The German mainstream is collapsing

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Thomas Fazi

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The German mainstream is collapsing

Fazi notes that a new left-right populist spectrum is emerging in Germany, but the phenom is not seen just in Germany, but hroughout the collective West, including, quite possibly, the United States.

AfD leaders in Germany

The imperialist-aligned establishment is throwing a "quarantine" fence around AfD to keep them from forming coalitions, a phenom also seen in France and possibly other countries in the EU and beyond. The AfD, however, is staunchly pro-capitalist, so this is not a party with an ultimate solution to Germany's long-term problems.

This weekend’s regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia have revealed significant shifts in the German political landscape, reflecting a country grappling with multiple crises. Although these were only regional elections, their outcomes carry national implications, particularly given the participation of nearly three-quarters of the five-million electorate. Here are the main takeaways:

The political mainstream has collapsed

The main opposition party, the centre-right CDU, maintained its dominant position in Saxony by a tiny margin. But the party now faces a choice: change or continue to shed votes to the AfD. The CDU’s involvement in centrist coalitions, driven by the necessity of excluding the AfD, has diluted its political identity. Also quite paradoxically, the rise of the AfD has been fuelled precisely by the migration policies of former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel.

The CDU now finds itself weakened, unable to form coalitions without compromising its traditional stances, and without striking alliances that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, such as with the newly formed left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — an option that is currently being explored by both parties. Incredibly, the BSW is now the third-largest party in both states — an impressive feat for a party that was launched just a few months ago.

For a deep dive into the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, and how her blend of old-school leftist economics, pro-peace and anti-NATO foreign policy, and conservative cultural outlook is redefining populism — and upending German politics — see this recent article of mine. (It is reproduced as an addendum below.—Ed)

The transplantation of the FRG’s economic order into the former GDR was the most brutal neoliberal shock therapy ever implemented in a European country...The first instrument of this shock therapy was monetary integration, which involved the former GDR’s adoption of the West-German mark, which was highly overvalued relative to the fundamentals of the East-German economy.

Migration and war: the central issues

The vote has confirmed that migration remains the “mother of all domestic policy problems”. The inability to manage migration effectively has eroded public trust in traditional parties. The AfD’s success can be attributed largely to its hardline stance on immigration, a position that has gained traction even among former left-wing voters who now support the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. This development suggests that migration will dominate the upcoming federal elections, turning them into a de facto referendum on Germany’s immigration policies. But opposition to war and to the government’s belligerent approach to the Russia-Ukraine crisis clearly also played a role, especially among young people. Sahra Wagenknecht, in particular, has put opposition to NATO and to the deployment US long-range missiles on German territory, and the question of détente with Russia, at the centre of her party’s platform. 

A new left-right populist spectrum  

The most interesting takeaway from the elections is probably the emergence of a new, and unique in the European panorama, left-right populist spectrum, in the form of the AfD and the BSW, which collectively make up almost 50 percent of the votes. This underscores that dissatisfaction with the established parties is even larger than what right-populists parties alone are able to capture: a lesson for other countries as well. For now the BSW has ruled out forming regional coalition governments with the AfD, which is understandable from a tactical standpoint: many disaffected voters from the centre and the left are turning to the BSW precisely because it is not the AfD. But in the future the mood might shift: if the establishment refuses to respond to popular concerns, the demand for a left-right populist front could grow. Meanwhile, the fact that both ends of the political spectrum are converging on similar migration policies suggests that this issue may hopefully be approached more pragmatically, rather than through the lens of morality.

An increasingly divided country

One cannot understand the populist uprising sweeping eastern Germany without understanding the economic, social and political trauma that reunification — or better, the East’s annexation by the West — was for many eastern Germans, and how this legacy continues to this day. As I recently wrote in Compact:

The transplantation of the FRG’s economic order into the former GDR was the most brutal neoliberal shock therapy ever implemented in a European country.

The first instrument of this shock therapy was monetary integration, which involved the former GDR’s adoption of the West-German mark, which was highly overvalued relative to the fundamentals of the East-German economy. This shattered the profitability of East-German firms, which quickly became insolvent, resulting in the immediate collapse of GDP and a sharp rise in unemployment. Most ominously, it kicked off what one study described as a “dramatic process of de-industrialization”.  

The second instrument was the mass privatization of state-owned firms, houses, and land by the infamous Treuhandanstalt, a West-German government-controlled trust agency that took control of almost all the assets of the former GDR with the aim of privatizing them as quickly as possible. By 1992, more than 80 percent of firms had already been privatized or closed. The overwhelming majority of the firms were sold to West German investors and companies—at bargain prices, of course. 

In other words, virtually the entire economy of the former socialist state passed into the hands of West-German capitalists.

[This is reflected in] the stark economic disparities that persist between West and East Germany more than three decades after reunification, when the territories of the GDR were incorporated into the FRG in 1990. The states that make up the former East Germany generally have lower GDP per capita and wages, higher unemployment and poverty rates, and poorer infrastructure and public services than those in the West. In 2017, net national income per capita in East Germany was still only 73 percent of what it was in West Germany. 

A wake-up call

In conclusion, the recent regional elections serve as a wake-up call for Germany. They highlight the urgent need for political realignment and the dangers of ignoring the concerns of significant portions of the electorate. The implications extend beyond Germany, affecting its role in the European Union and the broader geopolitical landscape.

This is a longer version of an article that appeared in UnHerd.

Thanks for reading. Putting out high-quality journalism requires constant research, most of which goes unpaid, so if you appreciate my writing please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you haven’t already. Aside from a fuzzy feeling inside of you, you’ll get access to exclusive articles and commentary.

Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope 

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)


Addendum
Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Germany's 'left-conservative' has redefined populism
Sahra Wagenknecht

Sahra Wagenknecht: her inteligent political formula may actually represent salvation for Germany and the continent—if the US-aligned satrap establishment will allow.

AUGUST 31, 2024

Few would have predicted that Germany, long known for having the continent’s most boring politics, would become the epicentre of Europe’s new populist revolt — let alone one coming from both the Right and the Left. And yet, that is exactly what is happening.

In the recent European elections, as amply expected, the Right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party overtook the centre-left SPD for the first time, becoming the country’s second-largest party after the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance. Meanwhile, the two major parties between them gained less than 45% of the votes — down from 70% just 20 years ago. It was the biggest collapse of the German political mainstream since reunification.

More than anything, the elections revealed that post-reunification Germany remains neatly divided along its former border: while western Germans are also signalling growing dissatisfaction with the current SPD-Greens-FDP coalition, but remaining within the bounds of mainstream politics, eastern Germans are revolting against the political establishment itself.

Thus, with state elections taking place in three eastern states over the next month — in Saxony and Thuringia this weekend, and in Brandenburg on September 22 — it’s no wonder the German centre is bracing itself for collapse. But while it’s a foregone conclusion that the AfD will make massive gains, with the party leading the polls in two of the three states, the real surprise may prove to be, once again, Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party, which is currently polling between 11% and 19%.

For now, Wagenknecht has ruled out forming regional coalition governments with the AfD, as well as with any party that supports arms deliveries to Ukraine (which means most mainstream parties). But her mere presence on the ballot will further erode support for the ruling coalition — and make it very hard, if not impossible, for the latter to form centrist coalition governments at the state level.

The Wagenknecht phenomenon is fascinating — and unique — for several reasons. Not only has she managed to establish the BSW as one of the country’s major political forces in a matter of months, but she’s also running on a platform that is unique in the Western political panorama, at least among electorally relevant parties. Though Wagenknecht tends to avoid framing her party in tired Left-Right terms, its platform can best be described as left-conservative.

In short, this means it mixes demands that would once have been associated with the socialist-labour Left — interventionist and redistributive government policies to regulate capitalist market forces, higher pensions and minimum wages, generous welfare and social security policies, taxes on wealth — with positions that today would be characterised as culturally conservative: first and foremost, a recognition of the importance of preserving and fostering traditions, stability, security and a sense of community.

Flailing Germany is the future of Europe

This inevitably entails more restrictive immigration policies and a rejection of the multiculturalist dogma, in which minorities refuse to recognise the superiority of common rules, threatening social cohesion. As the party’s founding text reads: “Immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be enriching. However, this only applies as long as the influx remains limited to a level that does not overburden our country and its infrastructure, and as long as integration is actively promoted and successful.” What this looks like in practice became clear in 2015, when Wagenknecht strongly criticised then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, invoking the mantra “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”). A year later, after a series of terror attacks perpetrated by migrants, Wagenknecht released a statement that read: “The reception and integration of a large number of refugees and immigrants is associated with considerable problems and is more difficult than Merkel’s frivolous ‘We can do it!’.”

More recently, following a fatal knife attack in Mannheim, Wagenknecht again lashed out at the government’s immigration policies: “We basically financed [the migrant attacker’s] radicalisation as well. He lived off us, off the money of the citizens.” Her focus on benefits here is crucial. For Wagenknecht, the promotion of social cohesion, including by restricting immigration flows, shouldn’t just be seen as a positive end in and of itself, such as for reasons of public safety, but also as a precondition for the pursuit of economically redistributive policies, and even of democracy itself. Only a political community defined by a collective identity — a demos — is capable of committing itself to a democratic discourse and to a related decision-making process, and of generating the affective ties and bonds of solidarity that are needed to legitimise and sustain redistributive policies between classes and/or regions. Simply put, if there is no demos, there can be no effective democracy, let alone a social democracy.

This is also why Wagenknecht places a strong emphasis on the importance of national sovereignty, and is highly critical of the European Union: not only because the EU is fundamentally anti-democratic and prone to oligarchic capture [actually captured ab initio by the globalist oligarchy.—Ed] , but because it cannot be otherwise, given that today the nation-state remains the main source of people’s collective identity and sense of belonging, and therefore the only territorial institution (or at least the largest) through which it is possible to organise democracy and achieve social balance. As she has said: “The call for ‘an end to the nation-state’ is ultimately a call for ‘an end to democracy and the welfare state’”.

In short, Sahra Wagenknecht is anything but your typical Western Leftist. Now, this is partly to do with the fact that she was born on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in former East Germany in 1969. She became interested in philosophy and Marxist economics as a teenager, but the end of the socialist GDR, in 1989, was, according to her biographer Christian Schneider, “the moment in time when the politician Wagenknecht was born”. She experienced it as a “unique horror”: like many East Germans, she believed in a reformed socialism, not in embracing West Germany’s capitalist path.

 

“In short, Sahra Wagenknecht is anything but your typical Western Leftist.”

That same year she joined the East German communist party, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then, following reunification, became one of the leading figures of the party’s successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Even back then, she stood out as being both more radical and more conservative than her communist peers. “There was now this young woman who desperately wanted to go back to the old days” of the GDR, as one former leader of the PDS put it.

When, in 2007, the PDS merged with a splinter of the SPD to give birth to Die Linke (The Left), Wagenknecht quickly emerged as one of the party’s leading voices — and the face of the German radical Left. Die Linke’s support rocketed to 12% of the vote in 2009’s elections to the Bundestag, and remained close to there for nearly a decade. Wagenknecht also became a key figure in the German parliament, serving as parliamentary co-chairwoman of her party from 2015 to 2019 and as leader of the opposition (against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition) until 2017. It was there that she earned a reputation for her powerful rhetoric and ability to challenge mainstream political narratives.

