It can frequently be felt that surviving for more than 30 years in a democratic country many people find it hard to find representations of their views or ideas. There's a missing organization that, by doing our business, could convince us of its credibility.
More and more frequently it turns out that "democracy" is just a cover for the interests of oligarchy, ignoring the opinions, values and norms present in society. The rulers, against or despite electoral announcements, force citizens to obey solutions that are contrary to national interest and the expectations of the majority of society. This was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is now happening during the war in Ukraine.
War and Democracy
Wars have never supported democracy. Not in ancient times, not in modern times. It was then essential to focus on strong, frequently one-man leadership and consolidation of forces, eliminating centrifugal and defetist tendencies. The full mobilisation of measures was encouraged by interior discipline, and this could be ensured, for reasons of efficiency and time, by oppressive mechanisms. After the demolition of war, individual had to “clean up”, hence the birth of “systemic” caricatures, which had nothing to do with democracy or the protection of human rights.
The time of war so promotes the concentration of power in the hands of a fewer and the ban on opposition by political parties and movements. Interestingly, all these phenomena and processes find support and approval among mature Western democracies. They are justified by extraordinary circumstances, while the war-torn state is becoming increasingly confused with decay and systemic hybridization, far from democratic standards. The destiny of Iraq, Libya, Syria or Afghanistan should be a informing to the war-torn Ukraine.
In Western Liberal Doctrine Since Immanuela Kanta (To Eternal Peace, 1795) the belief that democratic states do not wage war among themselves has become clear. "Republic States", freely developing trade cooperation, regulate their relations through law and global institutions. But they can be aggressive to others! In particular, the Americans liked the concept of "democratic peace", which became a cover for their imperialist crusades, and this for "freedom", and this for "democratic development" or, as in Ukraine, "freedom from Russian dependency".
"Democratic peace" has become an abused slogan and euphemism. The alleged Western War usually ended in blamash, as nowhere on good origin could be created by military force conditions for the introduction of democracy and peaceful reconstruction. This is evidenced by examples of many U.S. and NATO military interventions, which have been carefully developed in literature, but fewer people draw applicable conclusions from them (Mark Madej/ed., War of the West. Armed interventions of Western countries after the Cold War, Warsaw 2017).
It is now clear that democratisation (or alternatively the alleged export of democracy) is just a pretext for armed intervention. The promotion of real democracy is truly a marginal goal of powers, aiming primarily at acquiring fresh markets, space, positions and resources. "Wars for Democracy" is simply a fraud. Preparations for them take on tremendous resources, at the expense of taking care of public authorities for social welfare.
Great work is done by pro-war propaganda machines, remaining in symbiosis with large capital, arms complexes and the power of oligarchy. They prey on historical complexes, but besides drive people into “collective stupidity” syndrome, referring to all hostile atavism and idiosyncrasy. In the event of a war in Ukraine, many politicians, journalists, but besides average people fell into the trap of this syndrome, which Americans from the time of Makkartism and the 1962 Caribbean crisis know best.
You don't request to be besides pervasive to not announcement that war is going the incorrect way. The danger is that the more tragic the situation is in Ukraine, the more the United States will escalate the conflict, provoking an open confrontation with Russia. While Putin's Russia is determined to defend its vital existential interests, as it understands them, the United States is desperate to prevent for nothing another blamash, indicating a "sloping equal" to the fall of its empire. So we have a fatalistic choice between determination and desperation of the 2 strongest strategical antagonists.
Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize winner, in his online comments boldly calls on America and the planet to recapture. In his opinion, if Russia carries out retaliatory attacks on supply and training bases in neighbouring NATO states or uses tactical atomic weapons, the North Atlantic alliance will surely respond with an attack on Russian forces. planet War III will start, the final of which is better to not imagine. But what scares the most is the ease not to say the frivolity of politicians and the media in spreading the argument of utilizing atomic weapons as if it were a harmless toy for humanity.
The drama is that the full Polish political scene believed in dogmas concerning not so much neoliberal ideology as Atlantic geopolitics. Geopolitics, which is not understood either as rational, conditioned by the relation of forces, the concept of rivalry between powers, or as a real arrangement of forces, in which Poland always has any inferior alternatively than a powerful place. I think there has never been specified a phenomenon in our past that almost all representatives of citizens in the parliament have succumbed to the same psychosis and shared the same views on threats and security. In all erstwhile epochs there was always any opposition to the ruling camp.
