War is Peace: How journalists vilify peace to rationalize war

Not too long ago, a meme was going viral on social media. It showed the horrified face of George Orwell, looking in disbelief and with wide open mouth at a copy of the fictional book 2024. Not even the author of the dystopian novel 1984, the meme implied, could have imagined the world of today (see reference (1) for link to meme).

The world has been – or is still going through – three consecutive crises. First, the COVID-19 event, with large-scale measures limiting personal freedoms, followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing proxy war between Russia and NATO, and finally Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, which is firmly backed by Israel’s supporters in the West. These non-stop crises have had a palpable impact on people’s lives – the realization that civil liberties are evanescent and subject to compliance with government measures, the impact of rising costs of energy and everyday commodities as well as the open deconstruction of the Western self-proclaimed image as a defender of decency and human rights by its abetting of mass slaughter in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Throughout all of these three crises, public opinion has been sharply divided between people subscribing to the officially sanctioned narratives and people questioning and opposing them. In the two most recent ones, Ukraine and Gaza, this division has meant a split between people who see immediate ceasefire and negotiations as the only possible way to end even more unnecessary bloodshed and suffering and others who see the continuation of conflict as the sole means to achieve a lasting and just peace. The media, unsurprisingly, are drumming up support for continued military action in both cases. In Ukraine, the media equals ceasefire with Ukraine’s capitulation and defeat, while in Gaza they continue to repeat the Israeli claims of ‘self-defense’ despite the unimaginable level of destruction and death wrought upon Palestinians.

In order to justify the case for war, the media have resorted to systematic attempts to frame peace activism as defeatist and naïve, and to turn ‘peace’ into a dirty word. The following overview of media articles intends to show how this framing has been consistently applied across different media outlets, both in English- and in German-speaking media.

Peace negotiations

Peace negotiations to end the Ukrainian conflict started almost immediately following Russia’s initial incursion into the Donbass in February 2022. Multiple media reports indicated that the negotiations were close to conclusion when they were torpedoed by then-UK prime minister Boris Johnson. When these reports first leaked to the mainstream press, they were ridiculed. When former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder went on a private trip to meet with Russian president Putin to negotiate a deal, he was equally the target of media scorn, pointing out his friendly relationship to Putin and sarcastically framing his trip as “wondrous peace trip” and a PR-mission for himself (2). After the Russia-Ukraine negotiations finally collapsed, diplomacy became erased from Western political agendas and from media coverage. When, occasionally, celebrities like Elon Musk called for a peace deal, this was met by strong reactions that this would be tantamount to cow-towing to a brutal invader. The wife of Ukrainian president Zelenskyi, Olena Zelenska, was quoted in a headline from The Guardian as saying that “she hopes Musk’s Ukraine peace tweet was a ‘chance mistake’” (3) Business Insider commented on such voices in a similar manner, warning that “[a]n understandable desire to avoid a nuclear war could actually make the world more dangerous if it means rushing to implement a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that serves Russian interests”, adding that “such a deal […] could well make the world much less peaceful” (4). We already see a clear picture emerging: calls for peace are dangerous and could lead to even more war and conflict. Orwell would have been proud.

Another tendency by the media is to associate such calls for peace with Russian interference. The same Business Insider article states that “Musk’s proposal was […] welcomed by the Kremlin amid reports, disputed by the tech billionaire, that it was presented after consultations with Moscow.” The barely concealed implication being that any calls for peace inherently and necessarily must be a result of Russian propaganda, as they tend to be ‘welcomed’ by the Kremlin. Peace is Russian disinformation.

When China attempted to initiate peace talks in early 2023, the reactions were similarly hysterical. Bloomberg published an article entitled “US Fears a War-Weary World May Embrace China’s Ukraine Peace Bid” – including a triple alliteration – in which it uncritically quoted US officials’ “deep skepticism about the Chinese idea, saying its call for a cease-fire would reward Moscow’s invasion by cementing its territorial gains” (5). The semantic prosody that is evoked with regard to the word “war-weary” is that being war-weary is something negative that should be avoided, as you only fear things that are dangerous or threatening. Being weary of war used to be a virtue, not a vice.

The German-speaking press reacted equally alarmist to China’s attempts to arrange a ceasefire: The Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung called China’s efforts a “specious mission” (fadenscheinige Mission) (6), suggesting that the Chinese president is “trying to present himself as a mediator in the Ukraine conflict”. The very strong use of hedging language here clearly shows that the newspaper believes that these attempts are not at all in good faith and therefore should be rejected. Another Austrian newspaper, Der Standard, sarcastically titles “China wants to play the peace dove in the Ukraine War”, ridiculing these efforts and suggesting that China as a friend of Russia cannot possibly be an honest broker (7).

