Fabio Vighi

In short, the act of brandishing the Russian scarecrow is gaining momentum and the war drums are rolling. Above all, this means that we are entering an era of growing military indebtedness for the (supposed) monopoly on violence in multiple theatres of war which, precisely because financially motivated, must never disappear from sight. As Julian Assange put it in 2011, referring to Afghanistan, ‘the goal is an endless war, not a successful war’. This scenario comes with socioeconomic and cultural decadence, repression of dissent, and coercive manipulation of impoverished plebs. But it would be delusional to believe that the narrative of the West’s “noble military commitment” is merely the latest episode of a Netflix show we can afford to watch from the safe distance of our sofas, perhaps washing our consciences with some generic pacifist slogans. Because the more the model of financial capitalism falters, the more those who continue to profit from it will not hesitate to sacrifice under “democratic bombs” not only the “wretched of the earth” of which Franz Fanon wrote (populations, like the Palestinians, who have long been abandoned to conditions of subhuman misery and abuse), but also the placid dwellers of the “affluent world”, who are as highly considered by the elites as a herd of grazing cattle with a smartphone glued to their nose.

the financial sector (“a house of cards built on a pool of petrol”) is perpetually thirsty for liquidity