“As a podcaster and freelance journalist, Ole Nymoen admits he enjoys freedom of expression and other democratic rights in his home country of Germany. But he would not want to die for them. In a book published this week, Why I Would Never Fight for My Country, the 27-year-old argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on behalf of nation states and their rulers — even to fend off an invasion. Occupation by a foreign power might lead to a “shitty” life, he told the Financial Times . “But I’d rather be occupied than dead.” Refereshing in times of national chauvinism, rampant capitalism, neo-fascism… “A quarter of the 18,810 men and women who signed up in 2023 left the armed forces within six months. So far top officials “from the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, the two parties likely to form the next government, have ruled out a revival of traditional conscription. “Since Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion, Germany has had a steep rise in the number of conscie...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51