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PACIFISM
Posted by: dejan pasic (IP Logged)
Date: November 13, 2009 02:38PM
HIDING BEHIND PACIFISM
August 2009
Protest is when I say this does not please me.
Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.
Ulrike Meinhof
On a damp night in February 2003 as the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq, five Catholic Worker activists scrambled across runways and broke into a hangar at Shannon airport. Swinging hammers and a pickaxe, they did more than $ 2.5 million damage to a U.S. Navy transport plane.
The five were hit with the full weight of the law, and were quickly condemned by the media and much of the anti-war movement. But three-and-a-half years later a Dublin jury decided they were innocent of any crime.
The above passage was taken from the back cover of the book Hammered by the Irish: How the Pitstop Ploughshares disabled a U.S. war-plane with Ireland’s Blessing by Harry Browne with an introduction by Daniel Berrigan.
First of all: Bravo! To the these brave activists.
As for the much of the anti-war movement that condemned them: Shame on you!
Here in Japan, lots of us live practically surrounded by terroristic U.S. military bases, between 40 000 and 50 000 U.S. mercenaries are stationed here (mainly in Okinawa) to protect Japan from North Korea, which is total bull-shit but I won’t get into that now, it’s too ridiculous to be worth explaining.
What I am aiming at is the abundance of opportunity for the Japanese anti-war movement to put its words into practice. There are at least 4 U.S. military bases in the area where I live, a 5 minute train ride to the closest one.
In my 18 years in Japan, as you may know a major launch pad for Yankee wars of plunder and a country that pretends to be peace loving but follows and supports every single criminal war adventure in pursuit of plunder undertaken by its master Uncle Sam, in my 18 years here not once have I heard a call for action of the kind carried out by the brave Irishmen mentioned above.
Beside the circus-like peace parades organized around Tokyo in which I have taken part, in my memory the lowest point of the Japanese peace (brain dead, no balls) movement, I mean really pathetic, was when a guy, an activist, stood up at some gathering in Tokyo just before another one of their colorful anti-war prancing and suggested that the few people who were still raising a clenched fist during a march stop doing that. Can it get more pathetic? Supposedly it was too aggressive and it might alienate people. And I won’t even get into what hurts the most the Japanese Left: its sectarianism.
To get back to the Pitstop Ploughshares, in the opening passage taken from the book I mentioned it says that they (the five Catholic Worker activists) were quickly condemned by the media (the government lackeys) and much of the anti-war movement.
Condemned by much of the anti-war movement.
Why am I not surprised?
What else is to be expected from cowards? Yes! Cowards!
The Pitstop Ploughshares are pacifists, too, yet they have engaged in direct action.
How dare the spineless anti-war movement condemn them?!
But the fact is that there are very few pacifists like them.
At one of my gatherings, I brought up direct action for discussion (mentioning the Pitstop Ploughshares and Shannon airport), out of about 30 people only 2 agreed with the need for it. Although I tried to explain that direct action doesn’t necessarily mean violence, that the Pitstop Ploughshares’s actions were not violent, not violent, that they were right in every sense of the word, that they did save lives by destroying a U.S. military killing machine, that they had sent a strong message to the warmongers that people will no longer just stand by or prance in the street while innocents are being slaughtered for economic gains, that, if possible, we should all try to engage in such actions if we are at all serious about preventing our countries (Japan did take part in the U.S.-U.K.-led illegal war on Iraq and the peace-loving Japanese people are responsible for the death of over 1 million innocent Iraqis who were killed so that the Japanese and all those who took part in this war could get very, very, very cheap oil) from going into wars in order to preserve our comfortable, materialistic, parasitic, empty way of life.
The more I kept talking like this, the more cowardice became palpable. The usual excuses to avoid doing more were at hand, how we should keep organizing, how direct action would only alienate people, how we should preserve the moral high ground, how it’s counterproductive…bla, bla, bla…..Hell, nowadays coward pacifists are trying to avoid the topic of direct action altogether.
