(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
From Orientering 28.Oct 1967
The starting point for the concept of political denial is that the military apparatus cannot be considered separate from politics, and that Norway cannot be considered separate from NATO and the United States. As Jens Bjørneboe has written: Society educates the youth according to the ideal fight for everything you love. Implicit: One must have loved the same as society, ie NATO. It is a prerequisite for making it easy to both live and die.
U.S. Army / Dept. Northern Norway. In the book No, we love all authors, led by Arnulf Kolstad, have seen it as their main task to draw a world view of the conflict between the rich and the poor countries at the center. Through trade statistics and descriptions of US strategy in the Third World, we are forced to see our own face, forced to acknowledge the responsibility for our crimes. The humanistic Sunday picture of our peace will and our "efforts" for developing countries are being broken. The hypocrisy is revealed on every one of the book's 194 pages.
The political refusal action focuses on what is academically called NATO integration, which in Norwegian means that the entire military system is subject to NATO's goals and strategy. We have no Norwegian defense, only a NATO defense. We do not have soldiers with protection for the security of the kingdom as the only task, but NATO soldiers who are obedient servants for the greatest and most offensive armed forces in history. The question no longer becomes what values one fights for, but what values one fights for when one becomes available to the US Army, Northern Norway Division. It is therefore wrong to talk about NATO's common defense, without at the same time talking about NATO's joint attack. The attack on the poor people who fight for their freedom and their right to survive the threat of starvation.
An expanded concept of peace and violence. There has long been a debate about an expanded concept of defense, and it is of course important to consider what short-term measures are possible to turn the development away from today's sterile power policy. But more importantly, we are talking about an expanded concept of peace, a concept that encompasses the part of the earth's inhabitants who live politically and materially in freedom and distress that includes the poor peasants who fight in Vietnam, Bolivia, Angola and Mozambique. And most importantly today, we are discussing an expanded concept of violence, describing the direct and indirect violence that we are complicit in every day through military politics, our alliance with Portugal and the United States, our trade policy and our position as part of the struggle for international capital interests. status quo. In some parts of the world, active methods of violence are used against the people whom socialists see as their task to support. All efforts to fight against today's economic system are cut down with brutal means. We also make it more humane and indirect through the economic power politics protected by our military superiority. We call it e.g. trade policy, and do not get blood on their hands. We do not run out on the front and apply killing methods learned at the recruiting school; we are "just" sharing the prey.
A war of 30 million victims in 1967. Anyone who goes unchallenged in this system, in reality, is fighting for social liberation, and helping to bridge the gap between poor and rich. They are already in a war, a worldwide war that in 1967 will require 30 million hunger victims. What we call the problems of developing countries are not a natural disaster that deserves only humanistic thoughts, or which the Young Right solves by increasing an Isolated Norwegian budget line. Rune Skarstein's glittering article – Damned – shows that it is a matter of a holistic situation due to the Western, upper-class economic, political and military organization of the world community. Therefore, we are already engaged in the dirtiest and most unjust of all wars. It is a war that requires victims on a scale that causes the casualties of the Second World War's trenches to numerically appear as trifles. In this war, they deserve our support as deserters and through political action to attack the causes.
A situational viewpoint? This book is also positive because it focuses on the nuclear base Norway, on Norway as a practice territory and as a battlefield for NATO, against Norway as the northern flank to be strengthened according to the latest plans, against Norway which has its entire policy on nuclear weapons, against Norway, which every day gets stuck in a strategy and in an infrastructure that only makes sense in a collective nuclear suicide. Therefore, talking about military service is not enough. We must ask if it is not the best protection to counteract a nuclear weapons system. The weapons development has taken all the meaning out of the word defense, but our politicians still use the words (defense, peace, protection, security) that belong in another historical period. They want to prevent the Second World War, they reduced their political views in 1949, and are trained to look at the world through dollar eyes. Let me reveal my old dream: one day a year we exchange words like war and defense with the word doom. On that day, we talk about Minister of Foreign Affairs Grieg Tiedemand, about downfall as a continuation of politics by other means, about the will of the people, about the size of the budget, and about the organization Folk and Undergang. Maybe also about denial on political and ethical grounds. It should be banned. It could undermine the downfall morale. As Arnulf Kolstad himself puts it in the chapter How to succeed in killing without really trying: Protecting homes and homes by increasing the dangers of a nuclear war involves a serious contradiction.
There are many tasks that are solved simultaneously in "No, we love". Particularly useful are the attacks on the conservative distinction between politics and ethics (like two separate drawers in consciousness). Those who refuse military service in today's situation try to bring ethics and human view down to earth, they make the experience of the new worldview an action imperative. Ethics in 1967, that is, politics and morality transposed into concrete actions.
Does this not mean opportunism, is not the position situational? What position is then not situational? Also, most of those who are considered ethical pacifists, and who have escaped through the Ministry of Justice's soul investigation, will say that their position is also conditional. Of course, it is one's experiences, insights and environment that shape the detailed pattern of action. Apart from those who absolutely obey a God-given norm, few would argue that their serious convictions are independent of time and place. The practical derivations of the moral principles will never be constant.
World class class match. This review has written more about the background to military denial than about the action itself and its practical consequences. If this is an objection, it is an objection that will also hit the book. Maybe it's a weakness. Still, I think the internal criticism debate and just interpretations can wait, most importantly, being informed about the external situation. That's what Arnulf Kolstad, Rune Skarstein, Bernt Michael Førre, Einar Tetne, Johan Ludwig Mowinckel and Rakel Nordseth write about. In addition, President Edvard Bull has an interesting historical assessment of the anti-militarism in the labor movement. Conclusion: If military power is now to be perceived as a weapon in a class struggle, it must be "class struggle" on a world scale. The contributions of Jan Myrdal and Hans Magnus Enzensberger both deserve more in-depth treatment and should be presented more fully on another occasion.
Of all these cheers, I would eventually raise a serious objection, possibly something personal in the first place. Spitting on "pacifists" is quite unnecessary and, in addition, a bit outdated (the word must be uttered with searing contempt). The debate on conscription has in recent years been "an abstract dialogue on conscience issues". It seems spasmodic to have to distance ourselves from all former military deniers – a bloc – at all costs. For many, perhaps an abstract-ethical basis has been the source of political insight, and the Ministry of Justice's archives also contain many approved applications that emphasize NATO policy, the nuclear weapons issue and the relationship with the Third World. Often, the PAX group has been astonished that socialists and NATO opponents have not previously taken the stand on their views. Civilian workers have never formed a homogeneous group, and political awareness should be positively supported. Instead of hunting down their enemies, one should rather find people in this group who can take part in providing information about our crimes on a world scale and about Norway's participation in the US and Portugal's use of force. And is it more important to create political consciousness (and political change) than to portray oneself as spotless people who refuse to be hostages to civil society?
No, we love. An Anthology of Political Military Denial,
edited by Arnulf Kolstad. PAX 1967.
