09.26.06
A decision disliked by everyone. Almost everyone.
I have just been reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s account of the Deutsche Oper’s decision not to perform a particular version of Mozart’s Idomeneo because it was judged to be potentially too dangerous. Why too dangerous?
Why else? Because Muslim ragists might take offense to the fact that, in this production, their prophet (pbuh) suffers a fate similar to that suffered by victims of some of the more energetic of today’s adherents to the Religion of Peace ™: beheading.
Although Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon — yes, Poseidon — suffer the same fate in this production of the opera, one apparently cannot count on this equal opportunity beheading to placate the ragists. And we know what tends to happen when ragists act out. Kirsten Harms, the head of the Deutsche Oper, didn’t want that responsibility.
If the FAZ account is correct, it’s a bizarre story. It seems as though Harms, et al, actually kinda hoped nobody would notice that the opera disappeared from the season’s program:
Erst auf den Tip eines Informanten hin begann sich Ende letzter Woche Markus Geiler vom Evangelischen Pressedienst (epd) für die Sache zu interessieren. Tatsächlich fand sich im Spielplan der Deutschen Oper kein „Idomeneo“ mehr, ja nicht einmal ein Hinweis auf dessen Nicht-Wiederaufnahme. Nachfragen Geilers beim Landeskriminalamt und dem Opernhaus brachten schließlich das Gegenteil ans Licht. Getrieben von der öffentlichen Nachfrage und nachdem bereits die Meldung des epd die Redaktionen erreichte, gab das Opernhaus am Montag eine Pressemeldung heraus: „Idomeneo im November entfällt“.
(After getting an informant’s tip, Markus Geiler of the evangelical press service (epd) began to become interested in the story at the end of last week. True enough, “Idomeneo” was no longer on the Deutsche Oper’s program, and without any explanation. Geiler’s inquiries at the state criminal police [Landeskriminalamt] and the Opera House finally brought the issue to light. Pressured by enquiries and after the epd report reached editorial offices, the Opera finally gave out a press release on Monday: “Idomeneo in November cancelled.”)
In case you were worried, you will be pleased to know that this is not any kind of self-censorship or curtailing of artistic freedom (I’m being sarcastic). Referring to Harms’s strange press conference:
Es gehe nicht um eine grundsätzliche Einschränkung der Freiheit der Kunst. „Es geht um Einschränkung der Kunstfreiheit an dieser Stelle.“
(It is not a question of a fundamental curtailment of artistic freedom. “It is a question of a curtailment of artistic freedom on this point.”) [I translated "an dieser Stelle" as "on this point". It could, I suppose, also mean "location".]
And later, after meeting with Harms, the communist (oh, excuse me, “PDS”) Berlin Culture Senator issued a statement in which he said that he and Harms agreed
„daß hier kein Präzedenzfall vorliegt und auch keine Selbstzensur.“
(that this neither sets a precedent nor is it self-censorship.)
As FAZ immediately asks, “What is it then?” (Was sonst?)
Meanwhile, people are coming out of the woodwork to condemn the decision. Everybody hates it: representatives of the right, the left, the center, of religious communities…Oh, wait, except for this guy:
Der Vorsitzenden des Islamrats, Ali Kizilkaya, begrüßte hingegen die Absetzung. „Eine Oper oder eine Karikatur - das macht keinen großen Unterschied.“ Es gehe nicht um die Freiheit der Kunst, so Kizilkaya, sondern um „Respekt vor dem Anderen“.
The chairman of the Islamic Council, Ali Kizilkaya, welcomed the cancellation. “An opera or a cartoon — there is no big difference.” It’s not about artistic freedom, according to Kizilkaya, but rather about “respect for others.”
And we can learn a lot about respect for others from Islam. Am I right?
(NOTE: Here is a link to a Deutsche Welle story (in English) about the decision.)
08.31.06
Steinmeier on Ahmadinejad: Bizarre
It is refreshing to see some fairly straight talk from German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier regarding Iran. In his interview in BILD today (31 Aug 2006), Steinmeier says a few things that I’m happy to see being said in public by the highest ranking German diplomat.
