Most “Pacifists” are Really Just Afraid of Violence

 VIA: The Enigma of Steel

  I notice that a lot of people like to refer to themselves as “pacifists.”  If I were a betting man, I‘d say that about 10% of them are what they claim to be, and 90% are full of shit. 

First off, pacifism as a belief system, of going forth and doing no harm, is a good thing when chosen freely and voluntarily.  I would like to think that we, as a society, would want to encourage people to ‘go forth and do no harm.’  I am not an anti-pacifist, or a warmonger.  I am generally skeptical when the political and social war drums start beating, but I understand that there is a time and a place...and a very important set of protocols to be mastered when violence becomes an option.

There is a (I’m sad to say) large population of self-described “pacifists” who are simply afraid of and unskilled in the use of violence: a population who hides behind the title as if it were some sort of moral armor. 

I prefer a different term for these people: victims in waiting.  I have more bad news: such victimhood never makes for good armor when armor is most needed. 

You see, there is a stark difference between being a pacifist and simply being someone who is afraid of violence.  If you are on social media, or even hanging out with friends (I like to think that some people still hang out with their friends in real life, and don’t just sit behind keyboards,) and are attacking other peoples’ belief systems, their way of life, their ideas, or their identities; if you like acting superior and being snarky, I have news for you: you probably aren’t a real pacifist.  If you find yourself referring to others as “libtards,” “rednecks” or whatever the vitriolic political insult of the day is...you are basically exercising what is the opposite of pacifism, and are simply choosing to perform these exercises from a physically safe vantage point.   Reducing your ideological adversaries to monosyllabic sound bytes is not a trait of a real pacifist.  This is simply being aggressive in an artificial environment where there is no fear of physical harm.

This is what a real pacifist looks like:

I have a buddy who served on a SWAT team for years, where he was involved in many high risk operations.  He left the PD and basically turned his back on all aspects of violence.    This person consistently scored perfectly on firearms qualifications courses including when under physical stress.  This person threw grenades into dangerous folks' houses and kicked their doors down.  Today, this person won't even touch meat because it was procured by violence.  When a person like that decides to not harm others, and to live peacefully in a life of harmony rather than conflict, he is a true pacifist, because he makes a choice to do so. 

Just because you choose not to train in martial arts, to not acquaint yourself with the tools and tactics of personal security; and instead, rely on persons better than yourself to maintain your physical safety, you do not become a pacifist.  You simply become unprepared.  In order to truly be a pacifist, you must choose to be a pacifist.  In order to choose to abstain from violence, you must be able to inflict it in the first place.  Similarly, you must be trained in the art of diffusing violence, which, in my opinion, is JUST as important as being able to inflict it, if not more.

Otherwise, you’re basically just proud of something that you have no control over - similar to the self-interested pride that many racists and ultra-nationalists espouse.  I understand and recognize tribe as important, but if your belonging to the tribe is your ONLY source of pride, then you are dead weight.  You must be a functional member ---> if you are a nationalist - serve your nation; if you are proud of your race or heritage, serve your race or heritage (provide jobs and opportunity for persons in your ethnic/ racial/ minority group - give them leadership and guidance because you understand your culture and will be able to connect with members of it in a way that outsiders never will.)  I am of the opinion that one’s own deeds and one's own ability should be the primary source of one’s pride, not necessarily one’s heritage or lineage...but that is for another day.

 “Only a warrior chooses pacifism, others are condemned to it.” Is a quote I encountered often in my martial arts training, and it is absolutely true.

If you’re unable to do something, then there is no “choosing” not to perform that something.  If you're still calling yourself a pacifist, that may be you trying to fill the gaping hole in your personal security plan with ego.  And when the glass break, when the bullets fly, and when the rapist/ robber/ drunk guy pulls out his knife, ego counts for shit.

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”

-  Robert E. Howard

Disclaimer (this should not be a surprise:) I make no claim to being a pacifist.  I had a job for many years where I had to inflict violence in order to protect life, property, and myself.  I sleep just fine at night too.  

I’m not over here on the internet trying to say I’m the toughest guy since Simo Häyhä either.  (I don't care if you disagree - I think he is the baddest bad ass of the entire history of western civilization's bad asses).  I’m not – there are way more tough, smart and dangerous mofos out there – there are people who are stronger, faster and more cunning than I am.  I am okay with that.  I have another good friend...let’s call him “Tripp” who put 2 rifle rounds through the same quarter at 500 yards.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that, so don’t take this as patting-myself-on-the-back.  I'm glad he's on my side.

However, I did learn a few things about the nature of violence in my decades of martial arts training and years of police service. Feel free to agree...or to disagree with any of this – I am all ears.

Police suspect anarchists in 60,000-euro post office robbery

The anti-terrorism squad was called in on Friday to investigate an armed robbery in the Peloponnese amid suspicion that self-styled anarchists may have been involved. At least four men are believed to have taken part in the robbery, during which 60,000 euros was stolen. Nobody was hurt in the incident.

from ekathimerini
The anti-terrorism squad was called in on Friday to investigate an armed robbery in the Peloponnese amid suspicion that self-styled anarchists may have been involved.
At least four men are believed to have taken part in the robbery, during which 60,000 euros was stolen. Nobody was hurt in the incident.
Two of the robbers, wearing masks, smashed their way into the post office at Vrachneika in Achaia shortly after a security guard dropped off the cash.
It is believed the men were armed with AK-47 assault rifles and spoke Greek without a foreign accent.
They made off in a stolen Nissan Sunny, which was found burned a short distance from the post office.
A police source told Kathimerini that the robbers’ modus operandi was similar to that used by anarchists in past raids.

