by Dr Stefan Nold,* Germany
(5 July 2024) “Is this some kind of Christ thing?” a young guy asks me as I walk through Darmstadt-Arheilgen on a Monday evening, a large poster with “12 commandments for peace” around my neck. There are only a few of us. A fitter from Berlin, a master craftsman, a retired vocational teacher and a few others. An emeritus maths professor holds up the white flag. “Put up passive resistance, resistance wherever you are, stop this war machine from continuing before it’s too late,” said Petra Kelly, one of the founders of the Green Party, in 1983. She is dead, just like Rudi Dutschke and Antje Vollmer; her party now sings in favour of the arms lobby. The peace movement has died and Alexander Gauland, Walter Wallmann’s former under secretary, who made his new party big by stirring up nasty resentments, is giving speeches in the Bundestag on the war in Ukraine that Willy Brandt would have given in the past. I no longer understand the world.