Comrades, Welcome to the desert of the real. This year, I will endeavour to publish twice a week; Politics midweek, Culture or Bonus Obscenities on the weekend. If you have the means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Hakuin Ekaku, the Japanese Zen Buddhist from the early 17
Germany hasn't found a holocaust it can't enthusiastically support starting with the Herero, Nama, San and Damara and going through european jews to Gaza today and as the Berlinale showed the West Bank and Hebron. Cuba in their presentation to the ICJ on the occupation called it a low intensity genocide. Sure what's happening in Gaza is the same as the Nazi holocaust but in that context it's also not the same, in that the Palestinians do not have an army or a state to manufacture borders and protect them, how then can they fight back? The fight is by civil society led by South African and now Nicaragua and other states need to step up to their obligations under the Geneva Conventions and boycott/sanction/divest from all the criminal states involved. There are alternatives today especially in China and it wouldn't take much to bring these economies to their knees.
State repression is at its worst when there is there is profound dysfunctionality in the material reality that the State is attempting to force an ideological version of.
The rightward march of recent decades has been caused by the myriad failures materialist economic base, the capitalist world-system.
Germany's openly State-driven censorious war-time repression of any and all dissent from its overseas military engagements is made all the worse as the Gaza War is going very badly for Tel Aviv, Berlin and Washington. The exception, as detailed in the Owen Jones video linked to by Zizek, is the bonanza being enjoyed by arms manufacturers. E.g. try the simplest act of posting an anti-war statement on the Deutsche Welle Facebook page and then watch the Skinhead Censors of the German State delete the comments and then summarily ban the poster with an off-handed bestial epistemic brutality that would horrify Chinese State Censors.
There is no victorious end to the Gaza Genocide in sight. All prospects are for ever increasing Evil, death and violence. Genocidal war crimes and the concomitant moral debasement of the war criminal genocidaires. Even the mentally sclerotic, morally feeble dotard Biden is too much of an independent thinker, too much an ethical creature for the monstrous Netanyahu. The fact that the longer the Gaza Genocide continues, the more that this helps Trump become potus is not a point that is lost on Netanyahu.
A historical moment of profound abyssal moral degradation.
All signs also point to an increasingly militaristic and far-rightist German State that is openly embraced by the German populace. With a nice bit of convenient xenophobia thrown in, in the form of the dark-skinned sub-alterns of Europe. The SPD and the Greens ("Die Olivgrünen") of today are **rightist** parties that are light-years away from their anti-systemic political origins. Petra Kelly and Joseph Beuys must be desperately attempting to leave the afterlife and return to earth so that they can curse Baerbock to her warmongering, genocidal military-colonial face.
"“The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.” These words have rung in my ears and sat in my chest with nowhere in particular to go, a hard, ugly truth at the core of German society that precisely reflects my experience living in it. It is bewildering, it is comical, and it is accurate.
From the neo-Nazis of the AfD to “anti-Deutsche” leftists who claim to be combatting German anti-Semitism by obsessively and unconditionally supporting Zionism, many of today’s Germans are brimming with repressed rage towards Jews. Whether they are aware of it or not, this is resoundingly apparent in the deep, hysterical hypocrisy of a reaction such as that of the man at the demonstration – spitting in a Jewish person’s face for standing against fascism and genocide on the basis of her personal, generational relationship to fascism and genocide and becoming enraged at being identified as an anti-Semite accordingly.
This fury is seemingly a reaction to the “injustice” of Germans having to repent for the actions of their ancestors, something they have been widely celebrated for on the global stage. The resentment takes the form of narrowmindedness and bigotry: The only acceptable concepts of Judaism, Jewish people and “Jewish life” are those they themselves, non-Jewish Germans, explicitly sign off on. (Refer to the “anti-Semitism commissioners” claiming to represent the interests of Jewish people in Germany – not a single one of whom is Jewish or an expert in any relevant or related field.) For many Germans, the only palatable Judaism is Zionism, which in fact is no kind of Judaism at all. When forced to contend with perspectives in conflict with this toxic narrative or with Jewishness that doesn’t align with their understanding of it, their anger surfaces violently, explosively. “Anti-Deutsche” weaponise the fetishisation of Jews through their obsessive Zionism to an extreme degree, spearheading aggressive hate and smear campaigns against those who do not share their views (including anti-Zionist Jewish people). How dare anyone, most of all Jews, call into question the authority of Germans in defining and relating to Judaism, anti-Semitism and genocide.