Propaganda by the Deed, Fourth Generation Warfare and the Decline of the State

This essay is included in the recently released National-Anarchism: Methodology and Application, edited by Troy Southgate and available from Black Front Press.


From: Attack the system


An Examination of the History of the Decline of the State’s Monopoly on Violence and Warmaking.

By Keith Preston

Introduction
          World events of recent years have called to the forefront of public attention and intellectual debate the matter of what is commonly called “terrorism”. Efforts at merely defining this provocative term have proven difficult, and no consensus exists among scholars as to what “terrorism” actually is. The standardized cliche’ that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” appears to have some actual basis in fact given the ideologically charged nature of many efforts at summarizing the core characteristics of terrorism. Can all individuals or organizations who engage in extra-legal violence for political purposes be objectively classified as “terrorist”? Or do such actors need to engage in a narrower set of behaviors, such as inflicting injury or death upon persons not directly involved in whatever “cause” or “struggle” the alleged “terrorists” may be motivated by, in order to validly earn the “terrorist” label? Is the term “terrorism” itself appropriate when describing non-state actors who engage in political violence? Does this label signify any characteristics at all that are unique to those to whom it is being applied, or is the “terrorist” label merely a subjective ideological construct?(1)

          Of course, the use of physical threats and raw violence towards the achievement of political ends by rulers and the ruled alike has been commonplace since time immemorial. Political history is to a large degree the story of  palace coups, massacres, purges, insurrections and other incidents of violence occurring outside the context of any formalized legal infrastructure. However, “terrorism” as it is commonly perceived of by contemporary Westerners certainly carries with it the imagery of particular kinds of actions such as bombings, assassinations, hijackings and deliberate destruction of physical infrastructure carried out by persons devoted to the achievement of some political program through the use of such tactics and doing so in a manner that is frequently indistinguishable from that of common criminals so far as established legal norms are concerned. An examination of the history and evolution of modern Western “terrorism” would indicate that this lay perspective is indeed rooted in fact. However, it is inappropriate to associate extra-legal political violence with ordinary criminality. To understand why this is so, it is necessary to first understand the relationship between “terrorism” and the modern institution of the state as it has evolved in the Western nations and subsequently been exported to other parts of the world.
     As will be shown below, political governance underwent a major transformation in the Western world in the eras between the early Renaissance period and the rise of modern nationalism in the nineteenth century. The foremost characteristic of this transformation was the emergence of government as a corporative as opposed to personalized conception. Parallel to the development of this impersonalized, bureaucratized manifestation of government was the decline of the older polycentric order of Europe whereby powers that were previously shared by a variety of institutions (including warmaking powers) were now concentrated into the hands of the corporative state. The state then claimed for itself an exclusive monopoly on the use of political violence. Over time, the state evolved from its role as a means to an end (the maintenance of order) to an end unto itself. This latter process transpired from the time of the French Revolution to the explosions of the “total wars” of the twentieth century.

          Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the state’s monopoly on political violence and warmaking began to meet challenges from contending ideological currents and organizational forces. One of the earliest manifestations of this trend was the advent of so-called “propaganda by the deed”, a term given to the tactics of the classical Anarchists, an ideological tendency that ironically denied not only the legitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence but the legitimacy of the state in its entireity. Though the classical Anarchists of the “propaganda by the deed” period effectively died out as a political or ideological force following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War and the eclipsing of radical labor movements by the Second World War, their tactics were appropriated and utilized by a wide variety of dissident political currents in Europe and the Americas during the postwar period. Such currents originated from all over the geographical and intellectual spectrum. Some were “far Left”, others “far Right”. Some were religious in nature, others avowedly secular. Some consisted of indigenous Europeans or Americans, others originated from the Third World.  Some killed or bombed indiscriminately, others were more selective. Indeed, the only common denominator to be found among postwar Western “terrorist” groups is their resolute opposition to one or another of the manifestions of modern liberalism and its foundations: bourgeoise commercialism, neocolonialism and liberal imperialism, relative cosmopolitanism, rapid technological expansion and parliamentary forms of government.

          Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Western liberal model has achieved unprecedented hegemony and taken root in an expanded number of nations. The elimination of the Soviet Union as a constraint on liberal imperialism has been accompanied by a predictable rise in militarism on the part of Western liberalism.(2) Furthermore, the universalist presumptions and economic determinism of liberalism, combined with the ongoing process of the globalization of capital, have propelled the liberal powers, particularly the United States, towards the pursuit of unprecedented and unchallenged global hegemony. That this state of affairs should meet with resistance from many of the world’s peoples is no surprise, particularly those peoples whose cultural foundations are the most antithetical to liberalism, i.e., those of the Islamic world. Interestingly, pockets of resistance to liberal global hegemony have arisen within the First World as well, including the United States.

          Much of conventional opinion regards the practice of modern “terrorism” as originating from ordinary criminal motivations, ideological extremism, mental illness or moral deficiency on the part of its practicioners. Accusations of this type are frequently selective, uninformed and heavily ideologically-intoned. In this paper a dissenting point of view will be presented, that of “terrorists” as non-state political and military actors engaged in the rational application of ordinary principles of realpolitik and in the process mounting a challenge to the state’s claimed monopoly on political violence, and in ways that are not fundamentally different ideologically, morally or psychologically from those of state actors. Instead, the kinds of “terrorist” groupings to be examined will be shown to be representatives of a new stage in the evolution of modern war (so-called “fourth generation war”). Additionally, an examination of modern military history, contemporary military theory and the dramatic expansion of both the scale and success of so-called “terrorist” entities will demonstrate both the rise of such entities as major political contenders and the decline of the state as a monopolist of political violence.

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