Pacifism as Pathology has long since emerged as a dissident classic. Originally written during the mid-1980s, the seminal essay “Pacifism as Pathology” was prompted by veteran activist Ward Churchill’s frustration with what he diagnosed as a growing—and deliberately self-neutralizing—”hegemony of nonviolence” on the North American left. The essay’s publication unleashed a raging debate among activists in both the U.S. and Canada, a significant result of which was Michael Ryan’s penning of a follow-up essay reinforcing Churchill’s premise that nonviolence, at least as the term is popularly employed by white “progressives,” is inherently counterrevolutionary, adding up to little more than a manifestation of its proponents’ desire to maintain their relatively high degrees of socioeconomic privilege and thereby serving to stabilize rather than transform the prevailing relations of power.

This short book challenges the pacifist movement’s heralded victories—Gandhi in India, 1960s antiwar activists, even Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement—suggesting that their success was in spite of, rather than because of, their nonviolent tactics. Churchill also examines the Jewish Holocaust, pointing out that the overwhelming response of Jews was nonviolent, but that when they did use violence they succeeded in inflicting significant damage to the nazi war machine and saving countless lives.

As relevant today as when they first appeared, Churchill’s and Ryan’s trailblazing efforts were first published together in book form in 1998. Now, along with the preface to that volume by former participant in armed struggle/political prisoner Ed Mead, postscripts by both Churchill and Ryan, and a powerful new foreword by leading oppositionist intellectual Dylan Rodríguez, these vitally important essays are being released in a fresh edition.

Dr. Ward Churchill is Creek-Cherokee (a member of Keetoowah Band Cherokee). He is one of the strongest and most influential voices of native resistance to colonial oppression in North America. He is both an activist and an intellectual defending the rights of indigenous people across North America and around the world. Dr. Churchill is the Coordinator of American Studies at the Center for Studies of Race and Ethnicity in America at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he is co-director of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement and vice-chair of the American Anti-Defamation Council, he has served as a delegate to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations and has served with many other organizations protecting the interests of aboriginal people. Dr. Churchill is a prolific writer on issues affecting indigenous peoples. He has written innumerable articles and many books including Fantasies of the Master Race, Indians Are Us?, Struggle for the Land, and Since Predator Came.

Ward Churchill's profile page

Michael Ryan's profile page

Ed Mead's profile page

“Although Churchill couches his psychological analysis in much more polite terms than I would, he believes that some white upper-middle-class activists are deeply conflicted about whether they really want to dismantle capitalism and give up their position of privilege.”
—Greanville Post

“The book’s main thrust is to analyze and tear apart the ideology of pacifism, explaining how it is, in many ways, a counter-revolutionary ideology.”
—Irish Republican News