Her relationship with Die Linke, however, grew increasingly strained over the years: while the party became captured by the kind of “progressive neoliberalism” that has infected, to one degree or another, all Western Left-wing parties, Wagenknecht remained true to her old-school socialist roots. Her views on immigration and other issues — which would once have been completely non-controversial in socialist circles — were quickly becoming anathema on the Left. Eventually, in November 2019, Wagenknecht announced her resignation as parliamentary leader, citing burnout. Two years later, in the federal elections, Die Linkegarnered less than 5% of ballots and lost nearly half its seats — its worst result ever. For Wagenknecht, this was not a surprise.

Will East Germans ever feel at home?

For Wagenknecht, this new movement’s authoritarian shade became clear during the pandemic. Unlike virtually all her colleagues — and most of the German Left — Wagenknecht became a sharp critic of the government’s “endless lockdowns” and coercive mass vaccination programme (she refused to take the vaccine herself). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagenknecht has also emerged as the most vocal critic of Germany’s military support for Ukraine and the sanctions regime. This escalated her rift with Die Linke, which voted in favour of economic sanctions against Russia.

At that point, their break-up became inevitable — and finally, late last year, Wagenknecht announced the launch of her new party. The choice led to the unravelling of Die Linke, which was forced to dissolve its parliamentary faction, and has now virtually disappeared from the political map, receiving only 2.7% of the votes in June’s European elections.

Since the launch of BSW, Wagenknecht has put the question of détente with Russia at the centre of her party’s platform. On several occasions, she has highlighted how Germany’s subordination to the US-Nato proxy war strategy in Ukraine, and refusal to engage in diplomatic talks with Russia, is self-defeating from an economic as well as a geopolitical standpoint. Not only is the oil and gas embargo against Russia the main reason for Germany’s collapsing economy, but the government is, she told the Bundestag, “negligently playing with the security and in the worst case the lives of millions of people in Germany”. More recently, she has strongly condemned the government’s plan to deploy US long-range missiles on German territory and, perhaps most dramatically, challenged the omerta surrounding the Nord Stream attack. Indeed, following recent revelations about the German government’s possible cover-up of Ukrainian involvement, she called for a public inquiry, saying that, “should German authorities have known in advance about the attack plan on Nord Stream 1 and 2, then we would have the scandal of the century in German politics”.

It’s important to note that Wagenknecht views opposition to the proxy war against Russia as part of a much deeper rethinking of Germany’s geopolitical strategy. Its aim, as Wolfgang Streeck has written, is to “free it from the geostrategic grip of the United States, guided by German national survival interests instead of Nibelungentreue, or loyalty, to America’s claim to global political domination”. This necessarily entails re-establishing long-term political and economic relations with Russia, which could potentially lay the groundwork for a new Eurasian security architecture, and even a Eurasian community of states and economies.

Elsewhere, Wagenknecht has criticised the government’s “green” and gender-affirming policies, arguing that “Germany’s energy supply cannot currently be ensured by renewable energies alone”, and voting against a bill passed by the German parliament earlier this year to make it easier to change one’s legal gender. “Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby,” she said.

Germany's authoritarian turn

If that seems blunt, that’s because it is. But taken together, Wagenknecht’s old-school leftist economics, pro-peace and anti-Nato foreign policy, and conservative cultural outlook is resonating with voters. And as a result, she now finds herself in the crosshairs of both the establishment and her populist competitors. Indeed, on the Right in particular, the common criticism levelled at her is that, by drawing voters away from the AfD, she is weakening and dividing Germany’s populist front.

Yet the evidence for this is somewhat shaky. Rather, opinion polls show that the emergence of the BSW does not seem to have overly affected the AfD, which continues to maintain a 30% vote share in several eastern German states and 20% nationally. In fact, according to a recent study by the Hans Böckler Foundation, the BSW is actually drawing voters mostly from the centre and the Left — Die Linke and the SPD — rather than the AfD. The BSW’s staunchly Left-wing economic agenda, which puts it at odds with the neoliberal economic policy of the AfD, would appear to be key here: the study shows that the BSW draws support mainly from socially marginalised and low-income groups — traditionally, the classic target group of social-democratic parties. It also explains why she enjoys much stronger support in eastern Germany, which has significantly lower GDP per capita and wages, and higher unemployment and poverty rates than western Germany.

This suggests that Wagenknecht’s left-conservative agenda is filling a political space that was previously vacant, hoovering up German voters who are disillusioned with mainstream politics, and even very critical of immigration, but nonetheless feel uncomfortable voting for a party that has undeniably xenophobic or racist traits. The BSW, by contrast, represents a much more palatable “non-extremist” option for these would-be populist voters. This is further confirmed by the fact that, despite its tough stance on immigration, the BSW appears to be winning over an above-average number of voters from migrant backgrounds, a demographic that has traditionally voted for centre-left parties. In short, the evidence suggests that Wagenknecht is actually broadening the populist front rather than simply crowding out the existing populist pool.

It is this, along with the fact that Wagenknecht is among the top three most popular politicians in Germany, that explains why the establishment has decided to go on the attack. In recent weeks, the media there has launched a relentless campaign against Wagenknecht and the BSW, predictably focused on claims that she is a “Russian propagandist” — or “Vladimir Putinova”, as one article called her. Even more desperately, some have attempted to paint Wagenknecht, a literal communist, as a “far-Right extremist”. Only this week, Politico, which is owned by German media titan Axel Springer, unironically asked: “Is Germany’s rising superstar so far-Left she’s far-Right?”

The answer, of course, is a boring nein. And no doubt a far more interesting question will be thrown up by this weekend’s results: with a general election scheduled for next year, has Germany finally found a politician capable of breaking through its ideological wall?

Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

THOMAS FAZI
 
SELECT COMMENT
Gpcus

2 hrs ago

"Uno spettro si aggira per l'Europa: lo spettro del populismo destro-sinistro. Tutte i leader della vecchia Europa si sono coalizzati in una sacra caccia alle streghe contro questo spettro: da Mario Draghi a Ursula Von der Layen, da Macron a Scholz, liberali francesi e centristi tedeschi"... non si vedeva tanta agitazione nelle nostre elites politico-accademico-mediatiche dai moti del 1848 e la stesura del Manifesto, ahahaha!
 


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The Collective Creativity of Workers

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

Bruce Lerro
SOCIALIST PLANNING BEYOND CAPITALISM

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The Collective Creativity of Workers

From Unconscious Sleeping Giants to Conscious Builders of Barricades Part I

Orientation

One purpose of this article is to get you to think of creativity in a whole new way. Our notion of creative today is baked with the assumptions of a Romantic theory of art. These have their good points but they also limit us. In this article I want to argue that the most powerful forms of creativity are collective, not individual. One problem is that with the evolution of society into social classes the collective creativity of workers and peasants is buried in their alienated social-historical unconscious. Making this collective creativity conscious is inseparable from making a social revolution.

I proceed first by discussing individual creativity. I begin by describing the ways in which the artist is different from other workers. Then I connect this to the values and limitations of the romanticization of art.  Then I discuss what an artistic person is like. In the second part of my article I discuss the field of history. First, I talk about how all the arts were once integrated into magical activity in egalitarian hunting and gathering and horticultural societies.

There is the long shadow of alienation of collective creativity in caste and class societies. But then I show how even within capitalist societies there are instances during natural disasters, social movements and ultimately revolutionary times when workers express their collective creativity consciously in the construction of workers’ councils.

The Artist as a Visionary

The life of an artist provokes many, if not most, people. Whether dismissed as a good-for-nothing slacker, a vehicle through which the Muses may speak or just an eccentric personality, an artist in the 21st century West is not boring. One reason is that artistic activity flies in the face of that old sop, “you can’t mix business with pleasure”. In its highest moments, considered as a process (rather than a product), artistic activity approaches a synthesis of work and play as well as work and pleasure.

For most of my twenties I worked in various blue-collar jobs, unloading and loading trucks and driving a forklift in a warehouse. Wage-labor, especially the unskilled kind, is so mechanical and deadening it became associated with suffering. It was something I hated to do, a drudge to be gotten over with, a scourge to be wistfully contrasted to “the good life”. After years of this kind of work, it is difficult not to generalize from this particular job to work in general. Among workers not only is work avoided like the plague, as Marx says, but activity itself can come under suspicion. By activity I mean purposeful, non-frivolous deeds which require concentration and the exertion of will. When activity is done under alienated conditions, it is experienced as a dissipation. Rather than experiencing the outpouring of energy as producing more energy, the expenditure of energy is felt to be a loss.

One the other hand, if the hatred of work because synonymous with activity, then the good-life appears to be consuming sprees of mass media, sporting events and concerts, sensual, sexual pleasure, substance abuse and rest.  In the United States, even active play like table games, video games, dancing or travel far from home competes with TV, or internet surfing. Rather than an interlude, a moment of respite and fertilization for the more gratifying work to come, leisure becomes an end-in-itself. Bourgeois utopias are written about a time when leisure will be all there is.

However, we all need a rest from rest. Justifiably, there is a sense of uneasiness when idleness is posed as a way of life, and the discomfort is not limited to puritanical preachers. Many of us can sense this House of Death, jingling with the trappings of divine honors, as Nietzsche said, when we refuse to retire from jobs, even miserable ones, because we “wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.” I wonder how many people unconsciously kill themselves before or soon after retirement, when we start to get a full dose of “leisure for leisure’s sake”. Contrary to superficial notions of pleasure, rest can be disturbing just as activity can be alienating.

The careful ascertainment of how we shall do so, and the art of guiding it with consequent authority – this sense of authority, is for the master builder, the treasure of treasures – renews in the modern alchemist something like the old dream of the secret of life (Creative Process, Brewster Ghiselin, pg. 150).

In this self-contained magical workshop, in this valley of fertility, the artist pushes and pulls, she hems and haws, and when the oils dry, when the clay is fired, when the curtain falls a baby begins to make its way through the world.

Every artist is at heart a magician. Just as the shaman ventures into the forest or the desert on his vision-quest, so the artist heads for her secluded place of work, fitfully muttering “good riddance” to daily distractions. Alone at last, she surrounds herself with her talismans – a hat with a feather, a ring of beads. Like the Greek chorus, they whisper to her of previous glorious ventures, revelation. “Yes” they tell me, “this time you too can make magic on paper”.

