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Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word pacifism was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. The Abolition of War: the Peace Movement in Britain, 1914–1919 by Keith Robbins. University of Wales Press, 1976. (p. 10). A related term is ahimsa (to do no harm), which is a core philosophy in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.
In modern times, interest was revived by Leo Tolstoy in his late works, particularly in The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Mahatma Gandhi propounded the practice of steadfast nonviolent opposition which he called "satyagraha", instrumental in its role in the Indian independence movement. Its effectiveness served as inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., James Lawson, Mary and Charles Beard, James Bevel,James L. Bevel, The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" by Randy Kryn, a paper in David Garrow's 1989 book We Shall Overcome, Volume II, Carlson Publishing Company Thích Nhất Hạnh,"Searching for the Enemy of Man", in Nhat Nanh, Ho Huu Tuong, Tam Ich, Bui Giang, Pham Cong Thien. Dialogue. Saigon: La Boi, 1965. pp. 11–20., archived on the African-American Involvement in the Vietnam War website, King's Journey: 1964 – April 4, 1967 and many others in the civil rights movement.
Not all nonviolent resistance (sometimes also called civil resistance) is based on a fundamental rejection of all violence in all circumstances. Many leaders and participants in such movements, while recognizing the importance of using non-violent methods in particular circumstances, have not been absolute pacifists. Sometimes, as with the civil rights movement's march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, they have called for armed protection. The interconnections between civil resistance and factors of force are numerous and complex.Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2009. See [2]. Includes chapters by specialists on the various movements.
In the 1960s, some pacifists associated with the New Left supported wars of national liberation and supported groups such as the Viet Cong and the Algerian FLN, arguing peaceful attempts to liberate such nations were no longer viable, and war was thus the only option. Pacifism in the Twentieth Century, by Peter Brock and Nigel Young. Syracuse University Press, New York, 1999 (p. 296)
The Lemba people religion of southern French Congo, along with its symbolic herb, is named for pacifism : " lemba, lemba" (peace, peace), describes the action of the plant lemba-lemba ( Brillantaisia patula T. Anders). Likewise in Cabinda, " Lemba is the spirit of peace, as its name indicates."
The Moriori, of the Chatham Islands, practiced pacifism by order of their ancestor Nunuku-whenua. This enabled the Moriori to preserve what limited resources they had in their harsh climate, avoiding waste through warfare. In turn, this led to their almost complete annihilation in 1835 by invading Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama Māori from the Taranaki Region region of the North Island of New Zealand. The invading Māori killed, enslaved and cannibalised the Moriori. A Moriori survivor recalled : "The commenced to kill us like sheep ... We were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children indiscriminately."
In Ancient Greece, pacifism seems not to have existed except as a broad moral guideline against violence between individuals. Aristophanes, in his play Lysistrata, creates the scenario of an Athens woman's anti-war sex strike during the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BCE, and the play has gained an international reputation for its anti-war message. Nevertheless, it is both fictional and comical, and its message seems to stem from frustration with the existing conflict (then in its twentieth year) rather than from a philosophical position against violence or war. Equally fictional is the nonviolent protest of Hegetorides of Thasos. Euripides also expressed strong anti-war ideas in his work, especially The Trojan Women."Peace, War and Philosophy" by F. S. Northedge, in Paul Edwards, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 6, Collier Macmillan, 1967 (pp. 63–67). In Plato's Republic Socrates makes the pacifistic argument that a just person would not harm anyone. In Plato's earlier work Crito Socrates asserts that it is not moral to return evil with further evil, an original moral conception, according to Gregory Vlastos, that undermines all justifications for war and violence.
Several Roman writers rejected the militarism of Roman society and gave voice to anti-war sentiments, including Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. Restless Youth in Ancient Rome, Emiel Eyben, Routledge, 2004 , p. 194. The Stoicism Seneca the Younger criticised warfare in his book Naturales quaestiones (c. 65 CE). Panorama of the Classical World by Nigel Spivey and Michael Squire. Getty Publications, 2011, (p. 200). Maximilian of Tebessa was a Christian conscientious objector, killed for refusing to be conscripted. The Riddle of Saint Maximilian of Tebessa by Peter Brock. University of Toronto Press, 2000.
