Input by Initiative for total army objection (Greece)
We are the initiative for total army objection from Greece. We have been existing and active for 13 years based in Athens and we are working on the project of total army objection, but also more broadly on issues related to our opposition to militarism, nationalism, wars, patriarchy, from an anarchist anti-institutional perspective. Our composition includes not only men who have taken the option of total army objection, but also women comrades and, at times, comrades who have not taken the same option against compulsory military service. However, most of us are total army objectors and this has resulted in the state prosecuting us repeatedly with many ways. 2 examples is criminal prosecution (with sentences of up to 2 years in prison with suspension) and an administrative financial penalty (6000 euro fine for each active insubordination).
The decision to participate in this cluster was somewhat of an automatic reflex when we saw the BAB programme, since it is one of the main issues we have been dealing with throughout our journey as a collective.
The greek army is self presented as defensive and peaceful but in reality it is the opposite. It is equipped with billions of euros annually, it militarises borders and the mainland, it plays a leading role in suppressing migrants and it is a model of nationalist ideology, of masculinity, of our voluntary or forced submission and sacrifice to local power and more broadly. The greek army always participates actively or passively in many wars, for example in Afghanistan, in Libya or now in Ukraine sending war material to the Ukraine army. So, as total army objectors, we refuse military service in the Greek army not only for our individual emancipation but also refusing to put our bodies in any way as tools in the service of the war machine against our collective emancipation. Refusing war and peace of the rulers, refusing the hatred and social cannibalism among the “below”, here and now.
We would like to inform you that our input here is not based in the Ukraine war. Our more detailed position for Ukraine war can be found in BAB blog or our blog, in a text published one year ago. Our input here is based in a general antiwar context, in which the Ukraine war and other wars belong to. Secondly, our input does not separate war and peace, as they both belong on a common war process. Third, our input includes the patriarchy aspect of the war process. And finally, our input cannot begin without first analysing the modern ideological context of war which is nationalism.
The nation is an imaginary community created by the modern state and capitalism, and without these it could not exist and have its present meaning. It is a political religion that guarantees the cohesion and perpetuation of a society segregated by class, gender, race, religion and so on.
The components of nations may vary but do not differ in the social divisions they impose, having a timeless stance against social/class antagonism and the historical truth it constitutes. A nation may construct and be constructed by a “language”, a “territory”, a “culture”, a “history”, but never by an oppressed social group or an exploited class. Its existence did not come to erase pre-existing and historical relations of oppression and exploitation but to redefine and modernize them.
No nation sees itself identified with humanity. Just as no nation could ever survive on its own in an otherwise un-national world. A nation is not understood in itself but requires to exist and be defined through a constant interaction with other nations. Thus, a universal narrative of a single fragmented world into nations is formed.
Therefore, we understand nationalism as the ideology that defends the nation on the basis of these characteristics, but also the ideology that calls on the oppressed to unite with their oppressors, on the terms of the oppressors and always against the oppressed.
War is a violent process that is a base feature of the functioning of the state and capital, through which power relations breathe, expand and are restructured. The philosophy of war is adapted each time to the specific characteristics of the situation in question, in terms of the objectives of each ruling power.
The peace of the rulers is not the opposite of their war but the apology of the war process that prepares or conducts the next war, as well as that which normalizes it in our everyday life. It is peace that justifies and creates a new war each time for the mutual slaughter of those “below” and for the interests of the dominant powers. Peace is the war that has not been officially declared, on oppressed social groups (migrants, lgbtqi+, minorities, poor etc.), on those who resist anything that does not fit into the dominant peace normality.
The war process is a purely patriarchal and male affair, oppressing, bypassing or leaving aside other issues such as gender. Any attempt to democratise or achieve gender equality in the context of militarism and war is doomed to fail and ultimately reinforce patriarchy, gender segregation and ultimately war itself.
In most states, only those who are born male have the “obligation” and access to military training and are therefore considered to be the ones who will take up arms on the side of the state, whenever it needs them. This creates dominant divisions in which men are eligible and righteous for military service or war and on the other hand women, children and all those who cannot participate officially in the war process for various reasons, while their are being exploited and suppressed.