Regarding Ahmadinejad personally:
Der jetzige Präsident will sich zum Anführer der islamischen Welt aufspielen – sein bizarrer Vorschlag für ein Fernseh-Duell mit US-Präsident Bush zeigt das wieder einmal. Dabei teilen seine arabischen, ebenfalls islamischen Nachbarn unsere Sorge und unsere Ablehnung gegenüber einem atomar bewaffneten Regime in Teheran.
(The current president wants to present himself as the leader of the Islamic world — his bizarre suggestion of a TV-duel with US President Bush shows that once again. His arab and islamic neighbors share our worries and our rejection of a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran.)
His acknowledgement that time has run out for Iranians to comply:
[BILD: aber die Mullahs lehnen das Angebot doch kategorisch ab...]
So sieht es leider aus. Deshalb wird sich – wie angekündigt – wohl bald der Weltsicherheitsrat einschalten und die weiteren Schritte beraten. Klar ist: Der Iran hat ein Recht auf friedliche Nutzung der Kernenergie, aber kein Recht auf Atomwaffen! Hinzu kommt: Mit angereichertem Uran kann Teheran derzeit überhaupt nichts anfangen – außer, es plant den Bau der Bombe. Und eine iranische Atombombe müssen wir verhindern!
([BILD]: but the Mullahs categorically reject the proposal…]
So it seems, unfortunately. The Security Council will therefore assemble and discuss the next steps. What’s clear is this: Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear energy, but no right to possess nuclear weapons! It comes to this: Tehran absolutely cannot enrich uranium — if they do, they are planning to build the bomb. And we must prevent an iranian atomic bomb!)
Bravo. I like the talk, now let’s see the walk.
08.21.06
Günter Grass (2) — the anti-bourgeois
Wolfgang at Kapitalismus-Magazin:
Aber kann man über dieses Verhalten von Grass wirklich so überrascht sein oder muss nicht vielmehr festgestellt werden, dass es absolut zu dem passt, was Grass in den letzten Jahrzehnten politisch abgesondert hat?
(But can one really be so surprised about Grass’s behavior? Can’t we instead conclude that it is perfectly consistent with the political Günter Grass of recent decades?) [not a perfect translation from me, but I think it matches the sense and meaning of what Wolfgang is saying.]
Bravo. I think (I’ll have to look it up and write more about it later) that somewhere in that FAZ interview that Grass gave — or perhaps in an excerpt from the autobiography — Grass says something like (I think!) that the stifling bourgeois atmosphere of his family home is what interested him in volunteering for the submariners. If I’m right about that, it is, after all, indeed consistent with the anti-bourgeois leftist Grass of later years.
More along these lines… Wolfgang links to an excellent opinion piece by Wolfgang Münchau in the Financial Times Deutschland. Münchau begins by using Wagner (whose Bayreuth festival is going on right now) as a partial metaphor for Grass; one can enjoy the artistic Wagner in spite of Wagner the anti-semite. Regarding Grass, Münchau says that those who are calling for the revocation of his Nobel Prize for literature are being absurd. As for the political Grass:
Grass ist kein Antisemit wie Wagner, kein Nazi, kein alter Kommunist, sondern ein unerträglicher Doppelmoralist und, schlimmer noch, er ist ein Gegner freiheitlich-demokratischer Politik.
(Grass is not an anti-semite like Wagner, not a Nazi, not an old communist, but rather an insufferable double-moralist and, worse yet, an opponent of free, democratic politics.)
Münchau lists some examples, such as Grass pinning blame for 9/11 on the US and, during the recent “capitalism debate” in Germany (touched-off by Franz Müntefering), taking up his pen to argue that the parliament is run by banks and industry associations and that it subverts democracy in the name of global capitalism, which is discredited and “on the run.”
What Münchau finds noteworthy in all this is that the typical German reaction to the Waffen-SS connection is probably one of surprise because Germans are more likely (than Americans) to see the far right and the far left as being, in fact, opposites. Americans, he argues, would more likely see the extremes of the left and the right bending around to meet each other.
Bingo; that’s certainly how I see it. Münchau:
Grass’ Geschichte spiegelt die Lebenslüge der deutschen Linken. Sie glaubten, links sei das Gegenteil von rechts, und linksextrem sei das Gegenteil von rechtsextrem. Sie sahen sich als die wahren Antinazis. Sie betrachteten die bürgerlichen Parteien CDU, CSU und FDP als die Fortsetzung des Faschismus mit anderen Mitteln. Noch absurder ist, dass sie die USA in demselben Licht betrachteten, ungeachtet dessen, dass ohne Eintritt der USA in den Zweiten Weltkrieg der Faschismus gesiegt hätte.
(Grass’s story shows the lifelong lie of the German left. They believed that left is the opposite of right and that the extreme left is the opposite of the extreme right. They saw themselves as the real anti-Nazis. They viewed the bourgeois parties — the CDU, CSU and FDP — as the continuation of fascism by other means. Even more absurd is that they considered the USA in the same light and ignored the fact that without the USA’s entry into World War Two, fascism would have emerged victorious.)
Could the Grass confessions lead to some useful soul-searching by the German left? Certainly not. Could it at least open the eyes of those amongst the normal germans (i.e., the dreaded bourgeois!) who are prone to seeing the left in a favorable light? I hope so, but I wouldn’t count on it.
08.20.06
Günter Grass
[ed. note: I edited this entry to remove the original german excerpts of the Keese article. The side-by-side german-english didn't look good. Of course you can see the full german text at the Welt am Sonntag site.]
I have spent an astonishing amount of time over the last few days catching up on the stories about Günter Grass’s admission that he was part of the Waffen-SS during the last months of the second world war. I doubt if there is much coverage of the topic in the States, so if you are interested and you need a backgrounder, the english Wikipedia entry about Grass includes a decent overview of the events of the last week.
My own opinion — should anybody care — is that it certainly diminishes the political Günter Grass and rises to the level of a disgrace for which he should be deeply ashamed and embarrassed.
It was a gigantic mistake to remain silent about this for 60 years. What if he had disclosed this early on? I think that would have definitely impacted his ability to be the explicitly political moralizer that he turned out to be (Bitburg, etc.), but I think he still could have gone on to become the literary moral conscience of the nation that some make him out to be. In other words, I don’t think his admission really impacts his novels (I have read only one, by the way.) Had he admitted from the get-go that he was part of the Waffen-SS, I think his novels still could have had the impact that they did. In fact, perhaps the knowledge that the author was himself, as a teenager, a member of the Waffen-SS, would have made the novels even more compelling to his German audience.
Choosing as he did to be much more than “just” a novelist, to be overtly political and, especially, to be so accusatory towards others whom he deemed to be covering up or minimizing their own or Germany’s guilt, his silence was very shameful indeed.
To make it worse, it seems as though he is not being very forthcoming about it all. Of all the articles I have read on the subject, my favorite to date has been Christoph Keese’s “Was bleibt von Günter Grass?” (”What’s left of Günter Grass?”), available at the website of the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag.” It is my favorite because Keese manages to be very critical, yet not too emotional or overboard (as opposed to another article which I’ll discuss later). And he gives some good reasons why we might consider Grass’s “confession” as a less than complete account. I’ll translate some of Keese’s most interesting remarks below.
[Note: because this is a rather lengthy post, I've split it so that it doesn't take up such a big piece of the front page. Click the link below to continue reading.]
08.19.06
One of the alleged would-be mass murderers caught
German television ARD is reporting that one of the two suspected would-be bombers of regional German trains has been caught. According to the report, he was caught during the early morning hours today at the main rail station in the German city of Kiel.
If the guy they arrested is one of the two, then he gets around pretty good. Kiel is in the far north of Germany, whereas Koblenz and Dortmund — where the bombs were found on 31. July — are in the middle-west. If you look at this map, Kiel is up in the area numbered 24 whereas Koblenz is in 56 and Dortmund in 45.
Prosecutors say both DNA and fingerprint evidence matches with the man arrested today in Kiel. He is a 21 year-old student from Lebanon who has lived in Kiel for two years.
ARD also reports that the prosecutors are convinced that the two are not lone-wolves (they don’t use that term), but rather must be part of a larger, structured organization.
I now see there is an english report here.
UPDATE: as I look at earlier reports of the 31. July bombing attempts more closely, I notice that it wasn’t quite right for me to point out Dortmund and Koblenz as places where this man could have been. Police believe the two bombs were placed on the trains in Cologne. You’ll see that (with the german spelling “Köln”) in area 50 of this map — still quite far from Kiel.
