A diverse group comprising peace activists, former government officials, and political and religious leaders from Nicaragua to Sweden to the United States have been meeting weekly through the Schiller Institute to organize against what they see as the “immediate threat of thermonuclear war.” The group, formally organized as the International Peace Coalition, states their meetings thus far have heavily focused on strategies surrounding street organizing, political interventions, and charting a path to a “new paradigm.”
The coalition, which started convening remotely in early June and soon adopted a schedule of weekly gatherings, was initiated by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute, a German-based political and economic think tank operating globally and one of the more critical public arms of the LaRouche movement.
According to a press release summarizing the first gathering, the coalition initially came together in response to the growth of NATO and a desire to counter the “rapidly escalating threat of a U.S.-NATO full-scale war with Russia and potentially also China.”
The coalition is also responsible for coordinating the upcoming Peace for Humanity rally, set to occur outside the United Nations building in Midtown Manhattan next month. The anti-war event involves the participation of several emerging American political parties and organizations, including the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA) and the People’s Party. According to the Schiller Institute, there are ongoing plans to organize sister events “everywhere possible” leading up to and on the day of the event.
While Humanity for Peace has not officially announced any sister events at the time of this article, they are providing supporters with a template for event advertising. The organization encourages supporters to utilize the template for promoting related activities the same day as the NYC rally.
Since the inaugural meeting, the coalition has witnessed a gradual increase in its member organizations and individual supporters, although the exact number remains undisclosed. The coalition has also since discussed additional aims and objectives, such as establishing its own media network, exposing the “Romanticism” of the European Union, and organizing a White House demonstration.
Following the third IPC meeting, the Schiller Institute announced the establishment of a communication platform within the International Peace Coalition, allowing participants to share reports on their activities and proposals with other coalition members. During the fifth meeting, the coalition delved into several new topics, such as exploring the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as the “Star Wars” program, investigating technological approaches to prevent war, discussing the importance of former President John F. Kennedy’s famous peace speech, and learning a brief overview of Lyndon LaRouche, Ronald Reagan, and the USSR.
Political and social leaders from countries across the globe have participated in conversations or attended meetings, some more frequently than others. From the United States, notable voices include Angela McArdle, recognized as the Libertarian National Chair and co-organizer of Rage Against the War Machine; Nicholas Brana, Chair of the People’s Party and fellow co-organizer of Rage Against the War Machine; Father Robert Cushing of the Association of United States Catholic Priests, and Ray McGovern, a former CIA member and founding member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Richard Black, a former Republican State Senator from Virginia, and Diane Sare, an independent candidate associated with the LaRouche movement currently running for the US Senate in New York, have also participated or contributed to the overall discussions at different points.
Both McArdle and Brana have expressed their participation in the coalition as an opportunity to develop new outreach tactics and expand the anti-war movement. “I don’t believe that the bloods of monsters of the war machine, like Mitch McConnell or the McCain/Cheney types will have any interest in what we’re doing,” McArdle is quoted as saying at the second gathering, “but I would hope that people who are regular ‘low-information’ voters on the right and left will see what we are doing, be inspired by it and want to join with us.”
For Brana, it was finding ways to gauge the success of the international peace movement and strategies to work backward from there. “There have been Peace negotiation proposals by the Vatican, by Brazil, by China. There have been mass demonstrations to stop the war in the U.S., mass demonstrations to stop the war in Germany,” Brana said during the first gathering, “[…] we can identify a number of different possible win conditions for us as an international Peace movement, that these are the routes by which the war can be ended. And then work backwards from those.”
Several international political leaders have also participated in the meetings, including Donald Ramotar, the former President of Guyana, María de los Ángeles Huerta, a former Mexican Congresswoman, and Kirk Meighoo, a former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. Additionally, the Swiss political party Büezer und KMU Partei and the German electoral arm of the LaRouche movement, Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (BüSo), have also had representation present.
Assuming the recurring schedule of the International Peace Conference remains consistent, a sixth coalition meeting was held last Friday. However, the specific details of that meeting have not yet been made public.
I see the National Vanguard, a literal Nazi organization, is sponsoring this event.