Magistrate: The treasury supplies the expenses of the War.
Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!
Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!
When a character or group is too utterly swept up in their own need of being a pacifist or making sure that everyone/anyone else is pacifist, to the point where it slightly or completely prevents the hero/party/group in progressing to their goal or weighs them down immensely.
Sub-Trope of Honor Before Reason. Compare Suicidal Pacifism and We Have Become Complacent. Similar to Thou Shalt Not Kill. May lead to Too Dumb to Live.
Examples:
- Despite being the Sin of Wrath, Meliodas from The Seven Deadly Sins is a Technical Pacifist who chooses to be Willfully Weak and not kill his opponents. While this mindset works out early on in the manga as he and his fellow Sins are vastly more powerful than their opponents, it becomes a deterrent when they encounter the Armored Giant. Not only is this demon so strong that only using their full strength and killing it is the only way to stop it, but killing it is also the only merciful thing to relieve its suffering. Meliodas initially doesn't want to go this route and even hinders comrades of his that want to. It's only when the gravity of the whole matter is apparent to him that he decides to actually stop holding back.
- Heavy Object: Defied in the anime-only finale. Klondike is a prominent religious scholar committed to a creed of "non-violence, non-compliance, and non-resistance", and leads an antiwar movement with a considerable number of followers. He's too inconvenient for the realpolitik-driven super-nations to keep around, but too popular and too innocuous to simply imprison or assassinate, so they resort to repeatedly deporting him to each other like a hot potato to disrupt his peace movement.
- Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Lynn Kaifun promotes pacifism, but in his case it mostly just comes across as blind hatred of the military and everything they do or are involved in. This gets to the point that when peace talks are finally opened with the Zentraedi, he initially refuses to participate because the military has representatives at these peace talks, and Minmay of all people has to call him on this.
- Knights of the Old Republic: In the War miniseries, Zayne Carrick gets drafted and is forced to fight on the frontlines of the Mandalorian Wars. He not only refuses to kill, but he refuses to let anyone else kill anyone either: he limits himself to disarming enemies by destroying their weapons and goes out of his way to stop people on either side from gunning down defeated/retreating combatants. Naturally, this frustrates the hell out of his commanding officers.
- Padme Amidala in Saga of Tanya the Jedi
opposes the idea of a galactic military force and armies in general, believing that each planet should maintain a small defense force. Not only does she forget/ignore that Naboo was so easily invaded because they had no standing army, but Padme doesn't consider that many planets (such as Tatooine) are too poor to maintain their own military forces.
- In Deathworld 2, Mikah Samon is a "pacifist" who opposes Jason's plan to foment revolution (and later a war of consolidation) on the planet they've crashed on, even though in the existing political system most people are slaves and all the factions are too busy keeping a tight grip on their own technological monopolies for anyone to actually make any progress. His "principled resistance" led him to betray Jason twice (once to the gang he was undermining and again later to his chosen victors' enemies), the second time causing Jason to take a wound he wouldn't have survived if rescuers from his homeworld hadn't found them.
- In The Sword of Truth the beliefs of the culture that produced evil pacifists are absurd to the point where they won't fight back or even try to get out of the way when people with weapons are nearby and trying to kill each other. Indeed, they are Too Dumb to Live.
- Stargate SG-1 has the Nox. The Nox practice a philosophy of absolute pacifism and non-violence that is so strict that they refuse even to defend themselves when threatened. This policy is so strict that others within their domain are forced to obey their rules of policy of pacifism when necessary. Should visitors attempt to employ violence against one another, the Nox remove their weapons as part of their rules. Of course, they can afford to be pacifist, considering they can avoid most conflicts by turning themselves and other objects invisible with no apparent effort, and even bring their dead back to life if a conflict can't be avoided with outsiders. Jack tells them it doesn't work that way for humans.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- A famous example is Edith Keeler from "The City on the Edge of Forever". A time-traveling Dr. McCoy saves her, and because she lives, she leads a pacifist movement that prevents the US entry into World War II, causing the Nazis to win the war. Kirk has to let her die to reset the timeline.
- Subverted in "Errand of Mercy", in that the Organians look like this for most of the episode. Spock describes the planet as a stagnant culture and the planet seems to be populated by amiable old men who placidly allow the Klingons to conquer them, rebuking Kirk and Spock's efforts to inspire a resistance because they abhor violence so much they'd rather allow arbitrary executions than fight back. It's only at the end that we learn the Organians have simply pretended to be harmless (and executed, and humanoid) to make their visitors feel at ease. When tensions come to a head, they revert to their luminous true forms and make both sides sit in the corner.
- An episode of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda involves Dylan and his crew trying to save a pacifist colony from Space Pirates. When one of the pacifists deliberately blows up the crate of Smart Lances that the crew brought along (and he justifies it as better off dying than allowing the colony to be "tainted" with violence), Dylan has to do a Training the Peaceful Villagers montage and play guerrilla.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: The "Vow of Nonviolence" and "Vow of Peace" Intrinsic Vow feats make this a game mechanic — both require the Player Character to police their allies' behavior, and the former also inflicts mechanical penalties on nearby allies who commit violent acts. However, there are a few loopholes - the vows only cover living beings (constructs and undead are fair game), and if the enemies try to pull an I Surrender, Suckers then their lives are forfeit (the book explicitly states that the vow-swearer's allies are allowed to kill enemies under that condition without breaking the vow or suffering penalties).
- The community of Fisherman's Horizon in Final Fantasy VIII has a large proportion of pacifists amongst its citizens, and the Mayor, Dobe, tries to stop SeeD from fighting to defend the town from invading Galbadians in favour of attempting negotiation. He has no idea how to react when he learns the Galbadians are under orders to raze the town, nor when SeeD fights on his behalf and ends up saving his life.
- A series of sidequests in Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise has Kenshiro facing interference from a group of sworn pacifists within Eden. Each time, they try to settle the current issue peacefully. Each time, they fail miserably and Kenshiro has to save them. The group ultimately disbands after bandits brutally murder their leader for trying to negotiate with them. Kenshiro sympathizes with them, but is well aware this isn't a world where peace is an option.
- Hochi from Ghost of Tsushima. While not a coward, his insistence of being a pacifist essentially makes him The Load, giving Jin and Norio the unnecessary extra work of covering his ass. He proves his bravery by ultimately throwing himself in front of a Mongol trying to ambush Norio, dying in a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Mass Effect: A common tactic the Reapers use is to indoctrinate high-ranking politicians into this, luring them in with promises of negotiation and then making them sabotage any attempt to fight the Reapers, who have no interest in negotiation, often penalizing anyone who tries to fight back.
- Wander over Yonder: In "The Robomechabotatron", Wander and Sylvia team up with Lord Hater and Commander Peepers to pilot the eponymous Humongous Mecha, but Wander stubbornly refuses to pilot it into battle against Lord Dominator, even though she's an Omnicidal Maniac out to destroy every planet in the galaxy For the Evulz. The Robomechabotatron ends up getting destroyed in the ensuing struggle between our heroes, and the only thing they accomplish is distracting Lord Dominator and allowing the Cluckons to fully evacuate their homeworld.
- Many pacifists who would be Conscientious Objectors to military service are also opposed to paying taxes to fund the military. In the United States, The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund works to pass a national law to allow conscientious objectors to redirect their tax money to be used only for non-military purposesnote
