'I Would Fight for Germany', TAZ columnist and socialist utopian Leon Holly proclaims

In yet another milestone on the road to war (hell), left-woke media proudly advances pro-war agit-prop

Enough with the monkey stuff, back to ‘hard’ geopolitical nonsense. Today, I’ll bring to you an op-ed by one Leon Holly, a self-declared journalist and omega male (sic) who proudly announces his willingness to ‘fight for Germany’.

We note, in passing, the utter depravity of the 1996-born young man (sic) who could have volunteered for the Bundeswehr (which, for some twenty or so years, has, like the US after Vietnam, ‘paused’ conscription and switched to an all-volunteer force) but instead went to university and works as a ‘journo’.

Hence, in the best manner of more notorious chicken-hawks who never served a day in uniform but virtue-signal their willingness to sign up and fight, Mr. Holly is perhaps the best (worst) example of everything that’s wrong with legacy media.

Translation and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines.

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Fighting for Germany: To arms, comrades!

Wars everywhere and the question of who in Germany would lie down in the trenches in the event of an attack. Our author says: Me!

By Leon Holly, TAZ, 17 Aug. 2024 [source]

The scenario has probably been played out a million times in Germany [speak for yourself], at the latest since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At pub counters, family tables, and in newspaper feuilletons, the country asks itself: what would you do, what would I do, if one day Russian tanks rolled across the Oder and Neisse rivers? [the rivers marking Germany’s eastern border; it’s an absurd question to ask, for the NATO charter’s art. 5 is crystal-clear: Germany would have been at war way earlier, but that notion doesn’t trouble our self-declared ‘geopolitical’ expert…]

In personal conversations, many friends and family members told me that they would run away. But not to fight. And certainly not for Germany.

The author Ole Nymoen recently struck a similar note in Die Zeit. There is no unified national interest that can be defended, Nymoen correctly explains, but above all different class interests: ‘If I now ask myself what I would be prepared to fight for, then I have to be honest: for almost nothing. And certainly not for “my country”, not for this state, and not for Europe [sic] either.’

Running away is out of the question, was my first reaction. Not a thought, more of a reflex. The rationalisations followed: the fight against the threat of occupation would first and foremost be a fight for those who cannot fight or flee. Because they are too old or too weak [ah, the most vulnerable groups], or have the wrong passport [like, which ones?] and are not allowed to leave Germany [like ‘foreign nationals’ who ‘harbour sympathies’ for ‘the enemy’?]. Always talking about solidarity and ideals and then booking a train to Switzerland when things get serious? How could I look at myself in the mirror then?

I don’t know whether I would be ‘fit for war’ , as the Minister of Defence would like me to be. I haven’t served, I’ve never been through the mud, and I’ve never held a G36 assault rifle. If the going gets tough, I might be able to support the defence better in other ways. But I don’t want to say goodbye [this is mindbogglingly moronic, hence apologies to all readers are in order; yet, this is the mindset of ‘journos’ these days: sycophantic apologists for ‘the Minister of Defence’ wants this, and they shall oblige him or her].

Some Things Are Worth Fighting For

So far, I have been confronted with war merely through books: Remarque and Jünger, the First World War, a senseless slaughter. But then there was someone like George Orwell, who travelled to Spain in 1936 and joined a Trotskyist militia to defend the republic against the onslaught of Franco fascism [the give-away is ‘Troskyist’; Mr. Orwell would have ended up in a gulag in Stalin’s Soviet Union, or worse].

Orwell didn’t glorify war either, chronicling, in his Homage to Catalonia, the boredom at the front and the bullet that pierced his neck. But I understood that some things are worth fighting for [here I find myself in agreement: my family, my patch of land, my family’s honour, I’d go with].

But for what exactly? For thousands of years, young men have been patriotically galvanised and then burnt to death. The Roman poet Horace wrote: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country [patria means so much more than ‘one’s country’, as I mentioned in the preceding paragraph]. An offer I would gladly refuse.

But the author and journalist Artur Weigandt, who has since responded to Nymoen in the current issue of Die Zeit, wrote, quite correctly, on X:

The question of whether to fight for Germany or not will never arise. If Russia were to launch an invasion, we would not be fighting for something, but against something. That’s the unifying element that many people don’t understand.

