Subject: (6) from THE RADICALS AND NONVIOLENCE
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PACIFISM, NAZIISM, COMMUNISM...
Interview with Marco Pannella
[...] - Why, in your congress speeches, do you criticize pacifism so much?
So that young people understand, and old people remember, and we stop
deceiving them: in this century pacifism has had catastrophic effects,
related to those of Naziism and Communism. If Communism and Naziism are
outlawed, pacifism deserves to accompany them.
- What about support for disarmism, anti-militarism, nonviolence?
They can't be compared to pacifism. The line that stretches from Gandhi to
Bertrand Russell, from Luther King to Aldo Capitini (1), must finally
organize itself in the world. The Radical Party has planned this and begun
to carry it out, in Italy and around the world. It is a reasonable
undertaking. To allow yourself to be defeated is madness.
- The fact remains that, with war, the very idea of nonviolence has been
defeated...
No, and nor has the political force of nonviolence, seeing that it has
never existed in an organized way with a political strategy for the
present. Nonviolence and political democracy must live almost as synonyms.
For a century there have been no wars between democracies, justice and
liberty are the principal guarantee. And pacifism, in the course of
history, has always ignored this.
February 1991
(1) Aldo Capitini: an Italian theorist of nonviolence and follower of
Gandhi.
