Simulposted with we are not afraid of ruins

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By Ward Churchill

The following is a chapter from the above mentioned book.

Originally written for the radical therapy movement’s Issues in Radical Therapy (vol. 12 #s 1 and 2, 1986), the book has two main focuses. First, it points out the failure of the North American “peace”
movement’s ability to create any sort of lasting or “revolutionary”
change in American politics and the global repressive apparatus of
capitalism. Second, it suggests that nonviolent activists undergo a sort
of therapy to help them understand not only why oppressed people take
up armed struggle, but also why it is impossible to create any sort of
change in their circumstances without doing so.

Though the idea of some sort of “radical therapy” may at first seem simplistic and maybe a little silly, Churchill’s idea of therapy as he spells out in several chapters would indeed take North American
pacifists out of their cozy, privileged environment and expose them to
the very real threat of social as well as state repression. Basically,
the results would be one of three outcomes: the pacifist would wind up
with a stronger idea of how nonviolent tactics do not protect the
pacifists from violence and thus the pacifists might understand that
bodily, financial and social harm is inevitable in the struggle for
better conditions for oppressed people; the pacifists might come to
understand why repressed people often feel compelled to take up armed
self-defense; or, the pacifists would retreat to the safety of the
suburbs from which they came, and give up the charade of activism before
someone – themselves, for instance – gets hurt.

For people serious about struggle for a better life, this is a thought-provoking book. The impetus for it was a workshop Churchill gave at the Midwest Radical Therapy Association’s annual conference in 1981.
After the initial workshop, entitled “Demystification of the Assault
Rifle”, where Churchill explained and demonstrated how assault rifles
functioned, he was censured, the organizers – excluding the ones who had
actually attended the workshop and learned something – passed a
resolution which barred anyone from carrying weapons into the
conference. When Churchill asked how they would apply this rule if the
police were to show up, a quick amendment was passed to exempt the
police from having to surrender their weapons. The obvious hypocrisy was
an embarrassment to the organizers who had invited Churchill to conduct
the workshop and those who actually attended, thus the invitation for
his articles.

Though much-photocopied, the articles have not seen widespread distribution since the mid-80s. It is now widely available in book form. I hope you enjoy this!

Okay, I’ll admit that I edited some comments out of this chapter. They made reference to Pacifist attitudes amongst Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He devoted an entire chapter to this subject, and rather than
transcribing another chapter in order to clarify the author’s comments,
I left them out. It is my hope that upon reading this chapter, you will
want to read the entire booklet. I certainly would encourage you to do
so. Any comments about this editorial decision are welcomed, as it is
not something I am really comfortable with.

The Comfort Zone

Don’t speak to me of revolution until you’re ready to eat rats to survive…
– the last poets, 1972

Regardless of the shortcomings of pacifism as a methodological approach to revolution, there is nothing inherent in its basic impulse which prevents real practitioners from experiencing the revolutionary
ethos. Rather, as already noted, the emotional content of the principle
as already noted, the emotional content of the principle of nonviolence
is tantamount to a gut-level rejection of much, or even al, that the
present social order stands for – an intrinsically revolutionary
perspective. The question is not the motivations of real pacifists, but
instead the nature of a strategy by which the revolution may be won, at a
minimum sacrifice to all concerned.

This assumes that sacrifice is being made by all concerned. Here, it becomes relatively easy to separate the wheat from the chaff among America’s proponents of “nonviolent opposition.” While the premise of
pacifism necessarily precludes engaging in violent acts directed at
others, even for reasons of self-defense, it does not prevent its
adherents from themselves incurring physical punishment in pursuit of
social justice. In other words, there is nothing of a doctrinal nature
barring real pacifists from running real risks.

And indeed they do. Since at least the early Christians, devout pacifists have been sacrificing themselves while standing up for what they believe in against the armed might of
those they consider wrong. Gandhi’s followers perished by the thousands,
allowed themselves to be beaten and maimed en masse, and clogged
India’s penal system in their campaign to end British rule. (Martin
Luther) King (Jr.)’s field organizers showed incredible bravery in
confronting the racist thugs of the South, and many paid with their
lives on lonely back roads.

