Screw that!
Pacifism—the fundamental rejection of war—has long been a hallmark of many left-wing parties and movements. Today, it seems more like something for hippies. Among leftists, the motto often seems to be: Choose your fighter, add the right flag to your Instagram profile, and go for it! Unwavering solidarity with one of the warring parties. But since this issue is about contradictions and doubts, we won’t be able to avoid them when it comes to the topic of war either.
2025: The CDU and SPD are reintroducing mandatory military service. Even the Greens are in favor of mandatory conscription. From education policy to climate change to affordable housing, the German government isn’t really interested in the needs of young people. Nevertheless, they’re now expected to come to terms with the idea of defending Germany with weapons and their own lives.
Anyone who speaks out against “war readiness” is quickly asked, “Do you want to live under Putin’s dictatorship?” Of course not. Liberal democracies often fail to live up to their own standards and are increasingly giving rise to authoritarian and even fascist tendencies. And the separation of powers, democratic rights, and social protections were never gifts from the German state—they had to be fought for by political movements and have had to be continuously defended to this day. But under a regime like Russia’s, these achievements would not last long, and the struggle for a better future would definitely not be any easier. Most people would therefore likely prefer to live under the racist BlackRock Chancellor Merz than under an authoritarian regime that murders opposition figures, actively supports fascist forces, and wages an imperialist war of aggression.
The Bundeswehr is not Antifa
Putin, ISIS, or the Taliban are the enemies of any emancipatory cause. And so, in some armed conflicts, leftist and progressive forces appear to be on the same side of the barricade as the state. Or at least they are dependent on it, provided they cannot, do not want to, or are not allowed to flee. After all, it is not your local Antifa group that has military resources at its disposal, but the state alone. The Nazis, for example, would not have been defeated if nation-states had not gone to war against the German killing machine. We are glad that the U.S. Army also liberated the concentration camps. But does that make the White House a reliable partner in the fight for a better world? Certainly not. When Western powers, for example, support Kurds in Rojava against Islamist murderous gangs for a while and then eventually stop, it shows how arbitrary and unsustainable such aid often is. And that it’s also about geopolitical power games.
Even if they sometimes face the same opponents, a nation-state or the Bundeswehr is not Antifa for that reason. Regardless of whether the political system is a democracy or an autocracy: in a capitalist world, states always compete with one another on the global market. In doing so, they have their own—and often conflicting—interests: such as access to raw materials, trade markets, or even cheap labor. Nation-states seek to assert these interests to the best of their ability—sometimes through free trade agreements, sometimes through tariffs, and sometimes even by military means. When Merz condemns Putin’s war of aggression but at the same time shakes hands with an authoritarian ruler like Erdoğan, it becomes clear that, when it comes down to it, even liberal democracies like Germany are not concerned with protecting minorities in their foreign policy. The decision about which wars are fought is not made with human rights in mind. Fighting takes place wherever there is something to be gained or lost for capital and the nation. There is no guarantee that a rearmed Bundeswehr won’t soon be clearing trade routes by force or—for example, under an AfD government—eventually attack other countries again.
“Jan is a patriot and Fabian is ‘woke’—it doesn’t matter, because here in the trenches we’re all bros.”
But if Putin were really to stand at the gates of Berlin one day—wouldn’t we, as a German community bound by a shared destiny, find ourselves in the same wartime submarine after all? Not really. Despite competition between states, not all citizens of a nation-state form a unified community that stands united against people from other nations. Rather, individuals have different habits, possessions, and political views. Even if you and your boss share the same nationality, your interests can be as different as your own desires and those of the federal government.
How you experience it when bombs fall is always a matter of class as well. We don’t know whether the BMW heirs, worth billions, will be chilling in the Caribbean sun at that moment, but one thing is certain: they won’t be lying next to you in the trenches. Those who start wars or profit from them usually don’t fight themselves any more than the boomers who welcome compulsory military service on talk shows. The role of military cannon fodder is left to other poor souls. Putin, for example, primarily recruits men from poorer regions.
Having to fight in wars is by no means always a free choice. While some people in Ukraine volunteered for service right at the start of the war, other men are fleeing across forests and rivers to escape it. Depending on the source, over 250,000(!) Ukrainian soldiers—who had even already been in military service—have now fled. One man was shot by Ukrainian border guards while attempting to flee. Shot? By his “own” countrymen? How can that be?
To the government, you’re just an NPC in the death lottery
Well, the government has little interest in its citizens fleeing in the event of war—after all, it needs enough manpower to fight for it. The fact that this has little to do with protecting individuals is evident from the idea, raised in the debate on military service, of simply drawing lots to determine which citizens must go to the front in the event of war. Even if the Bundeswehr likes to portray military service as a fun video game: Real war isn’t playing on a PlayStation. If a drone takes you out, you can’t just restart the game. In the best-case scenario, you’re “only” traumatized for the rest of your life; in the worst-case scenario, you’re also maimed. Or it’s Game Over right away: then you’re dead. And you won’t get any use out of the fact that the Bundeswehr paid for your driver’s license.
But okay, setting aside the interests of the state for a moment—isn’t it also in your own interest to defend your family and friends? Well, what exactly is the Bundeswehr supposed to be defending? War doesn’t work by you patrolling with a rifle in front of your shared apartment or on your grandmother’s property. On a mission, you might be hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from your loved ones. You’ll then “get to” defend some dilapidated infrastructure that’s been run into the ground by decades of budget cuts from Merkel to Merz: schools in disrepair, closed swimming pools, crumbling bridges. If the state were seriously concerned about its own citizens, why is 100 billion being poured into military buildup—which makes arms dealers pop the champagne corks—rather than into social security, more daycare spots, or affordable housing?
Whether you’re truly standing up for your own interests when you tear other people to shreds with a G36 assault rifle is, in any case, a legitimate question. And also whether you have more in common with the person in the trench across from you than with your commanding officer in the Bundeswehr.
Refusing to Participate in Nationalist Mobilization
We cannot and will not dictate to anyone how they should behave in the event of war. Some Ukrainian anarchists consciously choose to fight on the same side as fascists. They justify this by saying they do not want to leave people in war zones to fend for themselves and by citing the need to ensure the survival of anarchist structures in the country. Other anarchists oppose the war through militant acts of sabotage or provide humanitarian aid outside the army.
Perhaps, considering current armed conflicts, there are no truly satisfactory leftist answers at present—and certainly no unambiguous ones. But at the very least, we can identify some cornerstones: It makes a difference whether nation-states are pitted against one another or whether Kurdish women are banding together to defend themselves militarily against Islamists and Turkish fascists. And rejecting an authoritarian regime does not automatically mean taking to the battlefield under a black-red-gold flag. We are fighting against an arms race and the compulsion to defend the nation. The problem here is not only the coercive nature of this compulsion—but also the hypocrisy of the nationalist rhetoric used to justify it.
That is why we also do not consider it a good choice to express solidarity with those affected by war by illuminating the Brandenburg Gate in blue and yellow or wrapping ourselves in a national flag. Not because we are not also in solidarity with people in Ukraine (and those opposed to the war in Russia), but because reality is more complicated than a soccer game. We shouldn’t get caught up in false group identities and a “Team A vs. Team B” mentality. In a war, we wouldn’t show solidarity with Merz, Pistorius, or all Germans who just happen to have the same passport as we do. Rather, we would show solidarity with the people suffering from the war, regardless of their nationality.
