Ward Churchill & Michael Ryan 
Pacifism as Pathology 

Pacifism as Pathology is a dissident classic. Originally written during the ’80s, the seminal essay ‘Pacifism as Pathology’ was prompted by Ward Churchill’s frustration with what he diagnosed as a growing – and deliberately self-neutralising – ‘hegemony of nonviolence’ on the North American left. The essay’s publication unleashed a raging debate among activists in both the US and Canada, a significant result of which was Michael Ryan’s penning of an essay reinforcing Churchill’s premise that nonviolence, at least as the term is popularly employed by white ‘progressives, ‘ is counterrevolutionary.