Germany Re-Engineered Ally PART 3_ Hail to the Chief

8/12/2019 Germany Re-Engineered Ally PART 3_ Hail to the Chief

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GERMANY, THE RE-ENGINEERED ALLY

Part 3: Hail to the chief, or else

By Axel Brot

Hoisting the Aerican flag

Germany had honed its ability to fly below the radar of international controversy to a fine art. Its

dependence on foreign trade for its economic well-being required this and it resisted, moreover, for

most of the last ! years rather successfully American attempts to sub"ect its economic relations

with the world to the more extravagant demands of economic warfare. #o wonder, therefore, that

the detente years of the $%&!s and the globali'ation of the $%%!s are remembered with fondness.

German economic interests and the philanthropic basso continuoof its declaratory foreign policy

were in tune. #o wonder, too, that (ashington regards these G)*-cored sentimentalities as

completely out-of-tune with rousing the (est against the +enemies of (estern values+.

After the shocs the German political class suffered in !!!!/, it agreed, be it out of conviction,

opportunism or fear, with the views of the American political class. But as poll after poll reveals,

both have to deal with the fact that they are the opposite of rather fundamental attitudes of the

ma"ority of Germans. Germany has gladly internali'ed what was preached over the decades in

political 0unday sermons about peace and prosperity, about the role of Germany in the modern

world, its relationship with the (est and, in particular, what ind of society Germany should aspire

to. 1his message has not only managed to tae hold2 it has become the prism through which many,

if not most, Germans loo at the world, at the government, the media - and, not least, at the 30.

1his is neither surprising nor extraordinary. 1he German lower classes have always been veryreluctant heroes, having been dragged sullenly into the two world wars. It even too all the efforts

of the 0ocial )emocratic and union leaderships to crush the grassroots movement for a general

strie that was about to disrupt the mobili'ation schedule of the German army in the run-up to

(orld (ar I2 and #a'i domestic intelligence documented their distinct lac of enthusiasm when

Germany attaced *oland and the sense of fear and foreboding when Germany went on to eradicate

4ewish Bolshevism.

1he German educated middle classes, still hung over from their half century of ideological debauch

with its "ingoism, imperialism and #a'ism, from Germany5s role as a genocidal ogre, and still

remembering its war fright from the $%6!s - that, by the way, had reached deeply into the political

class itself as well as into the senior levels of the German military - acquired a reflexive pacifism and

tae, in general, great satisfaction in Germany5s reputation as a mostly harmless global social

worer. 1hey are, to say the least, very difficult to get again behind a program of endless 7race8

wars, torture and an ideology of global mayhem. A strong ma"ority may even resist it actively via

another peace movement if the German government gets too eager, or too blatant, about

demonstrating militarily its commitment to the global +defense of (estern values+.

German pundits - +opinion-maers+ in German - tae all this as an expression of deeply-rooted,

popular +anti-Americanism+, and anti-Americanism as a facet of anti-semitism, and both as the

resurgence of anti-(estern, pro-totalitarian attitudes. 1his effort in guilt-mongering has led to some

interesting myth-maing, amusing if it were not so sinister.

1aing their cue from former 30 defense secretary )onald 9umsfeld5s inanity regarding :en'uelan*resident ;ugo //


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chosen by a cabal of leaders of right-wing parties, industry and the media, to head a coalition

government between those parties and the #a'is, to save the country from the left. Any schoolchild

should now this.

But delegitimi'ing +anti-Americanism+ seems to require heavy myth-maing because it has turned

into a problem not only for the German political class but for the whole of the ?3. 1he ?uropean

populations are, with a few exceptions, completely out of tune with the ideological mobili'ation

required to wage +(orld (ar I:+. #evertheless, the change has been most dramatic in Germany.

1he post-0eptember $$ spie in public support for the 30 was not only wiped out by !!!!/ but

the !-year fund of popular and confident pro-Americanism had evaporated and given way to

distrust, fear and loathing. 1he same holds true, somewhat less dramatically, for attitudes towards

Israel. As a danger to the world, both countries ran with #orth orea and Iran. 9ussia and drucversion.studien-von-'eitfragen.net9e-?ng...

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bomb+ scenario. 1here was no tal-show format that did not have torture on its schedule - with the

former director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, 4eff Gedmin 7now president of 9adio =ree

?urope9adio Fiberty8 as the most indefatigable of its proponents.