We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course continues, because the waging of war, by its nature is total-but the waging of peace, by our cowardice is partial.
Fr Daniel Berrigan
A comment on the side for all those of you who don’t know much about Japan, it is a country with a total lack of solidarity. In case you get involved in direct action here, do not expect any sympathy from the public or a sympathetic jury. Cowardice feeds on cowardice here.
I watched the German film The Baader-Meinhof Complex and I was praising their actions and the actions of other urban guerrilla groups such as The Red Brigades, The Tupamaros and so on…to a friend of mine and he said that those groups had done a great deal of damage to the Left that was trying to organize a mass movement .
I don’t think so.
Let’s turn that argument around and I say that it is the rest of the Left that damaged itself by refusing out of cowardice to lend support to those urban guerrilla groups and betrayed those groups by refusing to join them in their/our armed struggle against capitalism/imperialism.
Simply put: The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to “be active”, to “participate”, to mask the nothingness of what goes on. Slavoj Zizek
My message to you so-called pacifist activists is: Stop pretending!
Stop pretending you are doing something. Your ways, combining hesitance with cowardice, have never achieved anything! Name one example in History where pacifism has actually brought about meaningful social change, alleviated suffering of mankind, instilled fear into capitalist/imperialist dogs, restored justice…
It is the collective responsibility of the citizens in a modern
State to ensure by all means necessary that its government
adheres to the rule of law, not just domestically but internationally.
Karl Jaspers
Your ways, your flowers in the barrel of the gun are an insult to all those who came before you and really fought, who put up a real fight, who resorted to all kinds of direct action, who died so that you and I would have the right today to prance in the streets daring to pretend that your/our clownish activism is gonna save Iraqi, Palestinian….lives. All you are doing is legitimizing dictatorial democracies!
And don’t even dare to talk about Martin Luther King Jr. without mentioning The Black Panther Party and Malcolm X or Gandhi without Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh. We need a combination of tactics!
Much of the anti-war movement is about the first part of the quote by Ulrike Meinhof at the top of this piece. The Pitstop Ploughshares is about the second part of the same quote.
By condemning the five Catholic Worker activists, much of the anti-war movement took sides. It allied itself with the State, the lackeys in the media, it allied itself with the U.S. killing machine!
What much of the anti-war movement did and has been doing is, in the words of the title of a book by Romeo Dallaire, shaking hands with the Devil!
Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do.
Slavoj Zizek from his book Violence
We need a combination of tactics!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2009 02:40PM by dejan pasic.
August 2009
Protest is when I say this does not please me.
Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.
Ulrike Meinhof
On a damp night in February 2003 as the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq, five Catholic Worker activists scrambled across runways and broke into a hangar at Shannon airport. Swinging hammers and a pickaxe, they did more than $ 2.5 million damage to a U.S. Navy transport plane.
The five were hit with the full weight of the law, and were quickly condemned by the media and much of the anti-war movement. But three-and-a-half years later a Dublin jury decided they were innocent of any crime.
The above passage was taken from the back cover of the book Hammered by the Irish: How the Pitstop Ploughshares disabled a U.S. war-plane with Ireland’s Blessing by Harry Browne with an introduction by Daniel Berrigan.
First of all: Bravo! To the these brave activists.
As for the much of the anti-war movement that condemned them: Shame on you!
Here in Japan, lots of us live practically surrounded by terroristic U.S. military bases, between 40 000 and 50 000 U.S. mercenaries are stationed here (mainly in Okinawa) to protect Japan from North Korea, which is total bull-shit but I won’t get into that now, it’s too ridiculous to be worth explaining.
What I am aiming at is the abundance of opportunity for the Japanese anti-war movement to put its words into practice. There are at least 4 U.S. military bases in the area where I live, a 5 minute train ride to the closest one.
In my 18 years in Japan, as you may know a major launch pad for Yankee wars of plunder and a country that pretends to be peace loving but follows and supports every single criminal war adventure in pursuit of plunder undertaken by its master Uncle Sam, in my 18 years here not once have I heard a call for action of the kind carried out by the brave Irishmen mentioned above.