What we are seeing is that similar logics are taking up a lot of space within the movements we participate in. Too often gender/patriarchy/sexism issues are bypassed as issues that cannot have their place in time, especially in a situation of great pressure, such as a war. In other words, this is about a prioritisation of repressions according to the effectiveness of the war conflict as being more important than its structural characteristics. This often leads to the exclusion of those who do not meet certain criteria, or do not think and act in this way. That is, the end justifies the means, something that we have found ourselves disagreeing with over time, since we consider the means of struggle to be as important and political as the end itself.
We understand militarism as the philosophy of organising violence in hierarchical terms, to gain, maintain, impose or extend political power within and in favour of a framework of social divisions and exclusions.
As basic components of militarism we recognize the culture of enforcement and extermination against anything defined as an enemy; the organization around the means that are available to fulfill the end; and the pattern of barrack as a social/political organization and condition. Therefore, militarism is not found only in military spaces, but in social life as well under the dominance of the state/capitalism/patriarchy.
The arms and heavy weaponry used in a military conflict belong essentially to the state, which is called upon to manage to who they will be given and on what terms. The state also owns the know-how of militarism. Therefore, we cannot even have the illusion that we can, on equal terms, ‘beat’ it or change it from within. Militarism is a way of organising violence with an always specific objective, which is to annihilate the enemy in warlike terms and to gain superiority over him. The hierarchical structure is a vital part of it and is complemented by blind submission to the immediate superior, who of course cannot be challenged by any subordinate. It is considered normal and inherent in human life, and any resistance against it is presented as futile. But it is one of the key issues for us, as how to resist militarism is the starting point of any discussion, even in times of war.
For our part, as anarchists, we defend total army objection, not only in the sense of not doing military service, which is still compulsory in Greece. We opt for it regardless of compulsory or not military service and in any period, peaceful or not, as we see it as a more general anti-institutional attitude towards the military and the culture of militarism and it accompanies us in every aspect of our lives.
Therefore, according to our understanding of the war-peace complex and its patriarchal aspects, we oppose every dominant war and we stand away from the logic of choosing which dominant side to support. We consider that in every war process there is not just a single dipole and a role of good defender and bad aggressor state. We stand alongside those who refuse to submit to military and make their own self organising and collective struggles against war, militarism, nationalism, patriarchy and ultimately against every oppressor and every power.
We can never imagine ourselves participating in a dominant war, defined as such and especially through any military formation, which will inevitably operate militaristically. On the other side, we can very easily imagine ourselves participating in self-organised, anti-militarist, anti-patriarchal and anti-national struggles, even with the characteristics of an armed conflict. As well as in the creation of networks and anti-structures that will support our existence in them on the same terms.
To finally answer what we do in war, we first need to answer what we do in peace. The project of total army objection is about a political position that does not separate war and peace, but struggles to create the social fractures that will continually deconstruct and hopefully destroy the dominant ideologies and mechanisms that produce war and peace.
The slogan “we live war here every day” is not only a slogan that we write on our walls and in our texts, but we try to give it the value that it constantly brings to our struggles. The slogan encapsulates and deconstructs the war process, as this process breathes, camouflages and grows precisely in times of peace. From the production of weapons in factories, their research development and evolution, their testing in military exercises, to the constant diffusion of the ideology of nationalism, patriarchy and militarism by state institutions (religion, education, family) and its mechanisms (military, government, media).
AGAINST ALL NATIONS AND ALL ARMIES
WE PROPOSE SOLIDARITY, SELF ORGANISED COMMUNITIES
AND STRUGGLES, TOTAL ARMY OBJECTION AND REVOLT
. . .
AGAINST ALL NATIONS AND ALL ARMIES
WE PROPOSE SOLIDARITY AND TOTAL ARMY OBJECTION
BURNT FLAGS LOOK BEAUTIFUL
The people “from below” in Ukraine survive or die on the rubble left by the bombing and bullets. They migrate and desert, fight and resist, enlist and surrender, stand by and give up. They kill and get killed, fear and hope, are physically and mentally wounded, agonise and make desperate decisions. Around them, all kinds of powers, states, armies, parliaments, bosses, media, priests, paramilitaries, family coercions run rampant as they do in any war situation. On the one hand, the invasion of an army that plans, slaughters, rapes and terrorizes, imposing an iron fist on the occupied territories as well as on the domestic enemy of its country; on the other hand, an army that defends the local ruling power, deincriminates itself as a liberator, concentrates the power of its state, coerces, restrains or kills anything that is disobedient, having now embraced every paramilitary nazi group.
It is a nationalist war that debunks various fictions of globalisation, which would have weakened nations and nationalisms since the last century, but in fact has refueled them. The same nations that just in November 2018 in Paris jointly commemorated the centenary of the end of their first great massacre, the First World War, with vows of peace and the prevention of a new war between them. While at the same time, they have rapidly increased their military armaments and funding which now reaches $2 trillion per year worldwide. While they continued or subsidized the waging of various wars and the technological upgrade of their war machines, being at the forefront of artificial intelligence. While they continued and continue to stimulate the patriotism of their subjects within their territories, as a supposedly opposite concept to nationalism. From “Mother Russia” with the expansive invasions and plundering of its neighbouring territories, authoritarianism, exploitation and flattened repression of every internal enemy for its post-Soviet reconstruction. To “Proud Ukraine” with the manipulation and nationalisation of its subjects according to western standards, the opression of the Russian-speaking populations for ethnic homogenisation and the promotion of nazi ideologies and organisations. All the way to the greek and the other NATO states of “national self-determination” and “rights” which first and foremost taught, long before the establishment of NATO, how these are constructed to be circumvented, to separate those “from below” and to perpetuate the power of the state, capital and patriarchy.
The war in Ukraine is one of those that attract the attention of “world public opinion”, unlike many others where not a single crocodile tear is shed for the countless dead and their destruction, such as in Sudan and Yemen. It is one of those wars that spectacularise, instrumentalise and make good use of death and destruction, constructing narratives and examples for the pursuit of any ruling class. A war that projects many aspects of the planet-wide competition of the dominant powers, which is at the same time conventional between two nation-states, proxy among many others, and potentially global; that masks its systemic causes behind personal frames of “mad” or “heroic” leaders, that puts high on the agenda the “necessary evil” of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy in general. Another modern war with millions of “civilians”, displaced people and migrants, who not only become objects of use for the military and political administration in question, but are instrumentalised in every humanitarian guise, intensifying institutional racism against migrants who are not sanctioned by the misanthropy of white supremacy or christianity. At the same time washing off the sexist/sexual oppression and exploitation of ukrainian women that has been taking place for decades in european – and not only – territories, including Greece. A war that, together with the battlefields, is evolving, iconised and socially legitimised not only through the traditional mechanisms of spectacle but by diffusing its militaristic values through the “progressive innovations” of social networks and the internet. So that subjects around the globe become integrated and accustomed to institutional assimilation, to the overpowering and the supposed futility of any self-organized resistance in the face of the “omnipotence” of the armies and masters of political and economic power. So that all kinds of class, racial and gender conservatisms can resurface as a reaction against any emancipatory process within societies. From the racism of white supremacy, the reactionary sexism of dominant masculinities, the proletarianization of populations by the bosses up until the chauvinism of every national illusion in the face of social uprisings and anti-racist/anti-patriarchal/anti-capitalist/anti-statist struggles.
The whole ruling power flock that is caused, reproduced and strengthened by wars rushes with excessive vulgarity to extract the maximum political, economic and ideological surplus value. From Russia and China to USA, the NATO states and everywhere else, ideological projections of the wars of the last century become the apologies of all kinds of new brutality in the present. The supposed anti-nazism of the russian state is not just a cheap justification of its war but also the boosting of russian nationalism, that even in the soviet period attributed opposition to nazism more to russian patriotism than to socialism. The supposed defensive war of the ukrainian state is a camouflage for the formation of an nation-statism that already shows the “libertarian” way it will exploit and oppress its populations through chauvinistic, patriarchal and pro-nazi frameworks. The supposed “solidarity with the ukrainian people” of the greek state, the same “peaceful” and “anti-war” state that is rapidly equipping and preparing its army, while at the same time suppressing millions of migrants of other “peoples”, is essentially the aggressive armouring of its own dominance in the south-eastern Mediterranean. The so-called anti-imperialism of the biggest modern-day warmongers of US and NATO, as well as their ideologies of “the world of democracy opposing the world of authoritarianism” are nothing but an apology for the continuous wars they themselves have caused and are still causing worldwide. And on the side of all this, the capitalist machine and its economic interests, the geostrategic and energy planning, the competing capitals continue unhindered to exploit, destroy and recreate, invest and commodify the “opportunities” created by the military ruling power over entire territories and entire populations.
