Episode 296 Audio: Mike Prysner

Mike Prysner, this week’s guest and executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, knows what it’s like to be radicalized by firsthand experience of the brutality of the U.S. military. He joined the Army himself at age seventeen, right before 9/11, and was part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. So he witnessed the rhetoric that military leadership used to get buy-in from the rank and file tasked with waging war in Iraq, and he quickly noticed the disconnect between that leadership’s lies about the patriotic righteousness of its War on Terror and the solidarity that he felt for the people being massacred by that war. Mike works to support conscientious objectors speak out against what it’s like to be in the service, or why they’re choosing a different path. As we see from the work of the Center on Conscience and War, many people who did join the military in search of benefits like free college and healthcare are standing up against the institution that relies on promises of economic stability in order to recruit people to war. We talk about how conscientious objectors are speaking out, what risks they’re taking, and what support systems we can build to make it possible for increasingly disillusioned members of the U.S. military to grow a movement of conscientious objectors that can fundamentally destabilize our war machine. Thanks for subscribing to KK&F. You can listen to this episode on major streaming platforms. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/subscribe