Bruno Drweski | Union for Communist Reconstruction (URC)  

In a world where the idea that war has once again become “normal” is being imposed with some success on public opinion, peace advocates must fight to re-establish the view that only power relations favorable to anti-capitalist political and social movements can prevent war and set humanity on the bright path of peace and social progress. This leads us to ask why the most reactionary, repressive, bellicose, and genocidal tendencies have been able to gain a foothold in a growing number of countries over the past 40 years, even though the results of their policies are clearly disastrous. Why did the collapse of the Yugoslav states, followed by dangers of so-called “color revolutions”? Why did the descent of Libya into endless clan and tribal wars and social regression not alert the opinions of neighboring Arab countries to the dangers of the so-called “Arab Spring” and its promoters? And so why do significant and sometimes undoubtedly majority sections of public opinion in Western Europe and elsewhere in the world dare not see that capitalism, having reached the stage of senile imperialism, is leading all of humanity towards a world war of extermination, and that no country, no people, no nation is safe from this predictable catastrophe? How, then, can we make people aware of this imminent danger and prevent them from believing that they will be able to “slip through the cracks” of the tornado already visible on the horizon?

The reasons for the appeasement of the “glorious thirty” years from 1945 to 1975

 The existence of atomic weapons and the “balance of terror,” the experience of World War II in Europe and Asia, and the existence of the socialist camp until 1989 all contributed greatly to curbing the warmongering tendencies of the imperialist states after 1945. As Western societies were removed from the wars that imperialism was waging in the Third World throughout this period, the imperialism in crisis today is finding it difficult to “rearm” psychologically, which explains why the objective situation of imperialist “world war” that has been going on for some 40 years has still not reached the consciousness of the peoples of Europe and North America and why, as a result, they do not perceive the imminent danger threatening them. This situation has also affected other countries in other regions of the world, and all these factors combined, atomic weapons and the pacification of minds, may explain why we are not yet in a situation comparable to that of 1914 or 1939. Even if the objective conditions of capitalism in crisis are very reminiscent, and even more tense, of the situations that prevailed on the eve of the two previous world wars.

Even if, since the end of the socialist camp, the imperialists have succeeded in largely eliminating the pacifist vocabulary tending to impose policies of disarmament, denuclearization, detente, and diplomatic negotiations to resolve conflicts, they have not yet succeeded in imposing on public opinion the martial atmosphere that prevailed on the eve of the two previous world wars. This is despite the fact that we are currently facing more than forty conflicts around the world in which the imperialist powers are directly or indirectly involved, not to mention the “frozen conflicts” or the policies of blockades and sanctions, which are different ways of waging war.

 What we have just written clearly shows, given the scale of the phenomenon, that we are facing a third world war, but that while this war is “hot” and even openly genocidal in some places (Palestine, eastern DR Congo, etc.), it remains at least “low intensity” elsewhere. It does not even appear to be a war in large sections of the population of countries where mortality rates are high due to policies of blockading basic commodities, including medicines. However, this situation of mixed economic and military wars is creating major imbalances in most of the world’s societies, which have to bear the threats, pressures and conditions imposed on the market countries to be dominated or conquered. This inevitably provokes resistance and explains the systematic expansion of “local” war zones. We are therefore dealing with two contradictory processes: blindness to the threats of war and the will to resist them. It is therefore up to the forces of peace and progress to regain the upper hand in the propaganda war that is raging across the planet.

The state of the forces pushing for the generalization of war

 It is clear, for example, that Russia was pushed into a military response in 2022 because of threats, discriminatory policies, and military aggression aimed either at Russia or more directly at the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine. It is equally clear that the suffocation of Gaza since Zionist troops formally left the territory in 2005 could only lead to a revolt by the imprisoned, impoverished, humiliated, ignored, and still sporadically bombed population, which logically resulted in the uprising of October 7, 2023. This type of situation, which pushes countries and populations to resist the dominant order in crisis, is repeating itself in a more or less radical form in a growing number of regions around the world. Either we see the proliferation of rebellions by states and peoples, as is the case in the Sahel, Latin America, the Philippines and elsewhere, or the imperialist forces succeed in breaking up independent states by provoking civil wars, as we have seen in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, etc. All these wars and hotbeds of tension are emerging within the framework of a single global situation created by imperialist policies themselves. No serious and impartial observer can deny that, while the intensity of conflicts and tensions varies around the world, the cause of these phenomena is, on the contrary, unique: the struggle of the imperialists to prevent the tendency of their profit rates to fall. The war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, terrorism in the Sahel, the struggle to appropriate coltan in the Congo, tensions in the China Sea, in the Taiwan Strait and between the two Koreas, etc. have one and the same cause: the desire of the imperialist powers to eliminate the emerging powers currently grouped around the BRICS, to conquer their markets, to conquer the regions that produce energy and rare earths, and to control the trade flows of these resources that supply the BRICS countries or other countries that are more or less sovereign and more or less non-aligned.

