I think there is a verbose misconception in people about peace. Peace is viewed as an ideology in of itself. This belief leads to a noticeable apathy, and it is the cause of failure for every single American Anti War Movement since the 1960s.
Peace is an end, not a means. To view nonviolence as the only means to ending violence itself is just foolish. It is the height of privilege, and it is personified in the failure of the Anti War Movements.
The American Anti War Movement failed in Vietnam because it wouldn’t shut up about peace. “Give peace a chance,” “Make love not war,” it was all about adopting complacency, it was not about liberation. They promoted the illusion of liberation by espousing a dialogue founded in heteronormative sex and narcotic illusions set to a quack frame of philosophy. The Sexual Revolution was no revolution for the queer community, nor were people of color given the same liberal leeways of sexuality as their mostly white middle class counterparts, at least not until Black trans people in Stonewall started a riot. You see my point about peace yet?
The anti war movement failed two fold, Iraq and Vietnam. Vietnam’s anti war movement failed because it was blatantly lacking class consciousness, instead of supporting the sovereignty of the North Vietnamese, American liberals and hippies wouldn’t shut up about “feeling the love” and would fear Castro just as much as any conservative business suit square capitalist. It wasn’t about liberation from the masters, it was only about putting down the guns. I have a message for every American with any money to their name, it is not your place to tell the oppressed how to react to their oppression. The Anti War Movement did nothing to stop Vietnam, we were there until Saigon fell because we weren’t focused on ending imperialism, we were just talking about ending war. War is the tool of the imperialist master, this is true, therefore it is not the place of anyone who benefits from imperialism to tell the colonized how to rid themselves of their capitalist invasion.
It is not my place to tell Cubans, Palestinians, Kurds, black or brown Americans, or queer people how to liberate themselves. You would think this lesson would be learned easily by anti imperialist Americans, not so, we have repeated ourselves with our protests against the Iraq War. The entire dialogue was “no blood for oil” not “We are not your slaves, we have nothing to lose but our chains!” While their is truth that oil was the capitalists incentive to invade Iraq, focusing on the commodity and not the working people of Iraq how see none of this oil money was our mistake. Not to mention how both GOP and the DNC failed our veterans after victimizing them so in every war, many of whom only join the military because of their own stake in the class war . The Right exploits soldiers and veterans, but the Left just forsakes them, and it is one of the reasons we have so many homeless here in Sacramento and the whole nation. None of this comes into play when we say “Give Peace a Chance.”
Peace is important, it is the goal and the purpose of communism. But peace is not a means, it is an end. To achieve peace we must use any means necessary, be they non violent resistance or stringent militancy, peace is not achieved through peace itself, peace is achieved when agents are active on the March of History.
James J Jackson 