Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest (review)

Marian Mollin has written a fascinating, if occasionally frustrating, book about a tiny group of committed peace activists who struggled not only against the martial culture of the United States but also the gender and racial biases of society and themselves. Not quite a history of radical pacifists, not quite a polemic against their failures—from someone who worked in a later generation of the movement—the book awkwardly straddles the oft-difficult divide between scholarship and advocacy. Ultimately, her book proves useful, especially to those interested in the internal structures of (radical) social movements.

The book chronicles the relative ups and downs of the far left of the pacifist movement during World War II, the early decades of the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Though she never quantifies the handful of organizations she studies, it seems she is talking about groups whose membership numbered, at the most, in the low thousands, though perhaps at times in the hundreds; in fact, she only occasionally references the relatively mainstream and much larger pacifist organizations, like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). Mollin’s thesis is repeated throughout: though admirable for their objectives and passion to what is depicted as a noble cause, most leaders and rank-and-filers in the radical peace movement were trapped in typically racist and sexist thinking (though she never uses those terms). As a result, though vigorously committed to peace and willing to risk their very lives, the inability to overcome their own hidebound prejudices, or even see them, resulted in the movement’s failure to expand, become more relevant, or achieve greater success.

By “they,” Mollin means, basically, men of European ancestry. Primarily, she criticizes the white- and male-dominated movement for failing to reach out to women and non-whites. She gives numerous examples of the privileging of male leaders and manly tactics. From the WWII era, she notes that conscientious objectors (COs) prided themselves for being working-class toughs, partially, if unconsciously, to refute charges that pacifist males were effeminate. From the early Cold War, Mollin notes that men, depicted as vigorous and tan (not unlike JFK) tried to sail boldly into nuclear test sites. During the Vietnam War, Mollin vividly describes how young men, clad in nothing but their swimsuits, swam through the chilly waters of a New England river to sneak atop a nuclear submarine. In these examples, and others, Mollin notes how men and masculine action were privileged and women were proscribed from being role models and leaders.

However, Mollin also provides many examples of how women, or women with more (dare I say it?) evolved men, were active in the movement. These instructive counterexamples not only revealed open space for women but also would have been more successful strategies for the peace movement overall.

Although she claims to be looking at both race and gender as blind spots for the radical peace movement, Mollin focuses far more on gender and throws race matters in only occasionally. The important exception is perhaps the most powerful chapter which looks at how the peace movement uncomfortably allied with civil rights activists in the 1960s. There, Mollin deeply explores halting efforts to combine the goals of peace with equal rights through an interracial, mixed-gender march from Quebec down the East coast of the United States to Cuba (though it never got beyond Miami). The most important moment, according to Mollin, occurred when about a dozen were thrown into jail in Albany, Georgia in the midst of a well-known and failing struggle led by local and national civil rights groups to integrate the town. While in jail, the white women most ably challenged both the prison and segregationist regimes through hunger strikes, while the men proved less capable. Ultimately, it was this interracial peace group that broke Albany’s segregationist ranks while gaining the respect of the black community.

While not wanting to be overly...