So, who’s doing this and why?

In a number of posts on this blog, we’ve made it pretty clear that we’re starting to shift the way we disseminate our propaganda from digital to analogue means. One way of doing this is by the use of stickers which, even if they only stay up for a couple of days, will be seen by more eyeballs than anything we ever post up on X a.k.a. Twitter, where our reach has been throttled out of existence. This is a fairly recent post explaining the rationale behind this shift: Getting a reaction... 9.3.25.

On Saturday March 8, when it comes to analogue methods, we weren’t just talking the talk, we were walking the walk, quite literally in fact! The two of us spent an afternoon walking a loop around the centre of Bristol, putting up ‘We Do Not Consent To WW3!’ stickers, one of which is shown in the photograph above. This is after having put up a smaller number of stickers in Keynsham where we live. These anti-war stickers are not pulling any punches – they’re a statement of defiance that’s designed to get a reaction.

Pretty much every time we’re in Bristol, we take a number of stickers to put up. The ones that are going up at the moment are the anti-war ones with this wording – WE DO NOT CONSENT TO WW3! These stickers have been produced as a response to what feels like an increasingly dangerous move towards an all out war with Russia by the end of this decade. On Saturday 16.5, we had yet another trip into the city to put more of these stickers up.

We don’t expect them to stay up that long. That’s down to a combination of Bristol City Council taking them down in certain areas, plus people objecting to the message that’s being conveyed, attempting to tear them off in a fit of righteous indignation. Having said that, we have been pleasantly surprised to see stickers that we put up over a month ago still surviving and continuing to prompt people to start thinking about the trajectory our leaders and their mates in an over compliant media are dragging us along. I’ve posted up a fair number of articles challenging the propaganda and blatant Russophobia we’re being subjected to. This is one of the more recent ones: Some thoughts on the clamour for war 3.3.25.

The point is that at this stage, for those of us of an anti-war, dissident persuasion, there’s everything to play for. If we lose, we’re totally and utterly screwed. Bearing this in mind, we might just as well go all out for victory and stop this insane drive towards World War Three dead in its tracks. As I’ve previously argued, people have learned lessons from what was done to us five years ago – that includes a fair number of those who initially went along with it. On that basis, those of us who think that being dragged into an all out war with Russia is insane must be the majority, possibly quite a significant one.

At the moment, what impact these online anti-war posts and the stickers we’ve been putting up is having is difficult to assess. What we have noticed are a number of attempts by various people to tear the stickers off. When stickers get torn off, it’s not something we take personally. It’s something that we expect and plan for by going back to certain locations after they’ve been torn off and replacing them. If someone thinks they can get under our skin and demoralise us by targeting our ant-war stickers, they’re wasting their time.

However, while we refuse to get riled by whoever is doing this, we are curious about their motivations. Obviously whoever it is has bought into the pro-Ukrainian propaganda we’re being subjected. They could be the middle class liberal types who have been persuaded to adopt Ukraine as a cause in the same way that many of them adopted the masking, social distancing and vaccine pushing during the Covid ‘crisis’ in 2020/21. Alternatively, they could be the older armchair warriors unthinkingly swallowing every word rabidly anti-Russian rags such as the Telegraph spew out. Taken together, both of these demographics make for a strange combination. Then again, we do live in increasingly weird times.

I’ve published a number of posts looking at the dire consequences of this drive towards a war with Russia for all of us, arguing why it has to be resisted with everything we’ve got: A message to those beating the drums of war 24.2.25.

Another sacrifice is the spectre of conscription. It’s been suggested that even for a ‘peace keeping’ mission in Ukriane, the UK has insufficient military personnel to meet the obligation it would take on without seriously stretching itself on other commitments. The threat of an ‘inevitable’ conflict with Russia is being used as the justification to ramp up the pressure to reintroduce conscription: UK must prepare for war and to bring back conscription, warns ex-Nato commander - Joe Duggan | The I Paper | 20.2.25.

Have the gullible idiots falling for the blatant Russophobia ever thought for one minute what it’s going to be like living in a society that will become increasingly militarised as we gear up for a war which will most likely end with our destruction? It’s not just conscription but harsher austerity as more and more resources are piled into the war machine. On top of this, there will be the inevitable crackdown on any dissent against the drive towards war. Do the liberal middle class, pro-Ukraine, useful idiots really want to live in a society such as this? Will the Telegraph reading armchair warriors still be happy about the drive to war when even they get hit by the austerity that will be needed to fund it? Do any of these people have the capacity to take a few steps back and actually think about what it will be like trying to live in a society that’s being pushed towards all out war? If a conflict ends up going nuclear, have they paid any thought as to the consequences for humanity and the planet that supports us of this?

One of the lessons of war should be that when the firing stops, the trauma of what people have been through will live on for decades afterwards. With the idiots railing against Russia, you have to wonder if those lessons have ever been learned. All they have to do is ask anyone whose parents were old enough to either have fought in the Second World War or experience bombing and/or evacuation in the UK, and they will hear quite a few tales of unresolved trauma. From my own personal experience, I had a father who served in the navy, was very reluctant to talk about what he went through and his unresolved trauma manifested itself in having a very short fuse when it came to losing his temper. My mother who was in her adolescence at the time she was evacuated, was parted from her parents and shuffled off to a number of locations around the country. Suffice to say, her relationship with her parents suffered and never really recovered. Neither of which was ideal preparation for my mother and father being parents themselves, trust me on that one!

Have those who presume to rule over us, their compliant mouthpieces in the media, the middle class useful idiots who have adopted Ukraine as a cause and last but by no means least, the Telegraph reading armchair warriors had any direct experience of military conflict? I very much doubt it. Have they talked to anyone who has had direct experience, particularly with the Second World War? The answer may be that possibly they have, but whether what they were told about the horror of war has sunk in is open to question. Have they read any literature written by those with direct experience of war? In an increasingly dumbed down society, I do wonder whether they have. In my personal opinion, the books shown above – The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon and The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat – amongst many others, should be compulsory reading for all of these people.

Okay, that’s my rant over for the time being… The anti-war stickering will carry on regardless. So far, we’ve been able to do this without any confrontations with people objecting to what we’re doing. How long this will carry on is difficult to assess. Anyway, we’ll be getting a new run of the WE DO NOT CONSENT TO WW3! stickers printed. Depending how the situation develops, we have other sticker designs with different, considerably blunter wording waiting in reserve. If anyone wants a bundle of these stickers to put up where they live, please feel free to get in touch and we’ll work out a way of getting them to you.