Helga Zepp-LaRouches tale på Schiller Instituttets ungdomskonference:
At anvende Gandhis ikke-voldelige metode til at stoppe atomkrig,
på vej mod et nyt paradigme for menneskeheden.

Den 21. august 2022. HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Vi befinder os i et yderst interessant øjeblik i historien.  Normalt, når man lever, går man i skole, man studerer, man får et job; der sker ikke så meget, og så har folk almindeligvis den idé, at, ja, der er alligevel ikke noget, man kan gøre for at skabe store forandringer.  Normalt er dette ofte rigtigt, fordi vi har levet i et system, som var temmelig statisk og fastlåst. Men det er nu helt anderledes.  Jeg tror, det er vigtigt, at man udvikler en reel fornemmelse for øjeblikkets absolutte dramatik, for i min levetid var den eneste tilnærmelse til det der sker, og jeg siger “tilnærmelse”, da Berlinmuren faldt, og DDR [Østtyskland] ophørte, Tyskland blev genforenet, Sovjetunionen gik i opløsning.  Det var et historisk dramatisk øjeblik, og vi spillede en stor rolle i det, fordi Lyn i 1984 i sit Strategiske Forsvarsinitiativ havde forudsagt, at hvis Sovjetunionen fortsatte med sin daværende politik, ville landet bryde sammen om fem år.  

Så vidt jeg ved, var der på daværende tidspunkt ingen, der havde sagt noget tilsvarende. Men da Lyn altid var fuldstændig præcis i sine prognoser, tog vi det meget alvorligt, så vi fortsatte med at holde øje med, hvad der foregik i Comecon [den socialistiske handelsblok], og da det blev klart, at Comecons økonomiske vanskeligheder voksede i 1988, tog vi til Berlin, hvor Lyn holdt sin berømte tale på Kempinski Bristol Hotel den 12. oktober, i hvilken han forudsagde den tyske genforening et år før den fandt sted.  Det forenede Tyskland skulle derefter hjælpe Polen med at udvikle sig med moderne, vestlige midler.

I første omgang, da mandagsdemonstrationerne blev større, var der i begyndelsen et par hundrede. Dernæst, omkring udstedelsen af visum, strømmede folk ind på ambassaderne i Warszawa, i Budapest og i Prag, og demonstrationerne voksede sig større.  Derefter fulgte DDR’s 40-års jubilæum med en kæmpe militærparade, og [Østtysklands partiformand] Erich Honecker erklærede kort sagt: “Socialismen vil være her i 1.000 år mere, og hverken okse eller æsel kan stoppe det.” [Det var et rim på tysk.] Den sætning var berømt, for det tog kun 12 dage, før Honecker var ude, fordi han blev betragtet som værende uønsket af den kommunistiske ledelse i DDR. 

Blot tre uger senere blev Berlinmuren åbnet, og vi oplevede et utroligt historisk øjeblik, hvor folk klatrede op på toppen af Berlinmuren, omfavnede hinanden og drak champagne på toppen af muren, hvor folk tidligere var omkommet i forsøget på at flygte til Vesttyskland. Dette var et øjeblik, hvor befolkningen i en meget kort periode var helt åbne over for det, som Shelley ville betegne “at modtage grundlæggende opfattelser om mennesket og naturen”. Jeg husker det ganske godt, for den jul i 1989 udsendte det tyske tv to opførelser af Beethovens {Niende symfoni}, og ingen klagede over, at det samme program blev fremført to gange, for det ene var med den berømte dirigent Kurt Masur fra Leipzig Gewandhaus, og det efterfølgende var en anden dirigent.  

Man ville gerne have klassisk musik, man ville høre {Ode til glæden}: Det var den følelse, folk nærede.  Nu ved vi naturligvis, at dette historiske øjeblik blev forpasset, på grund af geopolitiske intriger.  Den eneste grund til, at jeg berører det, og vi har nogle videooptagelser om det, som du bør se, fordi dette er den eneste svage erindring eller det ringe eksempel, jeg har i tankerne for det øjeblik, vi har nu.  Men jeg er helt, 100 % sikker på, at dette, det vi gennemgår og oplever lige nu, er et utal gange mere afgørende end selv Berlinmurens fald, Tysklands genforening og de daværende omstændigheder. 