The sick, decades-long collaboration between Israel and Germany and the widespread assertion that Israel’s security is “Germany’s reason of state”(“Staatsraeson”), which upholds Zionist socialisation in the interests of political, racist ends, has created an atmosphere of fear, shame, guilt and ultimately self-righteousness that permeates much of German society. It punishes questions, dissuades education and quashes the necessary understanding of Judaism as a broad, differentiated and historically diasporic culture that existed long before Zionism – and will exist long after.
This designation of all Jews and all Judaism as a single uniform entity, necessarily speaking the same language (modern Hebrew), holding the same values (Zionism) and sharing an identical culture (which in Germany, must be determined by Germans), is, in fact, the precise definition of anti-Semitic, Nazistic racial segregation and the othering, dehumanising rhetoric they employed in its service. The rigid and inherently anti-Semitic conception of Jews as an undifferentiated people “native” to one land, characterised by the nationalist settler-colonial Zionist movement, has merely served as a continuation of Hitler’s work. It has erased secular Judaism in Europe. It has eradicated the Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and other Hebraic languages. Eighty years after the Holocaust, it has succeeded in upholding the view of Jews as a monolith, a foreign nuisance separate from German society, the attempted annihilation of whom can now be exploited to justify the annihilation of another group."
The conflict between the Berlinale and German politicians has a long backstory. The German Ministry of Culture, which Claudia Roth (Green Party) runs, dropped a significant amount of the funding for the festival this year, and other politicians/pundits, mostly conservatives, have constantly been calling for Berlinale to fall in line politically. This cut in funding also prompted the two leaders running the Berlinale to step down, so now it has no effective leader (until the new one comes sometime soon). Basically, this incident with Adra and Abraham's comments for accepting a Best Documentary award being shunned by the German establishment was a disaster waiting to happen, and the festival not only didn't support the filmmakers, but also joined in with the establishment. It's a fascinating story and one that I covered in several of my Berlinale posts while they're were happening:
The entire framing, by both Israel and its critics, seems designed to maximize suffering, and extend it for as long as possible.
When a bog standard state like Syria or Russia deals with insurgency with the inevitable brutality, it rings hollow to all but the most zealous pacifists.
In the case of Israel, us Israelis have slowly slid from a clear understanding that Palestinian nationalism is an existential threat that can only lead to chaos, to a muddy view that entertains impossible situations until they are status quo.
Ideally Palestinian nationalism is crushed, Israeli democracy dismantled, and Palestinians are made equal subjects under the law.
The same framework should be applied to Jews in the newly annexed territory.
i'm posting this comment on the article "the plank in our own eyes" (feb 24) here because substack only allows comments by non-paying readers on random entries. the article discusses the artist Andrei Molodkin's plan to destroy artworks if Assange dies in prison. Assange could be tortured for a long time yet and so artists should not trade on his illegal detention. there are legitimate reasons to criticize this kind of post-political activism but you are not likely to hear about in in The Guardian etc
There's no need to boycott Germany, as its economy has already been destroyed by the Nordsteam Bomber. It will soon be difficult to find a German produced good to boycott. Still, as long as Biden wins next November, the German ruling class will feel the destruction of their country was "worth it."
The right to self-defense, in the context of war, means the right to retaliate to subdue the enemy by all means necessary. If you argue "the right to self-defense, but under these terms..." then you don't believe in the right to self-defense.