Magical considerations of timing motivate the artist’s habits. Just as a magician studies the stars and arranges her correspondences, so too the artist becomes attuned to when and how she does her best work. What are the optimum conditions? What stage of the creative process is most appropriate based on her mood that day?  What non-artistic activities are most likely to stimulate further creativity? The artist becomes sensitive to knowing when persistence pays off and when it doesn’t.  In short, the artistic creative process is a secularization of a magical ritual:

In the minor occurrences of everyday life which passed unnoticed…the person disposed towards the creative life repeatedly finds clues, fragile portents which he seizes as the basis of some future identity at odds with the social pressures prevailing about. He lives like Schubert’s wanderer, in search of the land which speaks his language. (Dialectical Economics, L. Marcus, pg. 100)

Artists can be understood as the link between the old world and the one which may be born:

How can an individual within capitalist society base his identity on a non-capitalist set of identity and world-outlook? In the study of creative personalities. (Dialectical Economics, pg. 98)

Limitations of Romantic Theories of Art

The following bullets below are the beliefs and assumptions of Romantic theories of art. Let us take them one by one. The first two beliefs can be taken together. Like other animals, the human species has to adapt to its environment. Creativity is rooted in the capacity to solve problems that its environment presents. Since all human beings problem-solve, all human beings have some degree of creativity. The Romantic artist not only fails to see the creativity necessary for people to live in everyday life, he also images that the very involvement in the arts bestows upon him the mantle of creativity. By merely crossing the sacred portals of the arts each novice becomes initiated into the mysteries of creativity. It’s as if artists could never be accused of being mechanical or uncreative just because they are artists. But on the contrary, there can be instances of everyday problem solving that involve more creativity than an artistic product.

We can also combine tenets three and four. Romantic artists have a distrust of groups. Rooted in the individualist reaction to the mindless repetition of factory work of the industrial revolution, romantic artists think of groups only as a force for conformity or obedience to the authorities. The Romantic takes the alienation between the individual and society as given. He ignores the fact that extraordinary social circumstances, such as natural disasters and revolutions, can bring out the most of an individual’s creativity.

When the Romantic artist discounts planning and structure, he accepts that creativity is fundamentally unreasonable or irrational activity. On one side are the emotions, intuition and spontaneity and antithetical to that are reason, organization and constraints. It is hard to imagine how a Romantic artist who made their living from art could hold these beliefs. To sell a work to the public requires rationality, organization and deadlines. Only individuals who are supported by others or dabble in the arts as a form of therapy can imagine art as antithetical to organization, planning and setting priorities.

What is the place of shock in the arts? Surely one of the callings of the artist is to move a society beyond the comfortable, the taken-for-granted and the obvious. In the early part of the 20th century, Cubists, Dadaists and Surrealists did this as a reaction to the Renaissance and Baroque conventions. Before a society is crumbling this is a very important calling. However once social cracks appear and spread, too much shock from the arts is counter-revolutionary. The Romantic artist imagines that shocking people might propel masses of people into social action. This may be true. But too much shock can result in anesthetizing, not moving people. Past a certain point artists should be creating constructive visions of the future not tripping over themselves about how to outrage a public already frightened by social conditions.

The values and beliefs of Romantic theories of art include:

  • All creativity is artistic. All other activities are less creative.
  • There are creative individuals and then there are the rest of us.
  • Maximum creativity is achieved in isolation (groups hold creativity back).
  • Creative activity has nothing to do with everyday life. It is an escape from that life.
  • Creativity and planning are mutually exclusive.

(Disciplined, intellectual and structured activity holds creativity back)

  • What is creative is what is shocking and incomprehensible
  • What is creative is what makes us feel better. Art as therapy (Feedback from an audience matters little to the creative process).
  • What is creative is what appears to be absolutely new.
  • Art expresses more creativity than craft. Art is non-utilitarian (the more people use the art, the more debased it becomes). Art is about ornaments and decorations.
  • Art is in the eye of the beholder. Objective judgments about what is creative are impossible. Judgment of creativity is purely subjective.
  • Art is secular and has little do with sacred beliefs, mythology or rituals.
  • Art is all about the process and the product doesn’t matter.
  • Being an artist means you are eccentric, an outcast, unrealistic and a dreamer.
  • Art is the opposite of necessity. It is subjective and voluntary.
  • Art is fictional. It is an escape from reality.

Romantic artists turn art into therapy. However, while there are certainly therapeutic elements to the arts, the purpose of art is to move the public from more than it is to massage and prop up the emotional states of the artist. Romantics fancy themselves as undiscovered geniuses who are too sensitive to subject themselves to the barbaric tastes of the public. But without criticism from the world the artist loses a vital feedback loop that helps him to stay in touch with the socio-historic reality.

Is there anything that comes into the world that is absolutely new? Romantic artists imagine creativity in the Christian sense of God making the world out of nothing. In reality, the most creative work is always built upon the work of others in society, in the cross-currents between societies as well as the influence of those who have went before. There is no such thing as a genius creating something out of nothing.

Crafts are about making things for everyday use such as baskets, hats, pots, and beads. Crafts are embedded in everyday life and can be used by others in the spirit of carrying on a tradition of their kin and the ancestors. The separation of art from crafts in the modern period came about as part of the class divisions within society. Artists were hired by the Church to support its spiritual ideology and among the upper classes to immortalize themselves. During the Romantic period, artists began to rebel against these influences and began to make statements about societies that were somewhat independent of the upper classes. Unlike craft, art in this sense was more abstract, self-reflective, intended for fewer people and involved innovation as part of an ideology of change. To say that art is more creative than craft says that creativity has less to do with everyday life, large groups of people and that which has continuity across time and space. It is a hard case to make. At its worst, the Romantic artist can be accused of being elitist.

The notion that art is merely a matter of subjective taste is a relatively recent phenomenon. Western art became increasingly psychological in the 20th century and with that, the inner experience of the artist became a subject of consideration. This change in part was a reaction to the objective standards of the academic painting. Cross-cultural research on aesthetics together with evolutionary psychology has shown, however that there is a set of objective standards that all cultures point to when making aesthetic judgments about beauty. Among them include bodies of water, places to hide, and available food.

The Romantic movement was not opposed to spirituality, but to organized religion. While many Romantics wanted to bring back myths and rituals, still for many of the Romantics spirituality was an individual experience so that art in the eyes of Romantics is separated from collective myths, rituals and religious practices. This stance ignores the fact that for most of human history, art was in the service of preparation and delivery of magical rituals and the making of costumes for acting out mythological stories.