Two would-be mass murderers on the loose in Germany
You can boost your bank account to the tune of 50,000 EUR if you help the German authorities capture the two young men who planted bombs on German trains on July 31st. At the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung you can see video footage of the news conference today whereat the captured explosive devices were shown to the media. The video includes security camera footage of the two would-be murderers.
For From the article at Expatica:
The discovery of the two suitcase bombs coincided with the latest conflict in the Middle East. “We believe that it is possible that the perpetrators wanted to see signals in the direction of the Middle East,” said Ziercke.
He also revealed that in one of the bags containing the bombs police found a note written in Arabic along with a telephone number in Lebanon and - similar to a shopping list - the name of a yoghurt that is manufactured in Lebanon but is also available in Germany.
Opposing the US on the Iraq doesn’t necessarily buy you much security.
09.18.05
Who won the Cold War? Thoughts on the German Election.
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
The Left owns political and economic Germany. That’s my opinion, anyway. By saying this, I’m not ignoring the FDP’s suprising success in today’s election. What I’m suggesting is this: Germany is in a very difficult economic situation after seven years of the SPD and Greens, a leftist coalition. Yet no amount of misery seems enough to tilt people towards trying out a more free market economy. And don’t try to convince me that the FDP’s nice 2.6% gain is a sign of that — ok, maybe it is a bit, but let’s look instead at today’s real winners: the communists. Ok, I’ll call the combo of the PDS and Lafontainists “hard-lefties” instead of communists, just to play fair. They garnered 8.7% of the vote today, surpassing the Green party in the number of seats in Parliament. That’s a 4.7% jump for the hard-lefties.
And the Green party — which you might think would be punished a bit for being part of the coalition that has governed for seven years — lost almost nothing, with a measly 0.4% turning away from them. This means that the 4.3% who gave up on Schroeder’s SPD, plus the 0.4% that left the Greens, went in one and only one direction: left. According to the projections I am looking at right now (ZDF circa 22:15, 18. September 2005), the governing coalition parties’ losses (-4.3 + -0.4 = -4.7%) are exactly the far left’s gain (+4.7%).
Think of what this really means: it’s not just the case that nobody — after years of recession — has been convinced of a need to move towards a freer marketplace. It’s much worse: 4.7% of the voting populace fled towards even more socialism.
Still not convinced that The Left owns political and economic Germany? Think, then, about the tenor of the campaign. With such a miserable economy, you would think that the governing parties would be the ones on the defensive. But that was not at all the case. They had absolutely no reason to be on the defensive, because, fundamentally, most people think the same way they do: socialism and americo-skepticism (or blatant anti-americanism).
Speaking of being on the defensive, who the heck won the Cold War? The party that is more likely to let a positive utterance about the United States slip out — the CDU/CSU — had to be on the defensive and make sure they didn’t come across as pro-American. Rephrase: the greatest democratic ally that Germany has ever had was a liability in this campaign. But I also sense that Merkel was on the defensive economically. Instead of Gerhard Schroeder — or those more Socialist than he — being on the defensive and needing to explain what happened over the last several years, the CDU needed to be careful not to offend those people who live off of the state.
Needless to say, I am unhappy with the election results. I’m sorry to say this, because I wish the Germans well, but to me this seems like Germany is even less “dynamic” — and more stagnant — than I previously thought. I might even say it seems like a “fearful” country, where the people shy away from change and are hiding under a thin and shabby security blanket that they are terrified will be yanked off of them.
07.05.05
How left can “mainstream” Germans sound? Way left.
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
An entry by Ch.Arm at Brushfires of Freedom (German) brought the latest issue of IG Metall’s periodical to my attention. IG Metall is the German union whose earlier edition of metall featured the now infamous Americans-as-Bloodsuckers cover.
The newest issue instructs us on the evils of the much-hated neoliberalismus (neoliberalism), the term used generally here for a political economics that favors the free market, privatization and less emphasis on the social state. Living here I can tell you that those on the Left love to throw around the word neoliberalismus — it’s the official bogeyman, much in the same way that anglo-american lefties expect the term “neo-conservative” to instill fear and loathing in all of us.
In the timeline of the growth of evil that is printed alongside their lecture, the Metall Meanies show once again how the origins of this evil that disrupts what otherwise would be the splendid life of the german proletariat comes from outside Germany, just as their Americans-as-Bloodsuckers issue explicitly argued and just as their great teachers in the art of propaganda — Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, et al. — argued before them.
This time around it is that great “social-darwinist”, Margaret Thatcher, who is to blame, presumably because she was the first European “neoliberal” in power. The very beginning of the timeline is actually 1947. It reads: “Economist Friedrich Hayek founds the ‘Mont Pelerin Society’, the cradle of neoliberalism. His student: Margaret Thatcher.” (queue scary music here.)
Next we jump to 1979, when the now grown-up social darwinist becomes prime minister of England:
| Die Sozialdarwinistin Thatcher hat keinen Skrupel, immer mehr Wettbewerb zu fordern und in Großbritannien durchzusetzen. Sie kämpft gegen Gewerkschaften und betreibt massiven Sozialabbau. Außerdem privatisiert die Eiserne Lady alles was zu privatisieren ist. Thatchers Lieblingskommentar dazu: ‘Es gibt keine Alternativen.’ Die Bilanz ihrer Politik: In England ist heute jede vierte Person und jedes dritte Kind arm.Der Neoliberalismus wird mit Thatcher sowie auch US-Präsident Ronald Reagan salonfähig und breitet sich weltweit aus. Der Glaube an die neoliberale Politik, die den Märkten alle Macht geben will, wird auch als Allheimmittel für Entwicklungsländer gepriesen. Erstes Opfer: Chile. Der Versuch endet im Chaos. | The social-darwinist Thatcher does not hesitate to continuously press for increased competition [i.e., free market] throughout Britain. She fights against unions and carries out a massive dismantling of social services. Additionally, the Iron Lady privatizes whatever there is to privatize. Thatcher’s favorite saying: ‘There is no alternative.’ The result of her policies: in today’s England, every fourth person and every third child is poor.Through Thatcher as well as U.S. President Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism becomes fashionable and is spread throughout the world. The belief in the neoliberal politics, which give all power to the market, is even touted as a cure-all for the developing countries. First victim: Chile. The attempt ends in chaos. |
As they move on to complain about Germany’s miserable condition, they highlight the economic malaise there by showing how poorly German average income has fared versus other countries. They list several countries from best to worst. Guess who places second in the race for the highest increase in wages over the ten year period beginning in 1995: those darned darwinists in England, who had a whopping 25.2% increase, versus a 0.9% decrease in German wages. (Yet every fourth Englishman is poor, right?)
Though they have nothing but bile to spit at the likes of Thatcher and Reagan, see how the former eastern bloc fares in their timeline entry for 1989:
| Die 80er Jahre stehen im Zeichen des politischen Wandels. Mit Glasnost kommt die Widervereinigung Deutschlands und der Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion. Zu spät entdecken die Politiker, dass nicht alles aus der ehemaligen DDR schlecht war. Doch für Kinderkrippen und die meisten ostdeutschen Produkte ist es bereits zu spät. | The 80s herald political change. With Glasnost comes the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But politicians realize too late that not everything about the former DDR [East German Communist Dictatorship] was bad. For the daycare centers and most products from the east it is too late. |
I would, of course, have a lot to say about that, but to me it’s more appropriate to let a German do the talking on this subject. So here is Ch.Arm’s response to Metall’s complaint that politicians failed to see that not everything about the DDR was bad:
| Genau! Sozialismus, Totalitarismus, unfreie Wahlen, Stasi, Berliner Mauer, fehlende Reisefreiheit, enormes Wohlstandsgefälle zum Westen, etc. etc. Und genau in ein solches System gehören diese verbohrten Gewerkschaftsdeppen hin. Hoffen wir nur, dass nicht all zu viele Leser diesen Schwachsinn ernst nehmen und sich selbst ein eigenes, richtiges Meinungsbild ausarbeiten. |
Exactly! Socialism, totalitarianism, no free elections, Stasi, Berlin Wall, the absence of the freedom to travel, enormous differences in the standard of living vis-a-vis the west, etc., etc. And in exactly such a system do these pig-headed union idiots belong. We can only hope that not too many of the readers of this nonsense take it seriously and that they instead form their own opinions. |
The article itself ends with a call to lift the tax exemptions on the profits of “the locusts” — yes, they used the favorite lefty catchword “Heuschrecken” — and this ominous remark: “We won’t accept just criticisms of capitalism that are not backed-up with actions.”
