Hessians and North Koreans - War Will Make Corpses Of Us All

 


'His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is... where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there... in peace. War will make corpses of us all.'

Captain Faramir

The Two Towers

 

I'm assuming we're all just going to carry on as normal, as if North Koreans aren't on European soil?

North Korea is participating in the invasion and occupation of a sovereign European nation and yet it has barely made the news.

Obviously, there's the usual omerta from all the Morning Star, Socialist Worker and Stop the War, Trots and Tankies.

Similarly, there is an equal measure of silence from all those supposedly virulent anti-communists, who like to hysterically brand any form of socialised healthcare and welfare as 'communism', amid an actual communist invasion of Eastern Europe.

There is also silence from the so-called 'defenders of western civilization', on the far-right, quick to slur asylum seekers and refugees as 'invaders' destroying Europe, while ignoring a genuine foreign invasion of Europe.

In reality, all these factions are fellow peas in an imperialist pod, when it comes to Ukrainian autonomy and self-determination.

Alternatively, it isn't especially surprising to see others on the far right, descend into a dehumanisation of North Korean mercenaries in Europe to carry out war crimes and participate in the wholesale murder Ukrainian people, as the savage hoard from the East.

Yet, are they truly mercenaries? No, they are forced conscripts from a brutal dictatorship, where even military personnel consistently experience malnutrition, famine and starvation.

My thoughts turn to 'my ain fowk' - Those old German-Britons of the 18th and 19th centuries...King's German Legion, Hanoverians, Palatines, Black Brunswickers, Battenbergs, Tecks and Hessians etc.

 Especially the Hessians in the service of the British during the American Revolution. They too were once considered mercenaries, both feared and hated for their discipline and ferocity.

 Like North Koreans today, the Hessians also had no choice; they were still in the army of their prince, who had decided to rent their services to a foreign power without the individual soldier’s approval. Just as Kim Jong Un has ordered his own people to a far-off land, to be cannon fodder in a war they know nothing about.

 If you want to find out more about the Hessians, Friederike Baer’s fine book, 'Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War', provides a fascinating account of impoverished Hessians threatened, coerced, bullied and pressed into service against an enemy who had done them no harm.

Finally, two other 19th century German immigrants in Britain once pointed out that working-class communities can only resist the brutality of chauvinism and militarism, by entering into solidarity with their working-class neighbours in other countries, against the ruling class who continue to send us to slaughter.

This was true when Marx and Engels lived in Britain and it is still true today.







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