The same fate befell the trip by Hungarian prime minister and acting chair of the EU-Council, Victor Orbán, when he travelled to Russia and China in July 2024. Newspapers such as Der Standard put the official purpose of his trip in quotation marks, writing “Viktor Orbán caused an uproar with his ‘mission of peace’ to Moscow” and “Orbán meets Xi in Beijing on ‘mission of peace’”(8)(9). The newspaper also criticizes that “like a mantra, Orbán is regurgitating a narrative that Putin likes to hear – especially when it comes from within NATO: what is needed now is peace, a ceasefire, an end to the war. But the way Putin is acting, this would only be possible at the price of Ukraine’s unconditional surrender.” This is reminiscent of the tactics described above: since Putin likes the idea of a ceasefire, therefore calling for a ceasefire is Russian propaganda and must be opposed.

In general, the fact that calls for peace by Western activists happen to coincide with what some Russian representatives openly call for seems to be reason enough to see the concept of peace itself as suspicious. This is also fed to the media by intelligence sources claiming that Russia is attempting to co-opt peace movements in the West to undermine the war morale of Western populations. The Washington Post alleges such in their article “Kremlin tries to build antiwar coalition in Germany, documents show” from April 2023 (10). In the article, intelligence sources are uncritically reported as claiming that Russia is trying to create an antiwar sentiment in the extreme right and the extreme left of Germany’s political spectrum. The newspaper writes that “marrying Germany’s extremes is an explicit Kremlin goal” and that “[e]fforts to build antiwar sentiment in Germany are part of a hidden front in Russia’s war against Ukraine as the Kremlin tries to undermine Western unity and freeze the war on its terms. Exploiting peace protests to divide the West repeats tactics that were first honed in Soviet times.” And there goes the peace movement. By associating peace activism with a political agenda of undermining the unity and fighting spirit of the West, calling for peace becomes a deeply politicized and dirty word. It becomes impossible to call for a ceasefire and peace, since this is what the ‘enemy’ wants. If this assumption is adopted, then clearly the only alternative here is to call for more war, since this would thwart the enemy’s plans. Interestingly, the newspaper acknowledges, almost in passing, that there is no evidence of any cooperation or even contact between Russian authorities and the political parties in question. Not that this has any bearing on the main insinuation of the article that wanting peace is something sinister. What stands out is that merely having the same opinion on certain issues than the Russian government suffices to make people or parties the Kremlin’s ‘useful idiots’:

The AfD – called the party of “Putin understanders” by some in Germany – has echoed the Kremlin’s view that the war in Ukraine was triggered by the United States and that Russia was simply defending itself from NATO encirclement while protecting Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

Whatever one may think about Russia’s position on the Ukraine war, there is little doubt that NATO-advancement and Ukraine’s war on its Russian-speaking population in Eastern Ukraine are a core part of the Russian rationale (11). However, adopting these views or even raising them becomes tantamount to being a Putin apologist.

This Washington Post article was echoed by German-speaking media as well. The Austrian public broadcasting corporation, the ORF, enigmatically titled: “Report: Kremlin wants left-right antiwar-coalition in Germany” (12), again imbuing the word ‘antiwar’ with negative semantic prosody, because anything that Russia wants or desires must by definition be undesirable or tainted. According to the ORF, one way in which the pro-war morale in Germany was to be undermined is by spreading the narrative that “Russia sanctions hurt [Germany’s] economy.” The fact that Germany’s economy has indeed been shrinking and is now in recession since the Ukraine war and sanctions started (13), is of course just a random correlate. The German media outlet Focus, too, bemoaned Russian strategies to “create an antiwar sentiment in Germany” (14) – forgotten are the times when the whole world sighed in relief that Germany had become a peaceful country and opposed to war.

In this dichotic media universe of unalterable categories, there must be no overlaps between two opposing positions. The dogmatism of this way of thinking at times seems almost religious in nature and is very reminiscent of George W. Bush’s famous demand “You are either with us, or with the terrorists” (15). There is no middle ground and no deliberating the reasons and motives that drive ‘them’.

So it wasn’t only actual negotiations that were targeted and smeared by Western politicians and Western media, it was also any group or individual that demanded a peace perspective or called for a more balanced approach to how human suffering is measured – as the examples of Ukraine and Gaza well illustrate.

Peace activism

Calls for peace in Ukraine started relatively early after Russia’s incursion, at a time when there were still actual peace negotiations ongoing between the two parties. And it was from this very early time on that people demanding an end to the bloodshed were delegitimized and smeared by politicians and media alike.

Already in 2022, Der Spiegel labeled the German peace movement as “Lumpenpazifisten” (roughly, pathetic pacifists) suggesting that calling for peace at that moment was “the best that could happen to Putin” (16). The article accuses the peace movement of pursuing “a deeply egocentric ideology that places one’s personal feelings above the suffering of other people”. Indeed, how dare they feel bad that other people are dying. The article criticizes a peace researcher for suggesting to negotiate for a compromise because “what would a ‘compromise’ even look like when one party wants to eliminate the other”. One would think the answer would be: let’s first negotiate and find out. Such rhetoric makes pacifists look like vain couch potatoes who refuse to see the futility of their unrealistic ideals in a world full of war. This is also echoed by certain politicians such as the Estonian prime minister Katja Kallas (who has since advanced to being nominated to become the future High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the EU) who maintain that “in a world full of violence, pacifism would be suicide” (17). A self-perpetuating recipe for never-ending wars.

