On Selective Pacifism & other Oddities

Kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Wed Nov 28 21:02:54 PST 2001


oh, in that case, max should just emphasize that you selectively USE pacifists for your ideological ends.

did you tell the history profs and the mennonites you were there to convert them to the struggle?

kelley

At 09:03 PM 11/28/01 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote:
>One other objection to the term "selective pacifism" is that it goofs up
>the meaning of the word "pacifism" as used by 'real' and consistent
>self-labelled Pacifists. Members of the Mennonite Church, for example.
>And in anti-war coalitions it is really quite important to keep these
>terms reasonably straight so that members of those coalitions can talk
>to each other with some minimal clarity. Miscommunication could have
>seriously disruptive consequences. I can work (have worked, am working)
>with pacifists. They can work (have worked, are working) with me. But I
>can't see any thing but utter chaos if one begin to throw around such
>terms as "selective pacifism" (it's really bad writing; it's a confused
>and confusing oxymoron -- a figure that can work powerfully when
>conscious and under control but gives at least the appearance of
>cretinism when sloppy).
>
>Here is a case where an exception does test the rule. At an early
>meeting of the coalition here I rose to note that it did not consist
>wholly of adherents of "non-violence"; that I for example approved of
>the Vietnamese use of violence to oppose the u.s. invasion and the U.S.
>use of violence to suppress the insurrection of the slavedrivers. Later
>on a woman from the ISU history department (speciality: Civil War
>history) remarked to me in private conversation that she _was_ a
>pacifist, but that she could not quite avoid feeling that Lincoln had
>been right to call out the army. I think the rule survives the test: she
>was quite clear in noting that her particular judgment clashed with her
>general principle, and she was quite clear what the general principle
>was. Accurate language -i.e., the possibility of communication -- is
>maintained while ordinary human complexity and sloppiness is honored.
>
>But Max is trying by sheer violence (and I think considerable historical
>distortion) to apply the generic term "pacifist" (specifically qualified
>with "selective") to persons who never were nor never called themselves
>pacifists of any kind. They were/are just persons that independently of
>any general principles about war or violence correctly thought this that
>and the other war (e.g. the u.s. invasion of vietnam, the u.s. invasion
>of the Dominican Republic; the u.s. assault on Afghanistan) were
>criminal operations. If they can be called (selective) "pacifists," than
>every single blooming homo sapiens ever born was a pacifist, and the
>word loses all meaning.
>
>I come back to my initial judgment: the phrase "selective pacifist" is
>is seriously bad writing -- and one can't take seriously any discourse
>which seriously uses the term. (How's that for using a word three times
>in one sentence with a different sense every time.)
>
>Carrol



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