While Romantic artists rightfully drew attention to and reflects on the creative process rather than just the product, there is a point at which process becomes everything and the product becomes incidental. Again, artists who make their living as artists must pay attention to the product and reactions of the public in order to continue to paint. It is only those who are supported by others or using art for therapeutic purposes who can afford to ignore the product.

“I will live on the fringes of society rather than compromise my art”. This imagine of an artist as being an outcast, an eccentric, unrealistic or a dreamer has not been typical of how artists have been seen throughout history. More times than not the artist was producing objects that supported the existing order. Many artists who lived during the Renaissance were well-off, conventional, realistic and by most standards, creative. Suffering based on feeling misunderstood is atypical in the history of art.

What does it mean to say that art is the opposite of necessity? By necessity I mean that there is some external crisis or constraint that the artist must respond to. In other words, making art is not a voluntary experience. This is offensive to the Romantic because art is imagined to be coming from within, a free choice uninhibited by external circumstances. But why can’t art begin in reaction to something that must be done for social or historical reasons? Art, like problem solving is often most creative when forced by circumstances out of their control. Conversely, without the force of external events artist can fall asleep, falling back on the usual subject matter, materials and treatment or means of creativity. They can become obsessed by personal problems and lose their perspective.

Lastly, the belief that art is fictional is based on the assumption that reality is unchangeable, and the best you can do is escape it into an imaginary world or a future world. On the contrary, revolutionary art can change social and historical reality by being used in the service of a social movement.

The Artist’s Life as a Work of Art

Though Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller were both significant artists in the traditional sense, each understood that artistic products and artistic processes are just moments of living life. How creative is the artist beyond the activity of making art? Certainly, it is possible to be creative as an artist and uncreative in how life is lived. Both Stein and Miller understood that creativity should be extended beyond art. The artistic products and processes are like streams, which, if followed long enough can converge into the river of how an individual lives their lives. Stein points out the shortsightedness of exclusively identifying creativity with being an artist:

“They become writers. They cease to be creative men and they find that they are novelists, or critics or poets or biographers. When a man says “I am a novelist” he is simply a literary shoemaker (The Creative Process, Ghiselin, pg. 162) – a very important thing – and I know because I have seen it kill so many writers – is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing…When one has discovered and evolved a new form, it is not the form, but the fact that you are the form that is important (Ghiselin, 167) ‘This book will make literary history’ and I told him, ‘it will make some part of literary history, perhaps, but only if you can go on making a new part every day and grow with the history you are making, until you become part of it yourself’.

Henry Miller continues the same line of argument:

“I don’t consider myself a writer in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life… I become more and more indifferent to my fate as a writer and more and more certain of my destiny as a man…My life itself becomes a work of art…Now I can easily not write as write, there is no longer any therapeutic aspect to it. (Ghiselin, 178-180)”

These are modern artists aware of their own psychology. However, there were artists before them like Leonardo or Goethe who clearly as artists, lived extraordinary lives and their lives were works of art.

Coming Attractions: Conscious and Unconscious Creativity in History

  • the return of conscious creativity in capitalist society which can be seen in natural disasters, social movements and revolutionary situations which are expressed in workers’ councils.
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    The Abuse of Personal Identity

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    Billy Bob's Blowback Roundtable
    THE WORLD THROUGH AN INDEPENDENT LEFT LENS

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    Provocative roundtable discussions of world events from unusual political and cultural perspectives by thinkers and activists interested in building a new society.

    The Abuse of Personal Identity

    Billy Bob

    Streamed live on Aug 20, 2024
    8/20/2024 Episode 105 of Blowback: Exposing Imperial Decline with special guests Slava and Max Parry.
    In-depth discussion of how personal identity, race and culture are exploited by classism, colonialism and imperialism to maintain their hold on power, with a focus on the Ukraine/Russian conflict. 

       • Do Ukrainians Really Hate The USSR & ... 

    Yuri and Olga are two former USSR citizens, now citizens of Russia. Having spent much of their lives in Soviet Ukraine, they shared with us their perspectives on the current conflict, life in the USSR, and how they view Russia. What they have to say is likely not what you might think!




    https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022...

    Plus: Solidarity Forever
    8/23/2024 Episode 106 of Blowback: Exposing Imperial Decline with special guest Dust James.

    The system continues to look for ways to weaken and eliminate the pro-Palestinian movement. 

    The panel discusses—among many other things of pressing interest—the DNC convention and how many liberals covered their ears as some pro=Palestine protesters read the names of Zionist victims murdered in Gaza. Also, the DNC/Harris campaign refusal to give any details of their program, "waiting to be elected to spell out what the Democrat plan for the nation is." (Which both cynical and absurd. • Billy Bob and Ian Kummer zero in on the choice of Kamala as a tool to divide the pro-Palestinian movement and Black America, since many black Americans are beginning to resent protesters at Kamala's events. Billy Bob notes that notorious Dem/MICIMATT operative Malcolm Nance has already been agitating along those lines. 
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    The Global Crackdown on Dissent

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    CJ Hopkins


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    There are a lot of theories going around about the global crackdown on dissent.

    Most of these theories are, essentially, bullshit.

    Some of them are innocent, well-intentioned bullshit, in that the people putting them forth are honestly trying to explain what is happening, but they have no idea what the hell they’re talking about, or, due to their allegiances, they are only seeing one part of the picture. Others of these theories are not that innocent. Some are clearly designed to deceive, confuse, misdirect, and so on.

    In the end, it doesn’t matter. Bullshit is bullshit.

