Dialog International

The Open Society and its Enemies

I was a bit too young to follow the debate in the early 1970s between Herbert Marcuse and Sir Karl Popper.  But if asked to choose between the two I would have enthusiastically thrown my lot in with Marcuse - choosing hot revolution over dreary incrementalism.  What sex-crazed teenager wouldn't buy into Marcuse's Marxian/Freudian notion that Eros was the creative force behind all civilization, and "late capitalism" channeled erotic impulses into consumerism and therefore had to be transformed. But into what? Marcuse, in his Essay on Liberation, is noticeably vague on what a "liberated" society might look like, but he was an energetic supporter of Third World "revolutions":

"In Vietnam, in Cuba, in China, a revolution is being defended and driven forward which struggles to eschew the bureaucratic administration of socialism. The guerrilla forces in Latin America seem to be animated by that same subversive impulse: liberation." (Herbert Marcuse, Preface to Essay on Liberation, 1969).  

Freedom of Expression, The First Amendment?  - all manifestations of late capitalist "Repressive Tolerance". Marcuse's theory - I'm ashamed to say - made a big impression on my teenage self. It wasn't until much later - after spending time in the Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Staat (DDR) in the late 1970s and early 1980s - that I began to understand the wisdom of Sir Karl Popper's The Open society and its Enemies (1947). By then I had studied Freud's Unbehagen in der Kultur and had a different understanding of Eros - of its destructive tendencies - and had read much modern history, including accounts of Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward, which led to the slaughter of 40 million Chinese citizens. Utopian thinking,as Popper illustrates with Plato, tends to morph into tyranny. 

Popper wrote his treatise just as liberal democracy had managed to survive its greatest existential threat.  Now the open society is once again facing threats which just a few years ago were unthinkable. 

Ob AfD, Pegida, Hogesa, Salafisten, Graue Wölfe, abstruse linksradikale Reste antiimperialistischer Gruppen im Umfeld der Linkspartei, Nazis, Anhänger von Verschwörungstheorien, Esoterik und diverse ökoreligiösen Strömungen – fast alle diese Gruppen wachsen mit besorgniserregender Geschwindigkeit und so unterschiedlich sie auch sind, besteht zwischen ihnen in wesentlichen Punkten Einigkeit: Sie lehnen eine offene, pluralistische Gesellschaft ab. Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus sind bei ihnen mindestens weit verbreitet wenn nicht sogar ideologische Grundlage. Die Medien nehmen sie nur noch als Lügenpresse wahr. Offene Debatten sind ihnen verhasst.

(Whether AfD, Pegida, Hogesa, Salafi jihadists, Grey Wolves, abstruse radical left-wing remnants of anti-imperialists groups close to the Left Party, Nazis, fans of conspiracy theories, esoteric groups, diverse eco-religious elements - nearly all of these groups are growing at a speed that of great concern.  And, as diverse as they are, they all have one essential thing in common: they reject the open, pluralist society. Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are widespread with them, if not the core ideology.  They see the media as the "lying-press"; any open debate is anathema to them.)

I don't want to live in a world where Donald Trump is US president and Marine LePen is president of France, where migrant children seeking security and prosperity are gunned down at the border. Question is, do we still have the will any more to defend the open society?

Was eine Offene Gesellschaft nicht erträgt ist, wenn sie gleichzeitig angegriffen wird und sich zu wenige finden, sie zu verteidigen. In diese Situation kommen wir langsam...

(What the open society cannot tolerate is that it comes under attack and very few can be found to defend it.  We are slowly coming to this predicament...)

Putin's latest German disinformation campaign a huge success

This is pretty amazing - and a huge victory for Putin's propaganda efforts in Germany.

A thirteen-year-old girl runs away from home to have sex with her boyfriend and then lies about it.  An international crisis ensues and - in the end - it's all America's fault.

The student from Berlin-Marzahn, identified only as Lisa, was reported missing on January 11. She resurfaced around 30 hours later and filed a police report claiming to have been abducted by three men at a railway station in eastern Berlin. She was allegedly taken to an apartment where she was beaten and sexually assaulted. According to German media, the teen described the men as coming from "southern countries and speaking broken German."German police have repeatedly stated there was no evidence of kidnapping or rape. Martin Steltner, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, told Berlin's RBB public radio on Monday there were only indications of "consensual sexual contact."

