The advertising society

Advertising and marketing lead to a standardization of life plans and represent the greatest possible waste of creative potential.

Advertising is omnipresent in our capitalist society. It blares out at people on all channels, urging them to buy. Even spaces that were once free of advertising are increasingly being penetrated by it. The internet has given rise to entirely new forms of marketing, and in this way it has been transformed from an anarchic space of freedom into a capitalized product. Huge revenues are generated by advertising, and it is an important cornerstone of capitalism. But it is also the instrument that drives societies into fascism.
by Felix Feistel

[This article posted on 7/18/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-werbegesellschaft.]

It is impossible to imagine life without it: advertising. It is everywhere, intruding with its blunt and superficial slogans. Whether on the street in the form of posters, in newspapers or on the internet in the form of ads and pop-ups, or on television or radio in the form of loud, obtrusive clips. Even on online platforms like YouTube, where many people have fled precisely because they can no longer stand advertising, it is becoming more and more prevalent. Before almost every video, and often in the middle of them, advertising clips are played that sometimes run for minutes. You can often only skip them after 20 seconds, so you are either forced to endure the advertising or turn it off, which YouTube itself is eliminating its competitive advantage.

But it goes far beyond simple clips. The majority of videos on platforms like YouTube are now professionally produced by so-called influencers. These often become stars, especially among the younger generation, and act as advertising vehicles to promote products and bring them to an often young audience. This is usually done subliminally, not through aggressive advertising, but by subtly weaving the products into the video. Others openly sponsor their videos and present the sponsor in their video, so that not even an ad blocker can turn off the advertising. The same happens on other platforms such as Instagram or TikTok. Advertising is becoming an integral part of everyday life, permeating our entire lives and bombarding us on all channels.

Advertising is a central part of the capitalist system. This is because it can only survive through constant growth. However, growth is only possible if more and more products and services are sold. Capitalism therefore thrives on constantly selling new products to consumers.

It has long since ceased to be about fulfilling people's basic natural needs. On the contrary, capitalism does not fulfill any of the needs that people have by nature, but rather, in order to force an ever-increasing flood of goods onto the market, it has to constantly awaken new needs in people and then present them with the solution for satisfying them.

In doing so, it constantly appeals to the feelings of deprivation and inferiority that this system leaves behind in every person through trauma.

The advertising suggests that if you just buy this product or use that service, you can become the person you always wanted to be. But before you saw the commercial, you didn't even know that you ever wanted to be a different person – the advertising just made you think that. Products and goods are used to enhance the ego, as if this product would bring about a complete change of personality.

Of course, that is not the case. Someone who feels like a failure will do so even with a Rolex, a Porsche or the latest smartphone. Someone who lives in want can take as many courses as they like that show you how to become rich, beautiful and famous – but that will not make the feeling of want go away. Advertising is merely aimed at getting people to invest their money in something that they hope will enhance their status, by making false promises. In doing so, advertising fulfills the criminal offense of fraud and should actually be prosecuted.

Big business
But advertising itself has long since become an industry, a pillar of the economy of every country. According to the umbrella organization of the advertising industry, the German advertising industry alone generated sales of 48 billion euros in 2022. This was 1.24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In 2023, the advertising industry grew to 48.87 billion euros. This shows that the importance of advertising is only increasing. And platforms that offer advertising also generate enormous revenues: in 2023, they were around 26.3 billion euros. Google and Amazon in particular benefited from this, with 6.16 billion euros and 2.127 billion euros respectively. The advertising industry provides 897,800 jobs and is therefore a major source of employment. And that's not even counting influencers.
Influencers account for a growing share of the advertising industry, which is expected to reach around 16.4 billion US dollars worldwide in 2022. By 2025, the market is expected to grow to 22.2 billion dollars. Influencer advertising is aimed primarily at younger people. 3 out of 4 Germans between the ages of 16 and 24 encounter influencers on one platform or another every day. Cool, dynamic and incredibly creative, they are thus able to get their advertising messages across to young people. In general, the advertising industry presents itself as a creative field of activity.

Just how much creativity is wasted on meaningless content can be seen by simply turning on the television or switching off the ad blocker on YouTube. What could humanity achieve if all this creative potential were used to solve social problems and for art, instead of devising ways to sell people meaningless and superfluous products!

