Bad time for peace
Finnish social democrats openly talk about a "we" in the war against Russia, while conscription is becoming increasingly socially acceptable, Russia accuses the USA of direct involvement in attacks on Crimea, and the red lines are becoming increasingly blurred. Where is the storm of indignation, the civil movement, the resistance?
By Bent Erik Scholz
By Bent Erik Scholz
It is a well-known principle that the lack of attention to political decisions during major sporting events is often abused to push through undesirable measures. During the World Cup in its own country, Germany secretly and quietly increased the value added tax, and during the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, it increased health insurance contributions. We are currently experiencing something similar and yet more abstract, namely a clear rhetorical shift that is trying to creep in during the European Championships taking place in Germany. We need to be vigilant to recognize these linguistic declarations of war, and it would be much more cause for outrage than jersey colors, female commentators, or football fans vomiting all over the subway.
If, for example, the CDU suddenly calls for social benefits to be withdrawn from male Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing to go to the front in Ukraine, then that should make us think: if the refugees from Ukraine were initially showered with solidarity and special benefits, while people who had also fled from war in Africa were still crammed into camps, the Ukrainians are now being served the cold truth. That it is not, as is so often repeated like a mantra, about the "people in Ukraine", but rather that the Ukrainian person, if he is male and a refugee, is not worth protecting, but a parasite who is evading his destiny to die for something as vague as a country, European values, or freedom.
Deportation to war zones. A few years ago, those who are demanding this today would have been completely rightly outraged by such ideas. It is a scandal, the extent of which is given far too little attention. Turkish own goals are more effective in headlines.
The murmuring about conscription is also getting louder. It is becoming more and more of a background noise, and as is the case with background noise, people tend to block it out if necessary. That is dangerous. We must stop any attempt to bring this nonsense, which is being launched again by all parties from the AfD to the Greens, back to the table. Boris Pistorius's tentative groping is a transparent maneuver - it works like all politically determined major cuts in our lives in recent years: with small steps that we consider bearable, we are increasingly trained to accept it until we think: "Oh, that little step more doesn't make any difference." From corona measures to arms deliveries to Ukraine - this training always works the same way. In the beginning, Germany still supplied helmets.
Markus Söder said that military service has never hurt anyone - the same thing used to be said about beatings in upbringing. Personally, I think it is only partially wise to hand firearms to a young generation that has become highly psychotic due to the corona pandemic. But that is secondary, because here too the direction of the blow is frightening: the potential need for extensive self-defense is being emphasized more and more loudly, which also means that there is more and more open flirtation with an impending war.
The suspension of conscription was the result of a population's struggle against being taken over by the state into which it was born. It is a hard-won good to no longer have to put oneself involuntarily in the service of one's "country", whatever that means. What on earth is Germany supposed to be if not for me to risk my youth, my physical strength, perhaps even my life? Those who encourage the war the most are never the ones who have to fight it. Who am I to put myself at the disposal of the interests of a government whose behavior I cannot control, apart from the ballot box every few years?
As a human being, we tend to accept all of this, to block it out for self-protection, to capitulate to the seemingly overwhelming power of the spiral that is being driven forward by the West. When the Bild newspaper ran the headline last week: "For Ukraine mission: NATO builds headquarters in Wiesbaden" - we accepted it. This mission was only about further arms deliveries, not the deployment of troops. But if we are now being made aware of words like "mission", we should be extremely worried. We must never allow this kind of battle chatter to no longer affect us. Whenever we have the opportunity, we must be aware: This is not normal. This is not good.
The Progressive Governance Summit is a meeting of the European center-left parties that took place in Berlin last week. Olaf Scholz spoke in front of his social democratic colleagues.
uf, there was a clever story about the threat to democracy posed by capitalism - after all, you have to keep up a bit of a masquerade. But it gets treacherous elsewhere, when the Finnish SDP politician Tytti Tuppurainen says things like this: "Russia must lose the war. [...] To do that, we must first defeat Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine. For that, it is high time that Germany delivered Taurus missiles."
We. She actually said "we". She spoke of the battlefield. That is not a slip of the tongue by Baerbock, nobody is using this formulation, nobody is outraged by it. A member of the parliament of a country that has recently joined NATO succinctly declares the West to be a party to the war, and this horrendous, terrible exclamation fizzles out without a response. A Social Democrat at that.
A few months ago, Paul Ronzheimer was a guest on my podcast "Die gute Gesellschaft" and of course we talked about Ukraine. At the time I said to him: "But we certainly agree that the thing now not only includes Russia and Ukraine, but it is also a proxy war."