    As my regular readers know, for the last two years, I’ve been experiencing the global crackdown on dissent “up close and personal,” and trying to report on it. A lot of my reporting has fallen on deaf ears. Which is understandable, given the nature of what we’re up against, which is (a) formidable, (b) rather challenging to really understand, and (c) virtually unassailable, currently.

    People don’t tend to like stories like that. They tend to like stories with “good guys,” and “bad guys,” and identifiable enemies, and simple solutions, even if those stories are, essentially, bullshit.

    One of the most prevalent bullshit stories (i.e., theories) about the global crackdown on dissent is the one about how The Big Bad Government Forced the Poor Helpless Global Corporations to Censor Everybody, or at least Conservatives. Americans are particularly fond of this story, especially conservative Americans, as it casts the Big Bad Government as the antagonist, and good, freedom-loving, military-contracting billionaires like Elon Musk as the heroic protagonists.

    Variations on this bullshit story include, but are not limited to, the ones about how the Woke cabal, or the Communists, or the Democrats, or the Biden administration, or the Starmer government, or the Satanists, or the Zionists, or some other assembly of perverted evil-doers is responsible for the global crackdown on dissent, and every other bad thing you can think of.

    Another bullshit story that is popular with Americans is the one about how the evil EU is the Monster, because there’s no free speech in Europe, not like there is in the USA, where there’s the 1st Amendment, and everyone is free, and extremely armed, and, anyway, Europeans are pussies.

    I could go on, but you get the idea … all of these stories, and theories, are bullshit.

    The global crackdown on dissent is not a European, or a British, or American, or a Canadian, or Australian, or a Brazilian operation. It is a global, systemic operation. Governments aren’t forcing or extorting global corporations into censoring dissent. Left and right politics has nothing to do with it. It is part and parcel of the ongoing evolution of global capitalism, the globally hegemonic system we all live under. Re-electing Donald Trump will not stop it. Electing Bobby Kennedy, Jr. will not stop it. The Supreme Court will not stop it. Elon Musk won’t stop it.

    As I put it in a recent column …

    “What is actually happening is, a dominant power — a globally hegemonic dominant power in our case — is eliminating internal resistance throughout the territory it occupies, which in our case happens to be the whole planet. Any and all forms of internal resistance. The character of the resistance makes no difference … Islamic fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, neo-nationalism, ‘populism,’ socialism, whatever. Any form of resistance that interferes with the consolidation of its global hegemony and commodification of virtually everything.”

    I am well aware of many people’s objections to referring to the system that we all live under as “global capitalism,” but that’s what it is. It may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it is the kind of capitalism we have.

    If we cannot identify it, we cannot understand it. If we cannot understand it, we won’t be able to change it.

    I am going to demonstrate how that system works when it comes to cracking down on dissent. I’m going to use the facts of my case to do it. I’ve arranged them into a simple timeline, and editorialized as little as possible.

    What we are up against is a global system. A system. Not a clutch of conspirators. Not a political party. Not a “cabal.” A system. A decentralized, supra-national, hegemonic, global system. Which is eliminating internal resistance. Like a body’s immune system fighting an infection. Yes, the system is run by people, individual people, but they are all replaceable, interchangeable parts of the system. No one is giving anyone orders to censor anyone or prosecute anyone or telling anyone what to publish or broadcast. No one has to. Anyone in any position of power knows what to do, without being ordered. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in their positions. They are organs of the body that the system comprises. We are the infection.

    Until we understand that, and accept it, and embrace it, we are going to get nowhere.

    Anyway, let me not spoil the fun. If you’re not too fed up with reading about my case, go ahead, review the following timeline. Note the six points I outlined above. And, if you subscribe to one of those theories I listed at the top of this piece, and referred to as “bullshit,” try your theory out on these facts. If it works, feel free to let me know.

     

    August 24-27, 2022 — Three months later, as the German authorities debate whether to lift the Covid mask mandates, I tweet the following Tweets. (Translation: (1) “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is what they have always been. Stop pretending that they were ever anything else or get used to wearing them.” (2) “The mask always sends a signal.” — Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s Minister of Health, as quoted in Die Welt.)

    August 29, 2022 — Amazon/KDP bans The Rise of The New Normal Reich in Germany.

     

    August 30, 2022 — The Hessen CyberCompetenceCenter (“Hessen 3C”) reports the two Tweets to Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office’s Central Reporting Center for Criminal Content on the Internet. (Hessen 3C is “a department within the Cyber and IT Security Administrative Digitalization department in the Hessian Ministry of the Interior,” and an official partner of The National Cyber Response Center (“Cyber-AZ”), “a core element of Germany's Cyber Security Strategy.”)

     

    August 30, 2022 — Hessen 3C reports the Tweets to Twitter for censoring. Twitter censors the Tweets, claiming they violate German “hate speech” laws.

    August 30, 2022 — Amazon bans the book in Austria and The Netherlands, as well as Germany. The book becomes “unavailable to order” in German bookstores. Amazon applies warning notices to the book in markets where it is not banned (e.g., USA, UK, Canada, etc.), advising readers to visit the CDC, the World Health Organization, etc., “for the latest information on COVID-19 and vaccines.”

     

    September 19, 2022 — The Federal Criminal Police Office forwards the case to the Berlin District Prosecutor. An official criminal investigation is launched. (I am not notified of the investigation at this time.)

    June 2023 — Nine months later, the Berlin District Prosecutor notifies me that I am under criminal investigation on suspicion of “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” a violation of Section 86(a) of the German Criminal Code, punishable by up to three years in prison.

    June 2023 — Matt Taibbi reports on the investigation in Racket News.

    August 8, 2023 — The Berlin District Prosecutor’s office concludes its 11-month-long criminal investigation of my Tweets.

