The Case for Pacifism
Posted: April 29th, 2011 | Author: Ian | Filed under: Culture, politics | Tags: pacifism | 3 Comments »
Nicholson Baker has an article titled “Why I’m a Pacifist” in May’s issue of Harper’s. In it, Baker lays out arguments for pacifism grounded in the Allies response to Hitler’s genocidal campaign. The full article is enlightening and insightful but one paragraph stands above the rest:
At a Jewish Peace Fellowship meeting in Cincinnati some years after the war, Rabbi Cronbach was asked how any pacifist could justify opposition to World War II. “War was the sustenance of Hitler,” Cronbach answered. “When the Allies began killing Germans, Hitler threatened that, for every German slain, ten Jews would be slain, and that threat was carried out. We in America are not without some responsibility for that Jewish catastrophe.”
Baker, along with several scholars he quotes, argues that the only solution to Hitler’s mania was an armistice with the Axis powers on the condition that Jewish Germans be allowed to flee the country. There is, of course, much more nuance to his argument but for the sake of brevity I ask that you read the article in its fullness.
After a brief discussion of the mounting war in Libya, the article finishes with this paragraph:
When are we going to grasp the essential truth? War never works. It never has worked. It makes everything worse. Wars must be, as Jessie Hughan wrote in 1944, renounced, rejected, declared against, over and over, “as an ineffective and inhuman means to any end, however just.” That, I would suggest, is the lesson that the pacifists of the Second World War have to teach us.
Pacifism isn’t the answer to all problems. Instead, it’s a naive, dangerous, hypocritical, and self-righteous ideal that’s well-meaning on the inside but improper on the inside.
In other words, pacifism is for extreme goody-two-shoes. And those aren’t acceptable people because they lean towards the black and white area too much while violence leans more towards the gray area.
If you want peace, you sometimes have to fight for it.
Violence can never be eradicated fully. Even though it’s not the best thing in the world, it’s sometimes necessary.
If you live a sheltered life from violence, how are you going to respond to it if you meet it in real life?
In response to anti-pacifism, I think you make valuable points that can be helpful to people who identify with pacifism ( like myself). Self-righteousness, naivity, cowardice, hypocrisy are all potential dangers for someone who wants to explore nonviolence. But these are also risks for one who espouses justified violence. I also think someone who is genuinely nonviolent seeks out the grey area in order to bring opposing parties together. It is war , on the other hand, that lives off of either/or, us/them dichotomies.
Thanks for your comments, dani. I am not non-violent so I can judge the violent, I am non-violent because that’s, I believe, the only way to achieve peace. I reject the notion that peace is something to be fought for.
Peace by war is like purity through fornication.