All that money, time and resources could be put to much better use.
It is not only the time of the advertising creators that is wasted in this way, but above all that of the media users. On average, Germans are online for 71 hours a week. Since the pseudo-pandemic, 68.5 percent of Germans have been spending more time on YouTube. In doing so, they are also coming into contact with advertising more and more. The permanent use of online platforms can lead to addiction. Young people are particularly affected by this. According to a study, around 680,000 children and young people were addicted to computer games and social media in 2023. The number of unreported cases is likely to be high. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to find anyone in public without a smartphone.

Social media has thus led people into a spiral of dependency, in which they are kept by clever advertising and encouraged to consume more and more. In this way, online content robs people of precious time. It is similar with television: on the private channels in particular, every film is repeatedly interrupted by lengthy advertising breaks. It has now become so extreme that one could speak more of continuous advertising breaks with film interruptions.

Great standardization

The logic of marketing does not remain within the framework of advertising and sales. It metastasizes into the entire society and is adopted everywhere. Today, people become the advertising medium of themselves. They have to market themselves, praise themselves and sell themselves in order to survive in the “labor market”, a dictatorial regime of forced self-exploitation. And so countless providers advertise themselves and their often questionable, but usually completely superfluous products and services via social media. People are always judged by how they perform, how they present themselves. In doing so, people are forced to follow a certain ideal. In this way, they play themselves out as successful entrepreneurs, self-made nouveau riche and experts in making money.

The nature of the capitalist marketing society means that people no longer acquire in-depth knowledge, skills and expertise, but instead focus their sole goal and their sole, often supposed, knowledge on devising the best ways and means of making money.

Money is the only purpose of all our actions and the only goal that people still set for themselves. And so they do everything they can to earn this money. This not only leads to an erosion of society, which degenerates into an egocentric dog-eat-dog society in which everything is in constant competition and struggle, but also to an erosion of the economy itself, as it is increasingly less about creating real values or fulfilling people's basic needs, but rather about staging oneself as a one-man business and generating money through shady offers. At the same time, all those who do not fulfill the ideal of the young, dynamic, successful and always working self-made entrepreneur are being weeded out of the performance-oriented competitive society.

Advertising, which has long since metastasized into series and films, awakens the same needs in all people, presents the same roles, body measurements and lifestyles as the ideal to pursue, and makes it the only purpose of life. In this way, it subjects people's minds to the same goals, ideals and desires that all people are equally aligned with. This happens subtly and causes the whole of society to change in order to re-establish these goals and ideals. The advertising industry is not only dominated by US corporations and platforms – the ideals and values also come from the USA, and even the propaganda techniques used were devised in the USA. Important names here are Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, who wrote the book “Propaganda: The Art of Public Relations”, on which the entire advertising industry is based, and Walter Lippmann.

In this way, the mass consumer society also achieves an extreme degree of conformity through advertising, to an extent that fascism would never have achieved. Because when so many people submit to the dictates of money and the temptations of advertising, life plans are standardized and cultural diversity is abolished.

Everything is steered in the same direction, subjected to the same demands. Profit, self-promotion and usability in an ominous market dominate humanity, absorb creative potential and channel it into exploitation. Advertising is an instrument of global fascism, whose sole purpose is endless growth, constant profit maximization and monopolization. It is no coincidence that advertising is based on the propaganda strategies of Edward Bernays, which were also shamelessly used by Josef Goebbels.

Advertising thus promotes a fascist hegemony of the absolute exploitation of all life and all resources in a completely monopolized market. It permeates all areas of life and transforms them into a semblance of life, into a great spectacle, as Guy Debord described in his standard work “The Society of the Spectacle”. In this way, standardization and uniformity dominate humanity, making it accessible and exploitable for the machinery of capitalism. Therefore, the advertising machine is a fundamental evil of our world. In every country, even in the supposedly communist, but in reality thoroughly capitalist China, advertising is omnipresent.

It is not only a nuisance, but also constantly talks people into new needs in order to increase sales, and it levels society. Therefore, it would be necessary to abolish advertising altogether.

Advertising is organized fraud. The products never live up to what the advertising promises, they are presented in an idealized way, and the unhealthy, harmful aspects of the products are suppressed. Advertising should actually be considered criminal and banned.

But since that is not going to happen, it makes sense to avoid advertising and thus also the attempts at external influence. A simple step in this direction is to install ad blockers such as Ublock Origin or Ablock Plus in your online browser. This also gets rid of ad trackers that monitor your online behavior. You could also unsubscribe from social networks and ban TV and radio. The internet offers the opportunity to select content in a targeted manner, and once an ad blocker is installed, this can even be done without any advertising at all. It is an easy first step that makes life more pleasant and frees you from these influences, at least to some extent.