Another type of pacifist action which became a symbol for the nonviolent antiwar movement was that of a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, who immolated himself on a Saigon street on June 11, 1963. Duc’s
protest against growing U.S. involvement in his country was quickly
followed by similar actions by other Vietnamese bonzes and, on November
2, 1965, by an American Quaker, Norman Morrison, who burned himself in
front of the Pentagon to protest increasing levels of U.S. troop
commitment in Indochina. Whatever the strategic value one may place upon
the actions of Morrison and the Buddhists – and it must be acknowledged
that the U.S. grip on Vietnam rapidly tightened after the
self-immolation began, while U.S. troop strength in Southeast Asia
spiraled from some 125,000 at the time of Morrison’s suicide to more
than 525,000 barely two years later – they were unquestionably
courageous people, entirely willing to face the absolute certainty of
the most excruciating death in pursuit of their professed ideals.
Although the effectiveness of their tactics is open to question, their
courage and integrity certainly are not.

In a less severe fashion, there are many other examples of American pacifists putting themselves on the line for their beliefs. The Berrigan brothers, Phillip and Daniel, clearly qualify in this regard, as do a
number of others who took direct action against the Selective Service
System and certain U.S. military targets during the late ’60s and early
70s. Cadres of Witness for Peace placed their bodies between
CIA-sponsored contra-guerillas and their intended civilian victims along
the Nicaragua/Honduras border during the 80s. Members of Greenpeace,
Earth First! and Friends of the Earth have been known to take
considerable chances with their own well-being in their advocacy of a
range of environmental issues.

The list of principled and self-sacrificing pacifists and pacifist acts could undoubtedly be extended and, ineffectual or not, these people are admirable in their own right. Unfortunately, they represent the
exception rather than the rule of pacifist performance in the United
States. For every example of serious and committed pacifist activism
emerging from the normative mass of American nonviolent movements since
1965, one could cite scores of countering instances in which only lip
service was paid to the ideals of action and self-sacrifice.

The question central to the emergence and maintenance of nonviolence as the oppositional foundation of American activism has not been the truly pacifist formulation, “How can we forge a revolutionary politics
within which we can avoid inflicting violence on others?” On the
contrary, a more accurate guiding question has been, “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?” Hence, the
trappings of pacifism have been subverted to establish a sort of
“politics of the comfort zone,” not only akin to what Bettleheim termed
“the philosophy of business as usual” and devoid of perceived risk to
its advocates, but minus any conceivable revolutionary content of true
pacifist activism – the sort practiced by the Gandhian movement, the
Berrigans, and Norman Morrison – is thus isolated and subsumed in the
United States, even among the ranks of self-professing participants.

Such a situation must abort whatever limited utility pacifists tactics might have, absent other and concurrent forms of struggle, as a socially transformative method. yet the history of the American Left
over the past decade shows too clearly that the more diluted the
substance embodied in “pacifist practice,” the louder the insistence of
its subscribers that nonviolence is the only mode of action “appropriate
and acceptable within the context of North America,” and the greater
the effort to ostracize, or even stifle divergent types of actions. Such
strategic hegemony exerted by proponents of this truncated range of
tactical options has done mush to foreclose on whatever revolutionary
potential may be said to exist in modern America.

Is such an assessment too harsh? One need only to attend a mass demonstration (ostensibly directed against the policies of the state) in any U.S. city to discover the answer. One will find hundreds, sometimes
thousands, assembled in orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers
calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity,
carrying signs “demanding” the same thing, welcoming singers who
enunciate lyrically on the worthiness of the demonstrators’ agenda as
well as the plight of the various victims they are there to “defend,”
and – typically – the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations
to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to please sign a
petition and/or write letters to congresspeople requesting that they
alter or abandon offending undertakings.

Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The
organizers of the demonstration will have gone through “proper channels”
to obtain permits required by the state and instructions as to where
they will be allowed to assemble, how long they will be allowed to stay
and, should a march be involved in the demonstration, along which routes
they will be allowed to walk.

Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others – an elite. Adorned with green (or white, or powder blue) armbands, their function is to ensure that the demonstrators remain “responsible,” not
deviating from the state-sanctioned plan of protest. Individuals or
small groups who attempt to spin off from the main body, entering areas
to which the state has denied access (or some other inappropriate
activity) are headed off by these armbanded “marshals” who argue –
pointing to the nearby police – that “troublemaking” will only
“exacerbate an already tense situation” and “provoke violence,” thereby
“alienating those we are attempting to reach.”…

At this juncture, the confluence of interests between the state and the mass nonviolent movement could not be clearer. The role of the police, whose function is to support state policy by minimizing
disruption of its procedures, should be in natural conflict with that of
a movement purporting to challenge these same policies and, indeed, to
transform the state itself. However, with apparent perverseness, the
police find themselves serving as mere backups (or props) to
self-policing (now euphemistically termed “peace-keeping” rather than
the more accurate “marshalling”) efforts of the alleged opposition’s own
membership. Both sides of the “contestation” concur that the smooth
functioning of state processes must not be physically disturbed, at
least not in any significant way.

All of this is within the letter and spirit of cooptive forms of sophisticated self-preservation appearing as an integral aspect of the later phases of bourgeois democracy. It dovetails well with more
shopworn methods such as the electoral process and has been used by the
state as an innovative means of conducting public opinion polls, which
better hide rather than eliminate controversial policies. Even the
movement’s own sloganeering tends to bear this out from time to time, as
when the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) coined the
catch-phrase of its alternative to the polling place: “Vote with your
feet, vote in the street.”

Of course, any movement seeking to project a credible self-image as something other than just one more variation of accommodation to state power must ultimately establish its “militant” oppositional credentials
through the media in a manner more compelling than rhetorical
speechifying and the holding of impolite placards (“Fuck the War” was
always a good one) at rallies. Here, the time-honored pacifist notion of
“civil disobedience” is given a new twist by the adherents of
nonviolence in America. 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.”

The centerpiece of such activity usually involves as arrest, either of a token figurehead of the movement (or a small, selected group of them) or a mass arrest of some sort. In the latter event, “arrest
training” is generally provided – and lately has become “required” by
movement organizers – by the same marshals who will later ensure that
crowd control police units will be left with little or nothing to do.
This is to ensure that “no one gets hurt” in the process of being
arrested, and that the police are not inconvenienced by disorganized
arrest procedures.

The event which activates the arrests is typically preplanned, well-publisized in advance, and, more often than not, literally coordinated with the police – often including estimates by organizers
concerning how many arrestees will likely be involved. Generally
speaking, such “extreme statements” will be scheduled to coincide with
larger-scale peaceful demonstrations so that a considerable audience of
“committed” bystanders (and, hopefully, NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN) will be on hand
to applaud the bravery and sacrifice of those arrested; most of the
bystanders will, of course, have considered reasons why they themselves
are unprepared to “go so far” as to be arrested. The specific sort of
action designed to precipitate the arrests themselves usually involves
one of the following: (a) sitting down in a restricted area and refusing
to leave when ordered; (b) Stepping across an imaginary line drawn on
the ground by a police representative; (c) refusing to disperse at the
appointed time; or, (d) chaining or padlocking the doors to a public
building. When things really get heavy, those seeking to be arrested may
pour blood (real or ersatz) on something of “symbolic value.”

As a rule, those arrested are cooperative in the extreme, meekly allowing the police to lead them to waiting vans or buses for transportation to whatever station house or temporary facility has been
designed as the processing point. In especially “militant” actions,
arrestees go limp, undoubtedly severely taxing the state’s repressive
resources by forcing the police to carry them bodily to the vans or
buses (monitored all the while by volunteer attorneys who are there to
ensure that such “police brutality” as pushing, shoving, or dropping an
arrestee does not occur). In either event, the arrestees sit quietly in
their assigned vehicles – or sing “We Shall Overcome” and other
favorites – as they are driven away for booking. The typical charges
levied will be trespassing, creating a public disturbance, or being a
public nuisance. In the heavy instances, the charge may be escalated to
malicious mischief or even destruction of public property. Either way,
other than in exceptional circumstances, everyone will be assigned an
arraignment date and released on personal recognizance or a small cash
bond, home in time for dinner (and to review their exploits on the six
o’clock news).

In the unlikely event that charges are not dismissed prior to arraignment (the state having responded to symbolic actions by engaging largely in symbolic selective prosecutions), the arrestee will appear on
the appointed date in a room resembling a traffic court where s/he will
be allowed to plead guilty, pay a minimal fine, and go home. Repeat
offenders may be “sentenced” to pay a somewhat larger fine (which, of
course, goes into state accounts underwriting the very policies the
arrestees ostensibly oppose) or even to perform a specific number of
“public service hours” (promoting police/community relations, for
example). It is almost unheard of for arrestees to be sentenced to jail
time for the simple reason that most jails are already overflowing with
less principled individuals, most of them rather unpacifist in nature,
and many of whom have caused the state a considerably greater degree of
displeasure than the nonviolent movement, which claims to seek its
radical alteration.