Grunden til at jeg siger det er, at der ikke er nogen måde, hvorpå dette nuværende unipolære system kan opretholdes.  Den unipolære verden er færdig.  Der er {intet} i universet, som vil kunne genetablere det.  Francis Fukuyama, som efter Sovjetunionens sammenbrud erklærede, at dette var “historiens ende”, var en tåbe, en arrogant, kolonialistisk, åndssvag akademiker.  For det var naturligvis hensigten, at demokratiet ville sprede sig over hele verden, at alle lande, herunder Rusland og Kina, ville indføre det neoliberale system, og ved at forsøge at opnå dette ved hjælp af regimeskift, via farverevolutioner og gennem interventionistiske krige, som vi har set i Mellemøsten, har dette ført til et gigantisk tilbageslag.  Fordi de lande, der har lidt i århundreder under kolonialismen, absolut ikke havde nogen interesse i at vende tilbage til den periode. 

Det er grunden til, at nu, hvor det finansielle system segner i sin endelige dødskamp, med det hyperinflatoriske udbrud, krigen som middel til at knuse Rusland, sanktionerne, hvis brutalitet er helt uden fortilfælde, og endelig krigen i Ukraine foranlediget af NATO’s ekspansion, et emne, som selv venstrefløjen i Europa ikke tør tale om, men Putin vurderede tydeligvis, at han ikke havde noget andet valg: Eftersom Ruslands eksistens stod på spil, så måtte han gennemføre det, han kaldte den “særlige militære operation” i Ukraine.  

Nu kan man måske beklage, at det kom så vidt, ligesom ingen ønsker krig, men sagen er, at dette er en del af opgøret mellem et døende system, det neoliberale system, og Putin, en begavet, geopolitisk kyndig person, der reagerer herpå med krig, hvilket er uheldigt, men sådan er situationen nu engang. 

Da dette indtraf, forsøgte Biden at samle alle for at deltage i “Demokrati Topmødet”, og allerede forinden rejste Blinken, Wendy Sherman og forskellige andre mennesker rundt i verden og fortalte udviklingslandene, at de skulle underkaste sig, at de skulle stille sig på demokratiernes side i forhold til autokratierne.  Der blev gjort en enorm indsats for at få alle lande i Afrika, Asien og Latinamerika med i Vestens lejr.  Dette sker ikke: De eneste lande, der nu er en del af “Vesten”, er Japan, Australien og New Zealand (ikke engang helt), og jeg tror, det er det.  Så vi har NATO, vi har et forsøg på at skabe et globalt NATO, men det vil blive et meget hullet globalt NATO.

Vi står altså i en situation lige nu, hvor der opstår et nyt system, for hvad skal Rusland gøre?  Deres midler er blevet stjålet, de er blevet smidt ud af SWIFT, så de begynder at opbygge et nyt system.  De omdirigerer deres eksport til Asien; hvis Europa ikke vil aftage deres olie og gas, sælges det til Indien, Kina og andre lande.  Mellem Rusland og Kina er der netop nu en enorm indsats for at opbygge et nyt kreditsystem, en ny international valuta, der foregår en af-dollarisering, hvilket er Vestens egen skyld.  Vi har en nedtælling for dette, for om fire uger, afholdes SCO-topmødet, og efterfølgende G20-topmødet.  I takt med at de finansielle problemer og hyperinflationen bliver værre, vil vi se en optrapning af denne kontrovers – og det er ikke “demokratier mod autokratier”.  Det er de lande, hvis ledelse omfatter et oligarki, som absolut ønsker at bevare det kolonialistiske system.  Fordi det kolonialistiske system eksisterer stadig.  Formelt set havde mange af disse lande opnået uafhængighed, og i går havde vi et meget vellykket arrangement i forbindelse med 75-årsdagen for Indiens uafhængighed. Men i virkeligheden er vi stadig i et kolonialistisk system, så længe de vestlige finansinstitutioner kontrollerer verden via IMF og Verdensbanken, fordi Afrika, Latinamerika og landene i Asien nægtes udvikling, bortset fra de lande, der har besluttet at indgå i Bælte- og Vej-Initiativet (BRI), Den Nye Silkevej: Dette er efterhånden mere end 130 lande, som helt og holdent insisterer på deres status som alliancefri lande. 

