ALTONA, LOS ANGELES: FROM THE NEARBY TO THE NEIGHBOR

The neighbor is the (Evil) Thing that potentially lurks beneath every homely human face

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In the chaotic tumult of recent days, almost nobody noticed that on June 16, 2025, Europe as an emancipatory idea died—its demise marked in Canada, where the Group of Seven (G7) countries met for their 51st Summit. In a joint statement, the G7 urged “de-escalation” regarding Iran as tensions in the Middle East continued to rise. The countries affirmed that Israel has “the right to defend itself,” adding that “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”¹

But what does “de-escalation” really mean in this context? It appears to imply the “unconditional surrender” of one side (Iran)—even if it is true that Iran has instigated attacks on Israel through Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Yet, what opened the space for Iran to act in this way? Was it not Israeli terror against Palestinians? The G7 statement contains no mention of what some naïve observers had hoped for: collective recognition of Palestine, condemnation of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, or the ethnic cleansing taking place in the West Bank.

The peak of obscenity was reached by the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who stated in an interview for German TV on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada: “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this [Iran] regime.”² In Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is arguably doing the same—so what kind of civilization are we if we require so much “dirty work,” genocide included, to be done for us? Merz here merely follows the line of Western sympathizers with Hitler, who also claimed that by destroying the Jews and attacking the Soviet Union, he was just doing the dirty work for the West, so we should publicly condemn him but silently count on him to finish the job.

Europe was not killed by some Oriental despotism but by the new rightist populism, whose personification is Donald Trump. A Slovene painter said in a recent interview: “The power of the artist resides in the slightly crazy obsession to do what he believes in.” Yes, that’s why Goebbels said that Hitler was an artist whose work of art was Germany—and does the same obsession not characterize Trump as well? However, Trump is encountering more and more trouble in his artistic endeavor.