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Imo the worst pacifists are those that want to prevent others from being able to defend themselves.
If you're going to be beat up and you chose to not attempt to defend yourself in any way, then I'll think that you're being stupid, but ultimately it's your life, your choice.
But if someone else is going to be beat up, and you try to make sure that they won't be able to defend themselves, then that makes you an accessory to the assault in my eyes.
If you keep on caving in to bullies, one day, they'll take everything from you.
This is something I’ve wanted to write into a character in a fictitious world, but one that’s not even openly in foreign war.
He insists that people need to peacefully understand each other, rather than run lives by settling conflicts with bullets and bombs; he staunchly believes that war is the most horrible thing ever. But a second character points out to him, oppression delivers much of the same circumstance as war in a state of permanence. At least violence can lead to change. The summary quote being just “Everyone is at war.”
I want peace, and surrender is not peace.
... para bellum. Concept old as shit.
Yup.
Look, as a programmer I'm lazy. And I've worked a lot of extra hours due to that laziness, to automate stuff and have less work to do in the future.
It's the same with pacifism. If you want peace, sometimes you have first to use extreme violence to eradicate the bastards that don't.
First murder all fascists, billionaires, and similar threats to peace. And educate the young so they won't become threats to peace again.
Then we can have peace.
No neutral on a moving train.
You want at least a stick large enough to hit back or scare away aggressors. I agree that a no war world would be best, but that can be achieved by mutual disarment, not by one sided pacifism.
And if just one side refuses to disarm (which is perfectly sound decision seeing how superpowers act) nobody can disarm.
Exactly, the North Korea strategy.
In other words, if one doesn't have power, they aren't a pacifist, just weak.
Only once they have the ability to decimate the enemy, do they get to claim that they didn't use said ability.
I think they waste their time. At this point, signing waivers and petitions don't matter. Unfortunately until there's bloodshed things won't change. Politicians have zero accountability, you vote and it really doesn't matter, it's the illusion of having a choice.
You can't oversimplify the world in to "our side" and "their side," and say "if you're not with us, you're against us." There are countless different sides and there are factions within those sides that have different motivations and agendas. That's simply a fact, and to pretend otherwise is just lazy.
Pacifists are generally more correct than most people because they've figured out the "no war" part of "no war but class war," and the vast majority of war is not class war (or is perpetrated by the ruling class). I'm not a pacifist but I have respect for those who are.
To be fair, Orwell's argument is understandable in the specific context of WWII, but it is not a generalizable principle.
Technically, when it comes to violence, it is that simple. There is the side attacking you...and you.
When it comes to fascism, it's also that simple. You are either "with them" or you are on their list of eventual targets. Unless you do something to stop them, it's really just a matter of time before they get around to attacking you too.
Technically, when it comes to violence, it is that simple. There is the side attacking you…and you.
No, it isn't. Even in the purest, simplest scenario of like, crazy guy on the street comes after me for no reason, it still isn't that simple, because it's not a zero sum game of his interests vs my own. For him to assault me goes against his own interests, it's likely that he'll face legal or social consequences for doing so. At the same time, those legal/social forces are not necessarily "my side," they might act to protect my wellbeing (or at least punish someone after the fact), but I don't control them, and they may act against my wishes. For example, I might prefer that my assailant get rehabilitated rather than incarcerated.
This isn't even an abstract thing for me. I have a relative who used to be very mentally unstable, suffering from paranoid delusions, caused or made worse by the meth he was on, and the war he had fought in. He was a danger to myself and my family, and to everyone in the area. For him to get clean and find treatment that worked for him was in everyone's interest.
This is in the most extreme example of assailant and victim, and no one else. If you try to scale things up to a nation and pretend that there are only two sides, it's utterly ridiculous.
"My" side might forcibly conscript me to be sent into some pointless meat grinder, killing people who are in the exact same boat but who happened to be born in a different country. Are they not aggressing against me by doing that? Perhaps the real "sides" are the working people of both countries against the rulers sending us to die.
I think you're adding context that wouldn't exist in a real world situation.