Beside the circus-like peace parades organized around Tokyo in which I have taken part, in my memory the lowest point of the Japanese peace (brain dead, no balls) movement, I mean really pathetic, was when a guy, an activist, stood up at some gathering in Tokyo just before another one of their colorful anti-war prancing and suggested that the few people who were still raising a clenched fist during a march stop doing that. Can it get more pathetic? Supposedly it was too aggressive and it might alienate people. And I won’t even get into what hurts the most the Japanese Left: its sectarianism.
To get back to the Pitstop Ploughshares, in the opening passage taken from the book I mentioned it says that they (the five Catholic Worker activists) were quickly condemned by the media (the government lackeys) and much of the anti-war movement.
Condemned by much of the anti-war movement.
Why am I not surprised?
What else is to be expected from cowards? Yes! Cowards!
The Pitstop Ploughshares are pacifists, too, yet they have engaged in direct action.
How dare the spineless anti-war movement condemn them?!
But the fact is that there are very few pacifists like them.
At one of my gatherings, I brought up direct action for discussion (mentioning the Pitstop Ploughshares and Shannon airport), out of about 30 people only 2 agreed with the need for it. Although I tried to explain that direct action doesn’t necessarily mean violence, that the Pitstop Ploughshares’s actions were not violent, not violent, that they were right in every sense of the word, that they did save lives by destroying a U.S. military killing machine, that they had sent a strong message to the warmongers that people will no longer just stand by or prance in the street while innocents are being slaughtered for economic gains, that, if possible, we should all try to engage in such actions if we are at all serious about preventing our countries (Japan did take part in the U.S.-U.K.-led illegal war on Iraq and the peace-loving Japanese people are responsible for the death of over 1 million innocent Iraqis who were killed so that the Japanese and all those who took part in this war could get very, very, very cheap oil) from going into wars in order to preserve our comfortable, materialistic, parasitic, empty way of life.
The more I kept talking like this, the more cowardice became palpable. The usual excuses to avoid doing more were at hand, how we should keep organizing, how direct action would only alienate people, how we should preserve the moral high ground, how it’s counterproductive…bla, bla, bla…..Hell, nowadays coward pacifists are trying to avoid the topic of direct action altogether.
We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course continues, because the waging of war, by its nature is total-but the waging of peace, by our cowardice is partial.
Fr Daniel Berrigan
A comment on the side for all those of you who don’t know much about Japan, it is a country with a total lack of solidarity. In case you get involved in direct action here, do not expect any sympathy from the public or a sympathetic jury. Cowardice feeds on cowardice here.
I watched the German film The Baader-Meinhof Complex and I was praising their actions and the actions of other urban guerrilla groups such as The Red Brigades, The Tupamaros and so on…to a friend of mine and he said that those groups had done a great deal of damage to the Left that was trying to organize a mass movement .
I don’t think so.
Let’s turn that argument around and I say that it is the rest of the Left that damaged itself by refusing out of cowardice to lend support to those urban guerrilla groups and betrayed those groups by refusing to join them in their/our armed struggle against capitalism/imperialism.
Simply put: The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to “be active”, to “participate”, to mask the nothingness of what goes on. Slavoj Zizek
My message to you so-called pacifist activists is: Stop pretending!
Stop pretending you are doing something. Your ways, combining hesitance with cowardice, have never achieved anything! Name one example in History where pacifism has actually brought about meaningful social change, alleviated suffering of mankind, instilled fear into capitalist/imperialist dogs, restored justice…
It is the collective responsibility of the citizens in a modern
State to ensure by all means necessary that its government
adheres to the rule of law, not just domestically but internationally.
Karl Jaspers
Your ways, your flowers in the barrel of the gun are an insult to all those who came before you and really fought, who put up a real fight, who resorted to all kinds of direct action, who died so that you and I would have the right today to prance in the streets daring to pretend that your/our clownish activism is gonna save Iraqi, Palestinian….lives. All you are doing is legitimizing dictatorial democracies!