For those arrestees who opt to plead not-guilty to the charges they themselves literally arranged to incur, a trial date will be set. They will thereby accrue another symbolic advantage by exercising their right
to explain why they did whatever they did before a judge and jury. They
may then loftily contend that it is the state, rather than themselves,
that is really criminal. Their rights satisfied, they will then
generally be sentenced to exactly the same penalty which would have been
levied had they pleaded guilty at their arraignment (plus court costs),
and go home. A few will be sentenced to a day or two in jail as an
incentive not to waste court time with such pettiness in the future. A
few less will refuse to pay whatever fine is imposed, and received as
much as thirty days in jail (usually on work release) as an alternative;
a number of these have opted to pen “prison letters” during the period
of their brief confinement, underscoring the sense of symbolic (rather
the literal) self-sacrifice which is sought.

The trivial nature of this level of activity does not come into focus until it is juxtaposed to the sorts of state activity which the nonviolent movement claims to be “working on.” A brief sampling of
prominent issues addressed by the American opposition since 1965 will
suffice for purposes of illustration: the U.S. escalation of the ground
war in Southeast Asia to a level where more than a million lives were
lost, the saturation bombing of Vietnam (another one to two million
killed), the expansion of the Vietnam war into all of Indochina (costing
perhaps another two to three million lives when the intentional
destruction of Cambodia’s farmland and resultant mass starvation are
considered), U.S. sponsorship of the Pinochet coup in Chile (at least
another 10,000 dead), U.S. underwriting of the Salvadoran Oligarchy
(50,000 lives at a minimum), U.S. support of the Guatemalan junta
(perhaps 200,000 killed since 1954), and efforts to destabilize the
Sandinista government in Nicaragua (at least 20,000 dead). A far broader
sample of comparably lethal activities has gone unopposed altogether.

While the human costs of continuing American business as usual have registered well into the seven-digit range (and possibly higher), the nonviolent “opposition” in the United States has not only restricted its
tactics almost exclusively to the symbolic arena denoted above, but has
actively endeavored to prevent others from going further. The methods
employed to this end have generally been restricted to the deliberate
stigmatizing, isolation, and minimization of other potentials – as a
means of neutralizing, or at least containing them – although at times
it seems to have crossed over into collaboration with state efforts to
bring about their outright liquidation.

The usual approach has been a consistent a priori dismissal of any one person or group attempting to move beyond the level of symbolic action as “abandoning the original spirit (of North American
oppositional politics) and taking the counterproductive path of
small-scale violence now and organizing for serious armed struggle
later.” This is persistently coupled with attempts to diminish the
importance of actions aimed at concrete rather than symbolic effects,
epitomized in the question framed by Sam Brown, a primary organizer of
the November 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam (when perhaps
5,000 broke free of a carefully orchestrated schedule of passive
activities): “What’s more important, that a bunch of scruffy people
charged the Justice Department, or that (500,000 people were in the same
place at one time to sing?”

Not only was such “violence” as destroying property and scuffling with police proscribed in the view of the Moratorium organizers, but also any tendency to utilize the incredible mass of assembled humanity
in any way which might tangibly interfere with the smooth physical
functioning of the governing apparatus in the nation’s capital (e.g.,
nonviolent civil disobedience on the order of, say, systematic traffic
blockages and huge sit-ins).

Unsurprisingly, this same mentality manifested itself even more clearly a year and a half later with the open boycott by pacifism’s “responsible leadership” (and most of their committed followers) of the
Indochina Peace Campaign’s planned “May Day Demonstration” in
Washington. Despite the fact that in some ways the war had escalated
(e.g., increasingly heavy bombing) since the largest symbolic protest in
American History – the Moratorium fielded approximately one million
passive demonstrators, nationwide – it was still held that May Day
organizer Rennie Davis’ intent to “show the government that it will no
longer be able to control its own society unless it ends the war NOW!”
was “going too far.” It was opined that although the May Day plan did
not itself call for violent acts, its disruption of business as usual
was likely to “provoke a violent response from officials.”

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