Published im German on September 7, 2025 by Walter Grobe
English translation done by google, with amendments by the author
Demonstrations are planned for October 3rd in Stuttgart and Berlin. „Yes to peace and disarmament“ is the call.
Friends of mine are going to the demonstrations, but I’m not. I can no longer stand the stale phrases of the call and its initiators.
What do words like „international law,“ „nuclear weapons ban,“ and „détente“ have to do with the way we are governed globally today? And do anyone seriously believe that expressions of a desire for peace by parts of the population will change anything?
When I talk about illusionism, my friends say: yes, that may be true, but you meet a lot of good people at the demonstration, and it’s about making a public statement in the interests of the peaceful majority of the population… and then I say: okay, those are reasons to participate, but think a little more politically yourself.
The call sounds as if one wants to ask or nudge the world’s leading circles: renounce armaments, wars, and the incitement of crowds against crowds, or at least shift down a gear or two!
My objection: today’s global capitalism exists in rivalry and war; only by doing so can it sustain its messed-up existence. This is no different in the USA, Russia, or Europe, and the basic tendency must also be mentioned in China. The oligarchs in East and West cannot do without wars and gigantic armaments and are increasingly using war to tighten their control over their own populations. The new „multipolarity“ is not more peaceful, but more brutal.
Nothing is more illusory than demanding peace from the prevailing economic and social „order.“ It has presented itself to us for more than a hundred years through two world wars and a permanent, rising wave of wars in a wide variety of locations, scales, and effects. How can the global system of exploitation and rape be made to develop in the opposite direction?
The political conception behind the call for October 3rd is a reaction to the danger that we in Germany now feel firsthand. In the past, war was elsewhere. But this reaction is fearfully conservative. It does not question the system that produces endless war. It is not an independent factor, but an appendage of war policy.
We live in a global system of exploitation that, due to its laws of development, is now also rebounding on relatively wealthy countries like those in Europe. Its ruling classes, especially in the USA, but also in Europe, were the main sources and main beneficiaries of the international economy and global warmongering in the 70 years following World War II; they lulled their own populations into a sense of relative peace and social security. Today, with the rise of China, which has become capitalist, new competing centers of wealth and military power have emerged. Global rivalry is taking on new forms. Now the global capitalist system is massively backfiring on previously privileged populations, particularly in Europe. Germany has already been marked as a future military hotspot for global rivalries. Economically and socially, it is already in decline, and Europe as a whole is becoming increasingly unpeaceful and sliding into social destruction.
Do demonstrations like these now aim to force those in power to wage wars elsewhere, but not in their own European sphere? Do they want to beg for a „peace“ in Europe that would involve shifting wars elsewhere? Do they want to preserve the prosperity „order“ by reminding those in power: our „prosperity“ is yours too? Do they want to ignore how some oligarchs have now stopped playing hide-and-seek and declared: your demands endanger our prosperity, so get out of here, times of population reduction are coming. That is the inner voice of the system, not that of outsiders, and today, even more than before, the greatest profits are made through the extermination of human beings.
No, is the answer I get when I ask: ‚No, we’re not conservative, we don’t want that. We want to enforce global peace and a better life for everyone through worldwide peace movements!‘
Some people, whom I and others confront with similar arguments, tend to say: „Yes, you’re right, or at least somewhat right, but what other choice do we have but to give ourselves and the people the opportunity to express our desire for peace with large demonstrations. Maybe that won’t actually achieve much at first, but something can develop from it, and people like you can use this movement to propagate your more far-reaching views.“
Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just stop to illustrate reality to illusionists. Illusionists have rarely been moved when less illusionistic people have pointed out the windiness of their illusions, for they depend on illusions for their very existence.
If Don Quixote had yielded to Sancho’s attempts to enlighten him: ‚Those are windmills, and Dulcinea is not a fine lady, but a peasant woman with manure on her heels,‘ he could have just found a place in the cemetery, and the whole fantastic story would have been a waste. When, at the end, after being beaten dozens of times, he begins to see his world more realistically, he collapses internally and dies.
Today’s illusionists are those who are unwilling to examine the fundamentals of the system from the ground up. ‚Sustainable‘ is written on every cheap consumer product today, but sustainable would mean more than just organic farming and clean energy, but humanity in a much broader sense: humane in all economic, social, and political relationships, gradually ending the exploitation of people by people. This is something entirely different from urging those in power to make peace while graciously excluding the system of domination itself.
One avoids the question of how the current global system can be overcome and what new developments need to be developed. This system is doomed. Not only must it constantly shoot, bomb, and kill, but it also subjects people in zones temporarily spared from war to radical digital and military control, guidance, and dehumanization. But the idea that human dignity and human intelligence could finally be so undermined in the 21st century that oligarchic rule would become permanent doesn’t add up. So what is developing in their place, how can the new prevail historically?
One can take the easy way out and ask such a system for a bit of peace in Europe; but one can also begin to engage with such more far-reaching questions.
Our current prosperity system essentially consists in preventing the human interest in acquiring political insight and self-organization from becoming virulent in the first place. The prevailing education system and the pervasive media manipulation by those in power tend to block the development of such skills in most of our fellow citizens. One is permitted at least (and for the time being) feel compassion for those who aren’t doing so well and worry a little about the dangers one can immediately identify for one’s own life – but one should better not ask deeper questions about why many are doing poorly and few are doing well. Why should one, as long as one’s own European life is currently still bearable despite ‚losses in prosperity‘ and military storm clouds on the horizon.
By the way, nothing is easier for those in power today than to ignore an oppositional minority of the population, for example, politically articulate peace advocates such as in European countries, to relegate them to insignificance, or, if necessary, to bleed them dry.
Even if millions demonstrate for peace, as in Germany in 1982, for example, they needn’t, and in fact, don’t, care.
The blows will hit the illusionists in such a way that, although they were predicted, they preferred earplugs. Only in this way will deeper learning take place.
So far, so good or bad. If my lines contribute to more critical listening in Stuttgart or Berlin, then they are, just like participation, also good for something.
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