And don’t even dare to talk about Martin Luther King Jr. without mentioning The Black Panther Party and Malcolm X or Gandhi without Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh. We need a combination of tactics!
Much of the anti-war movement is about the first part of the quote by Ulrike Meinhof at the top of this piece. The Pitstop Ploughshares is about the second part of the same quote.
By condemning the five Catholic Worker activists, much of the anti-war movement took sides. It allied itself with the State, the lackeys in the media, it allied itself with the U.S. killing machine!
What much of the anti-war movement did and has been doing is, in the words of the title of a book by Romeo Dallaire, shaking hands with the Devil!
Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do.
Slavoj Zizek from his book Violence
We need a combination of tactics!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2009 02:40PM by dejan pasic.
Re: PACIFISM
Posted by: tylo (IP Logged)
Date: February 26, 2010 10:19PM
Utopia...saint intentions, but..=/
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Re: PACIFISM
Posted by: Sally_Cinnamon (IP Logged)
Date: March 31, 2010 07:21PM
I agree that a range of actions are required; yet your essay seems to show little respect for any other tactic other than direct action. The fact is that when people take up arms with hammers and pick axes they are going to be seen as violent, whether their intention is to destroy a fighter jet or a person. The picking up of a weapon is of itself seen as violent. Now you can argue that this is not the case (and in the case of the Pitsburgh ploughshares it clearly wasn't) but the majority of people don't know that (if someone came at me with a pickaxe I would not consider their intentions!) and don't consider that the taking up of arms can be anything but an act of aggression.
With this is mind we have to be crafty, to be aware of the connotations of our actions because violence will in general ailienate people. What we need in the struggle against capitalism is to bring the hearts, minds and actions of the greatest number with us. Numbers, not weapons or violent acts make people sit up and take notice. Look at the French trade unions; they are not perfect, many people despise them, but when they feel their liberties and work conditions are threatened, they mobilise. Not with axes but with numbers of people.
I myself am on the fence as to whether any real change in society can be achieved with no blood being shed; those with the wealth will not relinquish their money or status without a fight. And they have lots of money with which to overpower us with military might. Yet what we have is the majority - but to mobilise this most unique of advantages we must continue to try and bring the greatest majority along with us. Violence causes only division in this sense, and therefore should, to my mind, only ever be a last resort. Otherwise we simply take up the moniker of those who have oppressed us over the millenia; a hand held in peace can be worth much more than one which is wrenched into line by force.
With this is mind we have to be crafty, to be aware of the connotations of our actions because violence will in general ailienate people. What we need in the struggle against capitalism is to bring the hearts, minds and actions of the greatest number with us. Numbers, not weapons or violent acts make people sit up and take notice. Look at the French trade unions; they are not perfect, many people despise them, but when they feel their liberties and work conditions are threatened, they mobilise. Not with axes but with numbers of people.
I myself am on the fence as to whether any real change in society can be achieved with no blood being shed; those with the wealth will not relinquish their money or status without a fight. And they have lots of money with which to overpower us with military might. Yet what we have is the majority - but to mobilise this most unique of advantages we must continue to try and bring the greatest majority along with us. Violence causes only division in this sense, and therefore should, to my mind, only ever be a last resort. Otherwise we simply take up the moniker of those who have oppressed us over the millenia; a hand held in peace can be worth much more than one which is wrenched into line by force.
Re: PACIFISM
Posted by: Red-Metta (IP Logged)
Date: May 18, 2010 10:35AM
George Bush, the then President of the USA is of course not only a neo-Conservative ideologue, but also a Christian fundamentalist. Many int he US media and academia either passivley or aggresively support the underlying idea that Christian America has defeated non-Christian Japan (World War II) and is in the process of defeating the non-Christian Idlamic world. The language of the Bush administration often employed the language of the Christian Crusader in its ediects from the White House, justifying illegal military action - usually appealing 'beyond' secular' law, to a shared religious sense of what the American Rightwing considers to be 'morally' correct action in the world.
