The Plutocracy / oligarchy / super rich / .001%, whatever term you like, the power elite, is a real problem when it comes to war. Given this, the peace movement needs to stop playing whack a mole with war protests and oppose the power structure that makes war, if we are sincerely interested in ending war.
The Green Movement opposes war for many reasons. We are against militarism as a matter of principle. Most critically, we oppose the plutocratic power elite that historically are the cause of probably all of the wars dating back to at least the Mexican-American War of 1846 – 1848.
The plutocratic power elite is real; Robert Burrowes provides a pithy historical overview of the powerful ruling class.
This essay will argue that Greens should denounce the plutocracy as a war mongering, wicked force in society; we should indict the rich on their blood lust while simultaneously appealing to the public to join the cause for an egalitarian revolution.
Furthermore, we should indict the ruling elite for secretly advancing a techno-totalitarian society. David Hughes in his work provides evidence for a deep state power elite that conducts ‘omniwar,’ or class war if you prefer, against the people.
To directly confront the plutocracy, we should demand an egalitarian society as the predicate for real peace, which requires removing the plutocracy from power and instituting real and not fake democracy.
To accomplish this, we need to build a mass peace movement that is an egalitarian revolution. A mass movement for an egalitarian society can become the counter force that could enable us to reclaim our republic from a plutocratic ruling class. This elite force uses war to control the masses and by the way, makes profit for the military industrial complex.
But, can there really be profit in using a nuclear device? Is the nuclear option a final straw the people should not accept?
Most activists in the peace / anti-war movement are acutely aware of the danger of a nuclear event, and know that deploying nuclear weapons is more than foolish, but is simply an evil act for which there can be no redemption and absolutely no profit.
The prospect that the military chiefs seriously consider using nuclear weapons, even if a “mini” version, should fill us with indignation at the ruling elites. Plutocratic ambition for world domination and control of the population, puts all of humanity and the earth’s natural system at great risk.
Preposterously, today, military technocrats imagine a winnable nuclear war. Sixty years ago, President Kennedy famously left a meeting of his chiefs of staff in a fury over the hubris of his generals that a nuclear war is winnable. Shockingly, the war mongers have only grown more powerful since Kennedy’s time in office.
Demands to ban nuclear weapons need to be repeated ad nauseam; furthermore, the peace movement needs to expand its message to include an indictment of the ruling class, and the technocracy that operates a deep state.
The peace movement should set a goal to remove the rich from power as the means to build actual peace. We can do this by advancing an egalitarian revolution.
The moral imperative and rightness of calling out the plutocracy is clear. They have been completely irresponsible on multiple levels. On top of building empire at great expense to society, the powerful have advanced a sick care system that costs the most and delivers the least. We have an unregulated economic system that has produced ubiquitous toxins that pollute food, water and air and soil, and make us sick with cancer; and more recently, there has emerged what has been coined “turbo cancers.” Moreover, we are tending toward techno-totalitarianism.
To dispel any notion that the plutocracy is not a real problem, we only need recall the history of incidents that show beyond a doubt the presence of a power elite.
There are countless reports documenting the machinations of the overt and covert actors that have driven the USA / NATO imperial project, the chief driver of war in our modern era.
Chiefly, the report by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard documents the work of Alan Dulles, a soldier of the plutocracy, and others in showing the development of the USA national security state. Significantly, the 1947 National Security Act institutionalized the Central Intelligence Agency and other national security operations. See this lecture from Mike Benz for related information.
The documentary film, Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick, gives a thorough history of the power of plutocracy in the USA. The American power elite played both sides of World War II, financing the NAZI war machine, for which no American plutocrat was punished. Alarmingly, no elite were prosecuted for fraternizing with the NAZI enemy by way of making bank loans and transferring technology and engaging in other industrial collaboration. Operation Paperclip documents the exfiltration of military scientists from the defeated NAZI regime to the United States military industrial complex.
In an odd reflection of remorse, President Eisenhower warned the nation about the influence of the military industrial complex, and the emerging bio-security Big Pharma complex, on American society.
President Kennedy, aware of the horrors of war, sought peace and was able to negotiate an anti-ballistic nuclear missile treaty with the Soviet Union a few months before he was killed. But, President Kennedy heeded Eisenhower’s warning, and it cost him his life.