There are those, however, who deny that Jesus was a pacifist and state that Jesus never said not to fight, citing examples from the New Testament. One such instance portrays an angry Jesus driving dishonest market traders from the temple. A frequently quoted passage is Luke 22:36: "He said to them, 'But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.'" Pacifists have typically explained that verse as Jesus fulfilling prophecy, since in the next verse, Jesus continues to say: "It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment." Others have interpreted the non-pacifist statements in the New Testament to be related to self-defense or to be metaphorical and state that on no occasion did Jesus shed blood or urge others to shed blood.
The Quakers were prominent advocates of pacifism, who as early as 1660 had repudiated violence in all forms and adhered to a strictly pacifist interpretation of Christianity. Throughout the many 18th century wars in which Great Britain participated, the Quakers maintained a principled commitment not to serve in the army and militia or even to pay the alternative £10 fine. The English Quaker William Penn, who founded the Province of Pennsylvania, employed an anti-militarist public policy. Unlike residents of many of the colonies, Quakers chose to trade peacefully with the Native Americans, including for land. The colonial province was, for the 75 years from 1681 to 1756, essentially unarmed and experienced little or no warfare in that period.
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, a number of thinkers devised plans for an international organisation that would promote peace, and reduce or even eliminate the occurrence of war. These included the French politician Duc de Sully, the philosophers Émeric Crucé and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and the English Quakers William Penn and John Bellers. Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States, by Francis Harry Hinsley, Cambridge University Press, 1967, , (pp. 13–45)."Thinking About Peace in History" by Charles Chatfield, in The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective : Essays in Honour of Peter Brock, edited by Harvey L. Dyck. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996, (pp. 36–51).
Pacifist ideals emerged from two strands of thought that coalesced at the end of the 18th century. One, rooted in the secular Enlightenment, promoted peace as the rational antidote to the world's ills, while the other was a part of the Evangelicalism that had played an important part in the campaign for the abolitionism. Representatives of the former included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Extrait du Projet de Paix Perpetuelle de Monsieur l'Abbe Saint-Pierre (1756),Hinsley, pp. 46–61. Immanuel Kant, in his Thoughts on Perpetual Peace,Hinsley, pp. 62–80. and Jeremy Bentham who proposed the formation of a peace association in 1789. Representative of the latter, was William Wilberforce who thought that strict limits should be imposed on British involvement in the French Revolutionary Wars based on Christian ideals of peace and brotherhood. Bernard Bolzano taught about the social waste of militarism and the needlessness of war. He urged a total reform of the educational, social, and economic systems that would direct the nation's interests toward peace rather than toward armed conflict between nations.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pacifism was not entirely frowned upon throughout Europe. It was considered a political stance against costly capitalist-imperialist wars, a notion particularly popular in the British Liberal Party of the twentieth century. However, during the eras of World War One and especially World War Two, public opinion on the ideology split. Those against the Second World War, some argued, were not fighting against unnecessary wars of imperialism but instead acquiescing to the fascists of Germany, Italy and Japan.
The first peace movements appeared in 1815–16. In the United States the first such movement was the New York Peace Society, founded in 1815 by the theologian David Low Dodge, and the Massachusetts Peace Society. It became an active organization, holding regular weekly meetings, and producing literature which was spread as far as Gibraltar and Malta, describing the horrors of war and advocating pacificism on Christianity grounds. Pacifism to 1914 : an overview by Peter Brock. Toronto, Thistle Printing, 1994. (pp. 38–39). The Peace Society (also known as the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace) was formed in 1816 to promote permanent and universal peace by the philanthropy William Allen. In the 1840s, British women formed "Olive Leaf Circles", groups of around 15 to 20 women, to discuss and promote pacifist ideas. The Long Road to Greenham : Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820, by Jill Liddington. London, Virago, 1989 (pp. 14–15).
The peace movement began to grow in influence by the mid-nineteenth century.Gavin B. Henderson, "The Pacifists of the Fifties" Journal of Modern History 9#3 (1937), pp. 314–341, on British developments. online The London Peace Society, under the initiative of American consul Elihu Burritt and the reverend Henry Richard, convened the first International Peace Congress in London in 1843. The congress decided on two aims: the ideal of peaceable arbitration in the affairs of nations and the creation of an international institution to achieve that. Henry Richard became the secretary of the Peace Society in 1850 on a full-time basis, a position which he would keep for the next 40 years, earning himself a reputation as the 'Apostle of Peace'. He helped secure one of the earliest victories for the peace movement by securing a commitment from the in the Treaty of Paris (1856) at the end of the Crimean War, in favour of arbitration. On the European continent, wracked by social upheaval, the first peace congress was held in Brussels in 1848 followed by Paris a year later.
