Can Europe’s artists embrace the idea of armed pacifism?
And yet “no to militarisation” still feels like an easy answer to a difficult question, because the pacifist consensus that Europe has established since the time of the cold war has relied on US security guarantees and Russian fossil fuels – trade-offs that have started to look increasingly unwise since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and since Trump’s threats of aggression against Greenland
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/28/this-is-europe-european-film-awards-culture-war-pacifism
@balkanika
I embrace the idea of an armed proletarian militia.
@frightful_hobgoblin I don’t see a need to embrace an idea of something that already exists throughout
by that logic you shouldn’t hug your mother because she exists
@balkanika All the evidence suggests that calls for European rearmament are not driven by an out-of-control yearning for former military glories, but a gradual awakening to these realities – which is why this turn is happening slowly and often reluctantly, and why Germany’s new plans fall some way short of conscription
@balkanika It’s understandable to feel frustrated with political leaders of the past having manoeuvred Europe into this conundrum, or with those of today remaining in the “comfort zone of cowardice and inaction”, as Nathalie Tocci wrote. But we should also ask what role we have to play in this – the kind of people on the liberal left who enjoy thoughtful European arthouse cinema, or indeed those who make it
@balkanika Or can there be a middle way for culture in times of war? When I asked Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer, about this, she pointed me to the Ukrainian photojournalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov’s Bafta-nominated documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a film “which is not so much ‘pro-military’ but ‘pro-soldier’, deeply empathetic towards the men who are sacrificing their lives for inches of Ukrainian soil”