In another article by Der Spiegel, calls for a ceasefire and negotiations are compared to sexual violence: “What is happening with Ukraine is the state-level equivalent of being raped by your ex-husband while being threatened with extinction if you resist” (18). The article particularly takes issue with warnings of further escalation, and maintains in j’accuse-style, “Those who demonize the delivery of heavy weapons to defend your country and your life against an overpowering aggressor as escalation have lost any moral compass,” only to add a few lines later, “Whoever claims that weapon shipments would only prolong the war do not understand that it is probably the opposite. Someone who indicates that they will never resist makes themselves an attractive target.” Fair enough, but it’s not like the constant and escalating shipment of weapons has decreased Ukraine’s attractiveness as a target. In reality, the opposite has happened. Without the delivery of weapons, it seems likely Ukraine could have retained its territorial integrity – save for Crimea (19). The claim, however, is that the quickest – in fact the only – way to peace is by delivering even more arms into an already intense conflict situation, the reason being that “we are facing a threat that cannot be countered with negotiation, appeasement or compromise” – thus drawing the well-established comparison to pre-WWII appeasement policies regarding Hitler. Well, this certainly has not aged well. Two years after the publication of the article, Ukraine is in a much more dire situation than it was back when the article was published and swift negotiations might be the only way out of the violence.

German media are certainly not the only ones to equate peace activism with defeatism or even sympathies for Putin. The Austrian Der Standard called the two organizers of a peace demonstration in Berlin in February 2022, the feminist Alice Schwarzer and left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht, “Putin’s Sisters and Buddies for Peace” in one of its op-eds. It alleged that the goal of the peace efforts of “ending ‘death and destruction’” was to ensure “an end (to Putin’s liking)” (20) – a conspiracy theory that needs no proof. An effect, of course, of always linking peace in Ukraine to some sort of insane plan for world domination by Putin, is to make any peace that is not reached by means of total victory on the battlefield as a gift to the aggressor, rather than perhaps a gift to the already suffering population. And since there is broad consensus that a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield is not realistic, this means perpetual war.

Another means of delegitimizing peace activists is through name-calling as well as through guilt by association. In an article by Euronews, participants in the aforementioned peace protests are ridiculed as “Friedensschwurbler” (21) (roughly, ‘peace ramblers’), their cause is smeared by associating the protest with dubious or unwanted people and groups. For instance, the article points to participants “some of whom were waving Russian flags”, it mentions that one of the people attending was “the convicted Holocaust denier Nikolai Nerling” and it identifies many “Putin supporters” as well as “members of the AfD (22), conspiracy theorists and Reichsbürger” (23). The repeated mention of attendees that many media consumers have negative associations with serves to undermine the stated purpose of the protests, namely to call for an end to hostilities in Ukraine by painting it as the cause of dangerous fringe groups, some with ties to the aggressor himself.

Der Spiegel uses a similar rhetoric. It calls people opposing the war in Ukraine “vulgar pacifists, right or left nationalists, fans of Putin, Russia-romanticists, illiberals, victims of propaganda, conspiracy theorists or simply reality-averse” (24). It labels calls for negotiations as tantamount to demanding that Ukraine “arrange itself with Putin’s military mob, his mass murderers, torturers and rapists” and suggests that the driving force of such peace activists is plain “anti-Americanism”. The revealing irony that being for peace equals being against the US must clearly have slipped the author’s attention.

Even experts in international law join in the disavowing of peace activism. In an op-ed called “A peace call that only Putin takes delight in”, Wolfgang Benedek, an expert in international law, identifies a “paternalistic attitude” in those demonstrating for peace in Ukraine, saying that these people “fail to see that ultimately Ukraine must decide for itself how far it will go in its defensive war” (25). Interestingly, he seems to fail to understand that the West impersonated by then-British prime minister Boris Johnson decided it was not time for peace when Ukraine decided it was in April 2022, when peace negotiations with Russia came close to a conclusion; he insisted that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the Western allies] are not” (26). But then again, to his defense, he would not have known about this from consuming Western mainstream media. He also maintains, contrary to what we now know in hindsight and what many knew then, obviously with the gift of foresight, that “the demand to withhold further weapon shipments could indeed prolong the war, while a forceful and united approach by the West could shorten it.” Apparently, the barrel of a gun is still the most effective olive branch.

In March 2024, Pope Francis made news when he called on Ukraine to negotiate peace. In an interview to the Swiss broadcaster RSI, he was quoted as saying,

But I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates […] The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate (27).