The girl evidently has a Russian background, and that's when Putin's trolls kicked into high gear.

In the days following the girl's disappearance, Russian TV claimed she was held for 30 hours as a sex slave by several foreigners. The pro-Kremlin channel NTV went so far as to say that "in Germany and in Sweden, residents are regularly raped by refugees … but the local authorities and police hide these facts and do not open criminal investigations."The case prompted hundreds of Russian Germans to protest in Berlin over the weekend, calling for their children to be protected from "migrant violence." They were backed by supporters of "Bärgida," the Berlin branch of the Pegida movement.

The Russian-German protesters were coached well by the Kremlin.  Their anger against the migrants for the rape (which never happened) quickly turned to anger against the war-mongering United States. Among their list of demands:

„NEIN!“- den Kriegsbrandstiftern, die die Volker im Nahen Osten sowie in den nordafrikanischen Staaten in außerste Not gebracht haben und Millionen von Menschen in die Flucht treiben. Diese Kriegsstrategen – und vor allem die der USA – sollten auch die Verantwortung fur ihre Politik ubernehmen und die Fluchtlinge unterbringen. Vor allem sollten sie aber ungehend erforderliche Maßnahmen einleiten, um die Kriegshandlungen sofort zu stoppen, und den ruinierten Staaten unbegrenzte Hilfe im Aufbau des friedlichen Lebens zukommen lassen.

("NO! to those who foment war which has created an emergency situation for the people of the Middle east as well as North African countries and has force millions of people to flee. These war strategists - above all the United States - should also take responsibility for their policies and provide shelter to these refugees. Above all they should immediately terminate their war activities and provide unlimited assistance to the ruined countries for rebuilding a peaceful existence for all.")

 Left Party leader and Putin-loyalist Oskar Lafontaine couldn't resist joining in the fun. Writing in the Russian propaganda outlet NachDenkSeiten:

Da haben wir’s. Die USA bombardieren seit Jahren im Vorderen Orient, aber die Flüchtlingsströme sollen die Europäer bewältigen. Und Merkel erweist sich wieder einmal als treue Vasallin des großen Bruders. Dabei wäre es in erster Linie die Pflicht der USA, die Menschen aufzunehmen, die vor ihren Ölkriegen fliehen.

Europa braucht endlich eine eigenständige Außenpolitik und Politiker, die sich von der Vormundschaft des US-Imperialismus befreien.

("There we have it. For years the US bombs in the Middle East, but the Europeans have to deal with the flood of refugees.  And Merkel shows once again that she is a loyal vassal of big brother.  When in the first instance it should be the responsibility of the US to take in those people that flee their wars for oil.

Europe needs an independent foreign policy as well as politicians who can free themselves from the tutelage of American imperialism.")

Holocaust Denial on the Rise in Germany?

It is disappointing to write about this the day before we commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp which happened on January 27, 1945. According to a report in the Lübecker Nachrichten a member of the right-wing AfD Party ("Alternative for Germany") gave a presentation at a public forum where he claimed that Germany had nothing to do with the start of the Second World War:

Der Beginn des Zweiten Weltkrieges sei, entgegen der Forschungsmeinung, nicht von Hitler geplant gewesen. Die Alliierten hätten eine „erbarmungslose Propaganda“ verfolgt. Dann zitiert er Carl Schmitt, einen Juristen, der wegen seines Einsatzes für die Nationalsozialisten höchst umstritten ist.

(Contrary to the consensus of historians, Hitler did not plan the start of the Second World War. This is only the result of "relentless propaganda" by the Allied Forces. Then he quoted Carl Schmitt, a legal scholar who is highly controversial because of his strong endorsement of National Socialism.")

