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Sascha Lobo on the Ukraine war: German Lumpen

2022-04-20T13:14:29.823Z


A substantial part of the peace movement, in its self-righteousness, is the best thing that can happen to Putin. Unfortunately, he has powerful partners in politics and especially in the SPD.


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Banner with the inscription »Whoever supplies weapons should kill people themselves!« at the Hamburg Easter March: deeply egocentric ideology

Photo: Markus Scholz / dpa

'I dare say that when the Jews summon to their support the soul strength which springs solely from non-violence, Herr Hitler bows to a courage such as he has never before experienced to any appreciable degree in dealing with men would.” These lines were written in late 1938 by a pacifist, by

the

pacifist, namely Mahatma Gandhi.

Shortly thereafter he declared that there could not possibly be a Jewish Ghandi in Germany because he "most likely could not work for more than five minutes before he was immediately dragged to the guillotine".

Which means Gandhi knew what could happen to Jews in Germany.

Gandhi is not only a role model for many pacifists to this day, he was also an incredible banger.

The German peace movement seemed roughly divided at this year's high mass, the Easter marches for peace.

On the one hand there are the rationalists, who of course also exist, who pursue an enlightened, realistic pacifism.

This can be understood as: skepticism about militarism, breaking of positive war narratives, radicalism in creating the conditions for peace, but also acceptance of the desire of attack victims to defend themselves.

On the other side is a substantial part of the peace movement, which I would like to call German Lumpen-pacifism.

It is a deeply egocentric ideology that puts pride in one's own state of mind above the suffering of other people.

Lumpy pacifists may not understand reality very well, but they are not primarily naïve, as they are often accused of.

Naivety is uncomfortable, but not shameful.

Lumpy pacifists are first and foremost self-righteous.

It's people who put on a jacket and immediately forget what it means to be cold.

People who follow their chair circle principles even at the cost of the lives of others.

People who, faced with the horror of the Russian attack in Ukraine, do not want to do anything, exactly: nothing.

In short, they are people like the Peace Commissioner of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop Friedrich Kramer.

When asked how one should react to the war crimes of dictator Putin in Ukraine, he says: »Sometimes we can all only be helpless spectators.

And maybe that's a good thing.

« It hardly seems possible to me to celebrate our own indifference in the face of children being bombed to death any more maliciously.

But well, it's a bishop.

more on the subject

Scholz on the war in Ukraine: “German going it alone would be wrong”

Nothing better can happen to the Russian fascist leader Putin than those Western leaders who say, directly or indirectly, that Ukraine is none of our business.

The lumpen pacifists have some powerful partners, especially in politics and even more specifically in the SPD, the peace party.

You can recognize them by the parallelism of the arguments.

Bishop Kramer not only stands by blissfully helpless, he also tells the government how to deal with the conflict.

Deliveries of weapons are of course taboo, but above all Kramer says: "We mustn't go in there ethically, we have to stay out sober."

When on earth are you supposed to be mindset if not now?

With murdered and raped civilians outnumbered?

Attitude ethics means here that one draws red lines,

exceeding which must have consequences: the opposite of appeasement.

Especially since it is not about NATO actively fighting in Ukraine.

But about arms deliveries.

The smartest, funniest and saddest tweet about it: "Because we don't know exactly what Russia could take as a declaration of war, I decided not to empty the dishwasher today."

Now it's better not to be sober about annoying ethics that Putin could possibly "misunderstand" but to look on pragmatically, says the bishop.

We switch to Michael Müller (SPD), the former Governing Mayor of Berlin, who is now a member of the Bundestag.

He says on n-tv: "I'm amazed by some who have also looked at the situation on site, how quickly people are now calling for heavy weapons." Fast?

So after just a few tens of thousands of dead, tortured, raped, murdered civilians, mass war crimes?

The attacked committee chairmen of the Bundestag, who were in Kyiv last week, had to be mocked by Olaf Scholz as "boys and girls", and now ex-mayor Müller is warning them to be slow about weapons.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the pacifist, traditional Easter marches did not feel in a position to condemn the Russian war of aggression, but nevertheless believed they were demonstrating for peace.

Those who seriously wanted to show a “clear edge” against NATO – and only NATO – flaunted their looseness in a particularly striking manner.

Escape gravity by simply falling off the ground

If you remove the many layers of flat anti-Americanism from the German Lumpen-pacifists, then a core remains.

Namely the mixture of the right of the strongest and the perpetrator-victim reversal that Gandhi already mixed together: "If the Jews, instead of being helpless and necessarily non-violent, deliberately adopted non-violence, that is, compassion, for the non-Jewish Germans , so not only could they not harm the Germans, but I am as sure of that as I am dictating these lines – they would melt the hardest German heart.” And as a bizarrely anti-Semitic preamble: “Let the Jews who Claiming to be the chosen people, proving their claim by choosing the path of nonviolence to defend their earthly existence.

« Lumpy pacifism lies outstretched and not only points out to those who are attacked that it is their own fault if their non-violence does not work.

But also that they are no better than the attackers if they are not really in the mood for non-violence when faced with annihilation.

Okay, Gandhi - but that doesn't exist anymore in this spectacularly reality-averse, inhuman form?

Unfortunately yes.

In the taz, a peace researcher explains to the Ukrainians how they can “get the occupier’s regime to sit down with them and find a compromise.” Apart from the fact that what a “compromise ' can look like at all, if one party wants to destroy the other, the means which it seriously enumerates are the following:

  • Mass demonstrations to show the invaders they are not welcome

  • exchanging street signs and using traffic signs to insult or distract the invading army

  • stop Russian tanks with human chains

  • Boycott of Russian goods, because this also makes the occupation much more expensive

  • Provide funding, training, other resources to help Ukrainians build their capacity for mass civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance

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Then she describes it as an important tool not to pay the electricity bill in the event of an occupation.

Anyone who has looked at the images of the bombed cities and civil institutions, of the corpses in the streets and the reports of mass rapes no longer has to use arguments to refute the attempt to confuse soldiers with swapped street signs.

The remedies listed are a farce, they correspond to the recommendation to escape gravity by simply falling off the ground.

All of this is published the day after Putin awarded the troops who tortured and murdered people in Bucha with beautiful medals as co-slaughterer of the month.

And in the process confirmed his strategy of intentional war crimes.

This is no longer naive, but maliciously cold.

On the other hand, the pacifist-loving peace researcher rejects arms deliveries because "we shouldn't intensify the further militarization of the conflict." The people in Mariupol, starving of thirst in bombed-out cellars, will certainly be very happy that their city will not be militarized any further.

If they make an effort and post a few Gandhi tiles on Instagram, they can surely become pacifists after all.

Maybe not washed down to the pores,

Source: spiegel

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