EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2021

The Real, Just War Is Against Indifference; We Are Making Breakthroughs

April 19 , 2021 (EIRNS)—Schiller Institute founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche made the following remarks today in a discussion with associates on goals of the May 8 Schiller Institute conference:

I think we have to tune the entire international organization like a laser to effect the paradigm shift, because as I said many times before, you cannot see all of these different crises as separate topics, but if it be the war danger building up rapidly between NATO and Russia, and the U.S. and China for that matter; or the intolerable situation concerning starvation in many countries of the world, the solution in each case is the same: There needs to be an international cooperation for a New Bretton Woods, for doubling the food production, for a modern health system in every country, for a Classical renaissance.

And I think we have to—since more and more people and institutions are waking up, that the world is in trouble—I think we have to use the May 8 conference in one sense continue with the conference we had in March, with the same issues, the same organizations, but add and go for an absolute ambitious outreach, to try to get more people to understand the level of the coincidence of opposites. Because only if people “jump over their shadow,” as you say in Germany, in other words, if people look beyond the rim of their plate in front of them—only if people start to understand that you need to have a dynamic process of change, which addresses the problems of the entire human population that you can get people away from their invested positions, and divisions. 

And in a certain sense, the British Empire always said “divide and conquer,” no matter whether it’s among nations, or among identity groups, now with the identity politics, you divide people into ever smaller groups, pitting them against each other. And we have to intervene in this situation, knowing that everything will get much worse, that you will have an escalation of the war danger until it is replaced by a cooperation among, especially the United States and Russia, and the U.S. and China, until you have the idea that human life is sacred and therefore, you can’t have people starving to death, and you can’t have people dying of sickness when it’s avoidable.

I think we have to approach this from the standpoint that, as was discussed in the very successful Saturday, April 17 meeting, the real war is against indifference: Because, why would normal human beings not have an impulse to want to change these absolutely unbelievable injustices around the world?  Only if they have been numbed, and their soul has been shrunk to a dot, where compassion has been extinguished.  And remember, Bertrand Russell had this essay, “Why I Am not a Christian,” where he discusses that people who are Christians are the weakest people, because they are compassionate and that means they are weaklings.  And this is in stark contrast to [Gotthold] Lessing, who said that the opposite is true, that the best people are those who have the most compassion, because they are able to deal with any problem.

In any case, it is the question of agapē, without which nothing will work.  And right now I think the overriding subject of this conference on May 8 is we have to evoke agapē in people that they don’t want to deal with these incredible, or not accept these incredible situations. 

And I think we are making major breakthroughs! If you look at various reactions and statements, I think they are resonating with our influence! And let me give you a couple of examples....