The Trouble with Pacifists

Buck Up Pacifists, There’s a Time to Fight for That in Which You Believe.

There is an email that has been circulating the Internet for some time now that peaked my interest. It discusses the rise of dangerous regimes while the people in the midst of these movements did nothing. The authorship of this ‘article’ is inaccurately attributed, statistics were lacking, and there was a glaring element excluded from the thesis, but the theme is worth examining.

The article begins by asserting that very few people in Germany were true Nazis eager to slaughter Jewish people, though many enjoyed the ‘return of German pride’ which had suffered a devastating blow in the loss of WWI. The majority of Germans went on about their lives and silently allowed the rise of Hitler despite the fact that he had already written Mein Campf where he made his evil intentions known. Before long, the Third Reicht ruled the country and the Nazi regime killed between 6 and 11 million Jews.

We are told repeatedly by the media and our president that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful. Although this wholly unquantifiable assertion may well be true, it is an irrelevant platitude meant to calm the public and distract from the barrage of atrocities committed by radicals in the name of Islam.

The uncomfortable truth is that radicals rule Islam at this moment in history. Radicals wage war across the Middle East and Africa. Radicals hold marches and demonstrations calling for the world to submit to Allah. Radicals systematically slaughter minorities and Christians. Radicals execute anyone who dare insult the their prophet. Radicals bomb, behead, burn, honor kill and toss gays from roof-tops. Radicals preach hate to their children and take over mosque after mosque. And sadly, the peaceful majority has become the silent majority and rendered powerless.

A brief look at world history illustrates the perils of silence:

Communist Russia was full of Russians who likely wanted to live in peace, yet communist leaders of Russia were responsible for somewhere between 15 and 20 million deaths of their own citizens under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Stalin authored 104 books of theoretical writings dating back to 1905. Though Stalin’s ideology had been made public almost 20 years prior to his taking power, the people were silent and their pacifism allowed a malevolent power structure to take hold. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

Between 50 and 70 million peaceful Chinese citizens lost their lives between 1949-1974 under the Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong. Prior to seizing power, official materials published in 1948 reveal that Mao envisaged “one-tenth of the peasants” (or about 50,000,000 people) “would have to be destroyed to facilitate reform.” The regime ultimately succeeded through a variety of methods including forced starvation and violence on a grand scale in order to create a ‘utopian society’, though the silent majority did not rise up in opposition—in fact, many of them were slaughtered.

The world would be unwise to overlook these lessons in history. More than 100 million peace-loving Germans, Chinese, Russians, Rawandans, Serbs, Armenians, Sudanese and many others died because the peaceful majority did not rise up until it was too late. If peace-loving Muslims do not take a stand against this wave of radicalism, they are likely to awaken one day and find the radical movement unstoppable and be swept up in the wave.

In fact, there are many who fear it is already too late. Muslim communities across the U.K., Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden have become no-go zones for police. In these Muslim controlled neighborhoods, police and emergency responders are frequently attacked when they enter. The same rule of law and order does not exist in these communities and the governments have done nothing to reinstate it. In fact, with vast numbers of migrants arriving in Europe, these lawless communities have grown.

For those of us watching the violence and death emanating from the Middle East and finding its way to the West, I caution you to pay attention to the only group that counts: the radicals who threaten our way of life. This particular group has been very clear in broadcasting their intentions to overthrow democracy and religious freedom and are willing to commit murder to achieve their goals. We certainly can’t claim that we have not been warned.