The demolition and terrorizing of ukrainian regions, the annihilation of life in the face of the operational plans of states and capital, the political/economic exploitation of the fear and threat of war or nuclear catastrophes worldwide, form the explosions of another long war process. War is the common denominator of the nation-state formation of the former soviet union, the subsequent planetary expansion of NATO, the enduring rivalries for the exploitation of land and people in Africa, the political and economic hegemony in the Middle East, the anti-terrorist security doctrines and military control in Asia, the counter-insurgency militarisation of social conflicts and resistances, the anti-migration death policies of those displaced and the inextricable part of the intensification of oppression and exploitation within states by the ruling power. At the same time, war is the field of reconfiguration of power into what itself will later call peace. But the only peace they have reserved for us is the further normalization of war in the everyday life of modern totalitarianism: standing shoulder to shoulder with the rulers, discipline and obedience of subjects to the decisions and national interests of their rulers, patriarchal subjugation of those who do not fit the mold of the cis-straight man, exception and death-policies of “leftovers” and migrants, destruction and commodification of land, sea and air.
The peace of the rulers is not the opposite of their war but the apology of the war process that prepares or conducts the next war, as well as that which normalises it in our everyday life. The peace of the First World War was the war preparation and the fascisms that led to the Second, suppressing any emancipatory potential, such as the revolution in Spain in ’36. The peace of the Second World War was the “cold war” that slaughtered the entire globe. The peace of the “End of History” with the collapse of the Soviet Union is the nation-building wars of Russia, its peripheral regions and the Balkans, the wars of planetary democratization and security doctrines such as the “preventive” and “anti-“terrorist wars of the USA and NATO which were launched immediately after September 11, 2001, the proxy wars worldwide, as well as the militarization of social uprisings to transform them into civil conflicts. And beyond the military battlefields, the peace of the policed cities, the concentration camps and prisons, the repression of the “enemy within”, the control and surveillance, the impoverishment and subjugation, the abused bodies to the dictates of patriarchy. The peace that asks for certificates of anti-war sentiments to “condemn the invader who causes pain and migration”, after having condemned, shot and demonized as “invaders” thousands of migrant(s) from its own NATO wars, just as the greek state and army did at the Evros border in March 2020. The peace that sees no wars other than those of NATO, washing off every other slaughterer and oppressor in the world as long as it is “anti-NATO”. It is precisely this peace that various late-comers of opposition to the war in Ukraine preach, behind which they wink at one side or the other of the trenches. The peace that justifies and creates a new war each time for the mutual slaughter of those “from below” and for the interests of the ruling powers.
The denial of the rulers’ war and peace is the denial of all the constituent elements of the state’s and masters’ war process. It is the constant denial of war preparation, the armaments of the war industry and their ideological arsenal from nationalism and patriotism to racism and sexism. Just like every state and army, the greek army is equipped with billions of euros annually, militarises borders and mainland, plays a leading role in repressing migrants produced from the wars of the ruling powers, constitutes a model of nationalist ideology, of masculinity, of our voluntary or forced submission and sacrifice to local power and beyond. As total army objectors, we refuse military service in the greek army not only for our individual emancipation but also refusing to put our bodies as tools, from any position, in the service of the war machine against our collective emancipation. Refusing the war and peace of the rulers, refusing the hatred and social cannibalism among the ones “from below”, refusing the bombings in the here and now. Advocating a world of solidarity and mutual aid, without nations, states, borders, religions, capitalism and patriarchy.
For the unfolding of anti-patriotic, anti-militarist struggles and self-organized resistances against state/capital/patriarchy and the war industry
To deepen solidarity among those “from below” who struggle or even desert against the military powers, to those who suffer and migrate due to the wars and the peace of domination
NO SOLDIER ANYWHERE, ANYTIME.
COMMUNES AND UPRISINGS IN EVERY NEIGHBOURHOOD
TOTAL REFUSAL TO ENLIST IN THEIR WAR AND PEACE