Itching for a fight

“But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow…”

— John Lennon, “Revolution”

When I first got involved with the Quakers 20-some years ago, and started to learn their history, I was surprised to find that they’ve had their fair share of divisions and actual schisms over the years, some of them quite bitter. One would think that a people devoted to peace would try to avoid such things—but humans are, after all, still humans.

So perhaps it’s no shock that today’s “peace movement” has its divisions as well—or should I say “the anti-war movement,” or more precisely, “the anti-Iraq-War movement.” Not all of the people who are against the Iraq War are against war in and of itself—indeed, there are quite a few folks who support the idea of violent revolution as a legitimate response to oppression. A lot of those folks are old-school Marxists of one stripe or another, such as the folks at International ANSWER (which has its roots in a Trotskyite group called the Workers World Party) and World Can’t Wait (which is connected to the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist organization).

(If at this moment you’re saying “Trotskyite? Maoist? What’s the difference, aren’t they all just commies?” then you might find some time spent on Wikipedia very useful at providing some helpful distinctions.)

These groups have proved themselves to be excellent at organizing campaigns and large demonstrations, and this has been a double-edged sword for the larger movement. On the one hand, their disciplined and well-organized cadre does manage to get the word out, and pull off the daunting logistics required for large-scale events. On the other, their prominence provides opponents with ample ammunition for criticizing, denigrating, and “Red-baiting” the entire peace movement—which may in turn discourage moderate or undecided citizens from getting involved. The coalition called United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), with which both Waynepeace and Sullivan Peace and Justice have connections, was formed in part to counteract this effect.

I was thinking about this stuff last weekend, when International ANSWER sponsored a protest in Washington, DC, starting near the Vietnam War Memorial. Certain veterans groups, sensitive to the remotest possibility of mischief around a memorial, had decided to mobilize a counter-demonstration, and the situation seemed uncomfortably ripe for a confrontation or worse. There are a small number of folks on both sides who are just itching to translate their angst into violent action, and all it would take is for one person to provide the right kind of provocation. Even a small clash would be immensely damaging to the rest of the peace movement, which has rightfully taken pains to reach out to veterans of this conflict, and would greatly increase the polarization present in the country today. Fortunately, there wasn’t any such physical clash between the two groups —but observers reported that the verbal rhetoric was even more heated than in the past.

What I think such confrontational groups don’t recognize is this: a violent revolution is actually no revolution at all. The fundamental nature of power relationships usually does not change because one side has figured out how to exert more force than the other, or to wield force more skillfully. And once one side has overcome the other, history shows that the victorious side frequently continues to do what it knows how to do best—exert force—until it becomes the oppressor in its turn. (Think, say, Zimbabwe.) What I call “the real revolution”—the one that started in your own heart, and in the hearts of many others, some time ago—is, among other things, a revolt against violence itself. It is not dependent on force, and force cannot overcome it—any more than force can withhold the coming of spring.