India, which has been the most important target by the West to be pulled into the camp of “democracies,” is defying that.  I mean, there is not everything good in India: I have been talking to many of my Indian friends in the recent period, and they have said, domestically, there is a lot of tension because of the Hindu state, that Modi wants to have a state which is essentially Hindu, at the expense of the 200 million Muslims and other religious minorities, but from the standpoint of foreign policy, there is a rapprochement between India and China, which is very important.  And you have practically India insisting that its long friendship with the Soviet Union and now with Russia, will not be touched and they will not move away from that. 

So, we have practically the countries of the BRICS, the SCO, most of the OIC [Organization for Islamic Cooperation], the African Union, and much of the Global South all going in the direction of working with China, and Russia: And that is clearly the majority of the world right now.

Now, if you talk to some of these people, Russians, Chinese, Indians, Africans, they would be quite happy to go, all of this, on their own. Because they say: We get infrastructure, we get real development, overcoming of poverty in the collaboration with China and Russia.  So let the U.S. do whatever they want, let the Europeans be arrogant assholes, we don’t care. But unfortunately, the problem is  that I’m absolutely certain that when the West collapses more, and they will collapse—under the present circumstances, there is no way how this present, neoliberal financial system of the United States and Europe is not going to blow out.  In Europe, it will blow out in coming weeks because of the gas price, and many other factors.  But the problem is, that I’m convinced that NATO will not dissolve as peacefully as the Soviet Union did in 1991. You have to note the fact that the Soviet Union dissolved practically without a shot.  Sure, there were some coup attempts in Moscow, but it did not come to an international conflict. No tanks were rolling, there was no ’58 like in Hungary, or ’68 in Prague, Czechoslovakia:  It went all peacefully and through negotiations! And I’m absolutely concerned and worried that if we don’t convince the Americans, in particular, and the Europeans  that they have to cooperate with this emerging new bloc of nations, that we will have World War III.  

Because, if there is an attempt to suppress the majority of the world, by having other provocations, assassinations like we saw with the daughter of  Alexander Dugin, yesterday, which is a worrying sign that that is what people have in mind, or other atrocities—then, it will come to World War III.  So the big challenge, and that is also the challenge for you, is, can we get the United States and Europe to give up their idea that there is a superiority of the white man, of the white oligarchy centered in Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the City of London, in terms of their power; and can we get them to enter new paradigm for international relations?

I think this is the biggest challenge, and it will be decided in the next period.  And you should make a personal commitment, that you will play an active role in bringing that result about.  It is a personal decision, which you have to weigh in your consciousness, and you have to then make that decision, and decide what you want to do in this historical moment. 

Now, there are many lessons to be learned.  In reviewing again the history of India; and I must say, I really like China a lot, for many reasons, but I also absolutely love India, because India has a very fascinating culture. It is a cradle of human civilization, and as Lyn was very fascinated with that, and he always looked for the origins of scientific knowledge.  And you don’t get around India, because the Vedic writings and before that the transmission the Vedic hymns in a verbal form over many thousand years, probably, it’s one of the early origins where you can find out what mankind did to come out of the last Ice Age, to develop astronomical knowledge, for agriculture, for orientation—all of that, you find in the Vedic writings.  And these are some of the earliest transmissions of human knowledge, and therefore, it is very fascinating.  And as Lyn always emphasized the writings of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Indian philosopher and scientist who wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, it is very clear from these Vedic writings that the Indian civilization started about 9,500 or 10,000 years ago, which is 5,000 years older than generally assumed Mesopotamia to be.  

And this is very interesting, because the question, how did we get to where we are? Recorded human history is very brief: It’s only 10,000 years! It’s nothing!  From the standpoint of the universe it’s just a moment. So it’s very interesting.  And obviously, there were many, many beautiful developments in the Indian renaissance, which took place from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, produced some of the most powerful poets, and thinkers and philosophers, who are completely underrated in the West from the standpoint of what they contributed to universal history.  