The first step towards independence and personal responsibility, in which you become aware of your true needs, goals, ideals and ideas, is to overcome this external control, and this is at least partly possible by consistently banning advertising from your life.

Felix Feistel, born in 1992, studied law with a focus on international and European law. He worked as a journalist during his studies and has been working full-time as a freelance journalist and author since his state examination. He writes for manova.news, apolut.net, multipolar-magazin.de and on his own Telegram channel. His training as a trauma therapist in accordance with the Identity-Oriented Psychotrauma Theory and Therapy (IoPT), which he also works in, has broadened his understanding of the background to events in the world.


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Current article

Plain language about media literacy

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The arrogance of punishment

Prison stays rarely “improve” inmates and obscure the fact that the criteria for what is considered a crime are highly relative.

What is more criminal – to kill or to refuse to kill? The answer to this question seems obvious. And yet conscientious objection is severely punished in many countries, while it is highly regarded to have “successfully” killed an enemy in war. The definition of what is a crime and punishable is subject to time-related and cultural differences and is also determined by power interests. Punishment is obedience training, and prison is the worst possible threat that the state can use to keep an entire population in check. The idea of prison as a means of achieving moral improvement in the offender is highly questionable. In many cases, the humiliation suffered and the social stigmatization of ex-cons were the very triggers that led to a criminal career. Only a few people look for alternatives to prison.
by Heinrich Frei

[This article posted on 7/18/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-anmassung-des-strafens.]

A pre-trial detention should not destroy people. After the detention, life goes on and perhaps the criminal investigation shows that the person taken into custody is even innocent. Therefore, new measures to improve pre-trial detention are now being examined in Zurich and Bern. The situation for those arrested is to be improved by means of intake interviews and other measures. A pre-trial detention can last a very long time, even months (1).

District prison in Dietikon, Canton of Zurich. In the soundproof cells of this concrete bunker, prisoners on remand are also locked up for weeks and months. Photo: Heinrich Frei



Short prison sentences are very damaging

It has been known for a long time that “short prison sentences” – including pre-trial detention – “are very damaging. They threaten professional existence, have a stigmatizing effect, and put a strain on relationships with family and relatives, without being able to provide any impulses for reintegration. There is a danger that a prison sentence will actually start a criminal career instead of stopping it,” said Basel lawyer Urs Pfander years ago. Suicides and mental illness are common in prison.

Substitute imprisonment: instead of paying a fine, you go to prison

Almost half of all people who are sent to prison in Switzerland each year are there because they are unable to pay their fines or financial penalties (2).
A fine or penalty of 100 Swiss francs means a day in prison, or in some cases community service. A prisoner costs Switzerland 390 Swiss francs a day

My late acquaintance Hans Heinrich Zürrer was sentenced to 20 days in prison over 40 years ago for refusing to pay the military exemption tax as a conscientious objector. He regularly spent his vacations behind bars.

White-collar criminals rarely see the inside of a prison; it's usually the poor who end up there.

Deportation prison next to the runway at Zurich-Kloten Airport

This is where refugees who have not committed any crime are detained. Photo: Heinrich Frei, see also (3)

When two people do the same thing, it is not the same thing...
In our society, crimes are measured with different yardsticks. For murder, the German penal code provides for the highest penalty, life imprisonment. After 15 years, the sentence can be suspended on probation. However, if a soldier kills people who are designated as enemies by the state, and whom he does not know, this is permitted, for example the murder of a Taliban in Afghanistan, a Russian in Ukraine, or elsewhere a soldier of a foreign power or a terrorist.

Kurt Tucholsky: Soldiers are murderers
In 1931, Kurt Tucholsky wrote: “For four years, there were entire square miles of land where murder was compulsory, while it was just as strictly forbidden half an hour away. Did I say murder? Of course murder. Soldiers are murderers” (4).

Cyprian of Carthage: Impunity for major crimes

Cyprian of Carthage wrote around 200 AD:
“Murder is a crime when committed by a single person; but it is honored as a virtue and as bravery when committed by many! Thus, it is no longer innocence that ensures impunity, but the magnitude of the crime!” (5).