"Well," he said, "that's what Putin is making of it. Putin is just saying he is waging a war against the West. There are no troops from the West here. [...] But of course Putin has long been making something out of the fact that he is waging this war against NATO, against the West. That is what he is whipping up domestically and where he wants to ensure that the Russians say in whatever form, yes, Putin is right and we want our Soviet empire back. So we have to be careful not to fall into his trap."
That was only half true in February 2024. A few days after our conversation, the Taurus leaks made it clear that soldiers from Western countries were in Ukraine after all, not least to train troops there. Since then, however, it has become clear that it is not only Putin who claims to be fighting the West - the West itself is openly and openly admitting that it is part of this war. "We must defeat Putin on the battlefield" from the mouth of the former Finnish Minister for Europe is a declaration of war that is unparalleled.
The atmosphere is extremely tense, and that is not just because there is a chauvinistic dictator in the Kremlin. Anyone who acts according to the logic "But XY started it!" is not only arguing like a primary school student, but especially with regard to Ukraine, they are denying relevant parts of the history of the last thirty years. And they are neglecting how the West has also crossed borders bit by bit. They must actively ignore the fact that investigations into the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline have practically been dormant since February of this year, after evidence pointed to Ukrainian involvement in the explosion. You have to be deaf to the escalation of the statements made by leading Western politicians since February 24, 2022, and you have to be blind to the interests that are sometimes more, sometimes less openly revealed.
But we must fight this numbness tooth and nail. We can no longer allow stupid, regurgitated phrases like "Putler" and "RuZZland" to dominate our discourse on a conflict that is increasingly turning in our direction. We must keep reminding ourselves that it makes a striking difference whether you want to protect Ukraine or defeat Russia. A look at the politics of the last two years and the recent, absurd flirtation with the repatriation of conscripted Ukrainians makes it clear: the Ukrainians are not to be defended here - rather, they are being worn out to fight Russia. For the longest time, the West just about kept the attacked country afloat. But how can we defend Ukraine down to the last Ukrainian when everyone who could have lived in the cities that were not conquered was shot at the front in order to "bring Putin to his knees"?
We must not allow ourselves to be caught up in this web of empty words that are becoming increasingly drastic. We must hold those in power to their word when they resort to such inflammatory rhetoric from the safety of their ivory towers against the will of their people. This does not require attempted coups, violence or empty slogans. The most important step is to maintain inner purity - the constant awareness that this is not normal. It requires the expression of a polite but firm "no" using the means that democracy provides. Anyone who does not want war now has a responsibility to point out to their fellow human beings what it means when the war of words turns into direct confrontation with weapons.
06/26/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
If, for example, the CDU suddenly calls for social benefits to be withdrawn from male Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing to go to the front in Ukraine, then that should make us think: if the refugees from Ukraine were initially showered with solidarity and special benefits, while people who had also fled from war in Africa were still crammed into camps, the Ukrainians are now being served the cold truth. That it is not, as is so often repeated like a mantra, about the "people in Ukraine", but rather that the Ukrainian person, if he is male and a refugee, is not worth protecting, but a parasite who is evading his destiny to die for something as vague as a country, European values, or freedom.
Deportation to war zones. A few years ago, those who are demanding this today would have been completely rightly outraged by such ideas. It is a scandal, the extent of which is given far too little attention. Turkish own goals are more effective in headlines.
The murmuring about conscription is also getting louder. It is becoming more and more of a background noise, and as is the case with background noise, people tend to block it out if necessary. That is dangerous. We must stop any attempt to bring this nonsense, which is being launched again by all parties from the AfD to the Greens, back to the table. Boris Pistorius's tentative groping is a transparent maneuver - it works like all politically determined major cuts in our lives in recent years: with small steps that we consider bearable, we are increasingly trained to accept it until we think: "Oh, that little step more doesn't make any difference." From corona measures to arms deliveries to Ukraine - this training always works the same way. In the beginning, Germany still supplied helmets.
Markus Söder said that military service has never hurt anyone - the same thing used to be said about beatings in upbringing. Personally, I think it is only partially wise to hand firearms to a young generation that has become highly psychotic due to the corona pandemic. But that is secondary, because here too the direction of the blow is frightening: the potential need for extensive self-defense is being emphasized more and more loudly, which also means that there is more and more open flirtation with an impending war.
The suspension of conscription was the result of a population's struggle against being taken over by the state into which it was born. It is a hard-won good to no longer have to put oneself involuntarily in the service of one's "country", whatever that means. What on earth is Germany supposed to be if not for me to risk my youth, my physical strength, perhaps even my life? Those who encourage the war the most are never the ones who have to fight it. Who am I to put myself at the disposal of the interests of a government whose behavior I cannot control, apart from the ballot box every few years?
As a human being, we tend to accept all of this, to block it out for self-protection, to capitulate to the seemingly overwhelming power of the spiral that is being driven forward by the West. When the Bild newspaper ran the headline last week: "For Ukraine mission: NATO builds headquarters in Wiesbaden" - we accepted it. This mission was only about further arms deliveries, not the deployment of troops. But if we are now being made aware of words like "mission", we should be extremely worried. We must never allow this kind of battle chatter to no longer affect us. Whenever we have the opportunity, we must be aware: This is not normal. This is not good.
The Progressive Governance Summit is a meeting of the European center-left parties that took place in Berlin last week. Olaf Scholz spoke in front of his social democratic colleagues.
uf, there was a clever story about the threat to democracy posed by capitalism - after all, you have to keep up a bit of a masquerade. But it gets treacherous elsewhere, when the Finnish SDP politician Tytti Tuppurainen says things like this: "Russia must lose the war. [...] To do that, we must first defeat Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine. For that, it is high time that Germany delivered Taurus missiles."
We. She actually said "we". She spoke of the battlefield. That is not a slip of the tongue by Baerbock, nobody is using this formulation, nobody is outraged by it. A member of the parliament of a country that has recently joined NATO succinctly declares the West to be a party to the war, and this horrendous, terrible exclamation fizzles out without a response. A Social Democrat at that.
A few months ago, Paul Ronzheimer was a guest on my podcast "Die gute Gesellschaft" and of course we talked about Ukraine. At the time I said to him: "But we certainly agree that the thing now not only includes Russia and Ukraine, but it is also a proxy war."
"Well," he said, "that's what Putin is making of it. Putin is just saying he is waging a war against the West. There are no troops from the West here. [...] But of course Putin has long been making something out of the fact that he is waging this war against NATO, against the West. That is what he is whipping up domestically and where he wants to ensure that the Russians say in whatever form, yes, Putin is right and we want our Soviet empire back. So we have to be careful not to fall into his trap."
That was only half true in February 2024. A few days after our conversation, the Taurus leaks made it clear that soldiers from Western countries were in Ukraine after all, not least to train troops there. Since then, however, it has become clear that it is not only Putin who claims to be fighting the West - the West itself is openly and openly admitting that it is part of this war. "We must defeat Putin on the battlefield" from the mouth of the former Finnish Minister for Europe is a declaration of war that is unparalleled.
The atmosphere is extremely tense, and that is not just because there is a chauvinistic dictator in the Kremlin. Anyone who acts according to the logic "But XY started it!" is not only arguing like a primary school student, but especially with regard to Ukraine, they are denying relevant parts of the history of the last thirty years. And they are neglecting how the West has also crossed borders bit by bit. They must actively ignore the fact that investigations into the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline have practically been dormant since February of this year, after evidence pointed to Ukrainian involvement in the explosion. You have to be deaf to the escalation of the statements made by leading Western politicians since February 24, 2022, and you have to be blind to the interests that are sometimes more, sometimes less openly revealed.
But we must fight this numbness tooth and nail. We can no longer allow stupid, regurgitated phrases like "Putler" and "RuZZland" to dominate our discourse on a conflict that is increasingly turning in our direction. We must keep reminding ourselves that it makes a striking difference whether you want to protect Ukraine or defeat Russia. A look at the politics of the last two years and the recent, absurd flirtation with the repatriation of conscripted Ukrainians makes it clear: the Ukrainians are not to be defended here - rather, they are being worn out to fight Russia. For the longest time, the West just about kept the attacked country afloat. But how can we defend Ukraine down to the last Ukrainian when everyone who could have lived in the cities that were not conquered was shot at the front in order to "bring Putin to his knees"?
We must not allow ourselves to be caught up in this web of empty words that are becoming increasingly drastic. We must hold those in power to their word when they resort to such inflammatory rhetoric from the safety of their ivory towers against the will of their people. This does not require attempted coups, violence or empty slogans. The most important step is to maintain inner purity - the constant awareness that this is not normal. It requires the expression of a polite but firm "no" using the means that democracy provides. Anyone who does not want war now has a responsibility to point out to their fellow human beings what it means when the war of words turns into direct confrontation with weapons.
06/26/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
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