The Journey 98. William Hathaway: The Forces Controlling Government are Mangling Humanity

Publisher Kris Millegan speaks with William Hathaway about “Radical Peace: Refusing War” – true stories of war resisters, deserters and activists who became criminals for peace, helping soldiers to desert, destroying computer systems, and sabotaging defense contractors. They also discuss how war is used to exploit people; the psychological warfare bombarding us; and how the US benefits from the war in Ukraine and, maybe soon, a new proxy war in Taiwan.

William: I wrote this book to show the different ways that people are resisting domination by the government – and more importantly, by the forces that control the government. This domination is really mangling humanity. It hurts all of us in one way or another. So people are starting to fight back.

This struggle … is our part in a conflict that goes back thousands of years. The issue is, “Who’s going to control the resources of the world?” Currently, [they’re] controlled by a relatively small group of capitalists, who also control the government. And they’re divided into these nations. So these national groups are competing, at this point, for world domination. It’s coming down to fewer and fewer players. Because, under capitalism, it’s either “dominate or go under.”

And money and power keep accumulating and building up in fewer and fewer hands.

Now it’s our turn to seize power from this small group of capitalists, who are [working] for their benefit instead of the benefit of humanity.

Kris: Amen. I was just amazed at some of the stories in your book. People are being radicalized to one side or the other. We have physical war. And then we also have psychological warfare going against the people.

My dad was in intelligence. The day before my 20^th birthday, he tells me, first off, about his intelligence career, which had never been mentioned. Then he says that “They’re playing out a ‘lose scenario’ in Vietnam.” They’re using war to do something, and they’re going to lose in it, and they know they’re going to lose in it. But they’re going ahead and doing it anyway.

They use war in many ways to effect the population. They brought in the 60’s generation to oppose the [Vietnam] war, to create this psychological effect in the nation, to divide the nation, and they were using it to help create a drugged generation.

It amazes me how war gets used. You show amazing things that people did to stop the war machine. People standing up is quite a heroic act.

William: Now it seems to me that it’s naïve to think that this kind of sabotage really makes a difference. Because the government doesn’t mind at all to buy more computers, more trucks, more airplanes. It’s just another way of funneling our tax money to the corporations, and that’s the government’s job, basically. When it’s capitalist control, that’s their job.

Now soldiers don’t have to desert, because they’re not being killed anymore. They’re training other people in these other countries and the other people are getting killed. Now it’s the Ukrainians who are getting killed.

Back then, American soldiers saw that the US was supposed to be helping [people in other lands], but most of [those people] really despised the US for supporting these reactionary governments. That was certainly the case in Vietnam and also in Iraq.

Kris: It’s getting very interesting here. We’ve got people getting radicalized right, left, and center on all kinds of different issues. And the clash here is getting very interesting.

What’s it like living in Germany?

William: There’s a feeling now [that] NATO promised Russia that they would not expand any farther east. But they did that for decades [after German reunification]. [NATO has] been expanding more and more towards Russia, and circling them. They got them on their whole western border pretty much surrounded by NATO now. And that makes the Russians quite paranoid. We went back on our word by that, and they feel very threatened by it.

I’m not saying that that justifies the [Ukraine] invasion. But it seems to me that NATO, led by the US, has sort of set this thing up. I think, partly, the US wants this war there, as a way of socking it to the Russians, and it’s having a damaging effect on the Europeans, because they’re having to pay enormous amounts more. And this natural gas pipeline from Russia that was almost finished has been cancelled now. So now they’re dependent on the US for natural gas imports. And that’s helping the US economy.

The US has figured out a way with this proxy war to damage Russia and to damage Europe economically and boost up the US. That’s my take on it. And I think that we may be getting ready then for another proxy war in Taiwan against China. Both Taiwan and Ukraine have been very heavily armed by the US. And it’s a way of trying to maintain American domination that’s getting very shaky. That’s how I look at it.