After experiencing a recession in support due to the resurgence of militarism during the American Civil War and Crimean War, the movement began to spread across Europe and began to infiltrate the new socialist movements. In 1870, Randal Cremer formed the Workman's Peace Association in London. Cremer, alongside the French economist Frédéric Passy was also the founding father of the first international organisation for the arbitration of conflicts in 1889, the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The National Peace Council was founded in after the 17th Universal Peace Congress in London (July August 1908).
An important thinker who contributed to pacifist ideology was Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. In one of his latter works, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Tolstoy provides a detailed history, account and defense of pacifism. Tolstoy's work inspired a movement named after him advocating pacifism to arise in Russia and elsewhere. Tolstoy's Pacifism, by Colm McKeogh, Cambria Press, 2009, , (pp. 105–107). The book was a major early influence on Mahatma Gandhi, and the two engaged in regular correspondence while Gandhi was active in South Africa. Pacifism in the Twentieth Century, by Peter Brock and Nigel Young. Syracuse University Press, New York, 1999 (p. 73)
Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her novel, Die Waffen nieder! ("Lay Down Your Arms!") in 1889 and founded an Austrian pacifist organization in 1891.
Mahatma Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India, instrumental in the Indian independence movement. The Nobel prize winning great poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was also an Indian, gave him the honorific "Mahatma", usually translated "Great Soul". He was the pioneer of a brand of nonviolence (or ahimsa) which he called satyagrahatranslated literally as "truth force". This was the resistance of tyranny through civil disobedience that was not only nonviolent but also sought to change the heart of the opponent. He contrasted this with duragraha, "resistant force", which sought only to change behaviour with stubborn protest. During his 30 years of work (1917–1947) for the independence of his country from British Raj, Gandhi led dozens of nonviolent campaigns, spent over seven years in prison, and Hunger strike on several occasions to obtain British compliance with a demand or to stop inter-communal violence. His efforts helped lead India to independence in 1947, and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom worldwide.
The sudden outbreak of the First World War in July 1914 dismayed the peace movement. Socialist parties in every industrial nation had committed themselves to antiwar policies, but when the war came, all of them, except in Russia and the United States, supported their own governments. There were highly publicized dissidents, some of whom were imprisoned for opposing draft laws, such as Eugene Debs in the U.S.Harry W. Laidler, Harry W. Socialism in thought and action (1920) covers wartime roles in many countries online. In Britain, the prominent activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse was jailed for refusing military service, citing his convictions as a "socialist and a Christian".Hochschild, Adam, To end all wars : a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914–1918, p. 277, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, Many socialism groups and movements were antimilitarist, arguing that war by its nature was a type of governmental coercion of the working class for the benefit of capitalism elites. The French socialist pacifist leader Jean Jaurès was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic on 31 July 1914. The national parties in the Second International increasingly supported their respective nations in war, and the International was dissolved in 1916.
In 1915, the League of Nations Society was formed by British liberalism leaders to promote a strong international organisation that could enforce the peaceful resolution of conflict. Later that year, the League to Enforce Peace was established in the U.S. to promote similar goals. Hamilton Holt published a 28 September 1914, editorial in his magazine the Independent called "The Way to Disarm: A Practical Proposal" that called for an international organization to agree upon the arbitration of disputes and to guarantee the territorial integrity of its members by maintaining military forces sufficient to defeat those of any non-member. The ensuing debate among prominent internationalists modified Holt's plan to align it more closely with proposals offered in Great Britain by Viscount James Bryce, a former British ambassador to the United States.Herman, 56–57 These and other initiatives were pivotal in the change in attitudes that gave birth to the League of Nations after the war.