The media came down quickly and forcefully on the Pope’s proposal. Some headlines included:

• “Sharp criticism of Pope Francis for calls to Ukraine to negotiate peace” (28)
• “Ukraine War: ‘Pope Francis contradicts Christian morality’” (29)
• “Statement by Pope on Ukraine triggers strong outrage” (30)
• “After Pope appeal on Ukraine War – Strack-Zimmermann: I’m ashamed to be a Catholic” (31)
• “Harsh criticism of Pope appeal for peace talks” (32)

These are further evidence that ‘peace’ has become a tainted word.

Newspapers recounted that based on previous statements by the Pope, “Ukrainians feel that Francis has more empathy for Russia than their assaulted country” and that Francis’ appeal caused “horror and sharp criticism” (33). The author of the article felt reminded that “the desire for peace must not lead to the right of the supposedly strongest to prevail”, a statement that would fit any of the wars fought in the history of humankind, most of which ended with the stronger party prevailing. Another article quotes a German politician as saying, “Unbelievable! The head of the Catholic Church sides with the aggressor. How sad!” and another politician stating, “It’s Vladimir Putin who could end the war and the suffering immediately – not Ukraine. Those who demand that Ukraine capitulate are handing over to the aggressor that which they have illegally taken, and thus accept the annihilation of Ukraine.” – which sounds suspiciously like a slippery slope argument (34). Both these statements are not borne out by the facts, of course. Calling for peace in the face of a suffering population is not ‘siding with the aggressor’ in any meaningful way and wars can be ended by both sides. There is, however, not a lot of historical evidence for the more successful belligerent ending the war on someone else’s terms.

While Western media are very clear that only the more powerful party can end the war in Ukraine – while ironically refusing to hear the terms under which the more powerful party would actually do that – the situation is reversed in another case – the Israel-Palestine conflict and in particular the current and massive Israeli war on Gaza. Here, it’s obvious to politicians and the media that Hamas could end the war immediately if only they laid down their arms (35). Accordingly, anyone who voices objections to Israel’s brutal assault or calls for a ceasefire is met with the full force of media criticism, this time because they are not siding with the more powerful party. A useful if predictable argument.

One person who had to experience this reflexive criticism repeatedly has been the famous climate activist Greta Thunberg. A media darling when her critique was restricted to issues of climate change, her image took a turn for the worse abruptly when she started calling to ‘Stand with Gaza’. “In the conflict in the middle east, Fridays for Future have lost their innocence,” wrote Der Falter, an Austrian left-leaning magazine (36). The reason: after the Hamas attacks on Israeli border outposts and communities on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent full-scale assault on the strip, Thunberg posted a picture in support of Palestinians.

This posting was immediately criticized by multiple politicians and media figures as ‘one-sided’. Like a mantra, the media repeated, “But she hasn’t said a single word on the terror attack by Hamas since October 8” (37). In some cases, this mantra was more extensive, like in this example from the Austrian magazine Der Falter: “No word on the terror that Hamas wrought on Israeli civilians on October 7. No mention of the 222 Israeli hostages that Hamas abducted into Gaza” (38). The German Tagesschau even went into the archives to show that there was method to such one-sidedness, like the time when she criticized an Israeli air assault on Gaza in 2021: “[In her post], she did not mention the preceding rocket attacks from Gaza, where Hamas fired around 150 rockets into Israel according to the Israeli army” (39). This take is both common and revealing since Western media outlets are not particularly known to put violence into context unless we or our allies are perpetrating it. No attack by Palestinians on Israelis is ever ‘motivated’ – only Israeli violence is. But if someone turns the tables on this, the word ‘context’ is thrown around at will.

It was further insinuated that her stance on Gaza and on justice for Palestinians was due to her lack of education. In a piece by the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, the author smugly wrote: “Capitalizing on panic is never a good idea. And by the way, neither is refusing to go to school regularly” (40). A journalist at the Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung posted the following on X along similar lines – it translates as “great caption – if only she had finished school”:

Even her use of a plush toy, an octopus (see figure 3), was widely suggested as ‘antisemitic symbolism’: “Many users recognized antisemitic symbolism in it. After all, the National Socialists already used the octopus as a symbol of the supposed Jewish world conspiracy that encircles the whole world with its tentacles” (41). Thunberg later explained that the octopus was a normal plush toy for people with autism to express their emotions. Furthermore, the relevant fact that a Jewish person in the picture was also protesting Israel’s actions (see figure 2) was blissfully ignored.

She was also attacked for reposting an Instagram post by an account called “Palestine speaks” in which the authors called for a global strike in support of Palestinians. What the media took issue with was that said account has previously posted the slogan “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” which several news outlets stated was a sentence “that denies Israel’s right to exist” (42) and from which they deduced that Thunberg had joined forces with those “that wish to see Israel destroyed.” Interestingly enough, the fact that the same slogan is also part of Israel’s ruling party’s manifest has not been known to have raised similar concerns (43).

One headline by the Tagesschau from October 20, 2023, I think best sums up the gist of this hostility towards Thunberg. The headline went: “Greta Thunberg shares call by pro-Palestinian organization.” Usually, this would be tantamount in its banality to writing “Thunberg posts funny cat video on X”, but since the support of Palestinians is quite literally unthinkable, even such a platitude gains a deeper, more sinister meaning – scandalous like finding Nazi paraphernalia in a popular public figure’s hidden basement.

A comparable treatment was also reserved for a number of filmmakers who in their acceptance speeches during the 2024 Berlinale and the Oscars, respectively, called for an end to the genocide in Gaza and for a ceasefire. Some of the headlines may perhaps serve as an illustration of the kind of taboo these filmmakers broke:

• “Berlinale: Anti-Israeli statements cause criticism – Hamas terror remains unmentioned.”
• “Berlinale scandal about statements on Israel: was that antisemitic?”
• “Disgraceful scenes during Berlinale finale”
• “New Jew-hate scandal: Berlinale shocks with proscribed anti-Israel slogan”

The nature of the criticism was similar to that launched against Thunberg. The most egregious crime of these individuals – besides using words such as ‘genocide’ or ‘apartheid’ with respect to Israel – was again not to have engaged at the very least in both-sideism. “On stage, Israel’s action on Palestinian territory was in part criticized sharply – without mentioning the terror attack by the Islamist Hamas of October 7, 2023” (44) wrote one paper, “[Berlinale director Mariette] Rissenbeek was the only one to mention Hamas that evening, the terror organization which attacked Israel on October 7, perpetrated a massacre of more than 1200 people and is still holding more than 100 people hostages”, criticized another (45). The German Die Welt opined,

“The audience cheered and was obviously more than ready to clap at the equally absurd and misleading fighting term ‘genocide’ […] No word, however, on the terror of Hamas” (46). The magazine Die Zeit quotes an expert on culture from the Green Party “calling ‘the one-sided speech’ of laureate Basel Adra ‘difficult to stomach’. The one-sided accusations against Israel on stage without so much as mentioning the terror attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, were ‘not acceptable’” (47).

The Tagesspiegel calls the event “a one-sided pro-Palestine show” (48).

What is indeed difficult to stomach is that these news outlets seemed to ignore that such criticism was raised in large part by people identifying as Jews. It is worth imaging the different reaction we would get when a Russian person were to use their stage time to criticize the actions of their government in Ukraine. Would they be shamed for not also mentioning the Ukrainian assaults on their own Russian-speaking population before Russia’s large-scale invasion? Hardly. Would an Arab criticizing Palestinians be criticized? No, in fact they are celebrated, as the example of Ahmad Mansour shows. In this particular case, however, the antisemitism commissioner of the German government, Felix Klein, even went as far as saying “the foreign filmmakers have ‘abused their right to hospitality’”, while the senator for culture of the city of Berlin announced to cut the Berlinale’s funding as the justice minister threatened “legal consequences” (49). It is not known whether Oscar-winning Jonathan Glazer, who used his speech to denounce Israel’s attempt to co-opt his Jewishness to justify the killing of Palestinians, was faced with similar consequences, though the media reaction was equally intense. The German Die Welt even titled “How Glazer’s speech destroys his film” (50) on the everyday life of the Höß family directly adjacent to Auschwitz, and he was accused of blood libel by some fellow Jewish filmmakers (51).

Another celebrity who came out in support of Palestinians and with calls for a ceasefire to stop the ongoing genocide was the German comedian and actor Dieter Hallervorden. Together with the left-wing politician Diether Dehm, he produced a 3-minute video entitled “Gaza, Gaza”, in which he criticizes the support of Israel by Germany in its current war on Gaza and reminds the audience that most people killed are civilians and that no-one is born a terrorist. These simple messages were all that it took for the media to conduct a frontal assault on Hallervorden as a person.

The Bild, a German tabloid, titled their article “Didi Hallervorden and former Stasi spy Diether Dehm irritate with anti-Israel poem” (52). The reference here is to the contested past of Dehm as an ‘unofficial employee’ of the Stasi, the intelligence agency of the German Democratic Republic. This of course has no bearing at all on the content of the video, but it serves to discredit it in the eyes of the public. In the article, Bild calls it a ‘confused anti-Israel poem’. It particularly targets the claim that the German political parties all support Israel’s actions as ‘a delusion with which some of the worst conspiracy theories of the world begin’. They also note that “in the background of the 3-minute video by Hallervorden, we see, among other things, scenes from a Palestinian terror propaganda video and excerpts from the state-owned Qatari TV-station ‘Al Jazeera’, whose anchors constantly agitate against Israel.” The video indeed contains such footage, but it is also clearly marked as such. The Hamas video is even labeled as “Hamas propaganda video,” though it doesn’t show any ‘terror’, just civilian casualties. The reason why video footage from Al Jazeera should be considered problematic is unclear.

The Austrian left-wing broadsheet Der Standard uses even more ad-hominems to discredit Hallervorden and his video through the use of sarcastic language. It calls the poem “questionable”, the video “tacky” and accuses him of “talking himself into a whirlwind with antisemitic undertones” (53). Hallervorden himself is derogatorily called an “oldtimer comedian” – an irrelevant label, as the video obviously has no comical elements – his way of presenting the issue “sententious” (“salbungsvoll”). Like with others commenting on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the obligatory phrase “No mention of what Hamas did, of their massacre” is also used to comment on Hallervorden’s contemplation about mass graves in Gaza: “And you’re telling me this is not a genocide?” It’s perhaps important to mention that this article is not an opinion article, but a news article, yet the language it employs is dripping with condescension and sarcasm, and its only apparent purpose is not to report on reactions to the video, but to ridicule it and discredit its authors in the eyes of the readers.

The conservative Die Welt titled “A shame? Dieter Hallervorden invokes ‘right to free speech’”, also criticizing that the video used “propaganda clips by Hamas” as well as “excerpts from the Qatari TV-station Al Jazeera”. The news portal T-Online quotes a conservative German politician saying she thought Hallervorden’s video was “sickening”, while the article also complains that the clip contained “conspiratorial” content (54) because it insinuated that war is actively pursued for corporate interests – an axiomatic, self-evident statement for anyone with an iota of understanding for how the world is run.

What all these examples have in common is that those who call for peace, for a ceasefire, or for negotiations, are attacked and smeared and accused of wanting more death and destruction, while the media – calling for more weapons and more war – are the harbingers of real peace. The very definition of newspeak.

War is peace

It is quite clear from this overview that the lust for war has returned with a vengeance, with politicians and opinion leaders together and openly beating the drums for prolonged, even perennial global conflicts. War has been rebranded from the inhumane, destructive force that it is, into a productive, almost compassionate tool to forge peace. H.G. Wells’ “The war to end all wars” reloaded, as it were. And we all know that worked out fine.

Nowhere is this new oxymoronic ideology better expressed than in the words of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. During the 2023 WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and referring to the war in Ukraine, he was quoted as saying “Weapons are the way to peace” (55), an utterance that was then uncritically and unironically repeated by the media. Similarly, in an interview with the German Die Zeit, neoconservative philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy sees war as preferable to peace under certain conditions. “War is terrible, abhorrent,” he says, “But peace can be even more terrible and more abhorrent than war” (56). Not just is war the way to achieve peace, but it might also be preferable to it.

In an article discussing the German government’s hesitation to deliver tanks to Ukraine, the Tagesspiegel ran the following headline: “Murderous shortage of support for Ukraine: Scholz’ hesitation threatens to lead to direct war with Russia” (57). The author criticizes that “with reference to an allegedly wise act of preventing the danger of escalation, [weapons] are delivered too late and too few in number.” He likens the situation to – what else – 1938 and the appeasing reaction by European states to the annexation of the Sudetenland region in Czechoslovakia by Hitler. Drawing on this imagined parallel, the author issues a stern warning: “If Western hesitation leads Putin to believe that he can continue in the Baltic states, Olaf Scholz will go down in history as the chancellor who wanted to prevent direct war against Russia through wise restraint, but who helped bring it about through his hesitation.” War to prevent war. Because Hitler.

The Austrian Der Standard argues in a similar fashion in an op-ed by an expert on Eastern Europe entitled “One also needs weapons to achieve peace” (58). In this piece, the author states, “An end of Western weapon shipments would bring an end to defense, but probably not to violence. Only [military] aid enables a sustainable peace.” And he goes on to say that “even if the fighting at the front line subsided, that would not necessarily be, as experience shows, the end of violence and oppression and would not result to a return of peace and liberty – quite the contrary.” The only solution therefore: more weapons for peace.

In another Austrian newspaper, the Kleine Zeitung, even the editor-in-chief goes out of his way to denounce pacifism and embrace continued weapon shipments. “Peace through weapons” is the not-so-subtle title of his editorial in which he criticizes pacifists. He calls the potential shipment of tanks to Ukraine “not an act of ‘warmongering’, as critics claim, but the opposite […] It would be a pragmatic, militarily supported exit and peace concept”(59). Who needs negotiations, anyway. He goes on to call any opposition to escalating the war in Ukraine “ideas of an illusionary pacifism” and castigates that “the question of whether weapons prolong the suffering or not should not be answered from a couch, but by those who are suffering. The maltreated do not want to be muzzled.” The subtle irony that he is doing just that from the safety of his editorial office appears to have eluded him.

In another editorial, the same editor-in-chief complains that “pacifism does not work against relentless dictators” and calls appeals by so-called “feel-good pacifists” (“Salon-Pazifisten”) “presumptuous and cynical” (60). He argues that “a pacifist concept contains the danger of ‘submission to the force of the totalitarian’ as Karl Jaspers once phrased it. Creating and maintaining peace without weapons is illusionary nonsense.” It is not quite clear in what way the author thinks more bombs, more dead and more violence could contribute to a more sustainable peace between the neighboring states rather than fuel more hatred and animosity.

