smash-pacifism-zine

to contend with masses of them in urban rioting.
With the rupture of Birmingham in 1963 and an
increasing acceptance of armed self-defence, there arose
another obstacle to imposing pacifist doctrine on the
movement: the emergence of Black Power and militant
Black resistance. This internal struggle on tactics, strategies
and objectives, became a bitter public debate between
advocates of militant resistance and the pacifist reformers:
“The spread of the black power slogan during and
after 1966 was, like the riots, a touchy issue for civil rights
moderates. Established leaders feared... the possibility of a
[white] backlash. More directly, many moderates were
afraid of the damaging effect that the
anti-white thrust of black power might
have on their own relations with white
supporters and allies... The NAACP's
Roy Wilkin's called black power
'separatism... wicked fanaticism...
ranging race against race... and in the
end only black death.' Bayard Rustin
argued that black power 'diverts the
movement from any meaningful
debate over strategy and tactics, it
isolates the Negro community'... A
group of mainstream civil rights
leaders took out a large advertisement
in The New York Times, which stated in part: 'We repudiate
any strategies of violence, reprisal or vigilantism, and we
condemn both the rioting and demagoguery that feeds it.'”
(Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream,
p. 65)
It is worth noting some of the critiques King, and
others, directed against the concept of revolutionary
violence that began to gain acceptance. In August 1967,
King addressed a conference of the SCLC in Atlanta,
Georgia, with a speech entitled “Where Do We Go From
Here”:
“When one tries to pin down advocates of violence
as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly
illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state
and local governments and they talk about guerrilla
warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever
succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence
unless the government had already lost the allegiance and
effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right
mind knows that this will not happen in the US...
Furthermore, few if any violent revolutions have been
successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and
support of the... majority. Castro may have had only a few
Cubans actually fighting with him up in the hills, but he
could never have overthrown the Batista regime unless he
had the sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people.”
(I Have A Dream, p. 175
Perhaps unknown to King at the time, the US
Soldiers give Black Power salute during
Vietnam War.
military was in fact experiencing growing rebellion and
mutiny within its own ranks. Hundreds of Non-
Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and officers were killed in
“fragging” incidents (so-called because of the use of
fragmentation grenades), entire units refused to enter
combat, and soldiers began adopting techniques to
purposely avoid combat while on patrol. Underground
newspapers circulated, advocating both attacks on officers
as well as open rebellion. This growing insubordination was
especially strong among Black soldiers, who, along with
other people of colour, provided a disproportionate number
of frontline troops.
“Between 1969 and 1971,
according to Congressional data, the
total number of fragging incidents...
was 730, and 83 officers were
killed...”
(10,000 Day War, p. 271)
These statistics did not include
attacks involving rifles and knives.
According to a 1971 report by US
Colonel Robert Heinl,
“By every conceivable indicator,
our army that now remains in
Vietnam is in a state approaching
collapse with individual units avoiding or having refused
combat, murdering their officers and NCOs, drug-ridden
and dispirited where not near-mutinous.”
(10,000 Day War, p. 279)
By 1973, most US ground troops had been
removed from Vietnam, and it would take over a decade for
the US military to recover. Here, King is not thinking
strategically but, once again, ideologically. But this itself is
a result of his objective; King did not seek to overthrow the
government but was instead a collaborator who was
dependent on the state and sought to maintain its overall
legitimacy.
In the same 1967 speech, King minimized the
effects rioting had had on government policies:
“Occasionally Negroes contend that the 1965 Watts
riot and the other riots in various cities represented effective
civil rights action. But those who express this view always
end up with stumbling words when asked what concrete
gains have been won as a result. At best, the riots have
produced a little additional antipoverty money allotted by
frightened government officials... It is something like
improving the food in prison while the people remain
securely incarcerated behind bars. Nowhere have the riots
won any concrete improvement such as have the organized
protest demonstrations.”
(I Have A Dream, p. 174)
This is clearly disingenuous, however: the
Birmingham riots and subsequent uprisings were the
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