Civil war in Nigeria: Red Cross planes come under fire

In 1968, it was revealed that the company Bührle & Co had supplied embargoed countries with war material between 1963 and 1968, for a total of around 90 million Swiss francs, using forged export certificates. This amounted to around 16 percent of the company's turnover from arms sales.

During the Nigerian civil war and the famine, Swiss chartered aircraft belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were fired upon by Swiss guns from the Bührle company (6).

Prison for conscientious objectors, conditionally for Dieter Bührle
In November 1970, the general director of the arms factory, Dieter Bührle, was sentenced to eight months in prison and a fine of 200,000 Swiss francs for violating the Federal Council's decision on war material. All sentences were suspended. Correction to DODIS: A director of Bührle had to serve his sentence in the open prison Saxerriet in the Rhine Valley. The Bührle director Gabriel Lebedinsky worked in Saxerriet during his imprisonment in the office, as my acquaintance Robert Widmer told me. Robert was imprisoned in Saxerriet at the time for conscientious objection. One consequence of Dr. Dieter Bührle's conviction was that he had to leave the general staff as a colonel in the Swiss army.

In 1999, the Bührle Group sold its cannon production, Oerlikon Contraves Defence, to the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall.

Justitia, the goddess of justice. Fountain in the old town of Biel. Justitia often weighs with the wrong scales, photo: Heinrich Frei

Weapons for terrorists and weapons for wars

The Bührle case shows that different standards are applied in our society.

Aiding and abetting murder by supplying weapons is almost a trivial offense, while conscientious objection to military service was severely punished in Switzerland until 1996.

Even today, people who sell weapons to terrorists are severely punished, but companies that supply warring states with war material, wars that often result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, have nothing to fear. The arms exports are carried out with the blessing of the Federal Council, from Bern. On paper, it has been written since 1973: No export licenses are issued for war material “to areas in which an armed conflict is taking place, threatens to break out or where dangerous tensions otherwise exist”. The “loophole” that supposedly allowed Switzerland to legally supply warring regimes with armaments in recent years was the maintenance of the industrial capacity of the domestic armaments industry. The Federal Council continuously authorized the export of war material to warring NATO states, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and so on.

Why prisons are of no use to anyone
The focus of today's criminal law is no longer on the Old Testament concept of retribution and atonement, but on the prevention and rehabilitation of the offender, as Peter Haffner wrote in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on February 2, 2015.

However, the fundamental question regarding criminal law and the penal system is: can criminals be reformed by spending time in prison?
The director of the Zurich penal institution Pöschwies in Regensdorf, Andreas Naegeli, said, “Actually, our system” (of prisons) “is crazy, but it's the only one we have.” In Pöschwies, they try to rehabilitate criminals. According to Director Nägeli, with some success, “the vast majority of prisoners in Regensdorf do not reoffend”. “Our system is actually crazy,” write Isabel Heusser and Fabian Baumgartner in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on March 13, 2023.

There are alternatives to the prison system

The lawyer Thomas Galli wrote a book about the situation in German prisons, entitled “Weggesperrt, warum Gefängnisse niemandem nützen” (Locked away, why prisons are of no use to anyone). In his book, he questions the prison sentences that are common today.

In addition, he describes in this book how he learned the mathematical rules of criminal law during his studies:
“If A acts in such a way, this results in the corresponding criminal offense B and then the legal consequence C of x months or years of imprisonment.”
Galli's first job was as a department head at the Bavarian prison in Amberg, where he was responsible for 200 inmates. In the event of violations, there was arrest. If an inmate was caught with heroin, he was given up to four weeks of solitary confinement, with a bed and a Bible.

In retrospect, Galli realized the unjustifiable treatment that such a detention can inflict on a person, especially an addict. He realized early on that this is not the way to reform a person.

In his book, Galli shows that there are alternatives to the prison system. By providing alternatives to prisons, we could all live more safely and have less to fear from crime, writes Galli.

Sources and notes:
(1) Zurich and Bern are testing a more humane form of pre-trial detention www.tagesanzeiger.ch/untersuchtungshaft-modellversuch-von-bern-und-zuerich-126598769347
(2) Imprisonment in lieu of fines: It's not about the money | WOZ Die Wochenzeitung
(3) Rejected ed refugees in Switzerland, a rich and happy country — IFOR Switzerland — MIR Suisse (ifor-mir.ch)
(4) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian_von_Karthago
(5) (dodis.ch/33501). dodis.ch/36188)
Heinrich Frei, born in 1941, is an architect and involved in various peace initiatives in Switzerland. He also works with Swisso Kalmo.

