From the new issue of Wired magazine:

Apocalypse Now
[ Available online starting March 29 ]

How a hologram, a blimp, and a massively multiplayer game might bring peace to the Holy Land.
By Joshua Davis

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Book Reviews (Do or Die)

Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America

by Ward Churchill

Arbeiter Ring Publishing, Canada, 1999 / ISBN 1-894037-07-3

Whether you agree with all of Churchill's arguments or not (and personally I have a few problems with the therapy stuff) his analysis of the pacifist doctrine is both eloquent and truly eye-opening. I spent some time involved in explicitly non-violent activism in the UK without really thinking through the ideological implications - it was simply the first direct action scene I came across. I only wish that I had read this book 7 years ago and hastened the learning process that has led me to many of the same conclusions as the author. Don't be put off, however, if you are happily involved in non-violent action; this book will shed new light on your activities. In short, I can't recommend this book highly enough - if you, your friend, your flatmate or your mum hasn't read this book then get a copy quick!

Pacifism as Pathology - Notes on an American Pseudopraxis is the title of Ward Churchill's well-argued and persuasive essay criticising the form and ideology of non-violent political action in North America. The essay was first published in 1986, and is reprinted in this book alongside an essay by Mike Ryan who further develops the arguments in the context of the Canadian peace movement. Though Churchill's essay was written in response to the political scene of well over a decade ago, his arguments are (perhaps worringly) equally thought-provoking and relevant to the contemporary manifestations of non-violent political action that purport to have revolutionary methods and goals.

Taking the experience of the Jews in the Holocaust as an in-depth (and highly controversial) example, the author illustrates the ultimate futility of non-violent resistance. He suggests that the pacifist response of the Jews which was intended to promote "social responsibility" and not further exacerbate their persecution, in fact did the opposite and led to the Jews effectively colluding with the genocidal aims of their Nazi oppressors. Whilst not suggesting that the Holocaust could have been prevented by armed struggle on the part of the Jews, Churchill, quoting Bruno Bettleheim (a former concentration camp inmate), says: "Rebellion could only have saved either the life they were going to lose anyway, or the lives of others...Inertia it was that led millions of Jews into the ghettos that the SS had created for them." (p.36)

Churchill recognises that this example is extreme yet he suggests that: "it is precisely this extremity which makes the example useful; the Jewish experience reveals with stark clarity the basic illogic at the very core of pacifist conceptions of morality and political action." (p.38) The illogic to which he is referring is the idea that moral superiority can overcome state oppression; the moral superiority being based upon an unwillingness to take up arms and use violence as a tactic. This notion is so central to the 'pathology' of pacifism that the dichotomies between good (non-violent) and evil (violent) are found throughout. Of course, in order to sustain a belief in the ideology examples of good (non-violence) triumphing over evil (violence) are vital. Here, Churchill argues that pacifists are guilty of considerable revisionism in order to make history compatible with their beliefs.