And naturally, the fight for Independence is extremely important, because Mahatma Gandhi, who was a young lawyer who had started to study in Great Britain, who at the beginning had actually had quite an excessive lifestyle; and then he recognized that that was completely off, and he went into the complete opposite, into a very ascetic life and very spiritual life.  And he came to the conclusion that the method of nonviolence is the only way how you can resolve conflict.  Because if you don’t get violent thinking out of your system—James Bevel, who was the assistant to Martin Luther King, who always say you have to get it out of your system, and it is, in a certain sense, really a correct idea.  You have to delete what is evil in your mind:  You have to become a person who absolutely cannot stand for one second that a bad thought, an aggressive thought, a thought which hurts other people, is entering your mind.  And Mahatma Gandhi developed that method and applied it in several big marches, and he was able to defeat the British Empire with that method! 

Now, that is quite remarkable, because the history of India and the Independence fight has a very important moment in the history of our own organization.  Because, Lyn, when he was a soldier in the Second World War, in the China-Burma-India theater, happened to be in Kolkata, when the big riots took place in 1946.  And he saw with what brutality the British soldiers were beating down, shooting the Indian protesters; and it was that image of being in the middle of the Brutish Empire, trying to suppress this upheaval, which really shaped the way he proceeded afterwards, and how he recognized the crucial fight between Churchill and Truman on the one side, and what Franklin D. Roosevelt had intended instead.  And that had a lasting impact on the way he would look at the world. 

Now, what Mahatma Gandhi developed was a method of nonviolence, which is not just important in the social behavior, in the person-to-person behavior, but it is also the only way how you can conduct foreign policy and international relations.  Because, especially with nuclear weapons, it should be clear to anybody, that once one nuclear weapon is used, the likelihood that all nuclear weapons will be used is 99.9%, almost 100%, for reasons which we can discuss and you can read about from Ted Postol and Hans Kristensen [Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists], the famous Danish-born military expert.  And when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, civilization stops, because of nuclear winter.

So the question is, is this method of nonviolence applicable today, when more and more people are warning of World War III—John Mearsheimer,  Kissinger, people who are actually part of the cause for the mess we are in, at least concerning Kissinger; but more and more people realize that an accident can lead to a catastrophe and we are in the most dangerous moment in the history of mankind.  Is the method of nonviolence applicable under these circumstances? Or, is this military machine of NATO so powerful that it will steamroll forward and crush everything in its way?  I think that is the most important question:  Because if we do not induce people to accept the method of nonviolence, like Martin Luther King did, who went to India to study for five weeks the writings of Gandhi and he came back, and the whole civil rights movement in the United States was based on that method. 

So I believe that that is the way we have to go, because we, in the time of potential extinction, have to get to a new paradigm.  And Nehru, when he was asked if nonviolence would help in respect to the nuclear bomb, replied, “what else should help?”  And I’m more and more convinced that that is true.

However, it’s not just to be anti-war: It is a method of thinking which we have to educate people into which is what Nicholas of Cusa, the great scientist from the 15th century, developed as the “coincidence of opposites.”  This is a very important idea: Because the way the oligarchy manipulates people is by playing differentiated groups against each other.  In the United States, it’s not the Republican and Democratic Parties on the top, because they’re joined at the hip to each other; they’re identical because they have the same Wall Street interest.  But in terms of the so-called Trump followers and the Democrats, the polarization is huge and it’s being played.  And similarly, the Israelis and Palestinians, and you can go through various other situations that are like that. 

So how do you define a level where such conflicts don’t exist?  Nicholas of Cusa developed the idea that the human mind is uniquely capable to identify a higher One, where the contradictions that exist on the lower level, do not exist.  And Einstein said the same thing.  He said: You can never find the solution to a problem on the same level where the problem arose.  And then he came to his method of General Relativity, which expresses exactly that thinking.  And Nicolas of Cusa’s idea, the method of the “coincidence of opposites” was then in practice applied in the Peace of Westphalia, where 150 years of religious war were ended, by recognizing that if the war would continue, nobody would be left to enjoy the result.  That is why they then developed the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, where the first principle was that, for the sake of peace, every foreign policy from now on has to be based on love and on taking care of the interest of the other.  

Now, that is absolutely true, because if you look for example at the relationship between China and Africa, I’m convinced that it’s based on love. Churchill said, countries don’t have love or even friends, they have interests.  I think this is not true:  I have talked to many Africans, who basically said that the attitude of the Chinese toward African nations is based on love.  Now, I know that if you say that in the United States or in Germany, you get lynched for that, because it’s not allowed to even think it.  But I’m absolutely certain that in practice, it is that.  Because if you act in the interest of the other, then that is practically love.  It’s not some romantic something, but it is to make something good for the other country or the other person.