    August 15, 2023 — The District Court of Berlin issues an Order of Punishment. I am sentenced to 60 days in jail or ordered to pay a €3,600 fine.

    August 21, 2023 — My attorney appeals the Order of Punishment and requests a trial.

    September 2023 — The Berlin District Prosecutor’s office launches a second criminal investigation of me, after I republish the Tweets in a Substack column reviewing the facts of the case. (I am not notified of this second investigation, which is temporarily suspended pending the outcome of the original prosecution. My attorney discovers it in the criminal investigation file after the fact.)

    September 2023 — Stefan Millius reports on the prosecution in Weltwoche.

    Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

    October 2023 — Matt Taibbi reports on the prosecution in Racket News.

    January 2023 — James Kirchick reports on the prosecution in The Atlantic.

    January 23, 2024 — I stand trial in The District Court of Berlin. I am acquitted.

     

    January 2024 — Aya Velázquez, other independent German journalists, and Epoch Times report on the trial. It receives zero coverage in the German mainstream press.

    February 26, 2024 — The District Court Judge publishes her written acquittal verdict.

    March 23, 2024 — The Berlin District Prosecutor files a notice of intent to appeal the acquittal verdict.

    March 2023 — Ralf Hutter reports on the prosecution and the banning of the book in Multipolar, a prominent independent magazine in Germany.

    March 27, 2024 — My attorney submits disclosure requests to Hessen 3C, Twitter/X, and Amazon, requesting information regarding the censoring of the Tweets and the banning of the book. (Both X and Amazon refuse to comply. X refers us to the X Help Center, noting that, on X, “people are free to be their true selves.” Amazon responds by sending me a zip file of irrelevant “data sets” and advising that they have thereby met their legal obligation to respond.)

    May 3, 2024 — The Berlin District Prosecutor appeals to overturn my acquittal and requests a new trial before the Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht Berlin).

    May 2024 — Despite repeated reminders, Elon Musk and X continue to ignore my attorney’s disclosure request. Notwithstanding my acquittal, X continues to censor the two Tweets.

     

    May 2024 — Both Der Spiegel and Stern magazine print covers featuring swastikas. Der Spiegel’s cover concept is exactly the same as my book cover concept/Tweets, the only difference being that the Spiegel cover features a swastika covered by the German flag, whereas my book cover and Tweets feature a swastika covered by a medical mask.

    June 2024 — In response to my attorney’s disclosure request in March, Hessen 3C denies having instructed Twitter to censor the two Tweets, despite the fact that, on September 1, 2022, in the criminal investigation file, the Federal Criminal Police Office noted, “Hessen 3C has already taken measures to have the Tweets deleted.”

    Hessen 3C also denies contacting Amazon regarding the book cover, despite the fact that Amazon banned the book less than 24 hours prior to Hessen 3C’s reporting of the Tweets to the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

    July 18, 2024 — The Berlin Superior Court schedules the new trial for August 15, and issues an Order imposing security protocols on the proceedings, i.e., airport-style full-body scanning, no computers, phones, cameras, writing instruments, etc., allowed in the courtroom. Members of the press and the public (and my attorney and I) must surrender all personal items, including jackets, head coverings, etc., and completely their empty pockets before entering the courtroom. Members of the press and public will be limited to 35 and must be seated in the rear six rows of the gallery, so that they can be monitored by security personnel. The Superior Court’s pretext for this Order is that a certain high-security trial sometimes takes place in the same courtroom.

    July 22, 2024 — My attorney files a motion objecting to the Court’s Security Order. We are informed that the judge that issued the Security Order has gone on vacation and is unavailable to respond.

    July 26, 2024 — The Superior Court denies my attorney’s motion to lift the Security Order, which it explains is required due to the “overall tense security situation” and the need to protect the Court against “recently introduced wiretapping technology.” The trial is set to go ahead on August 15. The Security Order remains in effect.

    August 4, 2024 — John Mac Ghlionn reports on the prosecution and the banning of the book in Sky New Australia.

    August 9, 2024 — The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”)releases a video feature about the prosecution and the banning of the book.

    August 12, 2024 — My attorney files a bias complaint against the judge that issued the Security Order.

    August 14, 2024 — Ralf Hutter reports on the prosecution and the banning of the book in Berliner Zeitung, a mainstream German newspaper.

    August 14, 2024 — The Superior Court postpones the trial without explanation. A new trial date is set for September 30. The Security Order remains in effect.

    N.B. The Rise of The New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021)continues to sell briskly in countries where it is not banned. It remains banned by Amazon in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands. Despite also being distributed internationally by Ingram Content Group, the book remains “unavailable to order” from bookstores in Germany.

    P.S. And, yes, that’s Mr. Jensen up there again. I’m rather fond of Mr. Jensen. If you haven’t rewatched Network recently, or read his speech, I recommend doing that.

    Editor's Addendum:

    German court convicts CJ Hopkins for satirical book cover

    The Grayzone

    Aug 30, 2023 #TheGrayzone

    Satirist and author CJ Hopkins was found guilty and sentenced to 60 days in prison or a 3600 Euro fine by a German court for a single tweet mocking mask mandates, and for the cover of his book, "The New Normal Reich," which examines pandemic restrictions and the propaganda surrounding them as symbols of a new authoritarian order in the liberal West. CJ joins The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal to discuss his conviction for violating Germany's unusual speech codes and what it says about the future of liberal democracy in Europe. Read more about CJ's case from Matt Taibbi: https://substack.com/notes/post/p-136...

    CJ Hopkins is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

     


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    Scorsese’s universal humanity

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    Premiered Mar 19, 2022
    Martin Scorsese narrates his journey through his favourites in Italian cinema.  Few people will be unmoved. 

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    The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.