When at the start of the Ukraine war, Konflikt opened a conversation about how workers could resist war, people responded to us like we were crazy. Nobody believed that workers would fight against war. Everybody talked of all the reasons why we should support one side or the other. From the Prime Minster telling us to send a months salary to buy bombs for the Ukraine to people on the ‘left’ who told us that we had to support Russia’s invasion in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’.

The war in Ukraine drags on. Despite Trump’s plans to end it in 24-hours there is no end in sight. There haven’t been mass protests against the war. In Russia the opening days of the war saw protests of brave people who were prepared to risk imprisonment to stand up for what they believed was right. The protests though were on a small scale, 2,000 demonstrated in Moscow, and 1,000 in Petersburg. In other cities it was a matter of hundreds. Repression was harsh. In the first ten months of the war around 20,000 people were arrested in Russia for anti-war activities.

Ukraine is different. There have been no mass protests against the war. People have refused to sacrifice themselves in other ways though. Despite initial propoganda about how every Ukrainian was prepared to die to defend the nation, and men of military age being forbidden to leave the country over 5.5 million Ukrainians, over 10% of the population have fled the country. Desertion from the army is also widespread. In total around 250,000 soldiers have deserted over the three years of the war. In an army of about 1,000,000 soldiers, this is a massive number.

As the war goes on, it will continue to put strains upon society, not only in Ukraine and Russia themselves, but also across European countries where the costs of increased militarisation are beginning to have more and more of an effect on workers lives. NATO countries have committed to raise defence spending to 5%. The average spending for defence budgets in NATO countries is estimated to be about 2%. Ordinary working people will be asked to pay the cost of this increase. In many ways the European strike wave of early 2023 was a direct result of the inflationary costs of the war. Today attacks upon the social wage, pensions reforms, and the cutting of public holidays in France, and workers strikes and resistance against it are also a direct result of the war, and increased military spending.

What happened in Italy on Friday 4th of October represented something that was in many ways a clear development in the struggle though. Across the country 2,000,000 workers went on out onto the streets to protest, and 60% of workers joined a strike, halting all the main services in key sectors including transportation and schools, not in defence of their own living standards, but in a directly political strike against the genocide taking place in Gaza, and their own government’s complicity in it. Italy’s right wing Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni criticised the strikers, saying that it was ‘politically motivated and targeted her government’. In our opinion she is exactly right.

For us the fact that workers in Italy are prepared to lose money, and take to the streets in such huge numbers, all across the country, is inspiring. The fact that they are doing this not for their own direct interests, but in solidarity with others in far away lands is the strongest vaccine to the sickness of nationalism, which is currently sweeping across Europe.

The spark which set off this huge protest was the Israeli military’s boarding of the flotilla taking aid to the starving in Gaza. This flotilla itself is a representation of the will of people from all countries and all sorts of backgrounds not to idly sit by whilst a genocide taking place on the TV screen before their very eyes. It was obvious that the Israeli state was never going to allow these ships to deliver this food aid. Similar flotillas have been stopped before. In 2010, the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship carrying aid, was boarded, and ten of the supporters of human rights organisations were brutally murdered.

The participants on this current flotilla were obviously courageous people. The Israeli military was obviously going to stop these ships, and, as we see daily in the news, it is a brutal murderous organisation. Perhaps, people didn’t believe that they would slaughter Western Europeans as they did Turks, but nevertheless, it took a large amount of personal bravery to sail on those ships. The Israeli response was brutal. A Turkish participant said “They dragged little Greta (Thornburg) by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others.” These activists were beaten and kept in degrading conditions. This was completely denied by Israeli National Security Minister, Ben-Gvir, who dismissed these allegations describing them as ‘completely lies’. He then went on to say that he was proud of the harsh conditions the activists were subjected to, and that “I was proud that we are treating the ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters, whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist, and deserves the conditions of terrorists”. This is the world that we live in today, one where people trying to take food aid to starving children are treated as ‘terrorists’, one where Irish pop stars, and British grandmothers holding protest signs are arrested for terrorism offences, whilst companies all across the world continue to sell arms to a country committing acts of genocide without legal sanction.

For us at Konflict, the most important thing about these events is not the actions of a few hundred activists, but the fact that millions of Italian workers were prepared to stop work, and go out onto the streets to confront their own state. Across the world people came out onto the streets in protest. In France striking workers began to chant slogans against the genocide, and across the world people gathered in the streets in huge numbers, including a large demonstration here in Sofia.

The Konflikt organisation believes that politicians and businessmen won’t stop the ongoing cycle of wars. Why should they? As bombs are dropped, and children are dying, they are not suffering, but making money from selling those bombs, and generally raising prices. For us, it’s only the massive actions of millions of ordinary working people that can force them to stop their mass murder. We find in the actions of all those who attended protests, and stopped work in Italy last Friday an inspiration.