"How to reason with a War CRiminal"

"Sabotage the War Machine"

All Quiet on the Western Front had its New York premiere on April 29, 1930.

I’ve always been the kind of person who leans into learning more about things I dislike to try to understand how they tick, rather than simply hating it and shouting about it. It’s why I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of a podcast about Alex Jones, read multiple books about QAnon and put myself through 4 hours of Jessie Gender’s antizionist screed and even more explicitly hateful material like the Protocols, and periodically check in on SJP & JVP feeds to see what they’re saying. War is no exception. I’m interested in learning more about why people go to war, how they go to war, the unintended consequences of war, and the messy nature of peace processes.

I’m certainly no expert, but I feel like I’m at least semi-knowledgeable about a handful of wars. But the more I learn, the clearer it becomes that so many ostensibly pro-peace folks (even aside from/before 2023) just do not have the slightest interest in understanding the thing they’re criticizing beyond “thing bad” and 1001 justifications for why it is bad.

And that’s so disheartening. Because I do want to live in a world without war, or at least never have to see my country go to war again in my lifetime. But how are we supposed to do that if we don’t understand war?