In addition to the traditional peace churches, some of the many groups that protested against the war were the Woman's Peace Party (which was organized in 1915 and led by noted reformer Jane Addams), the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) (also organized in 1915), Pacifism vs. Patriotism in Women's Organizations in the 1920s. the American Union Against Militarism, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee. Chatfield, Charles, "Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy" 2002. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, was another fierce advocate of pacifism, the only person to vote against American entrance into both wars.
The British Labour Party had a strong pacifist wing in the early 1930s, and between 1931 and 1935 it was led by George Lansbury, a Christian pacifist who later chaired the No More War Movement and was president of the PPU. The 1933 annual conference resolved unanimously to "pledge itself to take no part in war". Researcher Richard Toye writes that "Labour's official position, however, although based on the aspiration towards a world socialist commonwealth and the outlawing of war, did not imply a renunciation of force under all circumstances, but rather support for the ill-defined concept of 'collective security' under the League of Nations. At the same time, on the party's left, Stafford Cripps's small but vocal Socialist League opposed the official policy, on the non-pacifist ground that the League of Nations was 'nothing but the tool of the satiated imperialist powers'."
Lansbury was eventually persuaded to resign as Labour leader by the non-pacifist wing of the party and was replaced by Clement Attlee.Rhiannon Vickers, Labour and the World, Manchester University Press, 2004, As the threat from Nazi Germany increased in the 1930s, the Labour Party abandoned its pacifist position and supported rearmament, largely as the result of the efforts of Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton, who by 1937 had also persuaded the party to oppose Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.A.J.Davies, To Build A New Jerusalem: The British Labour Party from Keir Hardie to Tony Blair, Abacus, 1996
The League of Nations attempted to play its role in ensuring world peace in the 1920s and 1930s. However, with the increasingly revisionist and aggressive behaviour of Nazi Germany, Italian Fascism and Imperial Japan, it ultimately failed to maintain such a world order. Economic sanctions were used against states that committed aggression, such as those against Italy when it invaded Abyssinia, but there was no will on the part of the principal League powers, Britain and France, to subordinate their interests to a multilateral process or to disarm at all themselves.
Pacifists across Great Britain further struggled to uphold their anti-military values during the The Blitz, a coordinated, long-term attack by the Luftwaffe on Great Britain. As the country was ravaged nightly by German bombing raids, pacifists had to seriously weigh the importance of their political and moral values against the desire to protect their nation.
The French pacifists André and Magda Trocmé helped conceal hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There Philip P. Hallie, (1979) New York: Harper & Row, Brock and Young, p. 220. After the war, the Trocmés were declared Righteous Among the Nations.
German nationalism consumed even the most peaceful of Christians, who may have believed that Hitler was acting in the good faith of Germany or who may have been so suppressed by the Nazi regime that they were content to act as bystanders to the violence occurring around them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi German pastor who later died in 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, once wrote in a letter to his grandmother: "The issue really is: Germanism or Christianity."
After the end of the war, it was discovered that "The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., a list of Britons to be arrested in the event of a successful German invasion of Britain, included three active pacifists: Vera Brittain, Sybil Thorndike and Aldous Huxley (who had left the country).Reinhard R. Doerries, Hitler's Intelligence Chief: Walter Schellenberg, New York. Enigma Books, 2013 (p. 33)William Hetherington, Swimming Against the Tide:The Peace Pledge Union Story, 1934–2009. London; The Peace Pledge Union, (p. 14)
During the two world wars, young men conscripted into the military, but who refused to take up arms, were called conscientious objectors. Though these men had to either answer their conscription or face prison time, their status as conscientious objectors permitted them to refuse to take part in battle using weapons, and the military was forced to find a different use for them. Often, these men were assigned various tasks close to battle such as medical duties, though some were assigned various civilian jobs including farming, forestry, hospital work and mining.Kramer, Ann. Conscientious Objectors of the Second World War : Refusing to Fight. Pen and Sword, 2013. Conscientious objectors were often viewed by soldiers as cowards and liars, and they were sometimes accused of shirking military duty out of fear rather than as the result of conscience. In Great Britain during World War II, the majority of the public did not approve of moral objection by soldiers but supported their right to abstain from direct combat. On the more extreme sides of public opinion were those who fully supported the objectors and those who believed they should be executed as traitors. The World War II objectors were often scorned as fascist sympathizers and traitors, though many of them cited the influence of World War I and their fathers as major reasons for refusing to participate.
