Ward Churchill Í 0 FREE READ
This extraordinarily important book cuts to the heart of one of the central reasons movements to bring about social and environmental justice always fail. The fundamental question here is: is violence ever an acceptable tool to help bring about social change? This is probably the most important question of our time, yet so often discussions around it fall into clichés and magical thinking: that somehow if we are merely good and nice enough people, the state will stop using its violence to exploit us all. Would that this were true.—Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame, from the introduction.
Pacifism, the ideology of nonviolent political resistance, has been the norm among mainstream North American progressive groups for decades. But to what end? Ward Churchill challenges the pacifist movement’s heralded victories—Gandhi in India, 1960s antiwar 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 counterrevolutionary; that it defends the status quo, and doesn’t lead to social change. In these times of upheaval and global protest, this is a vital and extremely relevant book.
Ward Churchill is a prolific writer and lecturer, having authored, co-authored, or edited over twenty books. He is a member of the leadership council of Colorado AIM (American Indian Movement).
In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.
Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America
I 100% give up on this book. I have tried and tried to read it 5 or 6 times. The entire first half of the book is just Ward Churchill wanking off about how great of a non-white ally he is. Both Peter Gelderloos and Ward Churchill have been criticized for different reasons, about their personal lives and behaviours. I don't know them personally, so I can't comment on which one is a better or worse human. Further, it's been a reeeeaaaaaaalllly long time since I read How Nonviolence Protects the State. I liked it in my early 20's, I have no idea what I would think of it now. I might hate it, I dunno. But in the Churchill vs Gelderloos battle of Which Book to Recommend to Your Young And Curious Friend I have to admit Gelderloos wins, if for no other reason other than I was actually able to *finish* his book. 9781904859185 Really not a Ward Churchill fan, especially after reading this book. The point that he makes throughout the book is legitimate; however, his tone is moralistic and very self-righteous and reeks of privilege, which I found extremely off-putting. His definition of resistance as armed revolt and armed revolt only is excessively narrow, and it invisibilizes countless profound liberation movements and tactics that were not pacifistic but under his definition would have been labeled so. I appreciate the ethos of rejecting a hierarchy of violence; however, I feel like a much more comprehensive, realistic, and less privileged enumeration of this idea can be found in How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos. 9781904859185 I have gifted this book to at least 10 people in my life. This book goes against the grain in so many ways but provides lucid arguments each step of the way. Whether or not you ultimately agree with Churchill’s thesis and his conclusions, there is so much juicy food for thought in this very short but packed with ideas collection of essays, I would absolutely argue it is essential reading for anyone concerned with how do we transform our societies to be more just and equitable and what are the means and tools at our disposal to do so. 9781904859185 To read this book with an open mind, one must begin by acknowledging the fact that the luxuries and lifestyles enjoyed in the first world are dependent upon violence and destruction propagated in the third world. As Churchill says “Pacifists, no less than their unpacifist counterparts, are quite aware that violence already exists as an integral component in the execution of state policies and requires no provocation” (70). A horrible example of this is occurring in Peru as I write this. A “fair trade” agreement was made between the Peruvian government and the United States government that allows Exxon Mobile and other multi-national companies to explore the relatively untouched Peruvian rainforests, as they pay monetary compensation for the lands they deface. However, indigenous people still live in these forests, and money matters little to them. They are being kicked off their land because the government says they have no “right” to it – they don't hold titles, just like Native Americans did not hold titles when Columbus arrived at the New World. Now that these indigenous people have banded together and peacefully protested this injustice, they are being killed. At least 90 have been murdered so far, all because of an agreement between Peru and America, which was made so that Exxon can continue to provide us American's with oil for our cars, planes, laptops, and packaging.
Churchill's most contentious point is that the only way to directly divert the violence propagated against other for our benefit is to violently fight that system ourselves. Peaceful protests, he argues, even if they log-jam the system, do not divert troops and ammunition.
