Psychology – war and peace

TFF board member If we’re being honest, with few exceptions, most of us have stopped counting the days since the genocide in Gaza began. We’ve also lost track of the death toll—especially the number of children. We can offer excuses: being overwhelmed with our personal and professional lives, the sheer intensity and frequency of global crises (Ukraine, trade wars, or the unbearable ease with which Trump is reshaping the world in his own image). But the truth is, sporadic mass protests in some Western cities, citizen petitions, intellectuals’ appeals, and podcast appearances do little to change the reality—or rather, the nightmare—of the people in Palestine. You’ll often read a post saying that eight billion people condemn the genocide that keeps going and going, seemingly with no end in sight. We blame ourselves for our helplessness, our despair, and our rage—at least those of us who refuse to forget the images...

AI generated imagine on Freepik A 2-minute “appetiser” for an extended interview by China’s CGTN. More to come!

Today is 9 April. It marks the 80th Anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Denmark. Denmark’s Radio reports today on how the country’s war museums have become ‘attractions’ where people queue to get in and go on guided tours, and ticket sales are booming. Of course, it never occurs to anyone to ask why Denmark and so many other countries are so preoccupied with war – monuments, anniversaries, museums, have so many bookshops with lots of books about war, war history, weapons, uniforms – use military-inspired fashion or drive city jeeps and other modern cars that look like armoured vehicles. Not to mention why there aren’t the same peace-inspired things – peace monuments, peace museums, bookshops with peace books… The answer is simple enough. The West as a culture, as a social cosmology and a collective way of thinking and behaving, is a terrible violence-based apparatus of world wars, armament, colonialism,...

Jan Oberg February 21, 2025 How amazing! The Danish government seemed unprepared for the eventuality that President Trump, if elected, would insist once again on getting Greenland – and a few other “things.” Who was asleep – or much too occupied with hating Russia and helping Ukraine to see what was coming? Secondly, Trump – who is no peace-maker but has other motives – grabbed the phone to Russian President Putin. Why did no European leader do exactly that during the last almost three years? And why did Europe not foresee that he would do that; Trump had said time and again that he would engage in the Ukraine war and stop it. They sat there hearing and seeing nothing of what – very predictably – happened outside their European groupthink box. This interview by the China Academy and Thinkers Forum was recorded on February 12, that is, before the...

“War Collage – La Paix Quand?” © Jan Oberg 2024 Jan Øberg October 31, 2024 Throughout modern world history, great powers, empires and civilisations have succeeded each other. No one has stayed on top indefinitely – there is a birth, the new thing grows creatively and materially until it reaches a peak and perhaps begins to relax, and then sooner or later it goes downhill – in relation to new powers that emerge – only to lose the leadership role completely and become one among many in a new world order. This is the natural law of global society – of humanity – and it is quite inexorable. The downturn can have many (combinations) of causes, here are some of the classic ones in macro-history: weakening innovation and economic growth; over-militarisation and lost wars; wanting to rule the whole world but lacking the necessary leadership capacity; declining legitimacy in the...

Source: Getty Images As Western elites shape their countries’ relationship with the Jewish state, they should apply one standard for all. Michael Young* August 20, 2024 On August 5, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that starving 2 million Palestinians in Gaza “to death” might be the “right and moral” thing to do until Israeli hostages held in Gaza are released, but that the “world won’t let us.” It took several days for countries to react to Smotrich’s effort to transform a genocidal impulse into a morally justified action. The U.S. State Department spokesman said his government was “appalled by these comments and reiterate[s] that this rhetoric is harmful and disturbing.” Under the circumstances, the rebuke was rather tame. Calling for the mass starvation of an entire civilian population should qualify as more than just “harmful and disturbing.” But perhaps the State Department was unwilling to go too far in...

Suzie Halewood April 15, 2024 “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime”Ernest Hemingway, 1946 This tax year, the so-called Ministry of Defence will be given £69BN of taxpayers’ money, to effectively subsidise the arms industry and fund more wars of aggression while offering little or nothing in the way of defence. A further £116BN of taxpayers’ money will go to the banks, interest on money that never existed for wars that are not only unnecessary and illegal, but which neither benefit the UK taxpayer, nor those who have lost life and limb in any one of the smorgasbord of conflicts the UK has instigated since WWII. Originally published on Off-Guardian on April 12, 2024 War was outlawed in 1928 by the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War. Known as Kellogg-Briand Pact, the treaty was signed by sixty-three nations, including Britain &...

Daryl Guppy April 11, 2024 This article, first published by Pearls & Irritations on April 4, 2024, focuses on Australia but there is no reason that you could not insert any Western country in its place. Hannah Arendt’s BANALITY OF EVIL report on the Eichmann trial failed to adequately address a key question. How could the German people not have known and how could they have let the holocaust happen? Arendt’s observation that the administrative industrialisation of evil led to its banality is most relevant today, but it is enhanced and magnified by the pervasive distribution of horrendous images by ubiquitous social media. What the mainstream Western media chooses not to show, or report, is readily available on Facebook, X and Instagram. Israel’s disproportionate response in Gaza to the Hamas’ attack, the al-Shifa hospital massacre, images of children crushed beneath tanks, joyous Israeli troops looting houses and the outright lie...

With the superego dissolved, there is no felt obligation to judge oneself in reference to any external or abstract standard. Narcissistic tendencies flourish. A similar psychology removes the requisite for experiencing shame. Is there now a moral void at the heart of Western societies?  That question haunts us as governments in the United States and Europe act as accomplices in Israel’s atrocious crimes against the Palestinians. The Jewish state’s conduct meets the standard of genocide as stated in the United Nations Convention on Genocide, of which they all are signatories. Confirmation is likely to come soon in a conclusive determination by the International Court of Justice. The ICJ already in January recognized a prime facie case for genocide. The UN’s top court ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. The ICJ found it did have jurisdiction on the matter, and decided there was a plausible case under the 1948 Genocide Convention. At...

Liberate yourself from NATO’s anti-intellectual and militarist fearmongering today! Why the omnipresent, massive, and uniform propagation of Russia as a threat against NATO is humbug. How a credible professional quality threat analysis is made instead. Why deciding military expenditures as a percentage of GDP is exemplary nonsense. Why NATO cannot be called ‘defensive’ and 17 reasons why Russia is not a threat to NATO or to neutral states. Jan Oberg March 19, 2024 NATO soon turns 75 – amid its deepest crisis ever, no matter what they say. During all these years, we have heard repeatedly that the ” Russians” – the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact and today’s Russia – are coming! But while the Soviets/Russians have invaded other countries, they’ve never invaded a NATO or a neutral country in Europe. And when the First Cold War ended a good 30 years ago, and archives were opened, allegedly no plans were...

Dedication To all the brave people who refuse to participate in war, in Ukraine, Russia and everywhere else. “War is a crime against humanity. I am therefore determined not to support any kind of war, and to strive for the removal of all causes of war”The pacifist declaration of War Resisters’ International. Back cover text “How can you be a pacifist in times like these?” THE SCEPTIC asks, the Russian invasion of Ukraine fresh in mind. Majken Jul Sørensen’s first response is to counter with the opposite question: “How can you not be a pacifist in times like these? With all that we know about the consequences of modern warfare, why are all the alternatives to war not on the table?”  In “Pacifism Today”, Majken illustrates with numerous examples her understanding of pacifism and her commitment to nonviolent action and unarmed resistance to war. In this personal reflection on why...

A very important German voice with a particular background expresses his outrage about the hypocrisy of heads of state and foreign ministers flocking to Tel Aviv with one-sided messages, adding the fig leaf not to forget humanitarian aid and completely ignoring the context, the ‘why’ it all happened. Hans von Sponeck TFF Associate March 6, 2024 War – war was part of the first years of my life. I have felt war. My father was executed in 1944, my grandfather died as a prisoner of war, my half-brother lost his life on the eastern front, my mother escaped from an internment camp, and my grandmother and I saw the end of the war in a hide-out at what became the border between two Germanies. As I grew older, I was eager, very eager, to understand what could prevent war. Young as I was, it was not yet clear to me...