Even worse, Dirk Helms - the AfD man - had a revisionist theory of the Holocaust:

Seine Ausführungen gehen weiter: Im Konzentrationslager Dachau seien erst im Nachhinein von den Alliierten Gaskammern eingerichtet worden — um zu täuschen. Dann berichtet er von einem angeblichen KZ-Überlebenden, der Schülern eine ausgedachte Geschichte erzählt habe, jedoch nie ein KZ von innen gesehen habe. Nach dem Vortrag gibt‘s Applaus, aber auch ein wenig Kritik.

("He continued his presentation: The Allied Forces constructed the gas chambers after the fact at the Dachau concentration camp - in order to deceive everybody.  Then he talked about an alleged survivor of the camps who told school children a fabricated story but who in fact had never been in a camp.  After the speech there was applause, but also some criticism.")

With this statement Herr Helms clearly violated Paragraph 130 of the German Criminal Code:

(3) Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine

I am not a supporter of such laws against incitement (Volksverhetzung) but they appear to be selectively enforced.

In general, one speech like this would appear to be harmless, but the fact that a growing number of Germans actually believe speakers like Dirk Helms is disturbing: the AfD is now polling as the 3rd largest political party in Germany.  Many people reject everything they learned in school or read in the newspapers.  One member of the audience shouted: „Die lügen mich jeden Tag an! Und deshalb bin ich hier!“ ("They lie to me every day.  That's why I'm here!") More and more people turn to "alternative media" such as Ken Jebsen's KenFM - Jebsen claims the Holocaust was nothing more than a PR stunt. 

Review: Sarah Helm's Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

Of the thousands of Nazi concentration camps, Ravensbrück has always been an outlier as the only large-scale camp built expressly for women.  Opened in May 1939, Ravensbrück was designed to hold 3,000. It had an aviary and later a hair salon for the guards. Prisoners slept 150 to a block. At its peak, in February 1945, it held 46,473 women. Babies were delivered and left to starve to death.  Children were sterilized. Up to 50,000 women were exterminated – gassed, shot, worked to death as slave labor (Siemens used slave labor in its munitions factory on site). Also, it was not built primarily for the internment of Jews, although thousands of Jewish women passed through the camp and were murdered.  The prisoners were an amazing assortment of intellectuals, political activists, aristocrats, celebrities - including the sister of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Franz Kafka's lover Milena Jesenská - along with Jehovah's Witnesses and women deemed "asozial" by the Nazis- primarily prostitutes and petty criminals.  By 1942 Himmler proudly declared the camp "Judenfrei" , which is perhaps why Ravensbrück does not figure prominently in historical accounts of the Holocaust.

Sarah Helm has done amazing research for Ravensbrück, tracking down and interviewing any survivors in Holland, Belarus, Israel, France; speaking with the children of survivors and victims, transcribing letters, documents, autobiographical accounts, And she doesn't just recount the stories of the prisoners; the female guards also figure prominently in the book.  One treasure-trove of information was provided by head guard herself:

‘The year is 1957. The doorbell of my flat is ringing,’ writes Grete Buber-Neumann, a former Ravensbrück prisoner. ‘I open the door. An old woman is standing before me, breathing heavily and missing teeth in the lower jaw. She babbles: “Don’t you know me any more? I am Johanna Langefeld, the former head guard at Ravensbrück.” The last time I had seen her was fourteen years ago in her office at the camp. I worked as her prisoner secretary . . . She would pray to God for strength to stop the evil happening, but if a Jewish woman came into her office her face would fill with hatred . . .‘So she sits at the table with me. She tells me she wishes she’d been born a man. She talks of Himmler, whom she sometimes still calls “Reichsführer”. She talks for many hours, she gets lost in the different years and tries to explain her behavior.’

Ravensbrück has dozens of accounts of depraved cruelty  - the barbaric "medical experiments" carried out by Nazi "doctors" on the Polish women prisoners are especially sickening - yet the book is strangely uplifting to read. Many of the women - mostly the politically committed ones, but not only these - showed remarkable courage and solidarity in caring for the other inmates.  There was Elsa Krug, an S&M prostitute from Dusseldorf who refused to beat her fellow prisoners and was beaten mercilessly for this.  Yevgenia Lazarevna Klemm, unofficial leader of 500 uniformed women from the Red Army. was a mother figured  to the teenage girls in Ravensbrück and encouraged the Russian women to learn German to help in their survival.  The "Red Army women" were effective in sabotaging he munitions they assembled as slave laborers for Siemens. 

And then there was Olga Benário Prestes, a Jew and famous communist leader who, along with her husband, was sent by Stalin to help mastermind a coup against President Getulio Vargas of Brazil. She was captured and sent back to Germany as a gift to the Führer. At Ravensbrück Olga was forced to wear both the yellow star for being Jewish and the red star for her communist activism. She was an inspirational leader for the other women, but in the end her fame did not save her: Himmler sent her to the Bernburg Psychiatric Clinic’s gas chambers, where she was murdered by carbon monoxide gas in “Action T4”.  But she was still able to smuggle a note in her clothing to warn others. The terse message read:

"Die letzte Stadt ist Dessau. Wir sollen uns ausziehen. Misshandelt worden sind wir nicht. Adieu."

(The last city is Dessau. We are told to undress. We haven't been harmed. Good-bye.)

Today there is a statue depicting Olga Benário holding up an emaciated inmate ("die Tragende" - "the one who carries") standing at the site of the Ravensbrück Camp.

 

HIgh Number of German 9/11 Truther Sites Reflects Resurgent Anti-Semitism

It seems that every time September 11 comes around there is a flurry of 9/11 Truther activity in Germany.  This past September 11 the influential left-oriented "critical" Web site NachDenkSeiten promoted a Telepolis piece by Super-Truther Mathias Bröckers (Terror und Tabu) where he stated that the WTC attacks had to have been carried out as an "inside job" ("9/11 nur als "inside job" durchführbar war").  Prominent Truthers routinely appear in magazines, or are invited by German universities to speak to packed auditoriums.  To be sure, there are plenty of conspiracy theorists in the United States - indeed, most of the "theories" originated here in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. But the "9/11 Truth Movement" has for the most been been marginalized in the US and is confined to extreme right-wing groups that hardly anyone here takes seriously.  In Germany, on the other hand, 9/11 Trutherism is mainstream, and is considered gospel on both the right and left. Trutherism is just a component of pervasive anti-Americanism, which- as the sociologist Andrei Markovits has written - is the flip-side of anti-Semitism. 

I have started to keep a list of the Web sites that routinely publish 9/11 Truther content; the list is just a start  and I welcome any suggestions to make it more complete:

RT Deutsch

Sputnik

Telepolis

NachDenkSeiten

Kopp Online

Free 21

Hintergrund

Duckhome

Wissensmanufaktur

Der Honigmann sagt

KenFM

Alles Schall und Rauch

Jens Wernicke

Compact

Mathias Bröckers

Infokrieger News

The proliferation in Germany of these Web sites is upsetting to me personally.  I worked for ten years on in lower Manhattan, five of them at 222 Broadway directly across from the World Trade Center.  Each morning I rode the PATH Train to the underground stop at the World Trade Center, or would take the Hoboken Ferry across the Hudson and walk through the South Tower to my office.  I had countless business meetings at offices in both towers, and had many breakfast meetings, luncheons and attended presentations at  Windows on the World  on the 107th floor of the North Tower.  On September 11, 2001 75 employees of Windows on the World were killed. I knew several of the bond traders at the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald two floors down from Windows of the World.  They were killed along with every one of their colleagues. Most of the people I knew in the South Tower managed to escape - but one, a 33-year-old woman, was trapped on the 93rd floor and died a horrible death.  Altogether, 2,762 people were killed that morning in the terrorist attack.  Many others were severely injured;  all were traumatized. Hundreds of first responders and recovery workers are suffering and dying today from exposure to the toxic environment at Ground Zero.

It angers me to no end that people like Mathias Bröckers or Daniele Ganser make a living with their books and speeches from the deaths of those victims of terror.  It disturbs me that universities in Germany would invite them to speak on their campuses; it saddens me that so many people would choose to attend those presentations and applaud them.

And make no mistake: nearly all of these conspiracy theories somehow involve Jews. 

Willkommen in der Welt der Verschwörungstheoretiker: Juden haben vom Einsturz des World Trade Centers finanziell profitiert. Der israelische Geheimdienst Mossad war in die Anschlagspläne eingeweiht. Neokonservative Drahtzieher in der US-Regierung haben die Sache angezettelt, um eine neue Weltordnung durchzusetzen....Die Thesen der Verschwörungstheoretiker lauten: Nicht islamistische Terroristen haben die Anschläge auf dem Gewissen, sondern die US-Regierung und ihre Helfer. Das World Trade Center etwa sei von innen gesprengt worden. Kaum überraschend, dass auch "die Juden" ins Fadenkreuz geraten. "Da werden immer wieder Zusammenhänge hergestellt", sagte Marilyn Mayo von der amerikanischen Anti-Defamation League (ADL) der Jüdischen Allgemeinen. Mayo hat die kursierenden Theorien untersucht und sagt: "Antisemitismus ist ein wichtiger Teil in diesem Puzzlespiel".So ist von Larry Silverstein die Rede, der im Sommer 2001 den Hochhaus-Komplex gepachtet und eine Versicherung abgeschlossen habe, die verdächtigerweise auch terroristische Akte einschließe. Silverstein sei Jude und habe Verbindungen nach Israel. Merkwürdig sei auch, dass vor den Anschlägen angebliche Kunststudenten aus Israel verhaftet wurden: Mossad-Spione.

At least one in ten of the 9/11 victims were believed to have been Jewish.

I urge anyone traveling to New York City to visit the 9/11 Memorial Museum; it is a moving experience and gives a sense of what the people of New York and all Americans went through that terrible day.

 

 

Review: Richard Overy's The Bombers and the Bombed

British historian Richard Overy's book The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War over Europe, 1940-1945 is the most comprehensive study yet of the bombing campaign that left many of Europe's great cities in ruin by 1945.  The book is neatly divided between the Anglo-American perspective of how the bombing program evolved and was executed and the story of the German victims and the efforts to defend against the aerial attacks.  Overy also breaks new ground in writing about how the bombing campaign we extended beyond Germany to Italy and Bulgaria, and - most controversially - to German-occupied countries: France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark,

The rationale for "strategic bombing" was that “bombing alone might unhinge the enemy war effort, undermine popular war willingness, and perhaps even force the politicians to sue for peace before the need to undertake dangerous, large-scale, and potentially costly amphibious operations.” But in practice this did not work out this way.  For the campaign was largely a failure for the first two years of the operation.  Overy writes about how the initial bombing attacks caused negligible damage of Germany's manufacturing infrastructure but did result in very high casualties of the bomber crews and the loss of aircraft.  Overy points out that in the beginning of the air war it was illegal to target areas where civilians could be negligently killed, but as the war went on " the ethical restraints imposed at the start of the war were eroded step by step as a result of the decision [in 1940] to initiate ‘unrestricted’ bombing of targets in urban areas.” 

The turning point in the air war was when the RAF decided to deploy incendiary instead of explosive bombs.  The British High Command was impressed when the Luftwaffe set the City of London on fire with 100,000 incendiary bombs during the December 29, 1940 raid.  While the Germans dropped 57,000 tons of high explosives and incendiaries on Britain, at a conservative estimate, Bomber Command and the U.S. 8th Air Force alone dropped over 1.6 million tons on Germany. The "success" of the new strategy with incendiaries was demonstrated in Operation Gomorrah when in July of 1943  British and American planes bombed Hamburg for a full week, creating a giant firestorm that killed 42,600 civilians and wounded 37,000 and virtually destroying most of the city. Overy writes about the plight of civilians as they try to survive the firebombing and cope with loss of shelter.  The best book about that aspect of the air war is still Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand (2002).

So did "strategic bombing" meet the objective of hastening the end of the war.  The verdict, Overy writes, is mixed, and controversial even today.  To be sure, the bombing forced Germany to divert resources from the Eastern Front to construct air defenses in every German city.  Also, the Americans were especially effective in decimating the Luftwaffe and destroying Germany's synthetic fuel plants.  By 1945 Allied air power was supreme and Germany lacked virtually all defense capabilities against the bombers. On the other hand, if the intent was to destroy and disrupt Germany's industrial output, the results were less than satisfactory: while the inner cities were destroyed, manufacturing infrastructure - even for armaments - was largely intact when the war ended in 1945. 

One other major failure of the "strategic bombing":  the idea was that the constant bombing would demoralize the German civilian population so much so that they would turn against the Nazi regime in revolt.  But, as Overy writes, just the opposite occurred:

"The effect of bombing was not, in the end, as the Allies hoped, to drive a wedge between people and regime, but the opposite, to increase dependence on the state and the party ad to prompt willing participation by civilians in structures designed for their own defense with a remarkable degree of social discipline. The experience of being bombed did indeed create widespread anxiety, demoralization, social conflict, and limited political criticism, but it was balanced in the end by the capacity of the dictatorship to exploit racial policy unscrupulously to its advantage (redistributing Jewish apartments and furnishings, using camp and foreign labor to clear up debris, etc.), while ensuring that minimum levels of social provision, flexible propaganda, administrative competence, and targeted coercion would prevent anything like collapse."

One interesting point that Overy mentions only in passing: the German civilian population harbored very little animosity against the British and American bombers who were causing so much death and destruction all around them.  They were far more fearful of the Russian Red Army troops advancing from the east. Why this stoicism among the civilians towards the bombing?  This is the question explored by W.E Sebald in his last book Luftkrieg und Literatur (see my review) and by the historians Frank Bajohr and Dieter Pohl in their book Massenmord und schlechtes Gewissen (see my review).

Oskar Lafontaine sympathizes with the ISIS suicide bombers

Left Party firebrand Oskar Lafontaine and his wife Sahra Wagenknecht are the two most prominent Terroristen-Versteher ("terror apologists") in Germany.  But Oskar ("Fuck the US Imperialism") outdid himself in a speech delivered in Berlin last Sunday.  The taz reports: 

Das war einer der Momente, bei denen man sich als Reporter fragt, ob man richtig gehört hat. Hatte Oskar Lafontaine gerade Selbstmordattentate legitimiert? Doch, er hat: „Was sollen die Armen machen im Vorderen Orient, die seit Jahren dem Kolonialismus ausgesetzt sind? Sie haben keine Bomben, sie haben keine Raketen, sie haben keine Heere, die sie auf den Weg bringen können, um ihre Interessen zu wahren – und dann greifen sie zum Selbstmordattentat. Das zeigt doch die ganze Perversion unserer Weltordnung, dass sich Menschen nur so noch wehren können“, sagte er.

("It was one of those times when a reporter has to ask himself if he had heard correctly.  Did Oskar Lafontaine just legitimize suicide bombers?  Yes, he did: "What else can the poor people in the Middle East do, where they have been under colonial rule for years? They don't have bombs, they don't have missiles, they don't have armies that they can rely on to achieve their interests - and so they turn to suicide attacks. That just shows the perversion of our world order that that is only path towards resistance these people have." )

Just two days after Oskar delivered this speech, ten German tourists were killed by a suicide bomber in Istanbul.  It turns out that the suspected terrorists behind the attack were from Russia - a nation with plenty of bombs, missiles and a very active army.  This must of have been doubly awkward for Oskar and Sahra - two of the most visible Putin-admirers in Germany. 

The reporter was surprised that at the Berlin event - organized by Die LINKE (Left Party) - which dealt with the crisis in Syria and the migrant situation, the name Bashar al-Assad was not mentioned once:

Drei Stunden lang war Assad einfach kein Thema. Auch der Iran oder die Hisbollah, die Assad unterstützen, wurden nicht erwähnt.

But really, there is no mystery to this at all:

 

David Bowie in Berlin

Pop icon David Bowie lived in Berlin from 1976 to 1979 (together, for a time, with punk rocker Iggy Pop).  The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel republished today a 2002 interview with Bowie where he reminisced about his Berlin years.  Here are two excerpts: 

Warum sind Sie damals ausgerechnet nach Berlin gekommen?

Nach vielen Jahren, die ich quasi unter Hochdruck in den USA gelebt hatte, war das sehr entspannend für mich, in eine Stadt zu kommen, wo man von mir relativ wenig Notiz nahm. Ich konnte endlich mal wieder entspannen und so einfache Dinge machen, wie im Straßencafé zu sitzen, ohne dass ich auffiel. Diese Anonymität hat mir damals sehr gut getan: Zu merken, dass man auch, wenn man schon eine gewisse Bekanntheit erworben hat, trotzdem ein ganz normales Leben führen kann. Das habe ich seitdem nicht mehr geändert. Ich habe trotz meiner Bekanntheit immer darauf geachtet, ein ganz normales Leben zu führen. Außerdem ist damals auch sonst sehr viel mit mir passiert. So habe ich zum Beispiel gemerkt, wie wichtig es mir ist, zu schreiben.

(What made you come to Berlin back then?

(After all those high-pressure years living in the US it was something of a relief to come to a city where people didn't pay me much notice.  I could finally relax and do ordinary things like sit in a cafe without attracting attention. The anonymity was good for me; I realized that even though I had achieved a degree of fame it was still possible to lead a normal life.  I haven't changed that since then. I've alwoys made sure to lead a normal life despite being famous. Besides that, a great deal happened to me back then. For example I realized how important it was for me to write.)

Bowie didn't just live in Berlin.  He was much taken by the city's culture: cinema, music, theater, - and especially art.  The German Expressionist Otto Mueller, the Berlin painter who was later declared "degenerate" (entartet) by the Nazis, was a particular inspiration: 

Und wirkt dieser Einfluss noch bis heute?

Ich denke, ich war damals so besessen davon, dass er mich seitdem nicht mehr losgelassen hat. Er ist Teil meines Vokabulars als Künstler geworden. Es gibt immer noch Momente, da denke ich: Oh, ich glaube, Brecht hätte das jetzt so gemacht.

(And do you still feel this influence yet today?

I think I was so possessed by it back then that since then it never left me.  It became part of my vocabulary as an artist. There are still moments when I think: Oh, I really believe Brecht would have done it this way now. ) 

It was in Berlin that Bowie wrote his song "Heroes" about a couple embracing by the Berlin Wall.  Here he performs "Helden" in German: 

 

 

Release of Mein Kampf in Germany long overdue

The copyright on Hitler's Mein Kampf expired on December 31, 2015, and the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich will be releasing a heavily annotated version next week for the German market.  The Institute wants its footnotes  to expose the "lies, half-truths and vicious tirades," the institute said, behind a Nazi vision of racist hostility that ended in the deaths of tens of millions of people in World War II. Censoring Mein Kampf in Germany was a lost cause anyway - at least since the advent of the Internet - because the text could easily be downloaded for free from numerous international sites.  The American neo-Nazi group Stormfront makes the book available on its Web site.  Stormfront is backing the candidacy of Donald Trump for US president, so if Trump becomes the Republican nominee the book could very well become a bestseller here.

Georg Diez, the Spiegel columnist and critic, has an excellent piece this week on Mein Kampf, and I endorse his views 100%: 

Denn Bücher sind nicht böse. Menschen sind böse. Bücher sind nicht gefährlich. Menschen sind gefährlich. Bücher töten keine Menschen. Menschen töten Menschen. Bücher sollten nie verboten werden, denn diese Art von Verboten sind Zeichen von Angst und Schwäche. Demokratien verbieten keine Bücher und keine Gedanken. Diktaturen tun das. Vielleicht ist das Verbot erklärbar aus der Panik, die die Deutschen ergriff, als sie 1945 nach dem Sieg der Alliierten in den Spiegel blickten und ein Volk von Mördern sahen. Man konnte nicht alle bestrafen. Also bestrafte man dieses Buch. Aber die, die "Mein Kampf" gelesen hatten, trugen die braunen Gedanken im Kopf herum, und manche blieben Nazis, auch ohne Reich. Sie schwiegen oder brummelten, sie schlugen ihre Kinder oder sammelten Waffen, sie verwünschten die Demokratie und starben verbittert.Das Verbot des Buches setzte die Fixierung auf Hitler fort und auch die Dämonisierung. Es ging dabei natürlich auch um Schuld. Es war aber nicht Hitler allein. Es waren Millionen von Deutschen, die zu Tätern wurden.