Churchill's final point, is that if you admit these two facts, it is morally unconscionable to refuse to engage in violence against the state when the state is violent against others for your benefit.
This argument lends itself to his use of the term pathology. “The psychopathic individual is characterized by the absence of the guilt feelings and anxiety that normally accompany an antisocial act” (10).
Basically, we should constantly feel terrible about what is happening in places like Peru, simply to maintain our way of life, so terrible that we are willing to assume some of that violence against ourselves.
The point is well taken. There would obviously be more outcry if 90 peaceful American protests had been killed than those recently killed in Peru. As we saw in the Vietnam War, effective outcry occurred not because of peaceful protests, but because American children had to stand on the front lines to defend America's neocolonialism (74).
But because of the complexity of neocolonialism, engaging the national guard would not directly divert troops from killing protesters in Peru, because the Peruvian government is using its troops against its own people, while the U.S. Government stands back and waits to reap the outcome. However, this is not always the case. As the Killer Coke campaign highlights, the U.S. Military has violently defended international corporations whose “progress” has been slowed by non-violent protests in the third world.
Churchill argues that throughout history, peaceful protests that have log-jammed the system have been effective, but only when supplemented with activity that weakens the violent powers of the state. He discuses the Holocaust, the Indian independent movement, the civil rights movement, and Vietnam.
Holocaust (47): many Jews could have been saved with more violent uprising. Their pacifists tactics did not save them, the intense violence of the allied forces did – 54 “Left to a pacifist prescription for the altering of offensive state policies, and the effecting of positive social change, 'World Jewry' – at least in its Eurasian variants – would have suffered total extermination.”
Indian Independence (55): Their success came in that their form of pacifism clogged the system – did not work with it in the extreme peaceful protests of contemporary America. And this pacifist tactic was only successful because British forces were spread too thin with the violent world wars 55: “While the Mahatma and his followers were able to remain 'pure,' their victory was contingent upon others physically gutting their opponents for them.”
Civil Rights(56), basically says that the state made King look good to encourage that sort of protest, a sort they could manage, control, acquiesce to without changing much. And this turns into his larger point, that non-violent protest has become a sort of internalized form of rebellion that the state is totally prepared to deal with, and allow to happen because it only reinforces the myth that we live in a free and just society.
Vietnam: “The perceived ineffectiveness with which (Lyndon Johnson) prosecuted the war, (was) brought about not by pacifist parades in American streets, but by Vietnamese armed resistance” (74).
The essential contradiction (57): “The essential contradiction inherent to pacifist praxis is that, for survival itself, any nonviolent confrontation of state power must ultimately depend either on the state refraining from unleashing some real measure of its potential violence, or the active presence of some counterbalancing violence of precisely the sort pacifism professes to reject as a political option.”
His most scathing points come toward the end of the book, when he argues that if the mostly affluent white pacifists in America condemn violence while it is necessary in third world struggles, a new hierarchy could emerge after the violence of the state is repealed, where white pacifists claim moral superiority over violent revolutionary, and espouse to hold the theoretical superiority in a new society: “social relations which could serve to largely replicate the present privileged social position of whites” (85).
His most important point is that contemporary American protesters and protests are becoming ineffectively passive. People are not willing to stand up for even the most important causes if it may harm them or their long-term standing in society. “'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?'” (61). In concur with this criticism. When I try to rally people to events and actions, I always find myself assuring them that they wont be hurt and their actions will be entirely unarrestable, which makes me think their pacifist stances are far more about personal safety and freedom than ideology. For example, when Students for Free Tibet were organizing actions surrounding the Beijing olympics, I heard many people say they were not willing to take part in this struggle for abused and murdered monks, because they might lose their own freedom to travel to China in the future.
Churchill then discusses the type of contemporary American protests that evolve from this mentality, where protesters obtain the necessary permits, let police know ahead of time what illegal actions they may engage in so that they can be prepared to arrest that amount of people, etc. “Both sides of the 'contestation' concur that the smooth functioning of the state's processes my not be physically disturbed, at least not in any significant way” (63). “Clearly the state allows us to engage in these actions because they are harmless or, worse, because they reinforce the popular myth of...democracy” (122).