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Fear of Russia

The West fears the large country in the east because it accuses it of having an aggressive mentality.

The European powers feel threatened by Russia. Yet it was Russia that was invaded by the West on several occasions, not the other way around. Where does the fear of the danger from the East come from?
by Rüdiger Rauls

[This article posted on 7/17/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/angst-vor-russland-2.]

Historical facts

The fear of Russia cannot be explained or justified by events and experiences from the past. Never in European history has Russia invaded those Western states that now see themselves as threatened by it. Russia's invasions of the West were always reactions to the invasion of Western states. There has never been a Russian initiative to conquer Western territories; at most, Russia participated in the plundering expeditions of other states, such as the partitions of Poland, in which Prussia and Austria were the driving forces, or the Hitler-Stalin Pact to divide Poland.

The world wars are the best-known examples of invasions from the west. Less well known is the involvement of western nations in the attempted suppression of the Russian Revolution of 1917/18. After the abdication of the Tsar, the German military had seized the opportunity and continued their advance into Russia. After the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the new Soviet government, large parts of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states were under German rule. Even Poland, which had gained independence through the Russian revolution, waged war against the Soviet Union in 1920/1921 in order to annex further territories. But the Red Army repelled both the Poles and the Germans.

In 1918, expeditionary armies of the Entente, consisting of French, British and American troops, landed in eastern Russia to support the White Guards in their fight against the Bolsheviks. In the same year, French and Greek troops occupied the Crimea and Odessa. In eastern Russia, 70,000 Japanese had invaded, taken Vladivostok and even founded their own republic.

They all wanted to put an end to the proletarian revolution and re-establish Russian conditions in their own favor. However, the French Black Sea fleet was soon forced to withdraw because its sailors mutinied and hoisted the red flag in solidarity with the Russian revolution. The civil war in the Soviet Union, which was supported from the outside, lasted well into the 1920s.

After that, the country experienced only a few years of peace before German troops invaded again in 1941. Their declared goal was to conquer a new living space in the east. Politically, fascism was about the destruction of what it saw as the Bolshevik-Jewish subhuman and their communist dictatorship. The Second World War raged in the Soviet Union for four years, leaving millions dead, cities in ruins, and poverty, misery and hunger in its wake.

All the countries that invaded Russia and the USSR at the time are the same ones that now feel threatened. They do not regret the suffering they caused, but rather present themselves as victims of a suffering that has not yet happened to them.

They are potential victims of a potential suffering that they have imagined for themselves, but unlike Russia, they have not yet really experienced.

Is this pre-emptive sympathy an attempt to assuage subliminally felt guilt? Or is it simply indifference to the suffering that the rulers of Western countries have inflicted on peoples all over the world over the centuries? Is the aim to make all this suffering forgotten by presenting oneself today as a victim, as a fellow sufferer in the making, so to speak?

Self-deception

In view of the decline in the ability to think analytically in the West, it is of course possible that even large sections of the Western leadership are no longer aware of all these facts from their own history. The general dumbing down, right up to the highest levels of leadership, should not be underestimated. It is alarming how many people in the West are unaware of all these historical facts or do not want to admit them. Some of this thinking may be calculated, but most of it is political conviction or ignorance.

It is therefore not surprising that even a large proportion of Western leaders are clearly deeply convinced that Russia has brought war back to Europe. This is something that can be heard time and again in political views and statements. Many of these leaders are no longer aware that the war against Yugoslavia was the first to be waged by NATO states in Europe since 1945, as incredible as this may seem.

They have forgotten it, repressed it, and the younger ones may never even have known about it. Moreover, over the years, people have successfully convinced themselves that there is a difference between their own actions back then and Russia's actions today. The public, both inside and outside the talk shows and magazines of the public broadcasting corporations, were satisfied with this. No one questioned what this difference was supposed to be. In addition, people feel justified in their actions because of the superiority of their own values, which they claim to stand for.

Almost no one wants to admit that the facts are different from the picture we have of them.

Western leaders are no longer aware of the facts that it was they themselves who moved closer to the Russian borders. They have forgotten or suppressed the fact that they were the ones who broke their promises to Russia not to expand NATO territory. After many warnings, Russia has now reacted, and the political West has been caught off guard.