This religious veneer of course, works to further justify and maintain the ruthless Capitalist imperialism currently practiced byt he United States of America. There is nothing particulalry 'moral' about it, and certainly nothing religious. However, the Christian Church, in its various guises has firmly come into line with Capitalist exploitation in the West. This is interesting, and needs to be thoroughly understood. The teachings of Jesus Christ, simply and clearly are anti-Capitalist and therefore anti-greed. Mainstream relgion Christian religion in the modern age however, has developed an ideology that is designed to support secular government action, based upon exploitation and aggression applied to the masses. Not only are the teachings of Jesus Christ anti-greed, they are also anti-violent.
Strictly speaking, Christians carrying-out any violent action, whether it be as a US soldier with a gun in his hand, or indeed a pious Catholic swinging a hammer at a plane, is to distort the teachings of Jesus Christ. Anyone who doubts this, are urged to read The Sermon On The Mount, which sums-up the original teachings of Jesus Christ as contained and conveyed in scripture.
Obviously, the works of Lenin suggest that religions should not have any political power whatsoever. This removes them from secular manipulation as it occurs today. Furthermore, religious teachings aimed at evolving an individual's character, should not be distorted to serve a political cause that it was never intended to address. When religious philosophy is 'forced' into a political mould, then inevitably distortions occur that are difficult to control. A certain 'selflessness', designed so that humanity might share resources in a civilised manner, becomes an excess for pointless 'self-sacrifice' int eh political arena that kills and maims not only the bomber, but hundreds of innocents in indiscriminate attacks of no military significance. Focusing on Christianity, but by no means limited to it, Jesus Christ also clearly taught that 'violence' was wrong - infact that 'war' was wrong, at least in the received scriptures. Bearing all this in-mind, it is difficult to see how a good Christian, conforming to Christian morality based firmly upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, could be viewed as 'justified' in taking any overt aggressive or violent action.
That does not mean that the war in Iraq is 'correct', simply because non-violent means are used to oppose it. On the contrary, such is the lurch to the Rightwing across the Liberal West, that the right to protest has been severely curtailed of late. Protest must be effective and not wasteful. There is a time for direct confrontation with one's government, and that confrontation can take many forms. My point here is that we shoudl not limit ourselves to 'predictable' protest which the State can easily prepare for, and legislate our of existence. On the other hand, situations that have persisted for decades, can suddenly come to an end via the forces of history and their sudden changes. It must also be pointed-out that concessions gained int he short-term by violent action, seldom last that long, and have little long-term benefit. For things to change, a culmination of events must occur across many different levels of society until change becomes an overwhelming force that sweeps all along with it.
We on the Left must continuously prepare ourselves to clearly see and understand the forces of hisory so that we might be ready when things move int he right direction. We must understand change to be able to master it, and not be mastered by it. Eventually, the US bases will close in Japan because they cost too much and gain too little for the Capitalist system. The bases will dissolve through the forces of history. The question is how to add support to these forces that will sweep the bases away in a non-violent manner? The non-violent manner here is by far the most preferred as it will have long-lasting effects. The illegal wars in iraq and Afghanistan, created by both Bush and Blair are already changing. Both former leaders are now gone - and the West is trying to create somekind of 'face saving' package to withdraw its troops from areas it can not really control. Regime change will probably not work in the long-run. And the killing of hundreds of thousands of people has probably done more for terrorist recruitment, than if the wars had not happened in the first place.
Protest is about correct positioning in both history and society. Things can change in an instant. Never under-estimate the suddenness that change can occur. The Left must be prepared for power at anytime, so that when the circumstances present themselves, true change can be effected. Force, when it is used, must be clearly defined and well thought out. Religious bigotry of anykind should have no say in the political process. Religious thinking should remain true to its origins, and not become distorted in an attempt to gain political power, as has been the case in the modern world with both Christianity and Islam.