In 1960, Thich Nhat Hanh came to the U.S. to study comparative religion at Princeton University and was subsequently appointed a lecturer in Buddhism at Columbia University. Nhất Hạnh had written a letter to King in 1965 entitled "Searching for the Enemy of Man" and met with King in 1966 to urge him to publicly denounce the Vietnam War. In a famous 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, "Beyond Vietnam" , 1967-04-04, speech made by King at the Riverside Church, NYC, archived on the African-American Involvement in the Vietnam War website King publicly questioned the U.S. involvement in Vietnam for the first time.
Other examples from this period include the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines led by Cory Aquino and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, with the broadly publicized "Tank Man" incident as its indelible image.
On 1 December 1948, President José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica abolished the Costa Rican military. "Costa Rica" . U.S. Department of State. In 1949, the abolition of the military was introduced in Article 12 of the Costa Rican constitution. The budget previously dedicated to the military is now dedicated to providing healthcare services and education. "The Happiest People" . The New York Times. 6 January 2010.
Within the halls of academe, several philosophers endeavored to demonstrate that the theoretical principles underlying secular pacifism could be successfully applied in order to resolve several unique forms of international conflict which emerged as the 20th century came to a close. Included in this group is Robert L. Holmes, who illustrates that four principles of "moral personalism" can be utilized within the context of both nuclear war and terrorism in order to promote an ethically viable outcome. The Ethics of Nonviolence: Essay by Robert L. Holmes - Book blurb on google.books.com He further argues that waging war in the modern era is unjustifiable when considered in its totality and that by transcending the particular perceptions of injustice in a conflict it is possible to be a "pragmatic pacifist". Pacifism A Philosophy of Nonviolence. Holmes, Robert L. Bloomsbury, London, 2017 pp.265-266, "Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews" - "Pacifism A Philosophy of Nonviolence" Book review presented by Cheyney Ryan, the University of Oxford 6/7/2017 archived at the University of Notre Dame on ndpr.nd.edu
On the level of society, Bahá'u'lláh promotes the principle of collective security, which does not abolish the use of force, but prescribes "a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice". The idea of collective security from the Bahá'í teachings states that if a government violates a fundamental norm of international law or provision of a future world constitution which Bahá'ís believe will be established by all nations, then the other governments should step in.
Notable pacifists or peace activists within Buddhist traditions include Thích Nhất Hạnh who advocated for peace in response to the Vietnam War, founded the Plum Village Tradition, and helped popularize engaged Buddhism, Robert Baker Aitken and Anne Hopkins Aitken who founded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Cheng Yen founder of the Tzu Chi Foundation, Bhikkhu Bodhi American Theravada Buddhist monk and founder of Buddhist Global Relief, Thai activist and author Sulak Sivaraksa, Cambodian activist Preah Maha Ghosananda. and Japanese activist and peace pagoda builder Nichidatsu Fujii.
The United Pentecostal Church, the largest Apostolic/Oneness denomination, takes an official stand of conscientious objection: its Articles of Faith read, "We are constrained to declare against participating in combatant service in war, armed insurrection ... aiding or abetting in or the actual destruction of human life. We believe that we can be consistent in serving our Government in certain noncombatant capacities, but not in the bearing of arms."
The Catholic Worker Movement is concerned with both social justice and pacifist issues, and voiced consistent opposition to the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Many of its early members were imprisoned for their opposition to conscription. Within the Roman Catholic Church, the Pax Christi organisation is the premier pacifist lobby group. It holds positions similar to APF, and the two organisations are known to work together on ecumenical projects. Within Roman Catholicism there has been a discernible move towards a more pacifist position through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Popes Benedict XV, John XXIII and John Paul II were all vocal in their opposition to specific wars. By taking the name Benedict XVI, some suspected that Joseph Ratzinger would continue the strong emphasis upon nonviolent conflict resolution of his predecessor. However, the Roman Catholic Church officially maintains the legitimacy of Just War, which is rejected by some pacifists.