Delivering more weapons has become so firmly connected to achieving peace in media discourse that some considerably contradictory headlines literally pass for common sense. When the US Congress, for instance, after long deliberations, passed an aid bill to send more money and weapons to Israel and Ukraine, US President Joe Biden publicly stated, “It’s a good day for America, it’s a good day for Europe and it’s a good day for world peace” (61). Stoking a dangerous conflict and aiding and abetting genocide: the contemporary definition of ‘good for world peace.’ Needless to say that this irony evaded the New York Times journalists in their article on this.

The fact that war has become so normalized in public discourse in the West is not only shown through the Orwellian reconfiguration of war as a force for good, but also in the fact that any actions that prevent the complete release of the proverbial ‘dogs of war’ is met with headlines like the following from the Washington Post: “Germany is refusing to send tanks to Ukraine. Biden cannot let that stand” (62). It seems almost scandalous that someone would not send more weapons into a conflict zone to kill more people. Der Spiegel had an equally distressing headline for a debate video that they did on Israel-Palestine. It said: “Sometimes it is necessary to kill to prevent the murdering” (63). Fight fire with fire. And gasoline. But the prize for the most atrocious comment goes to The Atlantic. In an article on the casualty numbers in the war on Gaza, the author wrote: “Even when conducted legally, war is ugly. It is possible to kill children legally, if for example one is being attacked by an enemy who hides behind them” (64). But worry not, he later admits that “the sight of a legally killed child is no less disturbing than the sight of a murdered one.” At least the children of Gaza have this going for them.

The literal axiom that war is terrible and that we should do everything in our power to prevent it has been turned on its head. Now, we are indoctrinated to embrace war, and to feel suspicion to people who fear it. In an article in the Tagesschau, to give an example, the author discusses a general tendency in the German public towards opposing further involvement of the country in the Ukraine war. It does so under the headline “Disinformation: How the fear of war is being instrumentalized”, attributing “pro-Russian interests” to the undesired “fearmongering” (65). The author quotes a ‘disinformation expert’ with the words, “Content-wise, the stoking of fear of war in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine fits pro-Russian interests and narratives.” Being pro-peace as the original sin and the hallmark of Russia’s unwitting ‘useful idiots’ in the West – a blatant contradiction that is the result of years of framing and priming and brainwashing by the Western media.

Nowhere is this effect shown better than in an article by the Spiegel journalist Tobias Rapp entitled “Why I rescind my conscientious objection” (66). He argues in it that he has now seen the errors of his ways because “the Russian army has killed tens of thousands of civilians in the past decades” and has also otherwise wreaked havoc in the world. On the other hand, he now has come to feel gratitude towards the US for its “continuous protection” of Germany and NATO’s “stabilizing missions”. This must have been before the whole Middle East was thrown into chaos and turmoil with millions of people dead, I suppose. The author also acknowledges that his conscientious objection was both too naïve and too cowardly. Though he is now 51 years old and admits that he probably won’t be drafted into the military anymore, he will not stand in the way of his sons should they choose to serve. After all, there is a war to be fought.

War is entertainment

So ultimately, not only has war been reframed as a positive force, it has also become almost a caricature, something to theorize about and indulge in, something to entertain, something that must never end. The show, after all, must go on. A modern day ‘panem et circenses’, so to speak, or – to borrow a book title by Neil Postman – Amusing ourselves to death, quite literally.

This reveals itself in rather comical headlines such as the following from the Augsburger Allgemeine: “Government and federal states want to make streets and bridges ‘fit for war’”(67). Or it can be a tad more serious, as in the Wallstreet Journal: “The US Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War”, which sounds like a re-enactment of the 1983 movie War Games in a real-life environment, but would likely be less entertaining.

In Germany, the Bild tabloid in particular, is attempting to monopolize the fearmongering of Russia with catchy headlines such as

• “Is Russia planning the war? Putin-attack ‘closer than most people think’” (68)
• “[Former head of the Social Democratic Party] Gabriel in talk show: We must overpower Russia” (69)
• “[Former defense minister] Guttenberg on Russia: Preparations for an attack ‘our damn duty’” (70)

It is easy to see where these and similar headlines might lead. Even if people do not necessarily believe or even subscribe to them, their sheer number and the eerie similarities of the scenarios that they project is enough to instill fear and suspicion in the populace and make them more ready to accept an armed conflict, in particular if at the same time any expectations of peace are being downplayed, smeared, or ridiculed, as in an article by Der Spiegel entitled “Putin fabulates about end to war” (71). If we don’t accept the olive branch from those who we call the aggressor, who do we accept it from? Then the only alternative is perpetual war. Which is, quite likely, the point of the pro-war agenda.

