Morning Comrades.
I know that most, if not all of you have had a few pretty intense days and whilst I always try to refrain from letting my personal life interfere with these emails having to explain reality to the spawn, to hold steadfast to the idea of a better tomorrow whilst, well “everything”, has taken its fair share of energy. I am going to do my best to unpack and explain what I deem important as rationally and pro-active as possible but if some points are a little unclear, or heated, bear that in mind.
Reality isn’t binary. Nothing is black or white and the same applies to everything that is happening. Much of what we experience is interwoven, openly and hidden from plain sight and it is overwhelming. The inaction due to shock is partly the point but that’s now what this email is about today. I am going to focus on a few points, all of which are interwoven with one another to hopefully help you puts this into context and far more importantly, offer a few ways through which you and I can help. Logic, analysis and debate without consequential action are useless, that has always been my opinion and reason for writing. Action will be the focus here, as it has always been. Specifically, this email will focus on.
What it is - refugees, racism, militarism, politicians & social media
What’s to be done
As with all wars, people suffer extremes that those unaffected, that’s you and me here, cannot fathom. Again, I am trying to not let my personal life come into play here but having worked with children that had flee from Afghanistan, Syria as well as other places really puts this into stark perspective. I am not a psychologist, far from it, but I know all too well what pain & trauma is at play here. The most human response to a threat is to flee, unless you have been brutally conditioned into soldiering. Every effort to not only help people flee from the terror of war but furthermore, give those fleeing shelter, food and even more importantly safety once arrived is the utmost priority for us.
This is already partly happening but of course, and it wouldn’t be Europe if this wasn’t happening, without massive prejudices. Reports over the last 48hrs have been prominent that non-white people fleeing Ukraine are being denied said support simply because of their non-whiteness. For clarity, I condemn this as strongly as I can. I am extremely cynical about a lot of the efforts being propagated only because I know how brutally racist European refugee policy is. The sheer inhumane efforts involved for any non-white person to reach the false safety of this Union is again beyond words. I am sure many of you have seen the reporting coming out of Ukraine and the West highlighting the full blown racist refugee reality now resulting because of this war and we here will do everything we can to make sure that ALL humans fleeing the dick measuring contests of the billionaire classes around the world are given not only safe passage but a safe and fair place to start over again. “Refugees Welcome” applies to everyone, not just white Europeans. There is work to be done and I will get to that shortly.
Nonetheless, there are wonderfully brave and organized groups from within our humanist spectrum currently working in and around Ukraine getting people out to safety irrespective of their skin colour. One such group here in Germany is Mission Lifeline and yes, I am putting together a bigger than usual collab drop for this week to support them in their work.
I also would like to mention a few unsettling observations from the last few days. One, the sheer volume of trigger happy fuckers off and online is unsettling to say the least and a direct result of decades of propaganda glorifying war. War is the most horrific failure of human interaction, there is nothing “great” about it and it most certainly is not a fucking Marvel film. There is no heroism in dying, killing and hating, heroism is opposing all of this and helping those suffering from a class war fought from above via the means of wholesale slaughter for money. I understand the need for on-the-ground reporting but so much of what I have seen and read over the weekend is nothing short of moronic fascination with killing, and again, this community here will not stand for it. I remain fiercely anti-war and any and all glorification, especially for profit - be it social clout and / or monetary, will put you on my shit list forever.
Secondly, while we are on that subject, how about we finally and once and for all get rid of nuclear weapons? Granted, I was briefly taken aback when the news hit on Sunday that Putin was putting his nuclear arsenal on high alert, only to remember that NATO has well over 450 nuclear weapons on HIGH ALERT STATUS AT ALL TIMES. The threat of nuclear war is always there and we simply ignore it. I reckon this episode of madness should be good enough reason to unify behind the idea, that maybe we should be getting rid of these monstrosities.