In the twentieth century, there was a notable trend among prominent Roman Catholics towards pacifism. Individuals such as Dorothy Day and Henri Nouwen stand out among them. The monk and mystic Thomas Merton was noted for his commitment to pacifism during the Vietnam War era. Murdered Salvadoran Bishop Óscar Romero was notable for using non-violent resistance tactics and wrote meditative sermons focusing on the power of prayer and peace. School of the Americas Watch was founded by Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois in 1990 and uses strictly pacifist principles to protest the training of Latin American military officers by United States Army officers at the School of the Americas in the state of Georgia.
The Southern Baptist Convention has stated in the Baptist Faith and Message, "It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war."
The United Methodist Church explicitly supports conscientious objection by its members "as an ethically valid position" while simultaneously allowing for differences of opinion and belief for those who do not object to military service.Article V, section 2 of The United Methodist Church and Peace
Members of the Rastafari Movement's Mansion Nyabinghi are specifically noted for having a large population of Pacifist members, though not all of them are.
Peace is an important aspect of Islam, and Muslims are encouraged to strive for peace and peaceful solutions to all problems. However, most Muslims are generally not pacifists, as the teachings in the Qur'an and Hadith allow for wars to be fought if they are justified.
In the 13th century, Salim Suwari a philosopher in Islam, came up with a peaceful approach to Islam known as the Suwarian tradition.
The earliest massive non-violent implementation of civil disobedience was brought about by Egyptians against the British in the Egyptian Revolution of 1919.
Khān Abdul Ghaffār Khān was a Pashtun people independence activist against British Raj. He was a political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolence opposition, and a lifelong pacifist and devout Muslim.An American Witness to India's Partition by Phillips Talbot Year (2007) Sage Publications A close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Bacha Khan was nicknamed the "Frontier Gandhi" in British Raj. (1990). 9788170222866, Concept Publishing Company. ISBN 9788170222866 Bacha Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God") movement in 1929, whose success triggered severe crackdowns by the colonial government against Khan and his supporters, and they experienced some of the strongest repression of the Indian independence movement.
Ahmadiyya claims its objective to be the peaceful propagation of Islam with special emphasis on spreading the true message of Islam by the pen. Ahmadis point out that as per prophecy, who they believe was the promised messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, rendered the concept of violent jihad unnecessary in modern times. They believe that the answer of hate should be given by love. Many Muslims consider Ahmadi Muslims as either or heretics, an animosity sometimes resulting in murder.
Today, the United States requires that all young men register for selective service but does not allow them to be classified as conscientious objectors unless they are drafted in some future reinstatement of the draft, allowing them to be discharged or transferred to noncombatant status. Some European governments like Switzerland, Greece, Norway and Germany offer civilian service. However, even during periods of peace, many pacifists still refuse to register for or report for military duty, risking criminal charges.
Anti-war and "pacifist" political parties seeking to win elections may moderate their demands, calling for de-escalation or major arms reduction rather than the outright disarmament which is advocated by many pacifists. Green parties list "non-violence" and "decentralization" towards anarchist co-operatives or minimalist village government as two of their ten key values. However, in power, Greens often compromise. The German Greens in the cabinet of Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder supported an intervention by German troops in Afghanistan in 2001 if that they hosted the peace conference in Berlin. However, during the 2002 election Greens forced Schröder to swear that no German troops would invade Iraq.
Some pacifists and multilateralism are in favor of international criminal law as means to prevent and control international aggression. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over war crimes, but the crime of aggression has yet to be clearly defined in international law.
The Italian Constitution enforces a mild pacifist character on the Italian Republic, as Article 11 states that "Italy repudiates war as an instrument offending the liberty of the peoples and as a means for settling international disputes ..." Similarly, Articles 24, 25 and 26 of the German Constitution (1949), Alinea 15 of the French Constitution (1946), Article 20 of the Danish Constitution (1953), Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (1947) and several other mostly European constitutions correspond to the United Nations Charter by rejecting the institution of war in favour of collective security and peaceful cooperation.
Violence has always been controversial in anarchism. While many anarchists during the 19th century embraced propaganda of the deed, Leo Tolstoy and other anarcho-pacifists directly opposed violence as a means for change. He argued that anarchism must by nature be nonviolent since it is, by definition, opposition to coercion and force and since the state is inherently violent, meaningful pacifism must likewise be anarchistic. His philosophy was cited as a major inspiration by Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian independence leader and pacifist who self-identified as an anarchist. Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis was also instrumental in establishing the pacifist trend within the anarchist movement. In France, anti-militarism appeared strongly in individualist anarchist circles as Émile Armand founded "Ligue Antimilitariste" in 1902 with Albert Libertad and George Mathias Paraf-Javal.
