Helga Zepp-LaRouche: We Urgently Need an Int'l Youth Movement

Nov. 11—The following is the uncorrected transcription of the remarks delivered by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche Nov. 8 at the beginning of the third panel of the Paris conference.

So, I think that the need to create a new international youth movement is more urgent than ever before, because it is very clear that we have reached, in terms of the long arc of history, that if we make it through this period, historians will look back and say this particular time was when the decision had to be made to change the system or not survive. Because never before in history was there a situation where all of civilization was at stake.

I don’t know how many of you have studied the matter, but we had a very important seminar, a zoom seminar and live seminar, a couple of weeks ago in Germany with the world-renowned rocket scientist, Ted Postol, who was an MIT professor and Pentagon advisor. He wrote practically all the major standard books on the difference between conventional war and nuclear war. And again, in his presentation, he made the same argument, namely, that it is the logic of nuclear war that once one weapon is used, the likelihood that within five days you will have a global nuclear exchange where almost the entire arsenal will be used, is almost 99.9%. And mathematically, that’s practically 100%. So, if this happens, there will be a nuclear winter, and after that there will be nothing left, no life on the planet.

If you think this through, any thinking citizen would think that everything has to be done to change a system which allows that to happen.

And as long as we keep this geopolitical confrontation between NATO on the one side, and Russia, China and possibly other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, we are sitting on a complete powder keg.

And Professor Postol has made special charts for us, which you can look at in the Schiller Institute website, if you want to study it. He has made special charts which show how many nuclear weapons will be dropped on Germany alone, if it comes to a war. There are hundreds, hundreds of nuclear weapons. So there will be nothing left. And since France is not very far from Germany, I would be extremely worried if I were you, because the present policies of the German government, and the French government for that matter, the coalition of the willing, are pushing mankind towards the abyss. That’s the reality.

And the peace movement is non-existent. Sure you have little peace movements, but it’s nowhere close to what is needed.

Stopping the Plunge Towards Nuclear War

Then if you take into account what Jacques [Cheminade] was saying this morning about the perfidious role of the combination of AI and military production as a money machine, where basically all these different algorithms converge, it is almost impossible to stop this, unless you have a real mass movement of people who are opposing it. It is also not something which is limited to Europe or the United States, because already at the Bandung Conference in 1955, President Sukarno of Indonesia said if it comes to a nuclear war, the countries of the Global South may die a few weeks later, because of radioactivity, and the general collapse of everything will follow. So it is really an existential question. And the only people who would lose something in what we are proposing are maybe a couple of thousand billionaires and maybe 1 or 2 trillionaires, maybe a couple of hundred multi-millionaires, but that’s all! The rest of the people would be happy—actually, 8 billion people would be happy!

So I think what we need to do is to have an earnest plan to change the policy of Europe, towards Africa first of all, because that’s where it becomes very concrete. And I think that what we should do in this panel, is to discuss what people think they can do to help in building up such a structure.

We are not starting from scratch, this is the third international conference we have had this year. We had one in New Jersey in May, one in Berlin in July, and now this is the third one. And if possible, we could have a fourth one even before the end of the year, because I think the situation cries out for it. Obviously there are tremendous changes going on in Europe. You have a bloc of nations which are already disconnecting from this war drive; Hungary, Slovakia, now Czechia, maybe other countries are in discussions of that. So you would not need a “coalition of the willing” if everybody were actually willing. The fact that the EU and NATO are not united, but yet you need this coalition of the willing, shows you that there is a tremendous potential.

Also in the southern countries, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Balkans, they are not on the same line. So we should really think of how to strengthen their voice within Europe.

We have elements of the picture; we presented at the Berlin conference, a draft of an Africa Development program. I would urge all of you to download it. I don’t know if you have it in French, but in any case Google translate is very efficient, and other translating machines, you can translate it very easily. This is a blueprint of what kinds of projects would be needed to cause such a change. 

Africa urgently needs infrastructure. No industrialization anywhere in the world ever occurs without basic infrastructure. So, 600 million people in Africa still do not have access to electricity. I mentioned earlier, the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia is a perfect example of the kinds of projects which would change that. And naturally, basic infrastructure ports, an integrated system of fast trains, railway, highways, waterways, ports, airports, energy production, distribution, communication. The way to look at it is to think about a continental net, like Europe. The European traffic transport ministers meet every so often and they always discuss the continental grid of Europe. They don’t discuss Germany or Luxembourg or any one country, but they look at the continent as a whole, and then they define which basic corridors need to be built in the next 20 years, in any case, it’s a model.

Likewise, you need that for Africa, independent of the political difficulties. You know that you have Sudan, you have Congo, you have all these horrible crises. But nevertheless, if you think about the African continent as a whole, they should have infrastructure as densely connected as that of the industrial regions of Europe. In other words, if you go to Germany, when Germany used to still function, that’s about 20 years ago, we had a fast train system connecting waterways, highways—in that time, North Rhine-Westphalia was still an industrialized zone. You could have a container ship coming from anywhere, from Asia, loaded in Rotterdam, going to Duisburg, the inland port, being shipped on either a train or a truck, very fast, very efficient.