Secondly, we finally need to realize that media is a weapon aimed at us by the ruling capitalist classes. Social Media especially and quite frankly I have found all sites to be effectively useless, even for short shots of dopamine, as the onslaught of propaganda from all sides on every platform has been not only extremely apparent but overwhelming. Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist behind breaking the Cambridge Analytica scandal a few years ago summarized the media war extremely clearly in a great set of tweets this morning and I would hugely recommend reading it to add this dimension to your understanding and subsequent action plan.
The only aspect I need to add to her narrative is that media warfare is practiced by everyone, not just the Russians and previously the Soviet’s, but also us, and again I would like to point towards one of the many examples when the West launched and ran one of the most sophisticated and large propaganda operations in modern history via the Congress for Cultural Freedom. I do believe we need a massive human and financial investment not only in media awareness / deprogramming but also a human investment in alternative media, one that does not rely on money from class that is actively waging a war on us to manipulate us into division and slavery.
Lastly, and this specific to Germany only insofar that I haven’t paid attention to similarities around the rest of the “western” world - money. Despite having the 7th largest military budget in the world the German military is a shit show, historically speaking a good thing but then that applies to all militaries in my book. Annually, the budget is here is set at around 50 BILLION Euros and there is ( again, thankfully ) jack shit to show for it. Whilst over 100`000 people were protesting for peace in Berlin over the weekend, a few streets down from the protest, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a plan to beef up the German military, pledging €100 billion ($112.7 billion) of the 2022 budget for the armed forces and repeating his promise to reach the 2% of gross domestic product spending on defense in line with NATO demands. This is after 20 years of brutal dystopian austerity measures through which all social services have been reduced to mere shells of their purpose. 2 years into a global pandemic, healthcare workers across the board, after 15 months of gruelling debates and strikes are not even seeing a 1% increase in their budget but here we are. Once again, a war manufactured by the ruling classes for ego and money, paid for in blood and suffering by people like you and me only for tax money, money that you and I work to generate, to be given to arms manufacturing companies posting record profits. This is the purest form of class warfare I can point out, today and whilst this is only part of it, this is madness.
Draw the parallels to increasing police budgets in the US post the BLM protests when it has been scientifically proven that policing in its current does anything but prevent crime. Increasing military budgets will not make the world a safer place, investing in education, for example does, but those budgets have been cut, yet again.
So what’s to be done I ask once again.
In regards to the refugee situation: Donate and volunteer yourself if you can. Many artists are creating goods whose profits will be donated, myself included. Donate to on-the-ground organisations that you can trust. If you have questions about those, please feel free to ask me, here or in our telegram channel.
A large part of helping refugees is social work. It’s one thing to rely on non-profits to help people make it to safety but more importantly is helping these people once they are here - wherever you are. Again, there are plenty of places that you can volunteer for to help ease their suffering, integrate them into your communities and this help is hugely important in the larger picture here. Again, rather than blowing tax money on increasing bonus’ for weapon manufacturers this is where it should be going but until we can make that happen this is where you can be of service.
Use and consume media with the full awareness that there is a point to what you are seeing and it is rarely to help you understand what is going on. Apply this knowledge however you see fit but keep this at the forefront of your mind.
Pressure politicians. All of them. Irrespective of party lines they are all complicit as every government is corrupt. Democracy is dead and it is up to us to build a truly democratic world. To the point, pressure your politicians into peace, demilitarization and into serving everyone, not just their bank accounts. Demonstrate, write, call and yes, there are other means but I need to keep those off the record for the time being. You get what I mean. Apathy towards power is how we got here and enough is enough. It’s 5 past midnight and we say: No More. Start there.
Be open in your anti-war stance and do not be pressured into falling into manufactured binaries of good and evil. The enemy is above and nowhere else. War is Class War and if the last week has proven anything it is just that. They are all in on it and it is time that we put an end to their war once and for all.
That’s it from me for today. I hope this helps a little getting yourself out of the confusion and puts a few bits into perspective.
I will be posting the new playlist for this week below as well as the upcoming mutual aid collabs into our telegram channel and IG account, so do stay tuned for those as well.
Stay well and stand strong comrades.
Yours, without compromise,
V.
Also, thanks to the recommendation of a comrade, I am going to post the track list of these playlists from now for those of you not using tidal.