Pacifism is opposition to war, militarism or violence. The word pacifism was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ahimsa, which is a core philosophy in Indian Religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.
Anarcho-pacifism, also referred to as anarchist pacifism and pacifist anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates for the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. Anarcho-pacifism rejects the principle of violence which is seen as a form of power and therefore as contradictory to key anarchist ideals such as the rejection of hierarchy and dominance. Many anarcho-pacifists are also Christian anarchists, who reject war and the use of violence.
The War Resisters League (WRL) is the oldest secular pacifist organization in the United States.
The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established on June 15, 1898, to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area. The anti-imperialists opposed expansion, believing that imperialism violated the fundamental principle that just republican government must derive from "consent of the governed." The League argued that such activity would necessitate the abandonment of American ideals of self-government and non-intervention—ideals expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence, George Washington's Farewell Address and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The Anti-Imperialist League was ultimately defeated in the battle of public opinion by a new wave of politicians who successfully advocated the virtues of American territorial expansion in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War and in the first years of the 20th century.
The American Peace Mobilization (APM) was a peace group established in 1940 to oppose American aid to the Allies in World War II before the United States entered the war. It was officially cited in 1947 by United States Attorney General Tom C. Clark on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations for 1948, as directed by President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9835.
Veterans of Future Wars (VFW) was a satirical political organization initially created as a prank by Princeton University students in 1936. The group was conceived as a parody of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the movement for early payment of a bonus to veterans of World War I that had been originally scheduled for disbursement in 1945 when the World War Adjusted Compensation Act was passed in 1924. The group jokingly advocated the payment of a similar $1,000 "bonus" to future veterans of a coming European conflagration while the recipients were young enough—and alive—to enjoy it.
The American Peace Society is a pacifist group founded upon the initiative of William Ladd, in New York City, May 8, 1828. It was formed by the merging of many state and local societies, from New York, Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, of which the oldest, the New York Peace Society, dated from 1815. Ladd was an advocate of a "Congress and High Court of Nations." The society organized peace conferences and regularly published a periodical entitled Advocate of Peace. The Society was only opposed to wars between nation states; it did not oppose the American Civil War, regarding the Union's war as a "police action" against the "criminals" of the Confederacy. Its most famous leader was Benjamin Franklin Trueblood (1847–1916), a Quaker who in his book The Federation of the World (1899) called for the establishment of an international state to bring about lasting peace in the world. In 1834 the headquarters of the society were removed to Hartford, in 1834 to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1911 to Washington, D.C. The group is now based in Washington. Its official journal is World Affairs.
Opposition to the War of 1812 was widespread in the United States, especially in New England. Many New Englanders opposed the conflict on political, economic, and religious grounds. When the Embargo Act of 1807 failed to remedy the situation with the United Kingdom, with Britain refusing to rescind the Orders in Council (1807) and the French continuing their decrees, certain Democratic-Republicans known as war hawks felt compelled to persuade the United States government to declare war on the British. A number of contemporaries called it, "The second war for independence." Henry Clay and John Calhoun pushed a declaration of war through Congress, stressing the need to uphold American honor and independence. Speaking of the impact of the depressed cotton trade upon his fellow Southerners, Calhoun told Congress that:
Opposition to World War II was expressed by the governments and peoples of all combatant nations to various extents. Initial reluctance for conflict in the Allied democratic nations changed to overwhelming, but not complete, support once the war had been joined. Some politicians and military leaders in the Axis powers opposed starting or expanding the conflict during its course. However, the totalitarian nature of these countries limited their effect. Noncombatant nations opposed joining the war for a variety of reasons, including, self preservation, economic disincentives or a belief in neutrality in upon itself. After the war the populations of the former Axis powers mostly regretted their nations involvement. While those of Allied nations celebrated their involvement and the perceived just nature of the war, particularly in comparison with World War I.
Opposition to World War I included socialist, anarchist, syndicalist, and Marxist groups on the left, as well as Christian pacifists, Canadian and Irish nationalists, women's groups, intellectuals, and rural folk.
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or wars, minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, and is often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. The means to achieve these ends include advocacy of pacifism, non-violent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, moral purchasing, supporting anti-war political candidates, legislation to remove the profit from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating open government and transparency tools, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and national political lobbying groups to create legislation. The political cooperative is an example of an organization that seeks to merge all peace movement organizations and green organizations, which may have some diverse goals, but all of whom have the common goal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those that oppose it often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
The Women's Peace Society was an organized movement that focused on demilitarization in the United States and iniquity of violence. The Women's Peace Society was an active organization for fourteen years, being founded in 1919 and evolving into a separate peace movement-Women's Peace Union of the Western Hemisphere- in 1933. The Women's Peace Society was created on September 12, 1919, in the United States when a group of women that included Fanny Garrison Villard, Elinor Byrns, Katherine Devereaux Blake, and Caroline Lexow Babcock resigned from the executive committee of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom because they found "a fundamental lack of unity in the membership as a whole and in the executive committee". The leader of the group, Fanny Garrison, Villard sought to bring importance to humanitarian issues and raise awareness for the importance of all lives after the deadly consequences of World War I.
Albert Einstein was widely known during his lifetime for the development of the theory of relativity and work with physics in general. However, Einstein's political views were of public interest through the middle of the 20th century due to his fame and involvement in political, humanitarian and academic projects around the world.
The New England Non-Resistance Society was an American peace group founded at a special peace convention organized by William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston in September 1838. Leading up to the convention, conservative members of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Peace Society expressed discomfort with Garrison's philosophy of "non-resistance" and inclusion of women in public political activities. After conservative attendees opposing Garrison walked out of the convention in protest, those remaining formed the New England Non-Resistance Society.
Jessie Wallace Hughan was an American educator, a socialist activist, and a radical pacifist. During her college days she was one of four co-founders of Alpha Omicron Pi, a national fraternity for university women. She also was a founder and the first Secretary of the War Resisters League, established in 1923. For over two decades, she was a perennial candidate for political office on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America in her home state of New York.
The Massachusetts Peace Society (1815–1828) was an anti-war organization in Boston, Massachusetts, established to "diffuse light on the subject of war, and to cultivate the principles and spirit of peace." Founding officers included Thomas Dawes, William Phillips, Elisha Ticknor, Thomas Wallcut and Noah Worcester. In 1828 the society "merged into the newly formed American Peace Society."
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts, or to anti-war books, paintings, and other works of art. Many activists distinguish between anti-war movements and peace movements. Anti-war activists work through protest and other grassroots means to attempt to pressure a government to put an end to a particular war or conflict or to prevent it in advance.
The Peace Movement of Ethiopia was an African-American organization based in Chicago, Illinois. It was active in the 1930s and 1940s, and promoted the repatriation of African Americans to the African continent, especially Liberia. They were affiliated with the Black Dragon Society.
Pacifism has manifested in the United States in a variety of forms, and in myriad contexts. In general, it exists in contrast to an acceptance of the necessity of war for national defense.
