“The madness of militarism,” the 2023 Ellsberg lecture by Norman Solomon

In this year’s Ellsberg Lecture, Norman Solomon reflects on what Martin Luther King Jr. called ‘the madness of militarism’ and offers an overview of present-day U.S. militarism, its consequences, and possibilities for overcoming its pervasive effects.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (Wiley, 2005) and War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press, 2023). He has been an activist since the late 1960s.

We are very grateful to the Media Education Foundation for filming the lecture and producing this video.