Because Poland and the Baltic states actually feel threatened, they are calling for the construction of fortifications along their borders with Russia and Belarus to prevent Russia's army from advancing further. These are barriers, not preparations for attacks on Russian territory. If the so-called Iron Curtain was erected by the Warsaw Pact countries as a protection against Western attacks, the demands for barriers today show how much NATO now sees itself on the defensive. It no longer seems to believe that it can attack Russia.

The Western opinion-makers in the media, academia and politics believe their own horror scenarios that Russia will not be satisfied with its victory over Ukraine. They are firmly convinced that Moscow will continue to expand westwards. This is partly propaganda, but at its core it corresponds to their own thinking, and this thinking is the core of their fear.

They fear that Russia could act exactly as they would do if they were in Russia's position.

It is in line with their own thinking not to relent when an opponent appears weak and it is certain that he cannot withstand their superior power. This was the case in Yugoslavia, where they did not stop until the country was dismembered. It was also the case with the successful color revolutions in the post-Soviet space. The more successful this approach was, the more often the West relied on it. The time and circumstances were favorable, and why not take advantage of the opportunity for one's own benefit?

If they were Russia, they would act in the same way, because that is how they have always done it themselves. They pushed ahead with NATO's eastward expansion when they were sure that Russia was too weak to oppose this advance. They still thought it was weak and overestimated their own strength when they began to arm Ukraine. Despite the defeats in Afghanistan and the Arab world, which they quickly glossed over, they were still firmly convinced at the beginning of the war that they could break up Russia like they did Yugoslavia.

Threatened from all sides

As Ukraine grows weaker in the war against Russia, fears and warnings of the Russian threat grow. The media never tire of scaring the population with this. They are literally falling over themselves to create threat scenarios. They are looking for ways to increase the defense capabilities of the army and the preparedness of the population. The reintroduction of compulsory military service is also moving ever closer. Public discussions and appeals to become war-ready reinforce the impression of extreme danger.

Instead of being guided by objectivity and prudence in their own behavior, short-sighted decisions are made that are driven by fears, wishful thinking or even delusions. Headlessness reigns, driven by arrogance on the one hand and self-deception on the other. The decision-makers in the political West are unable to recognize and understand the principles of Russian action. But they seem even less aware of what actually drives them and what political goals they are pursuing. What do they want to achieve in this conflict with Russia, or with China, or with both?

The leaders of the political West see themselves as victims, threatened from all sides. China is destroying the German economy with its overcapacity. Russia wants to invade Germany and destroy our democracy. Right-wing extremists are threatening our social cohesion, Muslims want to overpopulate us and abolish our culture.

And then there is also climate change. The populations of the West are in a state of panic. They have been left without orientation by the opinion-makers in the media, politics and science.

These opinion-makers create fears because they themselves are afraid. They themselves believe in the dangers with which they unsettle people. It is their own fears that they spread in their media and explanations of the situation in the world. They are the wealthy who fear for their prosperity. That is the core of their fear. Russians, Chinese, immigrants, recipients of citizen's income, they all threaten the prosperity that the wealthy have acquired with their interests and demands. Freedom, democracy, our Western way of life and all the other fine-sounding values are just other words for it.

The political West and its elites have no plan, even if some people never tire of assuming that there is one behind all the chaos. They act as if they know what is going on, or they act mysteriously or make dark allusions. But with this posturing, they are playing right into the hands of those who are causing the fear. The leaders in the West are driven, driven aimlessly by the internal contradictions of their societies. What kind of sensible plan could there be behind the idea of picking a fight with both Russia and China, after having had to run for your life from an army of Afghan farmers?

There is a complete lack of any realistic assessment of the situation and the balance of power, both among the leaders and their critics. Who seriously believes that people like Annalena Baerbock, Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen and whatever their other names may be have a realistic and in-depth overview of developments in the world in the power centers of the political West?

Russia is pursuing a strategy for its war and its political goals in the rest of the world, especially in the context of the BRICS countries. China has one for its economic and political development. This is recognizable in their unexcited actions and calm approach. The fact that the political West does not have all this is what makes it afraid and feels threatened.

Rüdiger Rauls, born in 1952, is a repro photographer and the author of several books. The best known are “How Money Works”, “The Future of Socialism”, “Colony Corporation War” and “The Development of Early Societies”. He runs the blog “Political Analysis - A Materialist Interpretation of the Processes and Events in the World”.

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