Claudia Roth symbolizes the quintessential dilemma faced by the Green Party in Germany, but this doesn't imply that she embodies evil or the specter of a green dictatorship often portrayed by certain centrists or so-called conservatives. The Green Party's conflict is deeply rooted in their moral stance and their relationship to it: on one hand, they aspire to be seen as a pacifist party championing the cause of goodness, while also promoting a lifestyle that remains out of reach for most Germans, leading to widespread skepticism about their ability to address social issues in Germany. On the other hand, politics demand extensive expertise in technical decisions on various political issues, which they only acknowledge superficially because the imperative to "das Richtige" (do the right thing) takes precedence over understanding the complexities of their positions on certain topics. It's not wrong to live for ideals, but if they fail to grasp what it means not only deontologically but also consequentially, i.e., in immediate terms, then we are witnessing a cyclical game of highs and lows in this country, tactically clinging to certainty, only to realize their fleeting duty when confronted with interpellation. Yet, the obligation to desire both, the guilt weighing on Germans and their pacifist agenda, as well as the immediate misfortune that is evident, finds itself today as a historical contradiction; how can one be categorically good and fulfill their historical duty? To get to the historical crux, history is the existing truth of the underlying reference (for the Greens, but also for the rest of the Germans), which now questions what identity (being German) even means, and what it teleologically signifies in its essence, is that this identity or historical identity holds no truth. This is precisely why many take issue with Koselleck's historical reconstruction, regarding the question of how Germans should live post-Auschwitz.
Whilst watching the Bundesliga highlights from this weekend, it was impossible to not think of Germany's recent reversion to, and revival of, the worst aspects of German militaristic ethno-nationalism and concomitant internal State-driven censorship and repression.
The situation is farcical. It's impossible to so much as post anti-war remarks in a place as innocuous and insignificant as the Deutsche Welle Facebook page without these comments (which no-one ever even reads FFS!) being summarily deleted and the poster blocked, banished into the abyss of non-personhood. However, at least no can accuse DW "News" of being uninformative! This disgusting taste of the contemporary "German Ideology" provides a glimpse into the pusillanimous Inquisitions put into place by such mental and moral degenerate dwarfs as Uwe Becker, Robert Habeck, Scholz, Baerbock et al.
Without a single syllable of protest from the likes of Jurgen Habermas! Who, as Zizek has pointed out, also failed to condemn the states of the former Eastern Bloc. Also silence from Peter Sloterdijk et al.
Germany will host the Euro Football Championship in June. The Gaza Genocide will still be ongoing in one form or another. The German State authorities are now looking forward to both exploiting the petty jingoism of football for support for its military adventures accompanied with the policing of the planned for anti-war protests which will allow them to identify political dissenters with the purpose of doxing and repressing them.
Why are Berlin and Moscow currently at war when they have so much common ground? Why can't the two autocratic States just learn to love each other, merrily trade in gas and enthusiastically share their ideas in State repression?
Looking at the crowds of (more or less) ordinary Germans in the football stands, alongside the feelings of disgust, fear and loathing evoked when contemplating the new German military nationalism there also was the novel feeling of pitying sympathy. The type that is normally evoked when observing crowds from places such as North Korea or when reading about historical times and places such as the censorship regimes of Czarist Russia or Counter-Reformation Spain.
so many shocks these days.. the nazis starting to take over again usa and eu etc... clearly ppl making some formal or so mistakes.. the nazi press runs germany like the republicans in germany rule through terror and lies.. unlike the leftwing.. the unrobotic side.. no war-robotics on pacifist sides.. those poleytical pole is neutral like ph neutral clean wortur.. but anyway mix a salad with 50%shit to be agressivly forced to throw the whole salat away!..
most comments here are like the 50%shitmixsalad kind of comments.. sadly i still have to see those pieces of shit after i blocked their makers.. the language barriers of intellectualized snobism is on retarded nazilike rightminded brains side..
Germany hasn't found a holocaust it can't enthusiastically support starting with the Herero, Nama, San and Damara and going through european jews to Gaza today and as the Berlinale showed the West Bank and Hebron. Cuba in their presentation to the ICJ on the occupation called it a low intensity genocide. Sure what's happening in Gaza is the same as the Nazi holocaust but in that context it's also not the same, in that the Palestinians do not have an army or a state to manufacture borders and protect them, how then can they fight back? The fight is by civil society led by South African and now Nicaragua and other states need to step up to their obligations under the Geneva Conventions and boycott/sanction/divest from all the criminal states involved. There are alternatives today especially in China and it wouldn't take much to bring these economies to their knees.