But it was the German-Israeli Dichael (olffsohn, a prominent professor at the Armed =orces

3niversity in Dunich, who publicly moved the sub"ect from the +ticing bomb+ to affirm the (est5s

fundamental obligation to use torture against terrorist suspects.

1orture, however, though normal in Israel, would be in breach of the German constitution and for acivil servant to propose it, a breach of the civil service laws. ;e should have been fired. ;e wasn5t.

Instead, then-interior minister and 0ocial )emocrat Ctto 0chily went out on a mission of damage

control. In an interview with )ie Eeit he presented the concerns about torture as a tempest in a

teapot. nowing full well what really was happening, having been privy to intelligence briefings

about the material of the 30 military5s 1aguba 9eport about Abu Ghraib as well as profiting from a

very close relationship with former 30 attorney general 4ohn Ashcroft, he still ridiculed the concern

about torture as a matter of suspects who have to sit on a stool instead of lounging in an easy-chair

and who have their faces illuminated to study facial expressions. 9egarding Guantanamo, he

ascribed it to the understandable American dilemma of what to do with the worst of the bad, a

dilemma that required for him, too, the need to change international law and the Geneva

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their indignation and venom directed against the 9ussian authorities.

=ollowing the lead of )ie Eeit, the high-brow formats of public 1: offered ;einsohn the opportunity

to expand on his theses before a larger audience. And contemporary German philosopher *eter

0loterdi", did not withhold his admiration for ;einsohn5s bold challenge to the pussyfooting

humanitarians. And bold it is. ?ven the economists and race strategists of the 1hird 9eich did not

anticipate the need to ill more than !-@! million subhumans during and after the victorious

campaign against the 0oviet 3nion.

In propagandi'ing the need to tae off the gloves in the fight against the Islamic threat, )ie Eeit

recruited also a )utch writer of middle-brow novels, Feon de (inter. ;e exposed the hopelessly

defective nature of Arab civili'ation, the inbred resistance to acculturation of the Duslim immigrants

in ?urope, and the gynophobe 7or genocidal8 obscurantism of Islam. 0ince he preached this message

often enough, one of the most prestigious German honors was bestowed on him.

)ie Eeit also saw to the requirements of creating empathy with Israel5s struggle at the front lines of

(estern civili'ation. Its publisher, 4osef 4offe, did see to it that one of his editorial team was

embedded with one of the covert operations and assassination squads of the Israeli )efense =orce

7I)=8 to report about the pride and the suffering of those soldiers. At the same time, )ie Eeit refined

the use of images, already characteri'ing the German media in toto, that opposes the dignified tears

of a pretty young woman in an I)= uniform to the 1: images of howling, old Arab strumpets and

menacingly strutting young men.

0imilar messages dominate the German media either in an even more vulgar fashion or somewhat

less stridently. But there is virtually a complete absence of any challenge to its common

denominator. 1he same holds true, by the way, for =rance - with the exception of the monthly

Donde )iplomatique. #evertheless, the German general public seems to continue to resist at least

its intended consequences.

!The Gerans ha*e to learn ho$ to +ill!

1hus, +the Germans have to learn how to ill+. 1his strange and most revealing conclusion about the

German state of mind was brought bac from a #A1C meeting at the end of last year by arsten:oigt, the eternal 0ocial )emocratic +coordinator for German-American relations+. It was occasioned

by the allied indignation 7American, the mandate of the German forces is still

limited to reconstruction assistance, peaceeeping in the 1a"i north, as well as policing and training

duties. But since the German commitment there is already highly contentious and en"oys hardly any

support among the German population, this sardonic comment is addressing more directly the

failure of the German political class to create the climate for getting the +Germans to the front+ than

"ust the limits of the Afghanistan commitment. And its meaning was not lost. =or a while, one might

have been able to en"oy the spectacle of shamefaced German opinion-leaders barely able to restrain

their impatience with the rabble they are forced to educate.

1o placate the allies, Germany sent six 1ornado reconnaissance planes to Afghanistan, either as the

thin end of a wedge or as the timid admission that more is not possible under prevailing conditions.

1ime will tell what it is going to be.

!The Gerans ha*e to learn to ie!

(hat has not yet been piced up in the wider campaign of re-educating Germans is 9afael

0eligmann5s recent pronouncement that +the Germans have to learn to die+ in the +war of

civili'ations+. 1hough a prominent novelist and "ournalist, and richly endowed with public honors, he

obviously had lost his sangfroid. 1he purpose of the whole effort is, of course, about illing and

dying, but the cooler heads among "ournalists and politicians now now - from the baclash of their

earlier offensiveness - that the average German needs to be much more terrori'ed, beleaguered and

anxious to be confronted with this truth.