Still more pacifists would argue that a nonviolent reaction may not save lives immediately but would in the long run. The acceptance of violence for any reason makes it easier to use in other situations. Learning and committing to pacifism helps to send a message that violence is, in fact, not the most effective way. It can also help people to think more creatively and find more effective ways to stop violence without more violence.
In light of the common criticism of pacifism as not offering a clear alternative policy, one approach to finding "more effective ways" has been the attempt to develop the idea of "defence by civil resistance", also called "social defence". This idea, which is not necessarily dependent on acceptance of pacifist beliefs, is based on relying on nonviolent resistance against possible threats, whether external (such as invasion) or internal (such as coup d'état).
There have been some works on this topic, including by Adam RobertsAdam Roberts, ed. The Strategy of Civilian Defence: Non-violent Resistance to Aggression, Faber, London, 1967. (Also published as Civilian Resistance as a National Defense, Stackpole Books, Harrisburg, USA, 1968; and, with a new Introduction on "Czechoslovakia and Civilian Defence", as Civilian Resistance as a National Defence, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, UK, and Baltimore, US, 1969. .) and Gene Sharp.Gene Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980, pp. 195–261. (paperback); and Civilian-based Defence: A Post-military Weapons System, Princeton University Press, 1990. . However, no country has adopted this approach as the sole basis of its defence.Adam Roberts, in Roberts and Garton Ash (ed.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics, Introduction, p. 12. (For further information and sources see social defence.)
Axis aggression that precipitated World War II has been cited as an argument against pacifism. If these forces had not been challenged and defeated militarily, the argument goes, many more people would have died under their oppressive rule. Adolf Hitler told the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax in 1937 that the British should "shoot Gandhi, and if this doesn't suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members of the Congress, and if that doesn't suffice shoot 200, and so on, as you make it clear that you mean business."Ghose, Sankar (1992). Jawaharlal Nehru, A Biography, p. 138. Allied Publishers Limited.
Adolf Hitler noted in his Second Book: "... Later, the attempt to adapt the living space to increased population turned into unmotivated wars of conquest, which in their very lack of motivation contained the germ of the subsequent reaction. Pacifism is the answer to it. Pacifism has existed in the world ever since there have been wars whose meaning no longer lay in the conquest of territory for a Folk's sustenance. Since then it has been war's eternal companion. It will again disappear as soon as war ceases to be an instrument of booty hungry or power hungry individuals or nations, and as soon as it again becomes the ultimate weapon with which a Folk fights for its daily bread."
Hermann Göring described, during an interview at the Nuremberg Trials, how denouncing and outlawing pacifism was an important part of the Nazis' seizure of power: "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Some commentators on the most nonviolent forms of pacifism, including Jan Narveson, argue that such pacifism is a self-contradictory doctrine. Narveson claims that everyone has rights and corresponding responsibilities not to violate others' rights. Since pacifists give up their ability to protect themselves from violation of their right not to be harmed, then other people thus have no corresponding responsibility, thus creating a paradox of rights. Narveson said that "the prevention of infractions of that right is precisely what one has a right to when one has a right at all." Narveson then discusses how rational persuasion is a good but often inadequate method of discouraging an aggressor. He considers that everyone has the right to use any means necessary to prevent deprivation of their civil liberties, and force could be necessary.Narveson, January 1965. "Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis." Ethics, LXXV: 4, pp. 259–271. Peter Gelderloos criticizes the idea that nonviolence is the only way to fight for a better world. According to Gelderloos, pacifism as an ideology serves the interests of the state and is hopelessly caught up psychologically with the control schema of patriarchy and white supremacy. Anne Appelbaum has argued that advocating pacifism in response to the Russo-Ukrainian War overlooks the lessons of history, as surrendering territory and principles enables atrocities, and early military support for Ukraine might have deterred the invasion, revealing that misguided pacifism can sometimes lead to greater conflict.Appelbaum, Anne. "The West Has to Believe That ...." The Atlantic. 20 October 2024. 21 October 2024.
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