If a crazy guy attacks you on the street, would you just stand there and let him kill you because of all those societal consequences that are working against him? If you just stand there and let him kill you, do those things go away?
Because unless you defending yourself is somehow the reason all those things happen to him, then none of those.things should have any impact on your choice to either live or die. Your choice is still binary.
I get what you're saying about trying to do something preventative to stop the violence from occurring, and that is a valid point. But it also completely ignores the violence itself. When you are faced with an imminent threat to your physical safety, that you can't run from...doing nothing is the worst thing you can do.
If your relative decided to actually do something to you or your family...would you have just stood there watching as he hurt them? Would you have just let him hurt you, all because rehab was a possible option?
That's the most extreme example of one-on-one violence. Them, or the ones you love. Them, or you.
As for fascists...even scaled up to the level of a country, it's the same choice. When the Nazis invaded a country, everyone living there was in one of two possible positions....you were either standing there watching your neighbors get rounded up, or you were the one getting rounded up.
If someone asks you to fight back to save yourself and your neighbors...no...they aren't the ones doing you harm. The invading force that's threatening your life, and the lives of those around you, is. You can either stand there and watch it happen, hoping it doesn't happen to you...or you can try to stop them before it does.
That's the threat of fascism.
George Orwell risked his life to travel to a different country and fight alongside the anarcho-communists there. I'm gonna agree with George on this one, he's got the street cred to back it up.
Refusing to defend yourself is a matter of choice and I have no moral issue with you taking an ass kicking without fighting back if you so choose. Refusing to defend innocents when you are capable, though, is morally reprehensible and makes you as culpable as the one attacking them. While you're taking your ass kicking, pacifists, I'll be there doing what I can to prevent it from happening and making your attacker regret it.
There are many definitions of pacifism, and without further context to simply say someone is a pacifist automatically makes them a fascist is a pretty myopic point of view.
I am anti-war, and I prefer peaceful resolution over violence. By definition I am a pacifist. But, that does not mean I will let someone simply walk all over me or my loved ones without opposition. It doesn’t mean I will simply resort to violence either.
The world is a complicated place, and to treat everything as if it’s an “either, or” situation does everyone a disservice and only feeds into the overall problem.
I believe Orwell was speaking of the Spanish Revolution (1936), in which he fought on the side of the socialists.
Pacifism is a great ideal, and (I believe) a lot of conflicts can be solved by honest negotiation. Once the shooting starts, though, the time for pacifism has ended. In the US, right now, it's not clear whether the shooting has started. I mean: ICE is definitely shooting people; people are definitely being injured and dying as result of the administration's actions, but it's not Shooting-shooting, and it still seems like avoidable, poor-policy harms. The question is: will it escalate to civil war level violence? And if it does, will strict pacifists already have blocked any hope of resistance?
Considering how this has gone for indiginous and black people of your country, who've been dealing with this problem for the last few hundred years, I don't think the issue is with the pacifists/non violent activists on your side. It's with the sheer fucking scale of the power imbalance you're facing.
Like yeah there's now more people in your country being shot at, but the people doing the shooting still have significantly more power.
Are there enough of you collectively now being shot at, to be able to take on the basically all of capitalism that's backing your government, funding your millitary, and controlling your economy?
It's fucking bleak thinking about this stuff. Like even with more Luigi's, how many will it take before the people holding the cards to make things considerably worse for most of society?
I've had this comic saved in my phone for a while now and it seems relevant. What with how well he predicted the future, Orwell being so against pacifists is painfully ironic.
Yeah, Orwell had the clarity of fighting against a literal right wing coup. A clear, decisive event to separate the non-violent time from the violent time, and violence instigated by people without even nominal consent of The People.
The slow rise of militancy, matched with spreading desperation, at least so far lacks a trigger. And in the particular case of the US, we have, like, 30 shootings a day just being us. That makes it a lot less shocking when a couple of those are government shootings. We let the right wingers take over the government (arguably, 250 years ago), and they're just slowly boiling the frog.
Arguing against violence and war when that is possible is fine.
