By: Gustavo Aguiar – translated by Jafe Arnold 

Pacifism for Whom? An Ode to the God of War

“Only the dead have seen the end of war” – Plato 

n the 1960’s, at the height of the hippie movement and amidst protests against the Vietnam War, a new type of man emerged: the pacifist man whose anti-militant, progressive and social democratic spirit (with crisp Trotskyist tears) served as the cement for consolidating a redefinition of the revolutionary status established by the old proletarian left of the 19th century. Far from intending to justify the war crimes perpetrated by Yankee detachments in North Vietnamese villages and towns, or the negligible goals that led Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to deploy tanks and helicopters on the plains of Indo-China, this paper aims to show the way in which the mentality of the New Left eventually engenders thought that is diametrically opposite to the slogans that adorn the signs in the subversive scenario of protests. Today, the same slogans are used as instruments of destabilization around the globe in service of the neocolonialist hyper-powers. Continue reading →