Of course, in order to prepare the public for extended war in times of war-weariness, war also needs to be entertaining to keep the public ‘in the mood’. What used to be the duty of media pundits discussing in endless detail every new and fancy weapon used in war became a matter of filmmakers in the Ukraine War. In the run-up to Ukraine’s much-hyped summer offensive of 2023, Ukraine launched several movie-like trailers to announce this offensive. Starting with a video that showed a camouflaged soldier showing the audience to remain quiet, something that the BILD newspaper termed “Operation Hush” (72), another 1-minute trailer was launched that had the media landscape in awe. It showed movie-like scenes of combat-ready soldiers and weaponry, intertwined with a spoken vow by some general or squad leader to take revenge and free the motherland. The Swiss tabloid Blick, for instance, announced the trailer as “Ukraine releases epic trailer video for imminent offensive” (73), while the Frankfurter Rundschau called it a “goosebump trailer” (74) and Yahoo News referred to it as “action movie-style trailer” (75). Strangely enough, none of these outlets seemed to take issue with the fact that an actual, real-life war was intentionally presented like an entertainment product, like announcing Season 2 of War on Ukraine: Turning the Tide.

On the contrary, the salivating responses by many media outlets were further proof, if any was needed, that the warmongering media had tasted blood and were yearning for more. In a world flooded with Pentagon propaganda in the form of movies, TV-series or video games, this ‘trailer’ was just one further addition to show how the boundaries between reality and entertainment have incrementally disintegrated. For journalists writing these pieces, war is a distant concept, like a soccer game you watch on TV and where you root for one team or the other and curse when one of your team fails to perform as you want them to. There is no sense of what war really is – only a faint notion of an idea from things seen on TV or the computer screen. What the editor-in-chief of the Kleine Zeitung condescendingly called “couch pacifism” – calling for peace from the comfort of your home while other people die, is not actually the issue; the issue, rather, is couch-warmongering, which politicians and the media do from the comfort of government buildings or editorial offices, while others have to bear the consequences of this. It is US senator Lindsey Graham who is on record saying, “As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person” (76). This definitely sounds like the motto that the mainstream media in the West seem to have subscribed to head over heels.

Conclusion

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” is a famous quote from George Orwell’s 1984 which shows the importance of people in power controlling the narrative and preventing people from ‘doing their own research’. If we look around us, we feel that an increasing number of people are feeling a divide, a cognitive dissonance between what our elites in politics and media are telling us and what our eyes, our ears and our instincts tell us. ‘If you want peace prepare for war’, is a popular Latin proverb that is often repeated these days to defend the necessity of military build-up and billions and billions worth of weapon shipments to Ukraine and Israel. The logic of this saying from a time when people fought person-to-person and with swords does not quite translate into the nuclear age.

We are constantly faced with the threat of war with our old enemy – Russia – and our new enemies – China, Iran, Islam. Fearmongering is omnipresent, and official narratives dominate the media terrain. The zone is being flooded with a wild mix of facts, half-truths and outright lies, and the result, it seems, in the words of Hannah Arendt, “of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world — and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end — is being destroyed” (77). People who no longer have any sense or any means to evaluate what is true and what is false, are much easier to mold and to manipulate. This is something that we are seeing very clearly with the discourse on war.

It should be clear to anyone that the standards media apply to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are blatantly different. In the one case they claim to support the underdog in the fight against the brutal occupier, yet in the other case they give a brutal occupier free reign to kill off, expel and immiserate a whole population. The only thing in common is that no-one is earnestly calling for both wars to end. In Ukraine, the claim is that if Russia were to stop fighting, the war would end; in Israel, they say it is the Palestinians that need to stop fighting for the war to end rather than the entity that is occupying them. It is a warped parallel universe, like stepping through the looking glass, but the end result is the same: perpetuation of war.

War, in a democracy, can only be fought if the population agrees. To get the population to agree to something that is fundamentally against their self-interests and against their human needs, massive propaganda is needed. As the examples in this article have shown, the media is all too willing to engage in propaganda, to make war seem appealing when it’s our war and appalling when it’s theirs, and to present more war – rather than negotiations – as the only feasible response to international conflicts. War is rebranded as a humanistic and compassionate act – the term ‘humanitarian intervention’ comes to mind – while peace is given a dirty image, something that our enemies want, not because they are benevolent, but because of some nefarious and self-serving reason. In this logic, everyone opposed to war, everyone calling for peace, is automatically the enemy, with all the name-calling and slander this entails.

The most consequential outcome of contemporary war discourse, however, is to make war respectable and a valid tool of policy-making once again. The reinterpretation and reevaluation of war and of weapons as a means to achieve peace is something that would have been unthinkable in this open fashion just a few years ago. Now, we are living the nightmare, thanks in no small part to a media drunk on war and unwilling to challenge the political elites on their destructive policies.

Had Orwell written 1984 today, it would have been more of a factual report than a novel. The metamorphosis of war into a synonym for peace that we are seeing today was Orwell’s brain child back then, but seeing it in use without a touch of irony, is certain to have him rolling in his grave – while seeing 2024 play out in disbelief.

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