Post-Heroic Pacifism: Ghandi, Grizzly-Adams, Hiroshima and the Idea of Limited Nuclear War and Freedom
Yes, those were the days when Grizzly Adams ran around in the 80s as the Mahatma Ghandi of all benevolent people. You could retreat with your Grizzly to a Ghandiland of eternal ecological peacefulness. Sascha Lobo rightly attacked “ragged pacifism”(“Lumpenpazifismus) in a Spiegel article, in which he criticized Gandhi’s own hypocrisy towards Hitler, fascism and the Jewish question, as well as the whole cowardice or brutality of pacifism, which remains vaguely uncaring,bt you don´t know if Sascha is speaking of rags, worn clothes or villains or both together:
„Putin’s War Against Ukraine German Lumpen-Pacifism
A column by Sascha Lobo
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. ‚I dare say that when the Jews summon to their support the soul strength which springs solely from non-violence, Herr Hitler brings to a courage such as he has never before experienced to any appreciable degree in dealing with menkind.” 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 Gandhi 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.”
Then, in the pacifist and ecologically influenced 80s, there was also Grizzly Adams, a man (angry white man?) who lives in nature and on his own with a grizzly, a hermit who renounces all the world and is the ideal guy for all projections from world peace to perfect ecology, also completely free of people and women. I would be interested to know how FFF interprets this clip of the minimalist ecoprint in the light of the Ukraine war, gender studies and post-colonialism. As a minimum consensus: probably no gas, no oil, but a grizzly.
In addition to Grizzly Adams, there were songs like Hiroshima by Wishful Thinking, which were just wishful thinking when US strategists said: „Hiroshima is a thriving city today – what’s the problem?“
So this German country wavers between romantic grizzly bear-Adams ideas of ecology and a nuclear-free zone, especially since it is not German nuclear military power, emphasizes its sovereignty under international law, which is not given in terms of power politics and serves as a battlefield for the conflict between US, Russian and Chinese imperialism. Although one prefers US liberalism, imperialism and its democracy in contrast to totalitarian Russia and China, which only the AfD, the Front National, Orban want to establish in Germany and the rest of Europe. So one likes the idea of a Pax Americana, which is already a multipolar world but needs to reform its Western core rather than all that multipolar world in which totalitarian China and Russia set the tone, albeit the United States‘ risk-sharing when it comes to Europe and Asia is different because of the idea of limited nuclear wars. Munich and Berlin can be wiped out like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Russia and the US would then rather limit their limited nuclear exchange to Europe like Germany would like to limit the Russian “Ukraine war” to Ukraine and China and the US to the rest of Asia. That is precisely the potential price of freedom , which one likes, but at the price of which one then considers again whether one doesn’t erase oneself. But that’s how deterrence works. You have to be willing to accept the maximum price in order to deter the other side. It was no different with the so-called retrofitting of the NATO double-track decision in the 1980s. They were willing to offer and sacrifice Germany as a battlefield and target in order to make it clear to the other side that they had even more to lose. That was and is the price of freedom as long as Germany or Europe does not have its own weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapons, which is very unlikely.
Especially since Macron’s „European sovereignty“, i.e. a kind of Eurasian alliance with Russia against China, as the German naval chief Schönbach or some US strategists have been thinking since the Ukraine war are over and one now sees more of a Putin-Le Pen alliance, maybe even with China on board against the rest of Europe, maybe even with Trump from 2024 without US nuclear protection. Macron spoke of a European nuclear power, but under the Force de frappe and under French command. So a megalomaniac illusion of its own, especially since leading NATO generals also believe that this is not a “credible deterrent”, since Macron would not sacrifice Paris for Moscow, at best would lead a limited nuclear war in Eastern Europe or Germany, i.e. for the rest of Europe or even more questionable than the US nuclear shield, although voices of a limited nuclear war are appearing more and more often inthe US discussion. Especially since Franz Josef Strauss and Dregger, as the Union’s steel helmet faction, tried to form German access to US nuclear weapons or a European nuclear militray power, which failed miserably – because of France, Great Britain and the USA rehcted the idea together. In this essential point of weapons of mass destruction and sovereignty, Germany is never granted so-called power-political sovereignty, but an international legal sovereignty, which one proudly invokes, but it changes nothingin the balance of real power. All that remains is the AfD hope that Germany under Trump, like South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Japan, will be granted its own nuclear weapons, which the other powers know how to prevent. Even a Putin didn’t want to see AfD-Germany with nuclear waepons even if Gauland and Höcke still have their hopes and kiss the Russians or Trump’s ass.Germnay would become anozher Russian- Chinese colony.
I can also remember a dialogue with Thomas Barnett, a senior Pentagon adviser to the former Bush Jr. government, neocon, author of the book “A Blueprint for the Pentagon” and globalism fanatic, who described his work to me as follows: “It was schizophrenic and paradoxical at first sight. In the morning I was in the hospital to witness the birth of my little daughter. In the afternoon I sat in the Pentagon planing nuclear mass murder with millions of statistical deaths. In the morning the creation of new life, and in the afternoon the extinction of millions of them. But you had to calculate the mass murder so that it didn’t happen and that´s how deterrence works.But you had to calculate the mass murder so that it didn’t happen and the deterrence worked. You had to plan the nuclear mass murder and the overkill or the limitation of the nuclear strikes just to be so credible and calibrated that the other side shied away „That´s detterence at its best.