The Madness of the Elites
Today, however, both wise and little wise politicians, “hawks” and “doves” from the law and left, have believed in the crazy ideas that they themselves propagate. They deficiency inside-steerness and critical distance from what external curators dictate. The worst thing, however, is that the ruling elites feel exempt from any work for highly risky decisions that can plunge the Polish state and society into disaster.
This is allowed by a large part of citizens who do not know, or who forget the cruel experiences of past wars. He uses naive moral criteria to measure global policy. He cannot discuss the Polish national interest wisely. Like in the form that happens in Hungary. Not without the participation of external Suflers, many politicians from opposition parties have besides become advocates for a war crusade in the name of another's cause. The top paradox of our times is that in the name of misunderstood values and insane logic the national interest began to be identified with the interest of the Ukrainian state.
Any criticism of specified a condition is met with pushy attacks of pro-government propaganda, calling for “smoke” anyone who has different views from those officially propagated. Absolute cognitive aberration has occurred. Most civilian or military commentators sin primarily in pride and ignorance. It does not realize the essence of the conflict in Ukraine as a ‘identical’ war, covering the rations of each party. He does not know historical reasons (and does not want to know them), and erstwhile it comes to facts contrary to their views, the worse for facts. In terms of analytical cognition – as evidenced by various comments, especially in anonymous hatred – the discussion is at the level of primitive troglodes and vulgar illiterates who, due to emotional uplift and cognitive blindness, are suitable for specialised treatment.
Personally, I am terrified that people who have been educated, for example, in global relations are barely speaking. As if the cognition gained by thousands of specialist graduates was of no use. After all, these people have studied political expertise over the years, allowing for a cool and nonsubjective explanation of processes taking place in relations between countries, especially large powers. They were taught how to usage analytical tools to not only realize the complexities of the modern world. Also, to have corrective and preventive tools against the collapse of humanity into disasters and conflicts. Why were there efforts for diplomas and what is the pride of graduating? In addition to being horrified by this state of affairs, I feel embarrassed by the individual educational and teaching defeat suffered in this respect as an academic teacher.
It turns out that theoretical cognition is not utilized for circumstantial political analyses. So what if he was repeatedly invited to Poland and lectured at the University of Warsaw Chicago prof. John J. Mearsheimer convinced his reasons from the point of view of offensive realism, so that his books published in Polish – The Tragism of Power Politics and large Imagination – were readings for exercises and seminars if in the minds of graduates remained only a moralistic and naive explanation of history, and the attitude to the power game is infected with incurable rusophobia?
Silence in discipline
It is worse erstwhile the Polish political environment (except for a fewer speeches) is silent about the consequences of the dramatic elections of Polish abroad and defence policy. We cannot hear the Committee of Political Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Polish Society of Political Sciences, the silence of faculty councils and independent scientists. After all, this is an extraordinary situation erstwhile almost all researchers and experts humbly stay silent, or – even worse – agree with the disastrous policy of involving Poland in the conflict in the East. For a long time we have been writing about conformism and opportunistic behaviours of Polish scientists, but are there truly not brave apart from a fistful of people who are loudly observing the tragic consequences of political scenarios drawn by the authorities and mainstream media?
Universities in Poland lose their social functions in front of us. They are neither "templates of wisdom", nor "smiths" forging competent and modern personnel, useful in the improvement of society, economy and state. All reforms of fresh decades have deepened the degradation of institutions, which even in the end times of the Polish People's Republic were the place of intellectual ferment and rational maturation. I know what I'm writing about due to the fact that I spent part of my conscious life in those days. It was much worse materially, but there was a climate of confrontation between different viewpoints. A narrow scope of freedom restricted by the repression of the authorities was used, but the university did not stay indifferent to them. Resolutions of the legislature of the University of Warsaw from the 1980s prove this best. However, the illusion of freedom is now sustained when, in reality, there is simply a blunt compulsion of "citizen obedience", and the scope of the investigation freedoms determines the dependence on grants and evaluation (conditional point-to-point). Wisdom Forgot George Orwellthat “an disobedience is the basis of freedom.” And “the tendency to disagree, to reject and protest... is the nerve of an open society” (Tony Judt).
