviolence as the oppositional foundation of American activism has not been the truly pacifist formulation, “How can we forge a revolutionary politics within which we can avoid inflicting violence on others?” On the contrary, a more accurate guiding question has been, “What sort of politics might I engage in which will both allow me to posture as a progressive and allow me to avoid incurring harm to myself?”
Even this highlights that pacifist movements have been co-opted by someone or with another purpose in mind.
Is such an assessment too harsh? One need only attend a mass demonstration (ostensibly directed against the policies of the state) in any U.S. city to discover the answer. One will find hundreds, sometimes thousands, assembled in orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs “demanding” the same thing, welcoming singers who enunciate lyrically on the worthiness of the demonstrators’ agenda, as well as the plight of the various victims they are there to “defend,” and—typically—the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to please sign a petition or write letters to legislators requesting that they alter or abandon offending undertakings.
Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The organizers of the demonstration will have gone through “proper channels” to obtain permits required by the state and instructions as to where they will be allowed to assemble, how long they will be allowed to stay and, should a march be involved in the demonstration, along which routes they will be allowed to walk.
Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others—an elite. Adorned with green (or white or powder blue) armbands, their function is to ensure that demonstrators remain “responsible,” not deviating from the state-sanctioned plan of protest. Individuals or small groups who attempt to spin off from the main body, entering areas to which the state has denied access (or some other unapproved activity) are headed off by these armbanded “marshals” who argue—pointing to the nearby police—that “troublemaking” will only “exacerbate an already tense situation” and “provoke violence,” thereby “alienating those we are attempting to reach.”
I just wanted to put these three paragraphs here because I feel them on such a visceral level, even without being in the US.
Precisely. The preoccupation with avoiding actions that might “provoke violence” is thus not based on a sincere belief that violence will, or even can, truly be avoided. Pacifists, no less than their nonpacifist counterparts, are quite aware that violence already exists as an integral component in the execution of state policies and requires no provocation; this is a formative basis of their doctrine. What is at issue then cannot be a valid attempt to stave off or even minimize violence per se. Instead, it can only be a conscious effort not to refocus state violence in such a way that it would directly impact American pacifists themselves. This is true even when it can be shown that the tactics which could trigger such a refocusing might in themselves alleviate a real measure of the much more massive state-inflicted violence occurring elsewhere; better that another 100,000 Indochinese peasants perish under a hail of cluster bombs and napalm than America’s principled progressives suffer real physical pain while rendering their government’s actions impracticable.
Again, something that I feel very viscerally because it is something that keeps happening.
However...
We are left with a husk of opposition, a ritual form capable of affording a maudlin “I’m OK, you’re OK” satisfaction to its subscribers at a psychic level but utterly useless in terms of transforming the power relations perpetuating systemic global violence. Such a defect can, however, be readily sublimated within the aggregate comfort zone produced by the continuation of North American business as usual; those who remain within the parameters of nondisruptive dissent allowed by the state, their symbolic duty to the victims of U.S. policy done (and with the bases of state power wholly unchallenged), can devote themselves to the prefiguration of the revolutionary future society with which they proclaim they will replace the present social order (having, no doubt, persuaded the state to overthrow itself through the moral force of their arguments). Here, concrete activities such as sexual experimentation, refinement of musical/artistic tastes, development of various meat-free diets, getting in touch with one’s “id” through meditation and ingestion of hallucinogens, alteration of sex-based distribution of household chores, and waging campaigns against such “bourgeois vices” as smoking tobacco become the signifiers of “correct politics” or even “revolutionary practice.” This is as opposed to the active and effective confrontation of state power.
Bold is mine because I think he didn't quite recognise something and their connections. So let's actually break down the things he's mentioning and how they exist or have been viewed:
“Sexual experimentation” feels like a way of discussing too many topics (queerness, feminism, health, nuclear family). This is particularly interesting as this was written in 1986, in the middle of the AIDS pandemic within the United States (and elsewhere). But it's also not only something that was ever focused on queerness because sexual freedom was not something that all people had, along with all the things that came with that. Recognising the positioning of movements around sex (including the ability to safely have it, the ability to choose when or if to conceive, the ability to have it with whomever you wanted with the consent of all involved, the ability to exist within different forms of relationships, etc)... Are all things that were always in confrontation with state power. They're not just “signifiers” of correct politics (I'm sure even in the 1980s, this should've been clear). Are there people who use it as such? Of course, but that's true of every movement and every fight.
“Refinement of musical/artistic tastes” is a hobby that people have always engaged in. This just feels like a weird denigration of art (when there is a very real critique of hyperfocusing on art in lieu of doing anything).
“Development of various meat-free diets” is very obviously a nod at vegetarianism and veganism, and both of these are... also tied to an international structure (even more so now than in the 1980s, but it should've been somewhat apparent then, too). While the 1970s were pretty good for US agricultural exports, the 1980s were not. This was also true of meat-related exports. Again, are there people who weaponise their personal diets to bludgeon people with them as a signifier of their moral superiority? Yes, but they're not the majority.
