Questions asked by Stephen Cheng, freelance journalist from NewYork, the United States
(e-mail: k145static[AT]hotmail.com)
1)
How extensive is anti-German influence?
2)
Is there a chance for anti-German criticism to become a multinational
influence?
3)
What divisions exist among the anti-Germans?
4)
How adamantly in favour are the anti-Germans of post-9/11
Anglo-American
foreign policy? Are there criticisms?
6)
Do any ties exist between anti-Germans and "conventional"
pro-Israel
advocates (i.e. American neoconservatives, American Christian evangelicals)?
7)
Are there links between the anti-Germans and other movements in
general
(i.e., unions, minority rights, homosexual rights, women's rights, human
rights, anarchists, other socialists/communists)?
8)
Where would most anti-Germans locate themselves on the left-right
political spectrum? Do they consider this dichotomy to be valid?
9)
Where else do anti-Germans differ from the conventional left?
10)
How exactly does Marxism and critical theory influence anti-German
criticism?
11)
What sort of conflicts has anti-German criticism caused within the
German left? How acrimonious (or, for that matter, violent) have these rifts
become?
12)
What are some trends (i.e., in history, in society, within Germany or
continental Europe or the Middle East) that concern anti-German thinking?
13)
What is the possibility of the anti-Germans dividing on what seems to
be their two basic points of agreement, solidarity with Israel and
solidarity against Germany?
Answers
given by the group sinistra! from Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
sinistra! holds a homepage under the address www.copyriot.com/sinistra or www.sinistra.tk and can be contacted by e-mail via sinistra[AT]gmx.li
As there doesn't exist any formal organizational structure it is impossible to speak of “the” anti-Germans as a homogeneous movement.
Historically
anti-German theory is a radicalization of anti-national theory.
Already in the course of WW1 the later communist leader Karl
Liebknecht strongly opposed the growing national mood and the erosion
of internationalism in the German (and European) social-democracy
stating “Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land” (the
most
dangerous enemy is to be found in your own country). But such views
remained minoritarian. A kind of (inter)nationalism, which does not
question the concept of nation states as such – if it is not
a kind
of nationalism itself - remained dominant in the German left for a
long time.
Neither
did anti-nationalism become a coherent theory nor a broader movement
until the late eighties or early nineties when the traditional
anti-imperialists were criticized by a post-modern, Foucault inspired
left for defending a concept of people (‘volk’) as
an almost
biological identity instead of deconstructing it. Besides, it became
obvious that the national liberation movements around the world (e.g.
IRA, ETA, PKK, ...) did no longer (if ever) fight for socialism but
for purely nationalistic motives only.
The
xenophobic outbursts and the growing nationalism after the German
“reunification” in 1990 made the simplified
old-school-left
distinction between a progressive working-class versus a reactionary
upper-class more and more ridiculous. Those burning down the homes of
refugees, waving German flags and shouting fascist slogans were for
the most part members of the working-class. The dark shadows of the
German past became more and more threatening and a new and accurate
study of German history - that is to say German national socialism -
was an obvious consequence for some in the German left. It became
clear that an emancipatorical left cannot rely on the German
working-classes but must stand in opposition to the vast majority in
this country; a majority who advocates racism, anti-Semitism,
nationalism, a majority with a deep authoritarian disposition and a
majority that did not change too much since their parents or
grandparents committed the most horrible crime in mankind's history:
the mass murder of six million European Jews. In this crime, that is
symbolized by the name of the death camp Auschwitz, the anti-Germans
recognize the ultimate break with the basic rules of a civilized
society: Colonialism, imperialism and wars were linked with massacres
and all kinds of atrocities, but followed a certain rational
calculation, the instrumental rationality of capitalism, that seeks
–
in general – to preserve its reproductive basis, i.e. those
to be
exploited, what limits the brutality and institutionalized violence
in a capitalist society to a certain extent.
Up
to now, only the Germans managed to install a mass-murderous ideology
– racial antisemitism – as a program that was to be
realized by a
cooperation of mob and elite, by a fusion of total state, capital and
work(ers). This project not only theoretically labeled ‘the
Jew’
as the head of an international conspiracy of capitalist and
communist forces against the ‘Aryan race’, as a
‘negative
principle’, in contradiction to the harmony of the German
‘volksgemeinschaft’, but tried to put this madness
to practice:
The Germans hunted for every Jew throughout Europe – old or
young,
rich or poor, left or right, atheist or orthodox – and shot
or
gassed every Jew they captured. It was even planned to eradicate all
Jews worldwide – the ideology of annihilation fully triumphed
over
any economic, political or military logic.
Against
the ignorance of an alienated world that not only created Auschwitz
but also a mentality of people that, instead of intervening, looked
on as their neighbours were being murdered in the gas-chambers,
Theodor W. Adorno formulated a new categorical imperative: It demands
that everything has to be done, so that Auschwitz or anything similar
may never happen again. But as long as there exist the concepts of
state, capital, nation and a specific coldness of the modern subject,
i.e. the social foundations that made Auschwitz possible, we can
never be sure that such an insane mass murder will not happen again.
