They Make a Desert and Call It Peace
Once again, I turn to Dietmar Pichler to caution people that 'peace' is used as an anti-Western operation and how to recognize the real from the fake peace movements
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“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”—Tacitus, historian, 98 AD
When Trump sends crime bosses Witkoff and Kushner to Russia for alleged ‘peace’ talks, it is to create illusion. Criminals do not want peace.
In reality, “the autocrats idea of peace is total domination,” explains fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
Trump is waging illegal wars to benefit himself and Putin’s Russia, and undermining Ukraine to benefit himself and Putin’s Russia.
As a refresher, I turned to disinformation analyst, Dietmar Pichler, to remind us how the word ‘peace’ and ‘peace’ movements are weaponized.
“The core nature of the pacifist and peace movement in the West, as we see it today and as we saw it during the Cold War, was a quite clear anti-Western bias and the idea that deterrence does not work and weapons always bring war,” he says.
“Stasi (East German intelligence) officer Werner Großmann stated openly after the Cold War: “That was also one goal of ours, to exploit the peace movement in West Germany for our means.”
Pichler continues: “There is plenty of evidence that intelligence officers infiltrated the Cold War peace movement, including recruiting agents of influence and front organizations, all in the name of ‘peace,’ of course, with disarmament in mind, only on one side, the Western one.”
Russia is always at war, and the fake peace movements are designed to weaken those under attack.
Blind In One Eye
“This main direction of the peace movement we can also see now, since the full scale invasion of Ukraine, when the main narrative goes as ‘more weapons bring more destruction and death,’ ignoring that Ukraine needs air defence to protect its citizens, ignoring that Russians kill civilians under occupation, as famously known from Bucha and many other examples,” says Pichler.
“Pacifism and peace have a good ‘image,’ but the movements put them in another context. In the case of Ukraine, it means it should subjugate itself and give in to Russia’s demands. In order to maintain this narrative, they also need to ignore and distort Russia’s imperialistic motives, the genocidal rhetoric, the bloody occupation regime and the criminal abduction of children, because it does not fit. On the other hand, Russia’s invasion is condemned only superficially — if at all — and explained as a reaction to ‘NATO expansion,’ so again the West is blamed.”
He adds: “These ‘movements’ only go one direction, they are blind in one eye.”
In a previous interview on this subject, Pichler told Bette Dangerous: “During the Cold War, there was an organization called the World Peace Council, some called it a KGB front organization, it was financed by the Soviet Union… It was anti-Western, pro-Soviet Union… the strategy of the KGB was to make it look like it was very diverse… but the point was to weaken the West.”
I often repost one of my podcast interviews with the Vienna-based analyst, who frequently attends our weekly Tuesday Happy Hour meetings to update us on the latest breaking news on Russian attacks on democratic nations.
It’s important that we have armor against the upside-down world of information warfare. Those promoting peace in the same breath as appeasement in Ukraine are actually promoting Putin’s war objectives, and as he explained, there is a Soviet history of infiltration and the co-opting of peace narratives.
When Russian stooges promote ‘peace,’ they’re really doing Kremlin theater.
When autocrats talk of peace, what they really mean is they want their opponents to surrender their weapons so they can go on murdering, raping, torturing, stealing children, resources, and borders indefinitely.
This infiltration is designed to demoralize societies, to make us think that only us, the Western side, needs to lay down weapons. There’s a script behind all this.
“Being Austrian and knowing our history, if there’s one thing we learned about the crimes our own ancestors committed is there are times when things are black and white… if you take a look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and take a look at movements like Code Pink — they were here in Vienna for a Peace Conference… we know that this ‘peace’ movement during the era of the ‘80s — the actors that were active back then — a lot of them are active now, propagating that we should not support Ukraine, the same people! So what we always forget is that it’s not only that Putin is using the same techniques, they can rely on the same people they brainwashed back in the Soviet era,” according to Pichler.
So just be leery when the word ‘peace’ is used by autocrats — it’s often for propaganda purposes, as with Trump’s Board of Peace.
As geopolitical analyst Dr. Michael MacKay reminds us: “Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is a Den of Thieves, a Cabal of Autocrats, a League of Villains and an Abyss of Nihilism. No civilized country will have anything to do with this freak show.”
Few things are as cut and dry as the war in Ukraine, but the world still slumbers under conjured illusions.
“There is no justification for evil,” says Pichler. “What is happening in Ukraine, you have an evil empire attacking a neighbor. Ukraine is a developing democracy, but there is no way to say these countries are the same. There is a good guy in this — it’s a really simple story. We don’t need a false equivalency here. There is a good guy.”
I am hoping it will become easier to spot the real from the fakes.
When Pope Leo speaks of peace, it is with sincerity.
Pope Leo XIV has made 400 appeals for peace in his first year, urging the “lords of war” to unarm and disarm.
But for imperialists like Putin and Trump, they will lie to your face — they will make a desert and call it peace.
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Dietmar Pichler is a disinformation analyst, resilience strategist, and Editor-in-Chief of Inved Insights published by the Institute for the Defense of European Democracies. To help support Dietmar Pichler’s work on exposing Russian and global disinformation strategies, please make a donation here:
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