I think he’s a war hawk who blusters about threat and patriotism while he would be sitting with his feet up while others do the dying and killing on his behalf.

We are no more at threat of war now than we have at any point since the end of WW2. Our Chief of the Defense Staff uses ChatGPT and gambling sites to tell us how at risk we are. I have no doubt our Defense Minister is doing similar and either has been in the bubble of lies so long he’s forgotten it’s bollocks and is now convinced the Russians will be storming the beaches any minute (despite their preoccupation with the disastrous invasion of a land neighbour). Or, he’s a greedy bastard wishing to line some pockets and is having a hissy fit on those people’s behalf at being told no.

It is not for your country that you fight when you go to war. It’s for your governors, your rulers, your capitalistic masters.

Neither your country, nor humanity, neither you nor your class — the workers — gain anything by war. It is only the big financiers and capitalists who profit by it.

War is bad for you. It is bad for the workers. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain by it. They don’t even get any glory from it, for that goes to the big generals and field marshals.

What do you get in war? You get lousy, you get shot, gassed, maimed, or killed. That is all the workers of any country get out of war.

War is bad for your country, bad for humanity: it spells slaughter and destruction. Everything that war destroys — bridges and harbors, cities and ships, fields and factories — all must be built up again. That means that the people are taxed, directly and indirectly, to build it up. For in the last analysis everything comes from the pockets of the people. So war is bad for them materially, not to speak of the brutalizing effect war has upon mankind in general. And don’t forget that 999 out of every 1,000 who are killed, blinded, or maimed in war are of the laboring class, sons of workers and farmers.

But there is one element in capitalist society for whom war is good. It is the element that coins money out of war, that gets rich on your ‘patriotism’ and self-sacrifice. It is the munitions manufacturers, the speculators in food and other supplies, the warship builders. In short, it is the great lords of finance, industry, and commerce who alone benefit by war.

For these war is a blessing. A blessing in more than one way. Because war also serves to distract the attention of the laboring masses from their everyday misery and turns it to ‘high politics’ and human slaughter. Governments and rulers have often sought to avoid popular uprising and revolution by staging a war. History is full of such examples. Of course, war is a double-edged sword. Often it, in turn, leads to revolt. But that is another story to which we shall return when we come to the Russian Revolution.

If you have followed me thus far, you must realize that war is just as much a direct result and inevitable effect of the capitalist system as are the regular financial and industrial crises.

When a crisis comes, in the manner in which I have described it, with its unemployment and hardships, you are told that it is no one’s fault, that it is ‘bad times’, the result of ‘over-production’ and similar humbug. And when capitalistic competition for profits brings about a condition of war, the capitalists and their flunkies — the politicians and the press — raise the cry ‘Save your country!’ in order to fill you with false patriotism and make you fight their battles for them.

from Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 6: War? Available to read for free here.