It turns out that increasing in a society without realistically reasoning elites and rationalized historical education means that most citizens do not realize that they are politically manipulated and obeying irrational (for damaging themselves) interpretations of national interest. The case of Poland contradicts any affirmative correlation between democracy and peace. The universal fascination of war, the pursuit of revenge and retaliation in the name of another people's interests is simply a phenomenon worthy of serious intellectual research.
Scientific environments could give more informing about the erratic effects of war escalation, limiting the field of activity of various instigators. Only calling things by their first name can bring a sobering effect. For example, the academic faculties of law of the largest universities, which courageously defended the regulation of law in Poland, are a good example. Equally crucial in the hr of trial is the defence of peace, even if it means civilian disobedience. Finally, the thought of civilian disobedience itself was born in the United States erstwhile in the mid-19th century Henry David Thoreau refused to pay taxes for the war, protesting against slavery, the persecution of Indians and the American invasion of Mexico.
Cultural practices should be recalled in this context Dariusz Paczkowski, Polish street artist, activist and cultural animator, to whom he devoted an interesting book Piotr Zańko (Pedagogies of Resistance, Kraków 2020). In his opinion, "there is no democratic society without the pedagogy of opposition – unconventional cultural practices that function outside the organization educational discourse, which are counterhegemonic and are produced mainly in urban space by alternative, minority, oppressed environments" (p. 19).
The bottom-up initiatives are so important, with the possible to revive the protest and opposition to the “party of war”. During the “cold war”, mass peace and anti-war movements were conscious of the reaction of any societies, especially the West, to the Vietnam War and then to the arms race, including atomic weapons.
Since the 1960s. There was besides increasing interest in technological peace and war, resulting in the birth of irenology (peace research) and polemology (war studies). Although the survey of peace was powerfully ideologicalized and determined by the then division into opposing blocks, their very meaning was not denied. investigation institutes inactive exist, which, as in the Nordic countries, execute crucial awareness-raising functions (SIPRI, TAPRI, PRIO), undertake monitoring, mediation, moderation initiatives, offer "broker diplomacy" in dispute resolution.
Bellization and anemisation
But where is the fresh generation of peace activists who would implement the demands of the most prominent of the surviving "mentors of peace" – Johan Galtung? What happened to the mentality of the pacifist Germans or the French, not to mention Poles – raised at the slogan “No more war!” that they were subject to mass bellification and enemization – a push for war and building an atmosphere of hostility in European relations?
It is advanced time to reconstruct religion in intellectual and social activity in order to rise awareness of the scale of threats and the request to save global peace. However, no plan of protest, boycott or demonstration will win until the "critical mass" of awareness of people thinking, independent, courageous and wise, believe that there are inactive alternate ways to regulate any conflict, besides reconstruct peace in Ukraine.
Intellectual elites in different countries must take the initiative, wake up from marazm and blissful lethargy. The happy era of “unipolar war” ended before our eyes. The dynamics of empires does not give a chance for systemic stability. The Western cultural hegemony provokes to contravene the alleged remainder of the world. We increasingly see the fascism of public space, which is announced by exclusions, stigmatizing, racist and nationalist sentiments.
It is so worth starting with a reliable diagnosis of modern capitalism, powerful systems of forces and dependence systems. No ideological prejudices, no intellectual attitudes! It is time to begin beginning fresh spaces of reflection and critical reflection on the problems of the planet's survival. An educational action should go hand in hand with intellectual activity, allowing people to get out of a state of infirmity and helplessness. It is time to realize that the real and common problem is the factors in individual attitudes and the increasing freedom of state institutions. It will be between them, both in democracies and authoritarian states, the war to reconstruct normality – pluralism of values, demilitarisation of politics, rejection of cult of force, force and rape.
The times of "real socialism", contrary to oppressive power, have paradoxically unleashed creative potential, initiative and the ability to protest. In hard conditions, fantastic ideas were born to get out of slavery. Today, various barriers to the imposition of "correct" behaviour patterns should become challenges. And it's not about anarching public life. alternatively to provoke discussion of the options, to protest criminal intentions, realizing the increasing repressiveness of political systems, even erstwhile they are democratic.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
photo izvietia.ru
Think Poland, No. 7-8 (12-19.02.2023)
