GERMAN & European complicity

JOHANNES STERN—ast week the New York Times published an op-ed by Jochen Bittner, political editor for the German weekly Die Zeit, entitled, “The world used to fear German militarism. Then it disappeared. How pacifism conquered Germany.”

The article provides an insight into the politically-malignant mentality of affluent journalists who are eager to see German militarism marching again. Throughout the article, Bittner treats the German population’s aversion to war—the result of the horrors of Nazism and the second world war—as an obstacle to be overcome.

PETER KOENIG—The EU – not being independent and her member countries having lost all sovereignty by submitting to the dictate first from Brussels, second from the tyranny of Washington, didn’t like the ultimatum, and said so in a joint statement. They added a weak and meek phrase, “We call on countries not party to the JCPoA to refrain from taking any actions that impede the remaining parties’ ability to fully perform their commitments;” not even daring calling the country by name, for whom the statement was destined, i.e. the US of A.

SAMUEL HUNEKE—Socialism is not necessarily the best form of government for queer people. Stalin, after all, recriminalized sodomy in 1934 and sent an untold number of queer people to the Gulag. Nonetheless it is also true that queer people were sometimes better off under socialism. Just as other historians have begun to argue for a more nuanced picture of socialism—Kristen Ghodsee recently contended that “women have better sex under socialism”—this history shows that socialism is not inimical to gay rights. Neither is capitalism necessarily good for gay rights.Policies related to sexuality are poor prognosticators of other politics. Gay liberation is not always a result of liberal democracy, nor is its absence isometric with authoritarianism.

MOA—The German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel is already accused of being too deep inside the U.S. rear.Her party supported the war on Iraq and now joined the illegal regime change attempt in Venezuela. The public is way less pro-American than German politicians. It will be quite difficult for Merkel and others to justify additional billions for U.S. troops in Germany. They are neither needed nor wanted. (The only sound reason to keep the 30,000 U.S. troops in Germany is to prevent them from moving to Poland from where they could threaten the country.)

The SGP has for years been the subject of media denunciations for opposing the revision of German history and rehabilitation of the Nazis. When the SGP and the IYSSE criticized right-wing extremist historian Jörg Baberowski, the media unleashed a storm of indignation. Baberowski defended the Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte and publicly declared that Hitler was “not vicious.” The IYSSE linked this directly to the return of German militarism. Germany could not return to a policy of militarism, it explained, without developing “a new narrative of the twentieth century,” “a falsification of history that diminishes and justifies the crimes of German imperialism.”