Anarchists to the Front Line [Mr. Holly actually wrote that]

Let’s take Ukraine as an example. Nationalists are fighting against Russia there, saying: my country, right or wrong. But since day one of the large-scale invasion, Ukrainian anarchists have also been on the front line, organised in the resistance committee. These militant leftists are hardly suspected of fighting for the Ukrainian state in its current form. Nevertheless, for them the fight against the invaders is an act of solidarity and necessary to create a free society tomorrow [Mr. Holly is so abjectly wrong about the Russian invasion, which occurred after many years of provocations, many of which can be traced back to that fateful 2008 Bucharest NATO summit that promised full membership to Ukraine; those who are inclined to object here, please consider John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs on these matters].

Germany is also a long way from a socialist utopia [thank God, but it’s bad enough as it is]. And yet there is much about society and the constitution that is worth defending, such as the liberal basic rights or the welfare state requirement in the Basic Law [except during the Covid emergency].

Especially when the alternative is reactionary Russian mafia capitalism [I’m so glad western pharmaceutical and military corporations are ‘the good guys’, for otherwise that’s a projection, if there ever was one], which would not shy away from letting even Zeit journalists fall out of windows, arresting queer people in Berlin, and—if the Kyiv suburb of Butsha can serve as an example—massacring civilians in Potsdam [Mr. Putin as a kind of catch-all bogeyman].

For some people, there is no war that would be so just that they would let themselves be put through the meat grinder for a good cause. But the question is what conditions must be met for people who argue like Nymoen or who do not fundamentally reject military defence to take up arms. Even the socialist utopia might one day have to defend itself in a defensive war [but…if said socialist utopia, according to Lenin, comes about once ‘the state’ has ‘withered away’ and the entire world is part of said socialist utopia, who would that utopian thing be defended against? Space aliens?].

In the end, all the prosperity debates about one’s own will to fight and that of others are—convenient: boutique pacifists and boutique militants play out the emergency from a safe distance. So it is quite possible that some of those who are now peddling their readiness for war will ultimately prefer to seek safe havens should Russian Iskander missiles hit Friedrichstrasse. But it is just as conceivable that some who could never imagine it will then take up arms.

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Bottom Lines

What a painful, mind-numbing, and ill-informed rant by a young man who ‘didn’t serve’. Personally, I think Mr. Holly is trying to impress (seduce) young women with this kind of ‘tough talk’, but we cannot deny his disturbing mental gymnastics that justifies, for him as a left-winger, to close ranks with ‘the state’, which is run for the benefits of powerful, vested interests, specifically the military-industrial complex.

Mr. Holly knows exactly—nothing, and this becomes apparent by the fact that he just writes a few words and doesn’t even try to pass muster, as a female Austrian wokefied journo tried some time ago (and failed miserably):

Woke Feminist Journo 'Tries' to Join the Army

Mr. Holly didn’t even get that far. All he offers are stupefyingly ill-informed and, above all, empty words.

He is also shockingly uninformed, in particular about the sad history of social democracy in Germany, whose breakthrough to power came about—in late July/early August 1914 when the Social Democratic Party voted for the war.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

I shall, for the sake of completeness, mention that, when Germany stared at defeat in autumn 1918, the Social Democrats took over and cooperated, without shame, qualms, and hesitation, with the German (imperial) army to suppress any kind of far-left, Bolshevik-utopian revolutionary ambitions (these are very long reads):

Germany 1918: Gunpowder, Treason and Plot by the Business, Financial, and Military Elites against the German People

Germany 1918, pt. 2: Accounting for Hopes Betrayed, Conspiracy, and Counter-Revolution

People like Mr. Holly are, in fact, extremely dangerous, because he would, in all likelihood, become the commissar that rounds up people to be pressganged to fight ‘in the east’.

Just like is happening in Ukraine right now. But it’s going to be ‘an act of solidarity’ that is ‘necessary’ to ‘create a socialist utopia’.

We’ve seen these snake oil salesmen before. They simply won’t go away, and neither should be our awareness of the history behind key events.

P.S.: I spent eight months as a conscript in the Austrian Army, and I’m currently a ‘reservist’ (until I reach age 50). I cannot image what kind of contempt active-duty soldiers must have for Mr. Holly and his ilk.