A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - IDEAS AND STRUGGLES: Cursed Be War! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

An Appeal to a Beautiful Life Force ---- In these bellicose times, 
propaganda, the stirring up of base instincts through posters in the 
subway, announcements in the media, and games on social networks, all 
create a climate conducive to violence and other perversities inherent 
in war. It is a pleasure to find a small but very informative book, 
entitled Cursed Be War, written by Pierre Drouillard-Lefèvre and 
published by Divergences. A heartfelt salute to the orphan of Gentioux 
and to this plea, "Never again!" The author emphasizes the proliferation 
of conflicts in the world. "Wherever you look, the strong devour the 
weak. The gears are turning. New major confrontations are brewing." With 
supporting figures, he demonstrates that "in the age of total war and 
the balance of terror, humanity concentrates a destructive power 
unprecedented in history, any escalation jeopardizing its very 
survival." The rise of destructive forces regularly fuels the media. For 
him, "it is therefore vital to rebuild a popular anti-militarist 
consciousness, accessible and adapted to our times. This is the ambition 
of this manual[...]."
It is worth noting that in France today, no major voice of the 
institutional left speaks out against war with the same force as Jean 
Jaurès. The President of the Republic readily adopts warlike vocabulary, 
even against a virus, a posture of wartime leader. One only needs to 
look at the Bastille Day parade on an avenue emptied of the population. 
Our country has a cult of the military; our dubious expertise was 
exported to the dictatorships of Latin America in the 1970s and 80s, to 
South Africa, to Françafrique... The arms industry is powerful, 
employing 200,000 people, with increasingly successful arms fairs, and 
France is the world's second-largest arms exporter.

"Nationalism Leads to Massacre"

What kind of war are we talking about? Pierre Drouillard-Lefèvre offers 
the following definition: "War is a process of extreme, mass, 
disciplined, and institutionalized violence,[...]the product of 
centralized power." He traces its origins to the writings of Rousseau 
and, more recently, James C. Scott. For him, "nationalism leads to 
massacre," both externally and internally.

The entry into war is a shock, a state of emergency, freedoms suspended 
indefinitely, and the surveillance of the population established. The 
aim of war is supposedly to prevent the end of the world... Yet the 
world has seen ends before. In North America, South America, 
Australia... Colonization is a war of conquest, of destroying peoples. 
There is no land without people, except perhaps in Antarctica...

Fascism loves war; it finds its origin there, along with violence and 
contempt for the "inferior." For Aimé Césaire, the oppressor is also 
alienated and decivilized by his own crimes. He destroys himself. For 
the fascist writer Marinetti, "war is beautiful." D'Annunzio is on the 
front lines, as is Ernst Jünger.

From Profits to Ecocide

For others, war is a source of profit. Budgets increase, and war is 
privatized with private military companies, as in Iraq (see Stéphane 
Lanos, *Les sous-traitants*, Ed. La Lanterne, 2025). Research is fueled 
by conflict: drones, nuclear fire, artificial intelligence, the horror 
of the augmented soldier. And then, after destruction, reconstruction is 
necessary-more profit! Current events in Ukraine and Gaza demonstrate 
this. Everyone knows Anatole France's famous quote: "We think we are 
dying for our country, but we are dying for industry." Let's not forget 
ecocide. In Vietnam, napalm, Agent Orange-dioxin. Worldwide, the ongoing 
devastation caused by nuclear tests, the dumping of nuclear weapons in 
ocean trenches, and the storage of nuclear submarines in the ports of 
the former Soviet Union.

Pierre Drouillard-Lefèvre calls for disarmament but also for the right 
to self-defense. Hating war without laying down arms. Peace does not 
mean bowing our heads before violence. He refers to true pacifists such 
as the philosopher Simone Weil, Albert Camus, Robert Desnos, and the 
members of La Nueve. An interesting reminder of the anarcho-syndicalist 
tradition against war in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He 
concludes with a call to action: "While there is still time, we can 
replace the death instinct that hangs over our world with a life force."

* Pierre Drouillard-Lefèvre
Cursed Be War: A Manual of Antimilitarist Resistance
Divergences Publishing, 2025

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8667
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