this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Yeah. There‘s two kinds of people that need to be dealt with in a revolution. The ones that need to be removed, like the corrupt leadership, and the people telling the revolutionaries to stop because “we need to stop the violence and have peace” or whatever.
The former is obvious. The latter because they want to reestablish existing systems because they benefit from them. To dismantle them would be to harm their status. So you wind up basically letting “bygones be bygones” and just sweeping the corruption that cause all the problems under the rug in the name of peace while it continues quietly in the background. Nothing changes except the surface level view, the shitty people just try to stay below the radar.
So yeah, the “pacifists” are often just as bad, not because they’re actually against harming the corrupt people in the regime, but because they’re against harming their comfort zone. They’re protecting the status quo.
So, conditionally, I am against pacifism.
Or maybe they just believe in morality. The warrior, the politician, and the sadist talk about effectiveness as they wear the mask of the revolutionary. The pacifist says 'I will not do evil, regardless of what prognosticators think it will lead to.' In a way it can be called selfish, a refusal to dirty oneself by doing harm. In another, it is the most sincere adherence to the morals for which the others say they are fighting, allowing even their own death rather than hurting others. The pacifist and the liberal both say 'peace' but the liberal will pull a knife if you say no.
But to allow evil to be done by being pacifist, I suppose that some mental gymnastics help wash one’s hands of any responsibility for their inaction to prevent or stop such things? BTW, refusing to kill or cause harm as a conscientious objector is not the same as pacifism.