State repression is at its worst when there is there is profound dysfunctionality in the material reality that the State is attempting to force an ideological version of.
The rightward march of recent decades has been caused by the myriad failures materialist economic base, the capitalist world-system.
Germany's openly State-driven censorious war-time repression of any and all dissent from its overseas military engagements is made all the worse as the Gaza War is going very badly for Tel Aviv, Berlin and Washington. The exception, as detailed in the Owen Jones video linked to by Zizek, is the bonanza being enjoyed by arms manufacturers. E.g. try the simplest act of posting an anti-war statement on the Deutsche Welle Facebook page and then watch the Skinhead Censors of the German State delete the comments and then summarily ban the poster with an off-handed bestial epistemic brutality that would horrify Chinese State Censors.
There is no victorious end to the Gaza Genocide in sight. All prospects are for ever increasing Evil, death and violence. Genocidal war crimes and the concomitant moral debasement of the war criminal genocidaires. Even the mentally sclerotic, morally feeble dotard Biden is too much of an independent thinker, too much an ethical creature for the monstrous Netanyahu. The fact that the longer the Gaza Genocide continues, the more that this helps Trump become potus is not a point that is lost on Netanyahu.
A historical moment of profound abyssal moral degradation.
All signs also point to an increasingly militaristic and far-rightist German State that is openly embraced by the German populace. With a nice bit of convenient xenophobia thrown in, in the form of the dark-skinned sub-alterns of Europe. The SPD and the Greens ("Die Olivgrünen") of today are **rightist** parties that are light-years away from their anti-systemic political origins. Petra Kelly and Joseph Beuys must be desperately attempting to leave the afterlife and return to earth so that they can curse Baerbock to her warmongering, genocidal military-colonial face.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/uelhhx/the_new_der_spiegel_cover_on_the_stance_of_the/
"“The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.” These words have rung in my ears and sat in my chest with nowhere in particular to go, a hard, ugly truth at the core of German society that precisely reflects my experience living in it. It is bewildering, it is comical, and it is accurate.
From the neo-Nazis of the AfD to “anti-Deutsche” leftists who claim to be combatting German anti-Semitism by obsessively and unconditionally supporting Zionism, many of today’s Germans are brimming with repressed rage towards Jews. Whether they are aware of it or not, this is resoundingly apparent in the deep, hysterical hypocrisy of a reaction such as that of the man at the demonstration – spitting in a Jewish person’s face for standing against fascism and genocide on the basis of her personal, generational relationship to fascism and genocide and becoming enraged at being identified as an anti-Semite accordingly.
This fury is seemingly a reaction to the “injustice” of Germans having to repent for the actions of their ancestors, something they have been widely celebrated for on the global stage. The resentment takes the form of narrowmindedness and bigotry: The only acceptable concepts of Judaism, Jewish people and “Jewish life” are those they themselves, non-Jewish Germans, explicitly sign off on. (Refer to the “anti-Semitism commissioners” claiming to represent the interests of Jewish people in Germany – not a single one of whom is Jewish or an expert in any relevant or related field.) For many Germans, the only palatable Judaism is Zionism, which in fact is no kind of Judaism at all. When forced to contend with perspectives in conflict with this toxic narrative or with Jewishness that doesn’t align with their understanding of it, their anger surfaces violently, explosively. “Anti-Deutsche” weaponise the fetishisation of Jews through their obsessive Zionism to an extreme degree, spearheading aggressive hate and smear campaigns against those who do not share their views (including anti-Zionist Jewish people). How dare anyone, most of all Jews, call into question the authority of Germans in defining and relating to Judaism, anti-Semitism and genocide.
The sick, decades-long collaboration between Israel and Germany and the widespread assertion that Israel’s security is “Germany’s reason of state”(“Staatsraeson”), which upholds Zionist socialisation in the interests of political, racist ends, has created an atmosphere of fear, shame, guilt and ultimately self-righteousness that permeates much of German society. It punishes questions, dissuades education and quashes the necessary understanding of Judaism as a broad, differentiated and historically diasporic culture that existed long before Zionism – and will exist long after.
