Appeal to the World’s Conscience by the Network in Defense of Humanity
When many thought that the bitter lessons of the pandemic would lead political leaders to try to build a more caring, inclusive and generous world, exactly the opposite has happened. Perhaps there is truth in the rumor that this attitude is due to their aim of reducing the world’s population by 25%.
A war of unforeseeable consequences has broken out, amid the avalanche of lies spread through the media and social networks, and pressures from powerful forces opposed to any attempt to achieve peace. Sensible voices warn about the danger of a nuclear conflict and go unheeded, while the arms industry, bellicose speeches and the stimulation of fascism and xenophobia grow.
Other voices, equally unheeded, speak of famine and an imminent humanitarian catastrophe due to the uncontrolled rise in the prices of food, oil, gas, export and import operations and many vital services. The main victims will be the hundreds of millions of poor people barely surviving in subhuman conditions.
At the same time, the environmental crisis is worsening alarmingly, and the agreements and negotiations to halt the collapse of the planet are not only far from approaching the measures that urgently need to be adopted, but the issue is increasingly absent from political discourse and from media consortiums.
Meanwhile, a reinterpretation of fascism is being encouraged as a salvation plank in the face of the increasingly radical demands of the sectors excluded by capital; this is becoming more visible in the United States, in Europe and in various Latin American countries, as could be seen on Nov. 18-19, in an event of the international ultra-right in Mexico, convened by the Political Conference of Conservative Action, with the virtual or face-to-face participation of extremist figures of the new fascism. This reinterpretation is also presented as an urgent necessity to put an end to the supposedly disintegrating threats of a “communism” presented as cartoonish, immoral, destroyer of the family and of Christian values.
Today, social media plays a decisive role in manipulating the emotions and perception of reality of millions of human beings. Hate groups, racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, and ultra-nationalist, proliferate on them, presenting themselves to young people as bearers of “new,” “modern,” “virile” messages, proper to the “victors.”
In this role of limiting the exercise of critical thinking and distorting the very meaning of the concept of democracy, the big corporate media, commercial advertising and the hegemonic entertainment industry also play a highly effective role.
Never before has the effort to erase or distort historical memory been so advanced. Never have we suffered such a devastating cultural and ethical crisis, which has mixed what is worthwhile, what we should preserve, love and remember, with a deluge of frivolous, irrelevant, “fun” messages. Never has culture been so degraded to mere merchandise, to mere empty pastime. Never has the colonial presence in our lives and in our subjectivity been so overwhelming. Never has the cultural hegemony of a small group of corporations that obtain multi-million-dollar profits while defending the interests of the system gone so far.
The Network in Defense of Humanity calls on all people who love peace and life to unite their voices to stop barbarism. All doors have not been closed. Power, no matter how absolute, has not succeeded in silencing the cry of the oppressed and, on the contrary, it has always been the people who survive empires. History shows that the greater their radicalism, the nearer their end. Today, a multipolar world is emerging, as evidenced by the desperation of the United States and its European allies in the face of what this world means for the maintenance of their hegemony.
Let us join our efforts so that there will never again be hegemony in the world. Let us validate and defend our cultural diversity against the pretension of subsuming ourselves in the consumerist monotony. Humanity is all peoples.
Therefore, let us say as the great troubadour Alí Primera claimed in his song “El despertar de la Historia” (“The Awakening of History”):
Help her, help her
Let humanity be human…
V International Conference for World Balance, Havana, Cuba, Jan. 24-28, 2023
Source: Network in Defense of Humanity
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