Because the more a country is industrialized, the more infrastructure you need, the more time counts. Just think that you have to make a plan, how should the African continent look? The Africans have the 2063 plan, which is a very advanced plan, but it can be augmented. We think we should think in terms of 2050 that coincides with the Chinese 100-year celebration of their Republic. And Xi Jinping at a certain point said that he wants to have, by 2049, an international system of modern, advanced, culturally forward-moving, happy people internationally! Not just China being happy, but other countries being happy. Can you imagine having a state leader who wants the happiness of the whole world community?!—that was already ten years ago or so. So if we think in terms of that, you can say it positively from the standpoint that it’s the human thing to do, that we need to recruit industries in Europe, in France, in Spain, in Germany, in the Benelux countries, who say we want to be part of such an investment drive together with countries from the BRICS, because this can be a lifeboat for European industries.

Europe Is Politically and Economically Bankrupt

France now has no government; speaking in words of stability, it’s an Eintagsfliege (a fly that only lives one day). You have a government in the morning and you don’t know if it’s still there in the evening, so that’s not exactly stability. The German economy is in a free fall. I don’t think people have realized that Germany is in such an existential crisis—you can’t imagine, everything is collapsing. The auto sector, because of the stupidity on the chips, Holland, confiscating chips production. Now, I don’t know the latest from today, but if this continues, they will close down the entire region of Wolfsburg, Braunschweig, which is where VW, Porsche and so forth are being built. Then BMW, Mercedes—every sixth job in Germany depends on the auto sector. We are going to lose two-thirds of it, not only the main factories, but all the suppliers. Thousands and thousands of jobs will go out of the window. Likewise in the steel industry, likewise in the pharma industry, likewise in other areas, depending on the industrial chain. Because of the trade war and other things, we are looking at a collapse of Germany, and this will have social consequences.

Some people may think that will be good for the AfD, they will take power. I don’t know, it’s an unsecure bet, because in the AfD you have, without any question, very interesting people who could be part of our movement without any problem. But unfortunately you also have some other elements in there who are not so nice. And, you know, I would like to have a clarification. They should kick out these people first, before I want to work with them. Therefore, I’m not betting on the AfD taking power and that everything will be immediately solved. Because these people—I have not seen any coherent plan, where they would know how to get the mess solved.

So if Germany goes into an uncontrolled collapse, think about the 1930s. Think about the Nazis versus the Communists in street fights and so forth. The whole social fabric in Germany is collapsing. I can only put the alarm bells on red alert! We are neighbor countries; if you don’t conceptualize that, you don’t understand what your future will be.

Building a Youth Movement

So what we are offering is a plan that we will build an international youth movement in Africa, and in as many countries as possible. That we will build youth movements everywhere we can, in Asia, in Latin America. We have one of the leaders here from Mexico. That then we will perfect this plan for the industrialization of Africa, and naturally, likewise in Latin America. And then we go to the industries [in the West] and tell them these are the options where you should invest.

And if we can organize a movement of SMEs, of small and medium-sized industries in Germany—it used to be that 85% of all industries were SMEs, Mittelstand, the hidden champions. They are still there, but for how long? And likewise, you have certain sectors in France where you have world notoriety, space, nuclear, other areas. We have to mobilize all of these to cause a change in the political policy of Europe.

If Europe would make the decision to industrialize Africa, together with China and maybe Russia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil, it could be done. We could change the direction quickly. And if an appeal to reason is not good enough, then you can also say: “Look, in 2050 there will be 2.5 billion Africans. That’s 1 billion more than now. And either you join our program or 1 billion Africans will come to your country, to your hometown.” I’m using this as a polemic, because the migrant question is one of the big moral crises of the West. If you look at what the EU is doing with Frontex in the Mediterranean, it is disgusting. There is no official count of how many people have drowned in the Mediterranean, but (un)official numbers are in the tens of thousands. The former Pope Francis has called the refugee camps around the Mediterranean, in Egypt, in Libya, in Türkiye, in Greece, he has called them concentration camps because they are surrounded by barbed wire. Once these people are in there, they normally don’t get out for years. It’s totally disgusting.

Racism and Fascism

Human rights you can forget, the West has abandoned even the pretext to be for human rights. Likewise, in the United States, if you look at the policies inside the United States, ripping families out of their sleep in the middle of the night with this ICE police: First of all, it’s economically completely stupid because the American economy depends on their labor, because these people are normally taking jobs other Americans don’t want to do. Likewise, in Germany, we are losing agriculture because the Germans don’t want to pick apples anymore, and not asparagus for sure, because it’s hard work! So we are losing entire areas of agriculture as a result of the anti-migrant policy. The health sector is completely collapsing without people from other countries, and so forth and so on.

So we have a new form of fascism, there is no question in my mind. If you start to characterize certain people from certain races—as if races would exist—we have only one human race. But if you start to categorize, and say people who have that color of the skin, or that characteristic, you are on the road to disaster. If you have learned anything from history, then that is the road to fascism.

So what we are proposing is a lifeboat for the European industries. It’s an absolutely necessary input into African countries, that because of 500 years of colonialism, do not have the technological means to do these kinds of things unless you provide it. And the Chinese are obviously there. But if you look at the world as a whole, you don’t want to compete geopolitically for influence in Africa between the West and China. That’s exactly what you don’t want. What you want is a cooperative approach, including equal partners from African nations to do this.

So I think that what we are proposing as a mass mobilization fulfills all criteria, all requirements at the same time. It’s a peace movement. It’s a movement for the coincidentia oppositorum way to look at humanity. And I cannot imagine that there are many people who would say, that’s the cause for which I can really go on the streets, make a lot of phone calls, sacrifice some of my hours every week to be part of this effort.

So that’s really my challenge to you, that you all join this movement, now, on the spot, and commit yourself to be part of it.