This designation of all Jews and all Judaism as a single uniform entity, necessarily speaking the same language (modern Hebrew), holding the same values (Zionism) and sharing an identical culture (which in Germany, must be determined by Germans), is, in fact, the precise definition of anti-Semitic, Nazistic racial segregation and the othering, dehumanising rhetoric they employed in its service. The rigid and inherently anti-Semitic conception of Jews as an undifferentiated people “native” to one land, characterised by the nationalist settler-colonial Zionist movement, has merely served as a continuation of Hitler’s work. It has erased secular Judaism in Europe. It has eradicated the Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and other Hebraic languages. Eighty years after the Holocaust, it has succeeded in upholding the view of Jews as a monolith, a foreign nuisance separate from German society, the attempted annihilation of whom can now be exploited to justify the annihilation of another group."
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/1/german-memory-culture-anti-semitic-zionists-and-palestinian-liberation
The conflict between the Berlinale and German politicians has a long backstory. The German Ministry of Culture, which Claudia Roth (Green Party) runs, dropped a significant amount of the funding for the festival this year, and other politicians/pundits, mostly conservatives, have constantly been calling for Berlinale to fall in line politically. This cut in funding also prompted the two leaders running the Berlinale to step down, so now it has no effective leader (until the new one comes sometime soon). Basically, this incident with Adra and Abraham's comments for accepting a Best Documentary award being shunned by the German establishment was a disaster waiting to happen, and the festival not only didn't support the filmmakers, but also joined in with the establishment. It's a fascinating story and one that I covered in several of my Berlinale posts while they're were happening:
https://stanleynolan.substack.com/p/pre-berlinale-2024-controversies
https://stanleynolan.substack.com/p/berlinale-tries-to-be-political-day
https://stanleynolan.substack.com/p/the-berlinale-experience-politics
The entire framing, by both Israel and its critics, seems designed to maximize suffering, and extend it for as long as possible.
When a bog standard state like Syria or Russia deals with insurgency with the inevitable brutality, it rings hollow to all but the most zealous pacifists.
In the case of Israel, us Israelis have slowly slid from a clear understanding that Palestinian nationalism is an existential threat that can only lead to chaos, to a muddy view that entertains impossible situations until they are status quo.
Ideally Palestinian nationalism is crushed, Israeli democracy dismantled, and Palestinians are made equal subjects under the law.
The same framework should be applied to Jews in the newly annexed territory.
i'm posting this comment on the article "the plank in our own eyes" (feb 24) here because substack only allows comments by non-paying readers on random entries. the article discusses the artist Andrei Molodkin's plan to destroy artworks if Assange dies in prison. Assange could be tortured for a long time yet and so artists should not trade on his illegal detention. there are legitimate reasons to criticize this kind of post-political activism but you are not likely to hear about in in The Guardian etc
There's no need to boycott Germany, as its economy has already been destroyed by the Nordsteam Bomber. It will soon be difficult to find a German produced good to boycott. Still, as long as Biden wins next November, the German ruling class will feel the destruction of their country was "worth it."
The right to self-defense, in the context of war, means the right to retaliate to subdue the enemy by all means necessary. If you argue "the right to self-defense, but under these terms..." then you don't believe in the right to self-defense.
So you support the right of the Palestinian people to self-defense by any means necessary?
Does a murderer have the right to self defense?
Does Apartheid and Genocide?
I wonder where you got these two concepts from. Your peers, or reality?
My peers tell me that "Israel" doesn't have a history - it has a criminal record.
Then it must be true.