 It is therefore important today to make the whole of humanity aware that poverty in countries deliberately kept in underdevelopment by imperialism and the precarious living conditions in developed countries whose productive capacities are on their last legs have one and the same cause: imperialism, which has reached a stage where it can no longer guarantee anywhere on the planet the distribution of the crumbs it could previously extort here and distribute there. Hence the end of social-liberal reformism in favor of openly militaristic and fascist policies. Therefore, without the overthrow of imperialism and thus of capitalism, it is illusory to imagine that the countries on the periphery of the developed world will have any chance of escaping underdevelopment, and it is illusory to imagine that the populations of developed countries who have become accustomed to a certain number of rights and social protections that are now being dismantled will be able to recover them without a struggle to overthrow the capitalist system, which has become sterile in terms of innovation and progress for all.

 This situation explains why we are seeing the rise of a warlike vocabulary in the mainstream “democratic” and pro-capitalist media, accompanied by the reemergence, including in these same media, of uninhibited fascist or para-fascist discourse on the part of politicians who are in principle “liberal.” Neoliberalism has effectively killed old-style liberalism, not to mention social democracy, and paved the way for new forms of fascism. One need only observe the rise of various forms of repression (censorship, arrests, prosecutions, expulsions, bans on media, parties, associations, interruptions or manipulation of electoral processes, etc.) in countries that were formerly liberal democracies to realize that the process of fascistization is no longer confined to countries dominated by imperialism but is now being “repatriated” to the imperialist metropolises. In 1973, during the Vietnam War, journalists in a liberal newspaper such as Le Monde could still openly ask and ask themselves the question of “external fascism,” that is, the fact that the dominant liberal democracies, which guaranteed their citizens a certain number of democratic freedoms, could export openly fascist methods of government to their colonies or neo-colonies, as was the case in Vietnam at the time. Today, it is clear that the methods that prevailed in Saigon, Santiago de Chile, Seoul, and Gaza in 1973, or at the same time in Madrid, Rabat, and Pretoria, now reign unabashedly in Tel Aviv, Odessa, London, Berlin, Bucharest, Paris, and elsewhere. This proves only one thing, namely that imperialism is no longer able to maintain an attractive appearance on the surface, because its sordid nature is now visible on both sides. This is proof of the degree of weakness it has reached, which in turn provokes its boundless aggression. And this is where the anti-imperialist forces in all their diversity must converge and unite.

The challenge we face

The challenge we face is to make societies that have become accustomed to peace, and all of them to a model of consumption capable of making even the most destitute dream “on credit,” even the most destitute, that this era is definitively over and that even if they wish to preserve their social “gains” without wanting to see the tragedies unfolding before their eyes, they no longer have any chance of escaping. For it is precariousness, war, and poverty that await them all at the end of the road. This is why the imperialist upper classes are spreading mistrust and fear by pitting workers against each other, precarious workers against permanent workers, religion against religion, ethnic group against ethnic group, tribe against tribe, region against region, country against country, etc., because they know that they can no longer promise anything positive or credible to the masses, not even crumbs. Hence the return of fascist, warlike, and racist slogans that now dominate the mainstream media, but also a host of social media outlets that also convey the dominant ideas, in a “hard” or “soft” form, depending on the target audience.

 Comrades! We must therefore be aware that our enemy, at least since the psychoanalyst Bernays, has developed a deep understanding of human psychology and methods of mental manipulation that tend to marginalize rational thinking in favor of magical thinking. We know that Bernays served as the basis for both Goebbels’ speeches and those of US advertisers, and he has therefore been used to promote the foundations of individualistic manipulation of the masses, who often no longer even dare to call themselves masses. So what seems obvious to us, the heirs of Marx and Lenin, the total war of all against all for the benefit of the globalized “happy few” oligarchs, and what I have briefly described above, is only convincing to those who have retained their capacity for rational, scientific thinking. The powers that be are banking on fear, atomization, and emotions that block reflection, and they’re doing it pretty well, we have to admit. This is why, alongside the struggles for social rights and against war that mobilize the most conscious section of society, we must carry out sociological and psychological analysis capable of unlocking the minds of the atomized masses, which have been distorted by the mass media, by a large part of the “social” media, and by the proliferation of false needs created by the system. The purpose of these false needs, apart from making profits, is to stupefy and fragment the population and awaken feelings of fear and hatred towards an invented external or internal “enemy.” We must therefore go to the people, listen to the people as they are, and know how to speak to the people according to their real state of mind. For the number of those who perceive that they are being lied to but do not believe that any future is possible other than trying to slip through the cracks is too large for us to ignore. If the Zionists have succeeded in transforming a mass of Jews into a genocidal herd, it is not because they are Jews, but because they have been able to manipulate the memory of the genocide of their cousins, create a mass consumerist society in a regional sea of misery, and instill hatred and fear of an invented enemy. This example and many others show us that we must adjust our propaganda by studying the methods of mental manipulation used by our enemies so that we can ultimately render them ineffective. To do this, we must all show courage, tenacity, and boldness.