This is what has really angered Churchill about pacifism – it's passive complicity in the violence of the state. “Rather than pursuing Gandhi's (or to a much lesser extent, King's) method of using passive bodies to literally clog the functioning of the state apparatus – regardless of the cost to those doing the clogging – the American nonviolent movement has increasingly opted for 'symbolic actions'” (63).
Throughout the book, it was odd to me that he never mentioned the incident at Wounded Knee in 1973, a great example of how violent protests can and did divert military intelligence, personnel, and resources from neocolonial wars abroad to the homeland. During the occupation, the two people who died on a reservation in the United States drew more attention to the unjust policies of the U.S. Government than the thousands dying in Vietnam, and the event informed the nation of the ills dealt Native American to this day, far more than other non-violent demonstrations such as the siege of Alcatraz and the BIA building. Perhaps most importantly, it became a lightning rod for groups and individuals who are willing to engage with violence for the state. Many people who are organize and participate in non-violent demonstrations are willing to engage in violent demonstrations if they believe the purpose is important enough, and it if will succeed to any measure, but opportunities like these are few and far between. Revolutionaries cannot merely pick up a gun and go to war with the state. Without the circumstances surrounding Wounded Knee – the issues facing Native America, the U.S., and the state of the media – those revolutionaries would quickly be brought down, and deemed terrorism by the system and general public.
Derrick Jensen's introduction adds a lot to this edition of the book, because many of his strengths are Churchill's weaknesses. He does a great job of deconstructing many of the platitudes of pacifism, particularly on pg 19 with his deconstruction of an aversion to use the “master's tools.” He proves we need to use our tools at our disposal, and only by giving the most effective ones up do we create the master/servant dichotomy. We cannot give up media or language even though the state misuses the, so why draw other lines.
Of escaping from violence with violence does lowering you to your oppressors “level” he says: 53 “May it rightly be suggested that those who took up arms against their executioners crossed the same symbolic line demarcating good and evil, becoming 'the same' as the SS?” This is a particularly important distinction because of most pacifists willingness to except violent revolutions in third world countries. If one argues that their violence is justified, surely less violence in the U.S. that could help their cause even more because of the media presence here, is also justified.
Other nice quotes from introduction:
17: Love does not imply pacifism, and I think a mother grizzly will back me up on this one.
12: But I'll tell you something important: the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, including those who went on what they thought were suicide missions, had a higher rate of survival than those who went along.
15: That's the good thing about everything being so fucked up: no matter where you look there is great work to be done.
24: I can change myself all I want. If damns still stand, salmon still die.
25: To say that violence never accomplishes anything not only degrades the suffering of those harmed by violence but it also devalues the triumphs of those who have fought their way out of abusive or exploitative situations.
Degrading the suffering of those harmed by violence is very important. Violence obviously accomplishes a lot of oppression and demoralization.
The afterward by Mike Ryan also helps Churchill's case.
“Another deformation, one which serves as a cushion against breaking with comfort zone politics, is the concept that there is no enemy, that we are all victims (oppressed and oppressors alike), victims of a state gone out of control. This concept is undoubtedly the result of the fact that nonviolence is often a white movement response to forms of repression which do not directly affect them” (133).
I think that with any honesty, relatively privileged, free Americans must admit that their struggles with the state pale in comparison to people in the third world who are living with violent oppression from our state and others that work in conjunction against them, for our benefit.
We “leave Third and Fourth World peoples in the front line of the very real and very violent struggle between imperialism and liberation while we continue to reap the benefits of a comfort zone created by their oppression” (133).
To remain pacifist while this struggle continues, yet desire to create a new, just society is “The wish to build up a luxury socialism on the fruits of imperialist robbery,” -Marcel Peju.
