At our rally against the German Armed Forces' "K.A.R.L." event on May 29th, we delivered the following speech: ---- Dear residents of Osnabrück, dear passersby, ---- Just a few weeks after students and their supporters took to the streets in Osnabrück and across Germany to demonstrate against conscription, we feel compelled to raise our voices once again! K.A.R.L. is in town! The German Armed Forces' "Career Advice, Roadshow, and Lounge."
This "roadshow" is touring Germany as part of the ubiquitous German Armed Forces image campaigns, primarily aimed at inspiring young people to pursue a "career" in the military. The event's website presents it as a strange mix of a folk festival and a job fair. For ten days, the German Armed Forces intend to portray themselves as a progressive, somehow "cool," and adventurous employer. Military service is being marketed here, as in previous campaigns, as an image product, as a lifestyle choice. Those being recruited are kept in the dark about the realities of military service, their training, and their use in killing, maiming, and killing. The same applies to the actual possibilities of military deployment, as long as they aren't simply downplayed.
For a military deployment of the German military is by no means far-fetched, not least in light of the current confrontations with Russia and China. Wars are inevitable in a capitalist system built on nation-state competition! War does not arise from the evil will of individuals. Nevertheless, Putin, Trump, and other warmongers are repeatedly presented to us as the causes, not the symptoms. The picture conveyed is clear: if individual rulers are replaced, "the world system will function again," and everyone can live in peace. That this is false is evident from reality. The military and foreign policy of Barack Obama ultimately differed from that of Donald Trump primarily in its public communication, and less so in substance. The same applies to the Green Party's Annalena Baerbock and the current CDU politician Wadephul. Despite supposedly "left-wing" politicians, systemic constraints persist, and at the level of action, there is hardly any discernible difference between the political camps across the political spectrum.
Furthermore, it is obvious that a state, like any capitalist state, which depends on permanent growth, will inevitably produce wars. If not for resources, then at the very latest to secure spheres of influence and markets, as soon as global free trade is no longer sufficient to achieve national goals.
These "national goals," the raison d'état of a state, are ultimately measured by the success of domestic capital on the world market. This results in a perfidious dual role for the arms and military industry. On the one hand, it is an important part of domestic capital; on the other hand, it produces the means with which this domestic capital is "defended." War thus becomes a crisis management strategy for heavy industry. If sales stagnate on the market, as is currently being experienced in the automotive industry, state-financed armaments create sales outside the free market. The goods financed by government debt and social spending cuts can neither be meaningfully consumed by us nor used as an investment in improved future production. Their sole purpose is to wage war and destroy people, animals, plants, and livelihoods. The arms-based industry needs war, because only when weapons are used up do new ones need to be ordered. The state, in turn, can only refinance its military spending through successful warfare, which allows it to pass the costs on to the defeated. If this fails, it must recoup the money through tax increases and social spending cuts from everyone living in the state. It becomes clear that parts of industry have a vested interest in rearmament and warmongering. Furthermore, it is no secret that pursuing economic interests is a key task of the German Armed Forces. After all, it is also officially their duty to secure "trade routes" for German imports and exports.
At this point, it also becomes clear that the aforementioned confrontation with Russia is not necessarily a negative development for the military and its associated industries. Massive, high-profile public campaigns are constructing a threat scenario that justifies almost all militaristic and authoritarian measures. The supposed defense of "freedom" and "democracy" effectively serves as a pretext for restricting them. Here, the official narrative is clearly contradictory. The supposed protection against authoritarian states is used to justify an authoritarian state apparatus with ever-expanding repressive apparatuses and ever-expanding powers. Anyone who criticizes this is quickly branded as naive or a utopian, since Germany must once again be "capable of defending itself" against this constructed threat landscape. Here, the state narrative has hit the nail on the head and appears to be firmly entrenched in mainstream society. In doing so, both the aforementioned causes of war are misunderstood, and other concepts of resistance, such as social resistance against an occupying power, are ridiculed or dismissed as impossible.
Aside from all this, it should be briefly mentioned that the term "peace" in the Western world has always, and still today, primarily meant "peace of the West." The fact that wars are outsourced from the capitalist metropolises of Europe and the USA to the global periphery, for example to Algeria, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and the Middle East, is nothing new, and armed conflicts, which are and have been commonplace worldwide, are acceptable, even desirable, for the West as long as they do not threaten but rather consolidate its prosperity and global dominance. Thus, this concept of peace, largely established in the mainstream, can be recognized as a political battle cry. Nevertheless, we must be clear that leftist thought cannot stop at national borders. The focus on the West and one's own state must not obscure the fact that the logic of war must be broken on all sides of the conflicts. A global peace as we understand it is impossible under nation-state competition.
To be clear once more:
We don't want your military recruitment!
We don't want your warmongering!
We don't want you lulling young people into complacency and portraying yourselves as great employers!
We don't want any proud displays of your weapons of death!
K.A.R.L., get lost!
https://likos.noblogs.org/2026/05/30/kein-werben-fuer-krieg-und-aufruestung-redebeitrag/
_________________________________________
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten