America could use some friends in the German blogosphere; unfortunately, those blogs that identify themselves as "pro-American" are often racist and contain the worst kind of right-wing, militaristic propaganda. The popular German blog Politically Incorrect has an American flag in its banner, and describes itself as fervently "pro-amerikanisch". But there is nothing "American" about the blog: in post after post it publishes hateful pieces about Muslims in Europe, alternating occasionally with posts that celebrate Israeli actions against Palestinians.
News for Politically Incorrect: America doesn't hate Muslims. America has always been a melting pot that welcomes all races and religions. There are at least five million Muslims living in the US, and they are among the most successful - and most assimilated - group in America. Yes, we also have racists who say hateful things about Muslims, but they are by and large marginalized (two unfortunate exceptions: the political pundit Pat Buchanen and the neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer). So please remove the American flag from your blog; your content is profoundly anti-American.
Note: I am horrified that Google News now indexes Politically Incorrect in its searches, exposing more readers to this hateful content. To give you an idea of the readership of PI, a journalist writing under the name of Bastian Engelke wrote an article in Telepolis where he criticized PI's racist rhetoric. For this he recieved a barrage of hate mail, even threats, from PI fans (HT Dr. Dean).
There you can see what people like Mr.Bush are doing for social stability around the world. This kind of neo-nazi "Islamkritik" is now very much the mainstream, with the prominent jewish journalist Henryk Broder leading the wolfpack. If you take his book about the supposed Islamization of Europe we're about 5 minutes away from a theocracy. All this is kind of like a zombified Völkische Bewegung raised from its grave.
You can see this crap in all the mass media, the people are being primed for another racist excess, maybe nuking Iran, maybe the completion of the Palestinian ethnicide.
Posted by: name | March 10, 2007 at 04:50 PM
'name' seems to be a typical adherent of 'telepolis', an information portal, which gave regularly place for conspiracy theories about 9/11. The fact that telepolis is cited here is a shame for a site that pretends to be representative for German-American dialogue.
Posted by: Oiseaudefeu | March 10, 2007 at 04:58 PM
I'm glad to read this posting, because I strongly agree with you that the people I wrote about are "friends" that the US and Israel need least. And the term horrified also quite well matches my feelings when I discovered that the German section of Google seems to consider daily hate messages "news". Especially since I wrote to Google a couple of weeks ago without getting any meaningful reaction. Maybe there is a chance that the Google people in the US take another look at the issue.
However, I have to state clearly that I did NOT receive any threats. I just said that I use a pseudonym to avoid becoming a target of hate messages and harrassment after publishing the article, which has happened to other people. The way things are now, I'm also not likely to receive any threats, because the only ways to contact me are via the telepolis editors or in the public forums.
Kind Regards,
B.E.
Posted by: Bastian Engelke | March 10, 2007 at 06:15 PM
@Bastian,
Thanks for your comment. Writing to Google is a good idea - I intend to do so. I am curious about what criteria Google uses to include blog content in its indexing of news items.
-DV
Posted by: David | March 11, 2007 at 07:42 AM
@name:
---with the prominent jewish journalist Henryk Broder leading the wolfpack.---
You know, it is kind of creepy that you have to mention that Broder is jewish. This sounds a bit like "the Jews control the media" conspiracist.
Is Broder actually a journalist or is he rather a columnist?
---You can see this crap in all the mass media, the people are being primed for another racist excess, maybe nuking Iran, maybe the completion of the Palestinian ethnicide.---
Ethnicide? You're really not helping your position there. You can say about the Palestinian problem what you want, but calling it the large scale eradication of a people is just plain stupid.
About the media: And our "liberal hawks" in Germany state exactly the same (see David's Medienkritik or Statler and Waldorf for that). So as long as *both* fringes complain that the media does not focus on their position enough, they seem to do something right.
---
@David:
Thanks for the post, this sums up my position as well. This hodge-podge of anti-German (as in "die Antideutsche"), anti-Muslim and neo-conservative views that some liberal bloggers wrap in America's or Israel's flag really grinds on my nerves.
Especially since any modicum of sensible discussion seems to disappear from the political blogosphere. (Due to trolls on both sides.)
You think that America deserves better than Bush's administration? You, Sir, are just too yellow to say outright that you hate freedom and America. And on the other hand, when you try to argue that Bush is not Hitler and that this kind of argumentation is counter-productive as well? You, Sir, are a rabid neocon and just plain evil.
Anyway, that's why I enjoy "Dialog International" and "Atlantic Review". Here you can still have an honest discussion without being shouted down by the angry mob.
So, David, keep up the good work.
Posted by: Wintermute | March 12, 2007 at 12:07 PM
"'name' seems to be a typical adherent of 'telepolis', an information portal, which gave regularly place for conspiracy theories about 9/11. The fact that telepolis is cited here is a shame for a site that pretends to be representative for German-American dialogue."
Telepolis is quite a sophisticated web journal. There is always space for "unpopular" topics which makes it indeed a good additional information source. It's relatively left-winged, though. Concerning this 9/11 conspiracy issue - you may remember that also Der Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had some features about "Loose Change", which were not that critical either.
Another problem, by the way, with PI is their commenting policy: Although many of their commentors declare pure hate regularly, reproducing stereotypes of muslims (seeing all of them as "Untermenschen") and even appeal for violence against muslims, they do not become deleted (although registration is required to post comments). So one has to draw the conclusion that PI's administrators are ideologically not that far away from their fascist friends.
Posted by: Hann0 | March 12, 2007 at 04:47 PM
@Hanno,
Good point about the PI commenters. I've noted the same thing at Medienkritik, which has a prominent button on the PI site. Racist comments are allowed to stand, while left-liberal commenters are banned.
Posted by: David | March 12, 2007 at 05:27 PM
@ Wintermute
Thanks for the compliment!
Posted by: Joerg | March 12, 2007 at 08:02 PM
You are a die hard leftwinger, David - and as such you don't represent the United States, this is a fact.
And now you want to play the Blockwart/Blogwart to get the biggest german Blog (Yes, you heard right) from the Google Index?
Neither the Leftwingers in Germany nor Google can stop the rise of PI, it is already too late :-)
PI is all about the "hard questions" that nobody else (media, politicans) is asking in Germany.
Posted by: Klaus | March 13, 2007 at 02:48 PM
@Klaus,
No, I am a die-hard Democrat. As I recall, the Democrats won the last election by a large margin (11 million votes) and are poised to take the White House in 2008.
It is racist blogs like PI that represent a radical fringe of right-wing zealots, prominent only in the former slave states. We will do what we can to contain you.
Posted by: David | March 13, 2007 at 07:32 PM
@David
Democrats may win, but not by presenting a lefties agenda to the American Voter.
Anyway, with a Democratic President the necessary attack on Iran is much more likely and will be well-received by the PI crowd.
PI is not advocating racism, it is fighting the "Gutmenschen"-System that poisoned the society and that threatens our freedom.
Americans have Fox, a bunch of high profile neo-conservative commentators and hundreds of conservative media outlets. In Germany there is only PI and that is mainly the reason this blog is growing like crazy.
Posted by: Klaus | March 13, 2007 at 09:15 PM
Klaus, blogs like PI simply hide their racism behind a pro-Israeli and pro-American attitude. Their calculation is that nobody will dare to mess with them when they pretend to side with the jews or with the anti-terror alliance.
America, as well as Israel, have good reasons to be chosey with making friends like that, or even with accepting applause from the wrong side.
PI successfully plays with fire, I won't deny it. But there are also good reasons why big media doesn't touch 'the hard questions' with a ten foot pole: These are no questions at all, they are racist answers hidden in hypocrite questions.
Posted by: 2020 | March 14, 2007 at 05:28 AM
"Americans have Fox, a bunch of high profile neo-conservative commentators and hundreds of conservative media outlets."
Yes, Klaus, you are absolutely correct about this. That is what we are trying to resist every day.
Posted by: David | March 14, 2007 at 07:46 AM
I recall George W. Bush visiting a mosque after 9/11 to distance himself from the militant, racist anti-islamism that is at issue here. In PI logic, any politician who does something like that is a pathetic leftist "Gutmensch".
Even though I'm not an American, I dare to say that someone who is far enough on the right to consider Bush a leftist coward does not speak for the US.
Posted by: Bastian Engelke | March 14, 2007 at 08:54 AM
@2020
BS, PI even started as a pure pro-American blog. This was a reaction to the daily dose of US-bashing in the german media and by the Schröder administration.
Fox is no big media ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk7AfHTtj-c
Posted by: Klaus | March 14, 2007 at 11:14 AM
Well it's perfectly OK to say that Broder is jewish because he's capitalising on it daily. Swap "muslim" in his hateful pamphlets for "jew", umm no thats not possible. And no, there's no conspiracy. But the only official lesson of history is supposed to be that Jews are untouchable but everyone else can be mistreated or killed freely.
Second, there's no such thing as a "Palestinian problem", there's a big problem with folkish and racist European ideology going overboard once more. Zionists cooperated with the Nazis and always shared the same goals of furthering anti-semitism and cleansing Europe of its Jews. Zionism in its current state is racism and religious fanaticism combined.
Third, idiots like PI are a big problem for Germany itself because ever more potential immigrants no matter how highly qualified won't be coming here. Whats the use of living in a country where some neo-nazi/anti-muslim morons are waiting to beat you up because you look foreign.
There is already a problem with immigrants getting smashed by "pro-american" and "pro-israeli" mobs. Ironically it is the pro-business FDP who also run these xenophobic campaigns due to their high ultra-right membership, see the Möllemann affair. They are now attempting a constitutional change to "protect german culture".
There are also groups like BFB (Bund freier Bürger) who are strictly neo-fascist splintergroups that left the FDP over such issues and are very likely behind webtrash like PI.
Posted by: name | March 14, 2007 at 11:10 PM
@ Klaus: I was talking about German big media.
Posted by: 2020 | March 15, 2007 at 12:26 AM
Everybody who considers "PI" a hateful and/or racist blogg, does not know what he is talking about.
All PI does is bring disturbing FACTS to the open. Questions which noone else dares to ask.
PI does not advocate violence or explicit racism against anybody, but only brings FACTS on immigration and muslim (mis-)behaviour in Germany and around the world.
What's wrong with being pro-american and pro-Israel? There are many other bloggs in german that have the same views than PI, for example "Fakten und Fiktionen".
If in a country DISTURBING FACTS may not be shown to the general public anymore, we have already left the field of democracy!rom
Posted by: rom | March 16, 2007 at 05:53 AM
Sorry, what do these alleged facts prove?
Posted by: effdii | March 22, 2007 at 11:26 AM
And also: what do these facts have to do with being "pro-American"? There is nothing American about "PI".
Posted by: David | March 22, 2007 at 01:39 PM
@name:
"There is already a problem with immigrants getting smashed by "pro-american" and "pro-israeli" mobs."
Can you prove that?
"Ironically it is the pro-business FDP who also run these xenophobic campaigns due to their high ultra-right membership, see the Möllemann affair."
Möllemann positioned himself clearly AGAINST America and Israel and was on the side of the Palestinians. And what xenophobic campaigns by the FDP have you seen?
"They are now attempting a constitutional change to "protect german culture"."
Again: Can you back that up with some evidence?
@rom:
"Fakten & Fiktionen" and PI have been seperated at birth, they post the same kind of stuff. And yes, there are some other blogs subscribing to the same "Islam is evil, and all Muslims are a kind of fifth column of that evil"-line. But that doesn't make them any better.
Posted by: Karsten | March 22, 2007 at 07:42 PM
@name:
Ok, seconds after klicking "Post", I remembered what you were talking about. Yes, the FDP want to put the advancement of cultural activity into the German constitution. But that campaign is not xenophobic at all - its aim is not to protect "German" culture against foreign influence, like you insinuated, but rather to make clear that cultural activities have to be supported and not forgotten even in times of economical problems.
However, even as a member of the FDP I am opposed to that campaign. For the same reasons that jo@chim points out here:
http://www.antibuerokratieteam.de/?p=1443
Posted by: Karsten | March 22, 2007 at 07:54 PM
Applause for the idea to bring this topic to this site.
For my part, having spent an exchange-year in the heartland of Appallachia it has been always painful to see a bunch of german nerds claim values for themselves they have never even experienced or reflected.
It would be good for you americans to discredit PI - by demanding the removal of the starspangled Banner from their hate-blog.
The southern Rebel-Flag would fit them way better anyway.
Nobody hates America around here. But many are disgusted by the Elite, that considers the country it´s own and prepares for a preemptive apocalypse.
..okay, add the RebornJesusArtists and and those loud so full of themselves american tourists :-)
But otherwise, i really like your country a lot.
- Humoregierung.
Posted by: Weltregierung | May 29, 2007 at 10:53 AM