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How left can “mainstream” Germans sound? Way left.
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
An entry by Ch.Arm at Brushfires of Freedom (German) brought the latest issue of IG Metall’s periodical to my attention. IG Metall is the German union whose earlier edition of metall featured the now infamous Americans-as-Bloodsuckers cover.
The newest issue instructs us on the evils of the much-hated neoliberalismus (neoliberalism), the term used generally here for a political economics that favors the free market, privatization and less emphasis on the social state. Living here I can tell you that those on the Left love to throw around the word neoliberalismus — it’s the official bogeyman, much in the same way that anglo-american lefties expect the term “neo-conservative” to instill fear and loathing in all of us.
In the timeline of the growth of evil that is printed alongside their lecture, the Metall Meanies show once again how the origins of this evil that disrupts what otherwise would be the splendid life of the german proletariat comes from outside Germany, just as their Americans-as-Bloodsuckers issue explicitly argued and just as their great teachers in the art of propaganda — Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, et al. — argued before them.
This time around it is that great “social-darwinist”, Margaret Thatcher, who is to blame, presumably because she was the first European “neoliberal” in power. The very beginning of the timeline is actually 1947. It reads: “Economist Friedrich Hayek founds the ‘Mont Pelerin Society’, the cradle of neoliberalism. His student: Margaret Thatcher.” (queue scary music here.)
Next we jump to 1979, when the now grown-up social darwinist becomes prime minister of England:
| Die Sozialdarwinistin Thatcher hat keinen Skrupel, immer mehr Wettbewerb zu fordern und in Großbritannien durchzusetzen. Sie kämpft gegen Gewerkschaften und betreibt massiven Sozialabbau. Außerdem privatisiert die Eiserne Lady alles was zu privatisieren ist. Thatchers Lieblingskommentar dazu: ‘Es gibt keine Alternativen.’ Die Bilanz ihrer Politik: In England ist heute jede vierte Person und jedes dritte Kind arm.
Der Neoliberalismus wird mit Thatcher sowie auch US-Präsident Ronald Reagan salonfähig und breitet sich weltweit aus. Der Glaube an die neoliberale Politik, die den Märkten alle Macht geben will, wird auch als Allheimmittel für Entwicklungsländer gepriesen. Erstes Opfer: Chile. Der Versuch endet im Chaos. |
The social-darwinist Thatcher does not hesitate to continuously press for increased competition [i.e., free market] throughout Britain. She fights against unions and carries out a massive dismantling of social services. Additionally, the Iron Lady privatizes whatever there is to privatize. Thatcher’s favorite saying: ‘There is no alternative.’ The result of her policies: in today’s England, every fourth person and every third child is poor.
Through Thatcher as well as U.S. President Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism becomes fashionable and is spread throughout the world. The belief in the neoliberal politics, which give all power to the market, is even touted as a cure-all for the developing countries. First victim: Chile. The attempt ends in chaos. |
As they move on to complain about Germany’s miserable condition, they highlight the economic malaise there by showing how poorly German average income has fared versus other countries. They list several countries from best to worst. Guess who places second in the race for the highest increase in wages over the ten year period beginning in 1995: those darned darwinists in England, who had a whopping 25.2% increase, versus a 0.9% decrease in German wages. (Yet every fourth Englishman is poor, right?)