In the meanwhile, the dissatisfaction with the German mice refusing to roar found different venues

of expression. A lead writer of )er 0piegel, ;endry Broder, also showered with prestigious awards,

too last year5s failure of the Germans to rally in the streets, when they should have demonstrated

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their support for Israel and protested against the ;e'bollah +war of aggression+, as proof of the

ineradicable German anti-semitism. And this is connecting well with the historical myths that have

come to dominate the public discourse, particularly those which hold the German lower classes

culpable for the German misfortunes of the last $!! years, the latest one being their reluctance to

man the barricades for the defense of the (est.

1rying to leverage the German consensus on anti-semitism has become all the rage since a ma"ority

of Germans turned against American 7and Israeli8 policies. 1he quasi-genetic disposition of Germans

to +genocidal anti-semitism+ has become the first and last resort for explaining their recalcitrantpacifism.

#evertheless, though the stridency of the consensual reporting and commenting in the German

media seems to have somewhat leveled off with regard to the wider Diddle ?ast, there is another

front line in the war of civili'ations where hostility and venom remains the only currency of media

opinion - namely, 9ussia. 0o much so, in fact, that the large minority of the political class which

considers normal relations with 9ussia possible and desirable has lost all influence on the public

discourse.

1he rediscovery of the 9ussian enemy - also dating from around !!!!/ - and the demoni'ation

of *utin5s 9ussia might have originated in the search for countermeasures to the crash of the

American public image. But it has now reached a depth that only a large ma"ority of the political

class - unafraid, at that, of a media campaign against it - could recondition the public discourse. 1his

is highly improbable - for domestic as well as for American reasons.

A new cold war with 9ussia is something the 9ussians fear far more than they are apt to let on and

this fear has acquired a real and influential constituency. 1hough the (est might err about the riss,

a cold war5s perceived benefits are simply too substantial to reconsider its wisdom. It is, of course,

driven by the expectation that the 9ussians can be forced to return to the state of affairs that 30

Ambassador to the 3nited #ations Ealmay halil'ad dubbed +adult supervision+. It may end in war

born out of desperation.

And war, the German war against the 0oviet 3nion, has become central to the myth maingunderlying so many of the efforts to reshape the German collective psyche. 1hough by the $%6!s,

many German generals and senior officials had forgiven the 0oviets for defeating the (ehrmacht,

the fashionable view now is that the 0oviet victory was illegitimate - because it was achieved by

+0talinist methods+ - and that 0talin and ;itler were equally responsible for the war, and equally

victimi'ers of the 0oviet population. But since democratic Germany repented its sins, and 9ussia

didn5t, 9ussia will remain in thrall to its totalitarian heritage, and will still have to pay for the war it

finally and "ustly lost in $%%$.

3ndergirding this caricature of history with applications for the present are endless series on public

1: about the 0oviet barbarian ineptness in fighting the war, the suffering of German women at the

hands of 9ed rapists, about the strafing and torpedoing of refugees and refugee ships, thedriving-out of Germans, and the 0oviet anti-semitic refusal to recogni'e the special place of the @

million 4ews among the ! million civilian victims of the German crusade against 4ewish Bolshevism.

In fact, in connecting the debate among the Israeli right and the ideological continuity in those

+history+ series, one might come to the conclusion that the German crime is the one of the

;olocaust of +innocent+ 4ews - innocent in the sense of non-communist. It is, therefore, completely

unsurprising that the cry of +anti-semitism+ that meets any opposition to Israel5s policies and its

propagandists, leaves the 4ewish non- or anti-Eionist left as it has always been, fair game.

3navoidably, these tales to shape the public conscience will eventually have effect. But for now they

seem to have failed their mission. 1he polls still show a substantial ma"ority of Germans regarding

9ussia as non-threatening and basically benign. 1hough not for lac of trying.

Fast year5s climax of the efforts to tae down *utin in a public relations sense - with hopes,

obviously, of getting the German public to scent blood - was an interview in the run-up to the G-6

*etersburg meeting.

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It was led by Daybrit Illner, a popular 1: political tal show host nown as one of the three

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Germany Re-Engineered Ally PART 3_ Hail to the Chief

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