I have a low opinion of self-proclaimed anti-war pacifists - especially those who make a big thing of it: the Peace Studies type.
Although I understand it, and from the inside; because I was that way myself as a young man (for obvious reasons).
But what really gets me, is how fragile and evanescent is pacifism - no matter how established and entrenched by years of reading the relevant books and magazines, watching the relevant TV plays and movies.
In 2022 nearly-all these anti-war pacifist upper-middle-class intellectuals, bureaucrats, managers; became fanatically pro-war activists overnight.
And continuing.
Why this 180 degrees, instant and effortless, change of "convictions"?
Apparently, very simply, because they were told to become fanatically pro-war by their favourite politicians, newspapers and especially The BBC.
That, in a nutshell, illustrates the depth and strength and moral seriousness of decades-long ideological anti-war pacifist convictions - in practice.
5 comments:
I wrote about something similar here; that is, how life experience very often seems to trump argument, even when someone has made great claims to the contrary.
https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-thought-on-atheists-returning-to-faith.html
is there really such a thing as 'peace studies'? my Lord.
as for the pacifists pushing for war, weren't they always like this? it all depends on who is waging the war, and if they are doing it for the right reasons. and these are always defined by something else. leftists are capable of these contortions in everything, like, say, being radical feminists and also supporters of importing foreign rape cultures. because, of course, it all depends on which women and which men are doing what.
@M - I tend to think that (no matter what public fuss they make about their passionate convictions; the in-practice superficiality and lability of opinion indicates that such people are actually just parroting and believing whatever their chosen media are currently telling them.
@Laeth - Even saying that little - you are probably giving such people too much credit for exercising personal evaluation and judgment!
Which is hardly surprising among those whose metaphysical assumptions are that there is neither purpose nor meaning in reality, and human life is a brief blip between infinites of nothingness...
How could such people be consistent about *anything*, except whatever is expedient here-and-now, among their chosen circle?
I think you're right, at least in most cases.
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