Especially
this fact made a re-formulation of anti-national theory necessary.
Even though nationalism, racism and antisemitism are universal
phenomena, to be found to a certain extent everywhere in the world,
it is undeniable that they became nowhere else as murderous as in
Germany. So when anti-national means the abolishment of all
nation-states, anti-German means that all nation-states should be
abolished, but Germany - the origin of an unprecedented mass-murder
–
should be the first and Israel as the refuge of the surviving victims
of German atrocities the last nation-state to vanish (and should
decide for itself).
In
this sense solidarity with Israel does not mean commenting on the
concrete politics of the state of Israel or its representatives,
though Israel – as each other state, too – is
formed by the
interest of its national capital, practices exploitation of the
Israeli proletarians and is structured by racist segregation. But
anti-German criticism has to emphasize that Israel is not to be
treated as any other “normal” nation-state, as it
is the only
spot on earth, where those who are still subject to anti-Semitic
attacks on a daily basis can defend themselves effectively.
Auschwitz, where no-one stood by the Jews to prevent their
eradication – neither the crematoria nor the railway tracks
to the
death camps were bombed – proved the necessity of this
institution
of Jewish political emancipation with a strong military arm to
guarantee its existence. In these days Israel's right to exist is not
only denied openly by neo-nazis and islamistic fanatics but also in
an indirect way by anti-Israeli governments in the West and a left
who is camouflaging its obvious anti-Semitism as
“anti-Zionism”.
The
position towards the United States is pretty much disputed within the
anti-German movement. All anti-Germans have in common to denounce
anti-Americanism though. Anti-Americanism has been a constitutive
factor of the German society after World War 2. Similar stereotypes
seem to be working in the left as well as in the right. So
anti-Germans are making it a point to break with this tradition of
thinking.
But
there are major differences within the anti-German movement
concerning this issue. While it is common sense to make mention of
the American role in World War 2 and the fact that the people in the
concentration camps were freed by the allied powers and not by the
German left, as often as necessary, some anti-German groups (often
referred to as “hardcore anti-Germans”, although
this term might
be quite misleading) made it a point to celebrate every single move
in American foreign politics in the past and present. Instead of just
giving the US credit for the major role they’ve played in
defeating
Nazi-Germany in World War 2 and thereby putting an end to the
holocaust, these groups are drawing close similarities between WW 2
and the “War on Terror”. By this they are putting
the reactionary
and anti-Semitic regimes in the so called Islamic world on one level
with the Nazis. This is not only a serious minimization of the nazi
era and the holocaust, but also a violation of the (radicalized)
categorical imperative of Karl Liebknecht, that the main enemy is
one’s “own country”. These anti-Germans
see themselves on the
side of civilization and declare Islam their main target instead of
Germany.
In
contrast to this position, we see our mission not in a form of policy
that tries to advise the one or the other government what they should
do, but in a sort of radical criticism of the basic forms of
capitalist society. Anti-Americanism in this sense is a
paradoxical product of capitalism: though conservative, left- and
right wing-forces in Germany see themselves as
‘anti-capitalist’
and maintain to reject ‘commerce’,
‘money-culture’ or
‘casino-capitalism’, tendencies which they suppose
to be
culminating in the USA, they tend on the other side to bind
themselves through this mode of superficial criticism stronger to a
form of ‘good’ and ‘social’
European capitalism. Communist
criticism should, instead of staring at phenomena like
‘Hollywood’
or ‘McDonald’s’ and propagating a
‘not-so-decadent-capitalism’,
attack the roots of the capitalist society: the mode of production
that commodifies every aspect of our lives under the merciless rule
of the value.
Of
course we do cooperate with antifascist, feminist and anti-racist
groups. For us all forms of discrimination and prejudice must be
confronted likewise: Racism, antisemitism, sexism and homophobia
contradict any idea of a better society and as long as any one of the
above mentioned ideologies exist it will be impossible to speak of
emancipation.
As
past and present of the American society differ from the
circumstances in Germany, we are aware of the fact that the people in
the USA who are interested in general emancipation stick to another
position than the anti-Germans. Yet we think that there can not only
be some kind of mutual learning, but also in some areas a practical
cooperation. As the USA is still an important partner in terms of
economy and military, it is able to establish a kind of political
pressure on German government. The press campaigns against German
enterprises like BMW and BASF during the latest round of negotiations
about compensations for slave labor during national socialism showed
that there can be a positive effect if this pressure is applied in a
reasonable manner. Although the result was in the end quite poor and
most of the former slave laborers have been left unpaid, this example
could be nevertheless a paradigm for future campaigns of the American
left against German politics.