'[If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people. Marx, Letter to His Father (1837)]'
This religious veneer of course, works to further justify and maintain the ruthless Capitalist imperialism currently practiced byt he United States of America. There is nothing particulalry 'moral' about it, and certainly nothing religious. However, the Christian Church, in its various guises has firmly come into line with Capitalist exploitation in the West. This is interesting, and needs to be thoroughly understood. The teachings of Jesus Christ, simply and clearly are anti-Capitalist and therefore anti-greed. Mainstream relgion Christian religion in the modern age however, has developed an ideology that is designed to support secular government action, based upon exploitation and aggression applied to the masses. Not only are the teachings of Jesus Christ anti-greed, they are also anti-violent.
Strictly speaking, Christians carrying-out any violent action, whether it be as a US soldier with a gun in his hand, or indeed a pious Catholic swinging a hammer at a plane, is to distort the teachings of Jesus Christ. Anyone who doubts this, are urged to read The Sermon On The Mount, which sums-up the original teachings of Jesus Christ as contained and conveyed in scripture.
Obviously, the works of Lenin suggest that religions should not have any political power whatsoever. This removes them from secular manipulation as it occurs today. Furthermore, religious teachings aimed at evolving an individual's character, should not be distorted to serve a political cause that it was never intended to address. When religious philosophy is 'forced' into a political mould, then inevitably distortions occur that are difficult to control. A certain 'selflessness', designed so that humanity might share resources in a civilised manner, becomes an excess for pointless 'self-sacrifice' int eh political arena that kills and maims not only the bomber, but hundreds of innocents in indiscriminate attacks of no military significance. Focusing on Christianity, but by no means limited to it, Jesus Christ also clearly taught that 'violence' was wrong - infact that 'war' was wrong, at least in the received scriptures. Bearing all this in-mind, it is difficult to see how a good Christian, conforming to Christian morality based firmly upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, could be viewed as 'justified' in taking any overt aggressive or violent action.
That does not mean that the war in Iraq is 'correct', simply because non-violent means are used to oppose it. On the contrary, such is the lurch to the Rightwing across the Liberal West, that the right to protest has been severely curtailed of late. Protest must be effective and not wasteful. There is a time for direct confrontation with one's government, and that confrontation can take many forms. My point here is that we shoudl not limit ourselves to 'predictable' protest which the State can easily prepare for, and legislate our of existence. On the other hand, situations that have persisted for decades, can suddenly come to an end via the forces of history and their sudden changes. It must also be pointed-out that concessions gained int he short-term by violent action, seldom last that long, and have little long-term benefit. For things to change, a culmination of events must occur across many different levels of society until change becomes an overwhelming force that sweeps all along with it.
We on the Left must continuously prepare ourselves to clearly see and understand the forces of hisory so that we might be ready when things move int he right direction. We must understand change to be able to master it, and not be mastered by it. Eventually, the US bases will close in Japan because they cost too much and gain too little for the Capitalist system. The bases will dissolve through the forces of history. The question is how to add support to these forces that will sweep the bases away in a non-violent manner? The non-violent manner here is by far the most preferred as it will have long-lasting effects. The illegal wars in iraq and Afghanistan, created by both Bush and Blair are already changing. Both former leaders are now gone - and the West is trying to create somekind of 'face saving' package to withdraw its troops from areas it can not really control. Regime change will probably not work in the long-run. And the killing of hundreds of thousands of people has probably done more for terrorist recruitment, than if the wars had not happened in the first place.
Protest is about correct positioning in both history and society. Things can change in an instant. Never under-estimate the suddenness that change can occur. The Left must be prepared for power at anytime, so that when the circumstances present themselves, true change can be effected. Force, when it is used, must be clearly defined and well thought out. Religious bigotry of anykind should have no say in the political process. Religious thinking should remain true to its origins, and not become distorted in an attempt to gain political power, as has been the case in the modern world with both Christianity and Islam.
'[If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people. Marx, Letter to His Father (1837)]'
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