“Getting in touch with one's 'id' through meditation and ingestion of hallucinogens” is very obviously a reference to drugs. This one can have a whole range of critique because it just sounds like someone is angry at people doing new age nonsense. There's a ton of political issues around drugs that can be dealt with, but if we're going to go down the road of critiquing those “getting in touch with their 'id',” then a specific critique of how the new age spiritual 'movements' often undermined others would be useful.
“Alteration of sex-based distribution of household chores” is a hit at feminism, and an interesting one when you realise how often women were sidelined in a ton of movements because they still had to do the work that men wouldn't (and sometimes still won't) do... because they keep shoving women into care work so they can be on the street.
“Waging campaigns against such 'bourgeois vices' as smoking tobacco” is interesting considering all that we know about Philip-Morris. And while a lot of this came out after 1985, a lot of it did not.
I'm not sure why Churchill decided to add that bit because it does nothing useful to the rest of the content, which was at least mostly thought-provoking (if not entirely agreeable). Especially when followed with this:
Small wonder that North America’s ghetto, barrio, and reservation populations, along with the bulk of the white working class—people who are by and large structurally denied access to the comfort zone (both in material terms and in a corresponding inability to avoid the imposition of a relatively high degree of systemic violence)—tend either to stand aside in bemused incomprehension of such politics or to react with outright hostility.
But a lot of the above resonated with people who weren't middle-class. The “alteration of sex-based distribution of household chores” was something that a lot of poor rural folks also could understand as being necessary, especially when women were expected to do the majority of the care work on top of doing everything else they had to do.
A lot of those weren't about “being in the comfort zone” but were explicit acknowledgements of areas in which life could be better, and not everyone making those critiques (as I outlined above) was white or middle-class. Maybe this bit would come out better if he didn't try to 'those bourgeois politics of ~niche~ things I don't get' immediately right before it. (Granted, I also know I have the benefit of foresight after 1986, but it should also have been easy then to see how the things he denigrated had serious counterparts and played a role in both domestic and foreign policy and a person's ability to personally participate in resistance struggles.)
I think I also need to point out that Kathleen Cleaver has stated how the BPP enabled more opportunity for women than other contemporary activist groups did, especially white ones. Black women in the BPP may have still faced significant challenges as a result of gender, but people like Cleaver say that this was over-exaggerated because many women were taking on leadership roles and running the day-to-day programs. So actually, that “alteration of sex-based gender roles” would've enabled more people to be out in varying movements.
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. A chronicle of significant success must be offered, even where none exists. Equally, should such a movement or perspective seek hegemony of its particular vision—again, as American pacifism has been shown to do since 1965—a certain mythological complex is required to support its contentions. Generally speaking, both needs can be accommodated within a single unified propaganda structure.
NEW SECTION, so here we go. Since now it's a “single unified propaganda structure,” maybe I'll get the thing I said he didn't do (earlier).
And... This section does not. It doesn't match the connection of the so-called “pacifists” creating the propaganda networks to the institutions people are coerced to engage with throughout their lives.
It is immediately perplexing to confront the fact that many of North America’s most outspoken advocates of absolute domestic nonviolence when challenging state power have consistently aligned themselves with the most powerful expressions of armed resistance to the exercise of U.S. power abroad. Any roster of pacifist luminaries fitting this description would include not only David Dellinger, but Joan Baez, Benjamin Spock, A.J. Muste, Holly Near, Staughton Lynd, and Noam Chomsky as well.
FINALLY. A list of people! Also interesting to see AJ Muste on that list. At least he has made one of the elements I've highlighted clear, even if it is in relation to labour organising. (Beyond this, I never really looked into him, so I've got nothing.)
Noam Chomsky doesn't surprise me here, since he enjoys doing genocide denials (then Cambodia, later Bosnia). And we'd also later learn that he's fine co-existing with sex pests and traffickers, as he was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
The situation is all the more problematic when one considers that these leaders, each in his/her own way, also advocate their followers’ perpetual diversion into activities prefiguring the nature of a revolutionary society, the basis for which cannot be reasonably expected to appear through nonviolent tactics alone. This apparent paradox erodes a line of reasoning that, although it has probably never been precisely formulated within the North American nonviolent movement, seems likely to have informed the thinking of its more astute leadership. Its logical contours can be sketched as follows. Since at least as early as 1916, the importance of colonial and later neocolonial exploitation of the nonindustrialized world in maintaining modern capitalist states has been increasingly well understood by the revolutionary opposition within those states. Today, it is widely held that removal of neocolonial sources of material and superprofits would irrevocably under-cut the viability of late capitalist states.
Still true today, honestly.
The function of “responsible” oppositional leadership in the mother country—as opposed to the “irresponsible” variety that might precipitate some measure of armed resistance from within before the Third World has bled itself in diminishing state power from without (and who might even go so far as to suggest whites could directly participate)—is first and foremost to link the mother country movement’s inaction symbolically and rhetorically to Third World liberation struggles. The blatant accommodation to state power involved in this is rationalized (both to the Third Worlders and to the movement rank-and-file) by professions of personal and principled pacifism, as well as in the need for “working models” of nonviolent behavior in postrevolutionary society.