Though they have nothing but bile to spit at the likes of Thatcher and Reagan, see how the former eastern bloc fares in their timeline entry for 1989:
| Die 80er Jahre stehen im Zeichen des politischen Wandels. Mit Glasnost kommt die Widervereinigung Deutschlands und der Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion. Zu spät entdecken die Politiker, dass nicht alles aus der ehemaligen DDR schlecht war. Doch für Kinderkrippen und die meisten ostdeutschen Produkte ist es bereits zu spät. | The 80s herald political change. With Glasnost comes the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But politicians realize too late that not everything about the former DDR [East German Communist Dictatorship] was bad. For the daycare centers and most products from the east it is too late. |
I would, of course, have a lot to say about that, but to me it’s more appropriate to let a German do the talking on this subject. So here is Ch.Arm’s response to Metall’s complaint that politicians failed to see that not everything about the DDR was bad:
| Genau! Sozialismus, Totalitarismus, unfreie Wahlen, Stasi, Berliner Mauer, fehlende Reisefreiheit, enormes Wohlstandsgefälle zum Westen, etc. etc. Und genau in ein solches System gehören diese verbohrten Gewerkschaftsdeppen hin. Hoffen wir nur, dass nicht all zu viele Leser diesen Schwachsinn ernst nehmen und sich selbst ein eigenes, richtiges Meinungsbild ausarbeiten. |
Exactly! Socialism, totalitarianism, no free elections, Stasi, Berlin Wall, the absence of the freedom to travel, enormous differences in the standard of living vis-a-vis the west, etc., etc. And in exactly such a system do these pig-headed union idiots belong. We can only hope that not too many of the readers of this nonsense take it seriously and that they instead form their own opinions. |
The article itself ends with a call to lift the tax exemptions on the profits of “the locusts” — yes, they used the favorite lefty catchword “Heuschrecken” — and this ominous remark: “We won’t accept just criticisms of capitalism that are not backed-up with actions.”
07.01.05
Prominent German Lefty Sounds Righty
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
After Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) failed in one regional election after another, one of its “prominents”, Oscar LaFontaine, decided to pull left. He abandoned his party and has now created — for this year’s national election — a coalition with the SED PDS, the successor party to the East German Communist Dictatorship. Now LaFontaine is on the campaign trail preparing for elections this autumn. A statement of his a few weeks ago at a rally in Chemnitz is a great example of how statists — be they left or right — inevitably start sounding like each other, especially in “emergencies”, which one might consider today’s German economy.
Specifically, LaFontaine said:
The State is obliged to protect its citizens. It is obliged to prevent family fathers and women from losing their jobs due to foreign workers taking low-paying jobs. [... weil Fremdarbeiter zu niedrigen Löhnen ihnen die Arbeitsplätze wegnehmen.]
Using the word Fremdarbeiter pejoratively usually marks you as a right-winger. But this comes from a prominent politician who has teamed-up with the far left. All sorts of foreigner interest groups are shocked and dismayed by the comment. But nobody should be surprised. The Euro Left is following basically the same logic when it works hard to be sure that the European Union does not pass any laws that significantly “liberalize” the service-sector, fearing it would mean that Czechs and Poles and other scary Easterners would be able to move into Germany (or France, etc.) and take smaller pay packets and fewer benefits while providing similar services that a German (or Frenchman, etc.) could provide. This is kind of what one might call Xenophobia is only slightly different from the right-wing version. I look at it this way:
People probably consider “right-wing” xenophobia to be based primarily on racial hatred; righties who use the economic argument (i.e., “they are stealing jobs”) are probably just rationalizing their hatred and using an excuse that they believe will motivate other people to their side.
This “left-wing” “xenophobia” is based on anger over people screwing up the lovely, utopian social state. For the social state utopia to function, there can’t be big gaps in personal income expectations between different sectors of the population. First of all, this means that the people who traditionally have had the higher expectations are more likely to become unemployed as they are replaced by people with lower expectations. Their unemployment is a further burden on the social state, which in turn is supported in large part by “contributions” based on percentages of income, payroll, etc.
Simply put: the extent to which LaFontaine is annoyed by Fremdarbeiter is the extent to which he believes they are upsetting the utopian balance of the well-functioning social state. His annoyance is actually probably less aimed at them personally as it is aimed at those who are willing to employ them at lower wages to increase profit.
Or, perhaps he is just a racist after all! Or he is cynically using the xenophobia angle to gain “disaffected” voters who would usually turn to the right-wing.
(In reviewing my paragraph up there about the Fremdarbeiter’s willingness to work for lower wages and how this upsets the social state’s balance, I am not so convinced that I am right. Because that argument suggests that, thanks to the presence of Fremdarbeiter willing to work for cheaper wages, the cost of labor in Germany is decreasing. But is this really so? I don’t know.)
