Over the past decades, and especially in the last few years, war has been radically reframed in the public mind. It’s not raw and brutal bloodshed, senseless destruction and atrocious human pain and suffering. War is no longer seen as an abomination, as the absolute worst case scenario that we must all do our best to avoid. The mainstream media and political leadership of the western world is enthusiastically calling for war, with ominous similarities to the run up to World War I.
Marketed as a “policy option”, a “moral obligation”, or even a “necessary evil” to safeguard the security of future generations, even in the lack of a tangible threat.
For this reason I have produced a documentary and interview series to warn the public of the disastrous outcome that awaits us if and when the Third World War breaks out. We sought out the most outspoken dignitaries warning the world of the futility and stupidity of war. The interviews reveal the backstory of the current theaters of war and place them within the tragic cycle of hubris and human folly that rears it ugly head throughout history.
The methods, intensity and speed of propaganda has evolved greatly since the first great war just over a century ago. Language itself has become weaponized to convince the people to welcome another grand conflict that will spell certain disaster. Civilian deaths are reframed as “collateral damage”, biblical-level destruction flattening of entire cities has been rebranded as “degradation of capabilities”, while reckless escalation, even outright military aggression is now spun as “deterrence.” Each layer of abstraction and each addition of “Newspeak” terminology to our daily news diet, adds even greater distance between the decisions being made and the human beings who will live, or not get to live, with the consequences. War is Peace, diplomacy is weakness, War is inevitable. Nothing is inevitable but thinking makes it so.
This abstraction makes war feel technical, manageable, and remote, more like something that is meant to be handled by accountants, rather than soldiers whose life is on the line, or even worse, something to be borne by innocent civilians. It has become impersonal, when it is and always has been deeply, savagely, viscerally personal. People, especially in the West, have been fortunate enough to have forgotten the reality of actual conflict. This is why it is so easy to ridicule and to marginalize dissenting voices and to dismiss anyone who objects to mass murder as naïve, unpatriotic, or even as a traitor to their own people.
However, it is also easy to despair and to simply resign to the fact that humanity’s moral compass is irreparably broken. When wars keep repeating themselves with familiar justifications, when civilian suffering is for the first time in history actually being live-streamed and when the slaughter of children is being witnessed by billions around the world and still nothing changes, it is easy to believe that speaking out is futile. The abstraction of the propaganda machine has worked too well: even when exposed to the most horrific images of war, the emotional disconnect remains. After all, it’s not our sons being abducted in broad daylight and sent to the front line to die a pointless death and it’s not our infants being killed by bombs targeting maternity wards. It’s all happening far away, to people who probably deserve it, who probably threaten us and our way of life, who gleefully plan our demise and who hate us for our freedom.
But allowing oneself to slip into despair and to accept that “this is the way of the world” is not without consequence either. Resignation is not neutrality: it is acquiescence, if not complicity. Those who study history know very well that the normalization and the proliferation of war doesn’t just depend on those who actively advocate it, but on the silence of all the rest, of all those who believe resistance no longer matters.
This is precisely why I chose to become involved in the production of a very important documentary, produced by my dear friend James Patrick, with whom I collaborated before on the “Planet Lockdown” film. The new documentary, “World War III”, closely examines today’s major conflict zones in Ukraine and in the Middle East through in-depth interviews with military, economic, and geopolitical specialists. It questions the logic of perpetual conflict and it sheds a much needed, bright, harsh and unforgiving light on the realities of war. Most importantly, it removes all the abstractions and all the soft focus lenses that have made the current situation not just possible, but acceptable and “normal” to too many people. “World War III” is an attempt to interrupt that normalization.
The voices featured in this film are prominent not merely because they are famous, or well-established in their fields, but because they have consistently challenged the dominant narratives that try to sell war as inevitable, necessary, or even benevolent. They come from different backgrounds and disciplines, but they share a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions: Who benefits from war? Who pays the price? What are the forces and the incentives that keep driving repeated failures?
Over the next three months, I’ll be also focusing on the voices in this documentary and doing my bit to amplify them, through a series of articles on each interviewee and their unique perspectives, experiences and ideas. We’ll kick off the series with Ron Paul, a legendary anti-war voice that has led by example and fought for peace and non-intervention for decades, and we’ll continue with many other compelling experts, including General Harald Kujat, retired German Air Force four-star general, Alain Juillet, former Director of Intelligence at the French foreign intelligence agency (DGSE), Douglas MacGregor, retired US Army colonel and Prince Michael of Lichtenstein.
Watch one of the trailers for the film here:
Consider donating to the production of the film to raise awareness of the futility of war in a time when are governments are calling for a conflict that will destroy the west. Please click here
