20210205 Kriegs-Werbung bei Kindern

Armaments companies advertise to nine-year-olds

Just yesterday, we were looking at children's problems in Corona time, criticizing the fact that home schooling children are played commercials "on the side" - and these were moving-picture commercials in the middle of mental arithmetic exercises. Is this deliberate distraction to create the perfect subject idiot or just profiteering?

But it gets worse. As the British Independent reports, (not only) British defense companies are very interested in the attention and a positive attitude of young people. Here, too, we must unfortunately admit that the Bundeswehr is not squeamish about this either (Kinder am G36 bei der Bundeswehr and Bundeswehr an Schulen und sogar Kitas).

Under the headline "Arms companies supply fairy tales to nine-year-olds as part of 'dystopian' marketing campaign in elementary schools", we can learn:

The fairy tales, produced specifically for children in years five and six, feature videos of BAE employees and armed forces personnel reading favourites like Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk and posing engineering questions.

The fairy stories are just the latest example of a marketing blitz on schools by military contractors and suppliers, who collectively spend millions of pounds a year promoting their brands in schools.

Thales, which has sold arms to regimes like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Kazakhstan, runs branded activities for children, including a missile simulator.

Meanwhile Raytheon, manufacturer of the Paveway IV missiles currently being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, runs a national dome-building competition for children in UK schools every year.

MDBA, another major supplier of missiles to Saudi Arabia, runs a “robot rumble” for children aged 11 and up in the town of Stevenage where its factory is based.

Such perfidious advertising tactics are condemned not only by Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade, who notes:

"The idea of allowing arms dealers to target young children through schools and home education is bizarre, dystopian and wrong. They are not doing this because of any love for education. It is because they want to build their reputations with children and parents, and sanitise the appalling things that they do. ...

Right now, BAE’s fighter jets are playing a central role in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen. This has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world and has seen the destruction of schools and deaths of thousands of school-age children. This is not a fairy tale, this is real life and these are the consequences of its arms sales."

It must be the task of parents and educational institutions to stop such influence. Education must not become an appendage of advertising - and certainly not of advertising for war.

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