Why Does Everyone Hate Pacifists?

I’ve noticed that whenever someone makes an anti-war argument, they feel the need to preface it with “I’m not a pacifist, but...” Similarly, if you admit to being a pacifist in the course of a conversation, all further arguments will be immediately dismissed. If you’re lucky, you might get a pat on the head, and you will definitely be told that you are too naïve and idealistic. Clearly, you don’t understand how the world “really works” and no one should take you seriously. If your interlocutor is fervent leftist, you may even be met with hostility, for your unwillingness to engage in or support “real revolution.” As a self-identified pacifist, I feel like that is the one aspect of my personal identity that no one feels a need to respect or tolerate.

I keep wondering, why is a principled love of peace so vile to the general public? Why has political realism become such a sacred cow? Violence is vital to the functioning of the global capitalist system, and we are psychologically primed to accept violence from a very young age. Perhaps it is the necessity of violence and the strength of the brainwashing that can account for the widespread aversion to pacifism. What this means, then, is that contrary to popular belief, it is the revolutionaries who have some trouble with reality. They are accepting the ideology of the capitalist system hook, line, and sinker.

This is where pacifists have the upper hand. Institutions do not operate in isolation from each other, but rather function as an integrated whole. As I have already discussed at length in this blog, all modern institutions and associated ideologies arose together as part of the bourgeois transformation of society. A revolution cannot be successful if everything is not attacked together, as one unified package - and this includes the ideology that justifies violence. To put it another way: it is so difficult to escape the world within which one is entrapped, that one often resorts to using the same tools and strategies as the dominating power one is trying to resist. But how can one effectively destroy a power when one is relying upon the foundational institutional and ideological components of that power? If one is to escape, one must completely and absolutely leave behind the Old World Order. It is failure to recognize this fact that always results in the unwitting reconstitution of the very type of society that one is trying to abolish.

So, I would argue that pacifists are able to more radically challenge the system and its ideologies than anyone else. Furthermore, pacifists are more faithful to underlying principles and values – holding them as ultimate ends in themselves and thus not willing to compromise for any other ends. Is it really so terrible if a person is not willing sacrifice their values?