Arguing fanatically to lay down weapons when one side is very clearly not going to do that, is very stupid.
In the sense that there will always be people who are going to be tricked into a fascist, violent, superiority cult, because there are just that many people, and in the sense that sometimes and regularly moderate or intense violence will be necessary to stop them, because some people are closed off to arguments and peaceful discussion, opposing that violence is taking their side, yes.
And it's fine if you disagree, I simply think you have really finished thinking about it. The reply is always going to be a "... but what if they just stopped being fanatic fascists" and I think that is not how that works.
So ultimately I agree with Orwell.
Conditional pacifism
Tapping into just war theory conditional pacifism represents a spectrum of positions departing from positions of absolute pacifism. One such conditional pacifism is the common pacificism, which may allow defense but is not advocating a default defensivism[10] or even interventionism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism#Types
Well that was fucking easy. /thread
Yeah probably, and without helping at all
Strongly anti-pacifism they never recognize the violence of the current state of affairs as violence.
Pacifism as a virtue is fine, though it won't stop actual Nazis. it's apathy and disillusionment that are killing us
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
- MLK
Malcolm X and The Black Panthers are an inconvenient thing to teach aren't they?
I.e., “What are your thoughts on people who are against people who are against people who are violently against people?”
Pacifism vs passive-ism?
Orwell couldn’t be more wrong about this, in my opinion.
Pacifism doesn’t mean inaction, it means opposing the use of violence as a way of resolving disputes.
There are lots of ways to resolve disputes that don’t involve violence, but they usually require significantly more effort and creativity than simply shooting someone in the face.
Anyone can change their mind, I firmly believe that, so I’m not going to generalize and say all people who are opposed to pacifism are evil or inherently violent themselves, but the inability to even imagine that there are alternatives to war and violence is a failure of one’s ability to empathize with others.
Empathy can be a superpower, lack of empathy can cause untold suffering.
The right to be a pacifist is upheld by the people willing to use violence to uphold it.
Pacifism, in its most extreme form, is simply an unsustainable ideology, because you cannot oppose an adversary that is committed to subduing you with violence unless you are willing to use violence to stop them.
Try being a pacifist Jew in Nazi Germany to see how much good that will do to you and how many alternative solutions you can find or how many soldiers you can convince. That is the context of the quote shared there, pacifist solutions should always be preferred, but sometimes that is not an option, it's the tolerance paradox.
Orwell is a child of his time though. If I recall correctly he went to Spain to report on the conflict (civil war) and was so shocked(?) that he volunteered to fight against the literal Nazis. Then getting told "put down your weapons" is the context I read into this quote.
Or to take your example: it's about someone telling you to not fight back instead of helping safe others.
While I agree with you in times of peace and between individuals it's more nuanced: when physically under attack your options shrink.
This is the part where this quote holds true in my opinion: When you're confronted with a situation that already turned violent. Or, worse for me personally, I'd there is no shared common value system.
How do you mediate with someone who not only is willing to kill but has the conviction that it's the only right thing to do?
And I don't mean that as a rhetorical question, I have no idea ... And my own moral compass is fucked up by now and spinning in circles.
This smells like rainbows and friendship. You cannot fathom the worst of humanity. You cannot truely empathize with them because your mind is so wildly different and your ability to empathize is part of that.
Sure anyone can change their mind but to think you can make such change realistically in this reality in all cases is so childish and outright foolish it amazes me adults believe this.
Yeh it’s like the idea you can understand a serial killer or a brutalist. You shouldn’t. They are different and thinking you can fix them with love puts you at danger.
100%
Its why I'm not a pacifist. Its why I don't generally involve myself with left-ish protest movements, where non-violence is a higher priority than effectiveness when it comes to the metrics of success for an action. I view pacifism as being co-opted after the 1960's and 70's and used to cuckold resistance movements to state power. Government reshaped and reworked itself to both allow and also entirely ignore protest in this time. So sure. Go protest all you want. Its what the state wants you to do and how it wants you to funnel your resentment and anger at a lack of representation or function of government.
