Resistance to the violence of World War II

Pacifism as a concept perplexes me^[1] so this reading of the role that these two concepts, anarchism and pacifism, had in contributing to the anti-war movement was interesting. However, this review has made some statements that I can't disagree with. It opens up strong:

Violence is not all the same. Context matters. There’s something much worse about violence when it’s perpetrated by or with the tacit acceptance of the State. It’s not just that governments and their allies in the capitalist class and the patriarchy have more resources, more weapons, and fewer ethical qualms about killing than most. Beyond these obvious assets, they can hide behind the veil of legitimacy that the State (allegedly) offers them. Hitler, George W. Bush, and Derek Chauvin may not have a lot in common personally, but all committed their crimes under the reasonable presumption that the social and political order sanctioned such behavior.

This statement is bold and can cause a knee-jerk reaction depending on who you are. If you're accepting of American violence, putting George W. Bush wouldn't make sense until you consider that his war led to three million innocent Iraqis dying over a lie on weapons of mass destruction. Chauvin had a twisted agenda^[2] but would be considered a villian to most Americans, especially because of his figure, the mask falling.

This book is interesting but not compelling enough for me to engage. I respect pacifism as a concept but I have yet to see a concrete example of it working outside of the West^[3]. How do you suppose the Sahel belt practice pacifism, for example? This is a reminder, for me and readers, that solutions aren't (can't!) be universal. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be taken (if viable). The review continues, however, with an indication of post-World War II America:

Repeatedly in Akst’s book and the contemporary writings of people like Muste and Dellinger, pacifists made the inconvenient point that in the name of winning an all-out war against Hitler, the U.S. was adopting many aspects of Hitlerism itself.

The astute reader who expands the perspective to be beyond the West will note that it is valid. This was also a time when the US government and its allies also were manipulating so many African and Asiatic countries in attempts to maintain their control over the land. The reviewer seems to have a particular ignorance towards anything that non-white folks (sans Martin Luther King Jr and Bayard Rustin) were doing. They write, at the time, "the new radicals of the 1960s never [finding] a way to engage the American labor movement in their struggle, or generate an alternative for working-class people in their increasingly complacent and ineffective mainstream union establishment". Questions like "who were able to make up union representation at this time" come to mind. Bayard Rustin was also a very prominent figure for labor as a high ranking representative for AFL-CIO; who, around this time, gave way for police to be more concretely recognized as workers. No one is perfect.