Militarism and its Connection to Toxic Masculinity
As the war continues in Ukraine, fewer and fewer people seem to see the need for a cease-fire. Our society, long reticent to allow the use of force as a means to solve political differences, has now turned 180 degrees, celebrating the Ukrainians for their "courage". Meanwhile, the lionization of Zelensky as macho hero in olive-green T-shirt is merely an extension of social media's memes of shirtless Putin riding a bear. Both images tie into our culture's "ideal man": embodying the virtues of courage, tenacity and violence. The courage to embrace pacifism is not part of our culture.
So, let's ask the question: where do we get the idea that courage is inherently connected to violence? Where does the culture of violence stem? As ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak puts it, "militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values" (see Warren-Cady, 16). In order to better understand the culture of violence, we need to see its origins in classical Greco-Roman culture, which has long been the cultural basis for our concept of masculinity: this concept is intimately connected to militarism, patriotism, violence and imperialism.
Even 1,600 years after the dissolution of the western Roman Empire, we are still being occupied by the Romans and their toxic gender ideology. And although the West has been "christianized", the pacifist ideas of the Jewish man Yeshua have never fully supplanted the toxic masculinity of the Romans, with their love of imperialism, their patriarchal system of subjugating women, minorities and slaves, and devotion to state as pseudo-religion. The ideology of the Nazis, with its imperialist thirst for blood and hatred of "inferior" races, finds its roots in the Classical period. The Nazis themselves based their "1000-Jahre Reich" on that of ancient Rome, creating imitations of Roman architecture in Nuremberg and Munich. The ancient Romans, with their detestation of the Jews and Jewish culture, would have approved.
The Roman concept of gender, based on the teachings of Aristotle, was that the woman was an incomplete man, partially formed in the womb but not having reached the final stage of perfection which is that of a man. This idea of man as default gender flies in the face of modern science, but we still have vestiges of this way of thinking in our day and age, and these ideas inform the basis of the glorification of war.
The idea of man as ideal was transferred to the moral and ethical realm, in the concept of virtus, related to the modern word virtue. It was a concept of manliness that combined both ethical and moral qualities such as bravery and self-control, along with physical traits such as martial prowess. What is notable is that the root of the word is Vir, meaning man. For the Romans, having virtue was essentially based in masculinity. Roman men practiced their virtus as fathers as patria potestas, and in the Res Publica, serving in the army to prove their military prowess.
The ideas of the itinerant preacher Yeshua, based on pacifism, gender equality, and liberation, were a threat to Rome. Early followers of "the Way" eschewed the military, sought to buy freedom for slaves, and carried out their church services in house churches that were sometimes headed by women. Alarmed by the Christians' refusal to pay homage to the emperor, the Romans tried without success to stamp out this new sect. After three hundred years of failure, Constantine declared himself Christian in the fourth century, and effectively co-opted the religion. Drastic changes were made in a short period: the institution of Sunday (Dies Invectus) as a state-wide holiday, separation of Christian Easter Sunday from the Jewish Passover, and most importantly, lifting of all restrictions from military service. Constantine's nephew, Theodosius, would make Romanized Christianity into the state religion, thus fusing Roman thought with the vestiges of early Christianity.
Thus, the egalitarian view of the sexes of the early church was sublimated by the Roman ideal of the woman as home-bound wife, and father as autocratic authority whose duty it was to ensure that sons were properly macho. According to Roman culture, too much exposure to the "feminine" would weaken boys, making them too "emotional" and sentimental. The myth of the ancient Spartans as the ultimate warriors, raised from childhood to endure hardship, became part of the Greco-Roman myth of manhood and patriotism.
The Ideas of Rome Linger on: Imperialism, Nationalism and Patriarchy
These ideas were carried forward to later periods, as institutions inspired by ancient Rome were founded. The British public boarding schools, influenced by the ancient Spartans and the ideals of the Stoic philosophers, were meant to instill discipline and toughness, far from the influence of the feminine. Young men would bond with each other, setting them up for their future roles in the military. This was, according to the BBC, "a system in which ideals of discipline, endurance and austerity were paramount".
The Nazis took such education a step further, setting up elite boarding schools ("Napolas"), modeled "on an amalgam of the British public schools, the Prussian cadet corps, and the harsh educational practices of ancient Sparta" (see Helen Roche). These schools were meant to propagandize the minds of the youth from an early and impressionable age, to create the future soldiers.
The American governmental and law system, based on the Roman Republic, and used Roman imagery at its inception, even borrowing the Roman word "Senator". Thus, it's hardly surprising that American patriotism shares much in common with the ancient Roman pietas, meaning devotion to country. As in ancient Rome, it is today unthinkable to have a public ceremony in the United States without a flag and the national anthem, often accompanied by a salute to the troops. The American Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, recited daily at all public schools, is a shocking example for most of the world of how American patriotism borders on idolatry.
Patriarchy is conceptionally grounded in a binary belief and value system based on a series of dichotomies: male versus female, reason and mind versus emotion and body, humanity versus nature. From the "nature as female" paradigm comes the idea "that humans are justified in using female nature simply to satisfy human consumptive needs".
Under such a system, women's bodies are solely meant to produce future soldiers. Their existence, as "inferior beings", serves the war machine. Every imperialist system has imitated this idea. The Nazis were known for their idea of women's role in society: "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche". Childbearing, keeping house and attending church were the ideal roles for women. This, of course, would not be the church of the resisters such as Bonhoeffer, Niemöller and Barth. It was the church of the Nazi Jesus, divested of His Jewish tallit, shorn of his beard, and with a gun instead of a cross. This was the ultimate triumph of Rome: first, to execute, then to erase Jesus, transforming a philosophy of ethical pacifism and Nächstenliebe into a twisted rhetoric of hatred, violence and antisemitism.
Furthermore, Imperialism and its bloodlust need production, and for this, exploitation of nature is necessary. Under such a system, nature and its riches exist to be conquered. The conquest and rape of nature is thus similar to the subjugation of women's bodies. Tons of coal are being burnt to produce weapons of war, and the effects of war and war production threaten not only human life, but the planet itself. Militaries are exempt from the Kyoto climate accord, but they account for approximately 5.5% of all global emissions. The war in Ukraine over the first twelve months totaled 120 million tons of CO2, according to a report by the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War.
This is why pacifism is unpalatable to many of the masses, who have been taught that a "real man" is a warrior. Pacifism, in their minds, is associated with weakness or cowardice. The armies of the world gladly use macho imagery to promote this idea. Similarly, as nationalism and neo-fascism rise throughout the United States and the EU, we see a huge resurgence in acts of violence against women, religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people. Nationalism and fascism need enemies and scapegoats, and who better than those who don't embody the ideals of "proper masculinity"?
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