Pacifism Is Pussyism

Thanks for Damien for making me aware of this blog post by Tammy Bruce.

"Lost Horizon" was a classic movie, released in 1937 to great acclaim. Hitler was in power and preparing to launch a war of aggression; meanwhile wishful thinking prevailed in the democracies. This 4-minute clip captures a preachy scene in which a statesman espouses the glory of disarmament and the wickedness of nationalism. It's blatantly a plea to answer the Nazi threat with love rather than arms, and worth viewing because it illustrates the "enlightened" thinking of the day; an attitude that, we now know, directly led to the violent deaths of 60 million human beings.

At the time, the advocates of "peace" thought they were doing a wonderful thing, but history shows the practical effect of their good intentions. Listen to this dialogue, and see how familiar it sounds...disturbingly like what we hear today. Have we learned from the past, or are we doomed to repeat it?

And, if that doesn't ring true for you, if you don't believe that is what Pacifism is really calling for, well, I can't say I blame you. It's just about impossible for me to believe as well.

But tell me, who do you think of when you think of Pacifism. Who is the most Pacifist of all Pacifist. Who laid the intellectual groundwork of Peace studies?

Ladies and gentlemen, Mahatma Gandhi:

"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions...

"If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."

"Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs."

Louis Fisher, Gandhi's biographer asked him: "You mean that the Jews should have committed collective suicide?"

Gandhi responded, "Yes, that would have been heroism."

It’s very lucky that Gandhi himself used passive resistance against the civilised British, because if he’d have used the same technique with the Nazis, there would be no people of Indian descent left in this world.

It's time for the world to grow up and realize that Gandhi was not a man of great vision. He was not an incarnation of God.

I would not even call him a man of peace.

The emotional devastation he was willing to lay on his wife gives the lie to his being a good man in private. For a person to deprive the one he supposedly loves of physical intimacy (and the emotional well-being that goes with it) because he believes he has some special relationship with the universe is an disgusting sin.

Gandhi was a snake oil salesman who won a P.R. battle against British imperialism. Thank God he did. He was the right schmuck at the right time. His people owe him thanks.

However, his legacy is a burden on the whole human race. Unfortunately many naiive, but well-placed, people believe we can take Gandhian "principles" and apply them to all of reality.

Gandhi's notion of applying his asinine philosophy to the fight against Hitler is not only laughable, it's arrogant to the point of megalomania. It shows he was willing to let the whole human race go down with the ship, because of his own belief in his special relationship with his stupid pantheistic universe.

And to sum it up, let me pose this question:

Gahndi says,"the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife." So, how exactly does his philosophy differ, in practice, from that of Hitler?

I say, drop the nuance and pick up the gun.