Pacifism?
Aug 25 2023
War is bad, and all lives matter. That is true, but the reality is way more complicated than that.
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First; “pacifism” from the Left.
Lars von Trier wrote on Instagram:
“Russian lives matter also!”, and he addressed his post to “Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin, and not least Mrs Frederiksen (who yesterday, like someone head over heels in love, posed in the cockpit of one of the scariest killing machines of our time, grinning from ear to ear).”
Now he defends his remarks writing that he
“support[s] Ukraine with every beat of my heart! I was just stating the obvious: that all lives in this world matter! A forgotten phrase it seems, from a time when pacifism was a virtue.”
Stating the obvious? If you are ‘stating the obvious’ you do not add disparaging lines about the Danish PM. Or fail to mention that Ukraine did not choose to be in this war.
‘Stating the obvious’ in this case would be; that no Russian lives would be lost, if Russia had not invaded Ukraine in the first place.
Then trying to gain the moral high ground he added the line about “a time when pacifism was a virtue.” Well, when there is a war in Ukraine, it is easy to be a pacifist, when you are living a comfortable life in Denmark.
Lars von Trier defends ‘Russian lives matter also’ comment
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Then; “pacifism” from the Right.
The Curious Conservative Case Against Defending Ukraine
This is by Bret Stephens from The New York Times, May 2, 2023, and starts with:
”One of the stranger features of the politics of the war in Ukraine is that the most vocal opposition to it tends to come from the hard right. In some ways, that right sounds like the hard left it used to oppose so fiercely.”
That kind of says it all, though the reasons the Right promotes “pacifism” are different from the traditional instinctive pacifism of the Left.
No point in repeating the arguments here, when you can read the original. I’ll just add a quote from the piece.
Certain conservative readers of this column will no doubt feel insulted and claim that it should be possible to oppose U.S. support for the war on strategic grounds without being labeled pro-Putin.
It’s worth reminding them what George Orwell wrote in 1942 about the position of Western pacifists vis-à-vis Nazi Germany: “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help that of the other.”
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Expanding on what George Orwell wrote, I would also like to remind both the Left and the Right, that from the Russian point of view, at this moment in the Ukraine war, all pacifists, and “pacifists”, in the West are, what they used to be called during the Cold War Soviet times;
Useful Idiots.