We have to arrive at that, and thinking the higher One, obviously, right now, is the one humanity.  This is why going back to the Vedic writings is so important, because you recognize at least all Indo-European languages derive from Sanskrit, and once you get the idea that there is a universal history and whatever your accidental existence represents right now—you’re born in America, therefore you are an American—that’s an accident!  But in a larger sense, you belong to the one universal history, and you have to define that history from the standpoint of the future, which is, we must become the immortal species, by making sure that when the Sun becomes a problem for the Earth, which will be 2 billion or 5 billion years,  we have to think about it now, how we make sure that we will be the immortal species by not building only a village on the Moon, or a city on Mars,  but developing fusion power, developing interstellar travel, occupying maybe even other galaxies down the road;  you know, we have to think in terms of the real laws of the physical universe, and that we will only make it as the one humanity. 

So, how do you get there?  Obviously, the nonviolent method:  You can go about it the Gandhi way; you can go about it the Confucius way, that you have to become a {xunzi} [ph] in your life, a wise person, getting rid of all that prevents you from being that; or you can be a Christian, believing that you should do good; or you can use the aesthetical method of aesthetical education, and personally think that is the most effective method I know of, because it puts the beauty of the soul as the goal.  Now, I have always said, if people would pay as much attention to the beauty of their soul as they do when they go to the fitness studio trying to develop their biceps. I have once seen two men discussing when you make a motion like that [flexing her biceps], it comes out here, so do it here, and then it comes out there. [laughter]  And they went through enormous pain to explain the difference about how you develop the most beautiful biceps:  I think if people would develop the same attention to how to develop a beautiful soul, we would be in a much better position.  

And you know, the way to do it, Schiller has written enormous amounts of beautiful ideas about it, not only the {Aesthetic Letters}, but also many other theoretical writings.  And it is the question that that beauty, you get from great art.  Why?  Because, when you indulge in the creative process of a composer, a painter, a poet, for that moment, when you try to grasp that great piece of art, you become like the composer, like the painter, like the poet.  And if you shorten the intervals in between, then you improve: Because the more you are creative, and the more you learn to be creative, and the less are the periods when your nasty inner self comes forward, the better.  I have advised some people they should be singing all the time, and never do anything else, because when they sing, they’re beautiful people, and when they don’t sing they tend to let the inner sow out to run around.  But that’s just my observation.

So the question is, how do you become internally free.  And the reason why the Schiller Institute is called Schiller Institute, is because I have found there is no other person who has a more beautiful image of man than Friedrich Schiller, because he has the idea that every person can be a beautiful soul, a genius, because only geniuses are really beautiful souls, as he develops; but how do you arrive at that?  And he was extremely concerned about freedom, and that’s why he totally rejected Kant—I mean, there are some stupid academic who say that Schiller was educated by Kant.  Nothing could be more wrong, because he developed his entire method of aesthetic education as a rejection of Kant.  Because he said the “moral imperative” of Kant, you know, “never do what you don’t want others to do to you,” that that was so much a suppression of the inner freedom, that if people apply that; and he said, if one has to watch them and see the procedure how they suppress their evil inner impulses, just to be moral—this may be necessary sometimes, before you do something really bad—but it is an insult to all of us who love freedom, and who love the freedom of the individual in the most beautiful expression.  So he said, it has to come from this inner freedom:  Freedom and necessity must be one, you must do your duty with passion.  So when you know what is necessary, and you say, what is necessary for humanity and the development for humanity, you have to do it with joy, and then you are free!  And that is something one can learn.

So I think these things are what is necessary to convey to our contemporaries, because I think we all must have a solemn commitment to not miss this incredible chance, that mankind can reach a new paradigm, and that we can actually start concentrating on those challenges only human can solve, like getting rid of cancer, getting rid of other untreatable or difficult to treat diseases, getting rid of the danger of asteroids hitting Earth: We have overcome gravitation in the developing space travel—well, that is just the first baby step.  There is no limit to the self-perfection of man.  I believe that the idea that man is the only creature which is limitlessly self-perfectible, both in terms of the intellect and in terms of the moral beauty, is absolutely true.  But it needs to be done. 

That is what I wanted to say. [applause]