Claudia Roth symbolizes the quintessential dilemma faced by the Green Party in Germany, but this doesn't imply that she embodies evil or the specter of a green dictatorship often portrayed by certain centrists or so-called conservatives. The Green Party's conflict is deeply rooted in their moral stance and their relationship to it: on one hand, they aspire to be seen as a pacifist party championing the cause of goodness, while also promoting a lifestyle that remains out of reach for most Germans, leading to widespread skepticism about their ability to address social issues in Germany. On the other hand, politics demand extensive expertise in technical decisions on various political issues, which they only acknowledge superficially because the imperative to "das Richtige" (do the right thing) takes precedence over understanding the complexities of their positions on certain topics. It's not wrong to live for ideals, but if they fail to grasp what it means not only deontologically but also consequentially, i.e., in immediate terms, then we are witnessing a cyclical game of highs and lows in this country, tactically clinging to certainty, only to realize their fleeting duty when confronted with interpellation. Yet, the obligation to desire both, the guilt weighing on Germans and their pacifist agenda, as well as the immediate misfortune that is evident, finds itself today as a historical contradiction; how can one be categorically good and fulfill their historical duty? To get to the historical crux, history is the existing truth of the underlying reference (for the Greens, but also for the rest of the Germans), which now questions what identity (being German) even means, and what it teleologically signifies in its essence, is that this identity or historical identity holds no truth. This is precisely why many take issue with Koselleck's historical reconstruction, regarding the question of how Germans should live post-Auschwitz.
Whilst watching the Bundesliga highlights from this weekend, it was impossible to not think of Germany's recent reversion to, and revival of, the worst aspects of German militaristic ethno-nationalism and concomitant internal State-driven censorship and repression.
The situation is farcical. It's impossible to so much as post anti-war remarks in a place as innocuous and insignificant as the Deutsche Welle Facebook page without these comments (which no-one ever even reads FFS!) being summarily deleted and the poster blocked, banished into the abyss of non-personhood. However, at least no can accuse DW "News" of being uninformative! This disgusting taste of the contemporary "German Ideology" provides a glimpse into the pusillanimous Inquisitions put into place by such mental and moral degenerate dwarfs as Uwe Becker, Robert Habeck, Scholz, Baerbock et al.
Without a single syllable of protest from the likes of Jurgen Habermas! Who, as Zizek has pointed out, also failed to condemn the states of the former Eastern Bloc. Also silence from Peter Sloterdijk et al.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4362806-germanys-unprecedented-crackdown-on-pro-palestinian-speech/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-germany-palestinian-supporters-say-they-struggle-be-heard-2023-10-19/
https://www.newarab.com/news/german-freedoms-lowered-over-climate-palestine-repression
https://www.reuters.com/world/germany-accused-silencing-pro-palestinian-voices-un-rights-forum-2023-11-09/
Germany will host the Euro Football Championship in June. The Gaza Genocide will still be ongoing in one form or another. The German State authorities are now looking forward to both exploiting the petty jingoism of football for support for its military adventures accompanied with the policing of the planned for anti-war protests which will allow them to identify political dissenters with the purpose of doxing and repressing them.
Why are Berlin and Moscow currently at war when they have so much common ground? Why can't the two autocratic States just learn to love each other, merrily trade in gas and enthusiastically share their ideas in State repression?
Looking at the crowds of (more or less) ordinary Germans in the football stands, alongside the feelings of disgust, fear and loathing evoked when contemplating the new German military nationalism there also was the novel feeling of pitying sympathy. The type that is normally evoked when observing crowds from places such as North Korea or when reading about historical times and places such as the censorship regimes of Czarist Russia or Counter-Reformation Spain.
"Pity the Land that needs Heroes"
owen jones i saw on wikipedia is an republican in the uk sense of the term..
so only in an republican sense he is an republican.. in an unrepublican sense he is not..
in an unnationalistic antifascistic sense he is thusly not an republican nazi fascist..
i think thats the true sense..
so many shocks these days.. the nazis starting to take over again usa and eu etc... clearly ppl making some formal or so mistakes.. the nazi press runs germany like the republicans in germany rule through terror and lies.. unlike the leftwing.. the unrobotic side.. no war-robotics on pacifist sides.. those poleytical pole is neutral like ph neutral clean wortur.. but anyway mix a salad with 50%shit to be agressivly forced to throw the whole salat away!..
on wikipedia one liberal jew named ignaz bubis called Michael Wolffsohn in 1992 „Vorzeigejude der deutschen Rechtsradikalen“..
a webside from him proofs it too..
most comments here are like the 50%shitmixsalad kind of comments.. sadly i still have to see those pieces of shit after i blocked their makers.. the language barriers of intellectualized snobism is on retarded nazilike rightminded brains side..