Like hardly anyone before him, Prigozhin embodied paid militarism, the reprehensible sacrifice of human life for money. In terms of attitude, he stood in the tradition of those German sovereigns who had "rented" soldiers to Great Britain in order to fight on the side of money rule and aristocracy against the liberal democracy of the USA in their War of Independence. The fact that the long willfully challenged death of such a morally low person attracts so much - remarkably uncritical - attention from the western media, says something about the ethics of our zeitgeist, jaded to real compassion. The same dullness also prevents the perception of the enormous danger in this historical moment, in which an inevitably imminent, profound change in the way of coexistence of humans is becoming clearer every day - for the much worse or finally for the better.
It is high time to think about the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in his farewell speech after 8 years in office in January 1961 did not warn of an external enemy of the USA and the West, but of internal forces that were dangerously gaining power. By that he meant the MIC - the Military Industrial Complex and thus people on whom our security depends to the highest degree. In this unofficial grouping of leaders from the military, the secret services, the armaments industry and politics, the former general and World War II veteran Eisenhower recognized even back then a serious threat to freedom, democracy and society. – What can we realistically, expect after more than 62 years of systematically ignoring this danger by politicians and the media – if not an escalation of violence up to a new world war?
It is therefore also high time to recognize that the Ukraine war is not about being against one war party and in favor of the other, but resolutely against the irresponsible militarism of both sides and for the overriding survival interests of the people in the currently contested areas - as well as throughout Europe. Like Mahatma Gandhi, the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King had understood deeply that lasting peace is only possible when people begin to understand their enemies - which does not mean at all condoning or even supporting their actions. John F. Kennedy formulated the actual, overarching premise as follows: "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind".