Persuading people to war

Abstract

Psychological war preparation means, in the current rejection of war activities of the German federal government by the majority of the German population: "justifications" for a "defiance". Joschka Fischer, who had been sent to the Foreign Office by the "Green Party" in the war against Yugoslavia, made the necessary "taboo" break. "We must intervene with the means of war to prevent a second" Auschwitz ". This threatening "Auschwitz" has now been exposed as a "fake". This shows that – psychologically speaking, it does not need the reality of the actual event to produce the effect of the threat with the occurrence of an event, but the "simulation", banal "lie". The condition of the effectiveness of the lie lies in the possibility of language to simulate a reality, here one that can trigger the feeling of a threat. For the history of the war preparation in the FRG a continuous cumulative sequence of further "taboo-breaks" is sketched. They take place in the context of an everyday "education" to warfare in social conditions characterized by structural violence.