("For books are not evil. People are evil. Books are not dangerous. People are dangerous. Books don't kill people.  People kill people. Books should never be forbidden, since banning them is a manifestation of fear and weakness. Democracies do not ban books or ban thoughts.  Dictatorships do this. It is perhaps possible to explain the panic that Germans felt when they looked in the mirror after the Allied victory  and saw a nation of murderers. You couldn't punish everybody; so they punished a book.  But those people who read Mein Kampf carried the brown ideas around in their heads, and many remained Nazis, even absent the Reich. They stayed quiet, or they grumbled, they beat their children or they kept collecting guns, they cursed the democracy and died embittered. Banning the book only perpetuated the fixation on Hitler and his demonizaion. Of course, it also had a lot to do with guilt. But it wasn't just the fault of Hitler. There were millions of Germans who became perpetrators.")

See my review of Massenmord und schlechtes Gewissen (Mass Murder and Bad Conscience) by Frank Bajohr and Dieter Pohl.

Kai Ruhsert (ex-NachDenkSeiten) Critiques Daniele Ganser's Misleading Presentation on the Sept. 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks in NY City

(Note to readers:  I contacted Kai Ruhsert after he expertly debunked the outrageous distortions of the "historian" Dr.Werner Rügemer's presentation at the forum sponsored by NachDenkSeiten in Pleisweiler-Oberhofen last May (see my post).  Subsequently, Kai performed an equally thorough analysis of Daniele Ganser's presentation on the 9/11 Terror Attacks.  This analysis was presented to Albrecht Müller at NachDenkSeiten who refused to publish it.  I agreed to translate the report into English and publish it here. We do hope to find a outlet in Germany to publish this analysis in its original form for a wider audience.

The work of Dr. Daniele Ganser is (thankfully) not well known here in the US.

What follows is an introduction by Kai Ruhsert and then his analysis of Ganser's presentation.)

 

 The New NachDenkSeiten: Clicks instead of Quality

by Kai Ruhsert

The NachDenkSeiten was once an institution known for its commitment to truth and sticking to the facts. If mistakes were made you could be sure they would be corrected the following day.

In 2011 I ended my regular collaboration with NachDenkSeiten after six interesting years.In October 2015 Wolfgang Lieb announced his departure from the editorial team. Among his reasons for leaving he wrote the following: “In my opinion when pieces are published on NachDenkSeiten the processing of information and the nuanced representation of reality should take precedence over the political analysis or advancing one’s own worldview. Nuance and precise observation are important prerequisites for gaining credibility and convincing the readers."

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer articles published in NDS are distinguished by “nuance and precise observation.” The power structure of the editorial team has shifted so that facts have become secondary; it’s okay to feed in to the readers’ resentments if the result is increased traffic to the site. Based on the timing (before or after Lieb’s departure) of the different reactions to criticism of authors close to NachDenkSeiten no other explanation seems to be possible.

When Werner Rügemer spoke all kinds of nonsense at the 24th Pleisweiler Conference it was still possible to persuade the editorial team to publish a critique of Rügemer’s lecture.
But now the NachDenkSeiten is no longer willing to publish any corrections.

Thus Dr. Daniele Ganser is allowed to state – without being challenged - that the collapse of the third tower WTC7 in the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York is still „unexplained“ .
Does Ganser have any new knowledge of the event? Has he done any original research on the topic? Hardly: what Ganser says about WTC7 is nothing more than a cleverly packaged rehash of banal conspiracy theories. My detailed analysis of how Ganser misleads his audience by systematically withholding facts was presented to NachDenkSeiten – which calls itself „The Critical Website“ – for publication. But it was refused.