“It may well be that our self-imposed inability to act decisively, far from having anything at all to do with reduction of violence, is instead perpetuating the greatest process of violence in history...These strategies are nothing but a complex, psychological self-deception that allows us to pose as revolutionaries from within our comfort zones” (149).
Even if someone dies in a nonviolent protest, their action can be brushed aside as misguided actions of confused individuals standing in the way of progress, the largess of which they enjoy in their freedom to protest. On the other hand, it is hard to argue that one enjoys the system if they seek to physically destroy it. And no one can shrug you off if you take over. 9781904859185 Very boneheaded and ultimately too arrogant for it's own good - for one, maybe tone down the levels of tankie a couple of hundred decibels? (The infamous comment where he called the victims of the World Trade Center attacks Little Eichmans kind of examplifies what kind of attitude we're dealing with here - like, I understand the sentiment but come the fuck on) Nonetheless, a pretty hearty read for a much needed critique of the phenomena of bourgeois pacifism. 9781904859185
Love the critique of the violence begets violence attitude of the bourgeois-liberal American left. His argument of it as a pathological condition leaves something to be desired, but his therapeutic solution is downright hilarious. 9781904859185 Churchill makes a very powerful argument against certain types of Western pacifism. It's certainly easy to be a pacifist you're not the target of the system's violence. The biggest wow moment for me was when Churchill took on academic pacifist-types who support violent anti-imperial struggles abroad. Churchill brilliantly argues how their positioning of their role as the discursive attackers of the system allied with subaltern populations fighting imperialism abroad reproduces the dynamics of imperialism. Colonizers located and educated in the West are positioned in a role of intellectual leadership over the left, and as such more valuable than the masses of non-white people fighting for their land-base and survival, whose deaths are tolerated.
I take issue with Churchill's take on Gandhi and other non-violent resistors who won their struggle. Churchill points out that India's independence was only won as a result of Britain being severely weakened after WW2, and that in normal circumstances, Britain could have contained the resistance. Okay, but what are normal circumstances for a violent imperial empire? I would argue that intermittent catastrophes, violent wars and economic collapses, all moments of vulnerability, are inevitable in the course of running empires that sustains themselves on violently dispossessing outsiders (and certain classes of insiders). It's during those moments of weakness that empires are most vulnerable to upheaval.
I guess my point is that I agree that violent resistance is sometimes the only option, often the best option, but I don't think it's always necessarily the most effective tactical option. I agree that the embrace of Pacifism by Western activists is overwhelmingly hypocritical and self-righteous, but I wouldn't dismiss pacifism as a basis of resistance altogether. Nor does Churchill, really, he affirms his respect for non-violent resistors whose tactics directly attack the system and who are willing to take a hit and suffer violent reprisals. By and large I agree with him, I think we just draw the line a little differently.
I was kinda taken aback by Churchill's characterization of feminism as being a frivolous movement concerned with fanny-pinching. Seriously, you felt the need to make that point? Violence against women is a huge problem, kills a lot of people... I get that he was writing in 1986, and that back then feminism did not paint gender as intersectional with race and class, which it totally is. Since then, there's been a ton written on how colonization and imperial wars target women and utilize Western sex and gender roles to subjugate and divide colonized populations. A great book on this topic is Conquest by Andrea Smith.
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The reviews from Ed Mead, Derrick Jensen, and Mike Rayan is as much important as the book itself.
Although there are some ideas that I didn’t like in this book, it is an addition to my global knowledge. 9781904859185
We can simply watch our systems collapse.
We can try to design successor systems before the collapse.
Or we can try to hasten the collapse with no idea of what might replace that which we have.
This book maintains the 3rd is right and that protest that delays the right timing, are wrong while itself failing to attempt reflection on if the proposed solution is in itself a very special pathology prohibiting the building of better systems to replace what was.
9781904859185 This was a fascinating and challenging book/essay. I definitely have issues with many of the book's ideas and some of it is downright offensive. But I think all pacifists or pacifist-inclined people should read it. Many of the criticisms are valid and ought to be given a lot of thought. 9781904859185