Can't we just point to schools, the academy, NGOs, political parties, governments... I mean, that's what's being talked about here, and that's not necessarily “pacifism.” It's coercive pacifism or hegemonic pacifism, but it's not the totality of pacifism (as Churchill already states).
It's also not even that these people are necessarily pacifists; it's that they adopt the guise of pacifism (or act it publicly) and weaponise those values for their own personal benefit. It's part of the maintenance of the desired (by them) hierarchy and of their own positions of power, with the goal to stay at that position or access more.
The political expression of pacifism confronts us with what may be analogously described as a (mass) pathology.
I think 'pathology' is actually the wrong analogy, and I've been getting that feeling from the very beginning. It's more of a religion than a disease, though I understand why someone would prefer the analogy to a disease over religion.
He does recognise this, to an extent, too. Prior to this, he said:
Codification of essentially religious symbology and mythology as the basis for political ideology is not lacking in precedent and has been effectively analyzed elsewhere.
But I don't see the 'pathological' aspect here. Almost everything I've seen described has reminded me, in many aspects, of a fundamentalist religion. Or a cult. Neither of which are 'diseases' and do rely on an excruciating amount of propaganda both by the top and from within.
He also utilises this aspect to say that there are 'symptoms', but I'm not fond of the 'racism as pathology' analogy either:
Racism itself has been accurately defined as a pathology.
I think pathologising things is a bad idea, and I think it helps people to find ways to opt out of taking responsibility for their own participation (whether they intended to or not).
Anyway, he says that pacificism can be diagnosable because: Pacifism is delusional, racist, and suicidal. I don't think this makes for a good enough analogy, and I think people are better off comparing coercive pacifism to the varying religions and cults that surround us. The comparison would've been far better and still capable of making those points (and also better able to encompass the existence of a “comfort zone” for white people that he keeps bringing up).
He quotes Blase Bonpane, who says:
Unfortunately, we have been brought up on parlor games, where the participants discuss whether or not they are “for” or “against” violence. Can you picture a similar discussion on whether we are for or against disease? Violence, class struggle, and disease are all real. They do not go away through mystification…. Those who deny the reality of violence and class struggle—like those who deny the reality of disease—are not dealing with the real world.
And I have to wonder what the context of that quote is (I am not doing another book rabbit-hole at this moment, for I will go insane), but the first sentence is precisely pointing at part of the problem for why coercive pacifism and coercive nonviolence exist. “We have been brought up on parlor games” just reminds me of all the lessons we learned from everyone around us, and many of us learned these lessons from the same places: institutions we were forced to participate in.
However, as with any pathologically based manifestation, hegemonic pacifism in advanced capitalist contexts proves itself supremely resistant—indeed, virtually impervious—to mere logic and moral suasion. The standard accouterments (such as intelligent theoretical dialogue) of political consciousness raising/movement building have proven relatively useless when confronted within the cynically self-congratulatory obstinacy with which the ideologues of pacifist absolutism defend their faith.
Even he keeps flipping between the 'patholgy' and 'religion' analogy. I would've stuck with the latter.
What follows, then, is a sketch of a strategy by which radical therapists might begin to work through the pacifist problematic in both individual and group settings. It should be noted that the suggested method of approach is contingent upon the therapist’s own freedom from contamination with pacifist predilections (it has been my experience that a number of supposed radical therapists are themselves in acute need of therapy in this area). It should also be noted that in the process of elaboration a number of terms from present psychological jargon (e.g., “reality therapy”) are simply appropriated for their use value rather than through any formal adherence to the precepts which led to their initial currency. Such instances should be self-explanatory.
Therapy may be perceived as progressing either through a series of related and overlapping stages or phases of indeterminate length.
If I didn't have the context from the 2016 introduction, this would've felt like it came absolutely out of left field. I wonder how many people who've read this didn't have that context.
I'm also... not a fan of the further framing of therapy because it makes a lot of assumptions of what have to happen, but I can see echos of someone else's later thoughts about Therapy Works (for Abusers) mixed within. This kind of hinders the whole revolutionary aspect, I think, because it still relies upon the hierarchical structures; it's a top-down approach to 'fixing' something that was already top-down applied.
Demystification. It has been my experience that, by this point in the therapeutic process, there are few (if any) remaining participants seeking to extend the principles of pacifist absolutism. And among remaining participants—especially among those who began with such absolutist notions—there often remains a profound lack of practical insight into the technologies and techniques common to both physical repression and physical resistance.
I actually think the 'demystification' element of tools that may be used in revolutionary struggle is good. I don't find the therapy aspect helpful, but giving people hands-on knowledge and engagement with the things they theoretically view as inherently bad is helpful.
I also think connecting this lack of personal engagement with these tools (something a lot of BPP members, rural folks, etc already had because they were tools that existed in their lives)... to the hierarchy that has enabled that disconnect? Would be helpful.