Hello folks, Derek here with the fifth entry in Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’ special Foreign Exchanges series on the anti-war/non-violence movement as a political tradition. As I mentioned in the preface to his introductory piece, this series is being offered as a special for paid FX subscribers. I hope those who are interested in the piece will consider subscribing to FX to support Daniel’s work as well as everything else that goes on here. Please subscribe today:
The last two entries in this series addressed questions concerning the relationship between fascism, non-violence, and anti-war thought during the period between the World Wars in Europe and, in particular, France. These reflections were inspired by Donald Trump’s recent re-election to the White House and the fears that he would establish an authoritarian, and even fascist, regime. We will further address the question of non-violence and World War II in the weeks to come. I want to return with this entry, however, to Domenico Losurdo’s book Non-violence: A History Beyond the Myth. To recall, a major claim of this series is that the study of modern non-violence/antiwar thought involves a rich historical dialogue between thinkers and activists spanning from the French Revolution until the present.
Losurdo’s book has the virtue of demonstrating how the non-violent thinking of one generation was picked up and reappropriated by another. The second entry in this series, for instance, unpacked his discussion of how visions of perpetual peace in Europe inspired by the French Revolution influenced the Abolitionist movement in the US. Moreover, perhaps the major aim of Losurdo’s Non-violence is to show how many pacifist and anti-war movements ended up jettisoning non-violence for holy wars against enemies that they came to perceive as less than human–a major point in case being the absolutist William Lloyd Garrison’s decision to use violence against Southern slave owners.
Yet there are weaknesses to Lorsurdo’s argument, which is perhaps most glaringly on display in his discussion of perhaps the most famous modern pacifist of all, namely Leo Tolstoy. During the 1870s, the famous Russian writer had experienced a full blown religious conversion to a form of Christianity that was in part of his own making, but was also profoundly influenced by the American Abolitionists. His non-violent religious philosophy was most famously expressed in the publication of his 1893 book, The Kingdom of God is Within. It argued that the church was too implicated in the violence of the state, while true Christianity was to be found in Jesus’s teachings on non-violence. This message, for Tolstoy, was directly accessible to the human consciousness without need of mediation from religious authorities compromised by their collaboration with the violent political state.
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