Were Kennedy not to have been killed, he would have left a peace legacy, for sure, but his murder denied the American people this possibility. Subsequently, the Vietnam War went into full swing under President Johnson. The plutocratic power elite through deep state operations rob us, we the people, of the possibilities for a more egalitarian and just society.
In the midst of the civil rights struggle, the anti-Vietnam war student movement took off, and inspired Martin Luther King to expand his message to include solidarity with the poor and opposition to the military industrial complex. This departure from strictly civil rights protest, cemented his end.
Kennedy’s assassination, and the other 1960’s murders, and the failure to prosecute the actual criminals, established a horrible precedent for elite / deep state impunity. Not getting accountability for earlier crimes, set the stage for more acts of impunity like the September 11th, 2001 events, which produced “forever wars” most recently expressed as Ukraine and Gaza.
The September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack gave the neoconservatives the excuse to advance a plan for ‘forever wars’, initiated by the Project for a New American Century. 9/11 crushed any fantasy of a peace dividend we imagined possible with the the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.
American NATO belligerence has without a doubt driven the war in Ukraine, and claims that Mr. Putin started the Ukraine war misses the history of NATO expansion.
We mustn’t forget the lies that rationalized the NATO invasion of Iraq in 2003. Colin Powell claimed to the United Nations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; the state department claimed Saddam enabled the 9/11 “terrorists,” and that “yellow cake” from Niger was a prelude to a real nuke; all not true. The Iraqi threat to USA national security was a lie. The truth is that Saddam, as a nationalist was a threat to Anglo-American plutocratic hegemony.
War is a means to control the population. It is used by the plutocrats to divide and conquer the working class and prevent revolutionary possibilities. There is a long history of war as a counter-revolutionary event, purposefully set to disempower revolutionary movements. World War I, WW II, even the recent October 7th false flag attack by Hamas against Israel, all served to stop a popular uprising against the super rich.
The peace movement must make clear that the people do not create, or make, war. The average person knows better than to think a nuclear war is winnable. War is a contrivance of the powerful and, ultimately, it serves to distract the working classes, to pit them against each other, and weaken any resolve to make a better society.
The public is induced to accept the necessity of war based on a bogeyman enemy; this builds fear and makes people compliant to the demands from the state for the young to enlist. War is a colossal waste, forcing society to spend inheritance to cover military machinery and technology.
The plutocracy, given their command of the state, consider military action as a necessary means to advance foreign policy.
But maybe a popular awareness of how crazy the war mongers are, and awareness of the shared value for an egalitarian society, could galvanize the peace movement.
The moment the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan, the peace movement was given a huge task, to resist the madness. The thermonuclear monster cloud captured the popular imagination in the 1950’s and galvanized many in protest, led by Linus Pauling. But the demand for peace and end to war, ran into the wall of the 1960’s assassinations, which took the wind out of all the protest movements, and shredded any revolutionary ideas. And war, as a means for expanding and securing American empire, has not let up.
We in the movement shouldn’t be distracted by a game of whack-a-mole, as the Peace Movement responds to every new military incursion or event. We need to recognize the gestalt of the war mongering; it’s driven by a powerful class that seeks to hold and expand power. See the report from Jeremy Kuzmarov on the Ukraine War as pretext for land grab.
In conclusion, David Hughes lays out an excellent criticism of what he calls a trans-national plutocratic power structure and explains how we the people are experiencing ‘omniwar,’ a high-tech version of modern class war.
Let’s denounce war, denounce the plutocracy that advances it, recognize we are being attacked on multiple fronts and that a peace movement needs to fight to protect humanity from technocracy, the power structure of the plutocracy.
Only an egalitarian revolution, spearheaded by the working and professional classes, even students and elderly, who accept egalitarian values, and support ecological justice, acting in concert can save the earth and society from a sociopathic ruling elite that have turned society over to mad scientists.
Originally published on www.greenlibertycaucus.org. Green Liberty Caucus is a U.S based group that seeks the liberation of society from oligarchic and corporate domination by working in a liberation coalition to mobilize a mass movement that can transform society.