Who Are The Anti-Germans?

Interview

February 13, 2006

Questions from Stephen Cheng; freelance journalist from New York, the United States.

Answers from Thomas Becker; a former programmer, now unemployed for a long time, using the benefits of Germany's welfare state and the free time thereby granted to him for criticising German ideology. He writes in the main anti-German magazine Bahamas, gives lectures on current political developments and publishes on his own website.

1) How extensive is anti-German influence?

The anti-Germans are not a political party, not an organisation with identity cards, not a uniform collective at all. Instead they are individuals connected through their criticism of German ideology. Their practice is the criticism of ideology (“Ideologiekritik”).

Well, how do you measure the influence of such criticism?

There may be some thousand anti-German critics. Their publications probably have some thousand readers more. Some hundreds of participants (or less) take part in anti-German demonstrations.

So while their influence goes against zero measured in numbers, they are rather agile, their criticism is sharp and apt, resulting in the curiosity that they are well-known in Germany – and even abroad – especially by the radical left and the anti-Imperialists, in Germany as elsewhere in the world one of the leading forces of the appeasers and collaborators of the current “Islamic revolution”. There is a special opportunity for effective criticism of the radical movements, given the fact that there is a striking contradiction between their self-portrait as the world’s elite emancipators and their real practice of systematically defending the world’s most anti-emancipatory movements and regimes, for example Hamas, Hizbullah, the Iraqi “resistance” and Iran’s “Islamic revolution”. This is true even for the so called moderate left, in Germany currently represented by the party “Die Linke”, founded just last year. It’s leader, former Minister of Finance Oscar Lafontaine, repeatedly defended Iran’s atomic weapons program and propagates an alliance between the left and Islamists, arguing that they have many things in common; rejection of the interest economy, for example. Unfortunately, this argument is absolutely correct.

Prior to the Iraqi war of 2003, Germany as a whole wanted to lead the all the appeasers. Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (Social Democratic party) and Appease-Minister Josef Fisher (Green party) defined the German foreign policy to entail Germany acting as the world’s “peace” power (“Friedensmacht”). What are the methods for “peace”? “Dialogue” with the henchmen of “Holy War” and support for anti-Americanism.

We don’t have and don’t seek to have any influence on that policy. What we’re doing is “Kritik im Handgemänge” (which means something like “criticism in action”), which Karl Marx formulated in the introduction to his criticism of Georg Hegel’s philosophy of right (“Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie”). Marx inveighed, „to allow the Germans no moment of self-deception and resignation (“Es handelt sich darum, den Deutschen keinen Augenblick der Selbsttäuschung und der Resignation zu gönnen”) and insisted that one must teach the Germans to be “frighten[ed] of themselves” (“Man muß das Volk vor sich selbst erschrecken lehren”). That could be an excerpt from the anti-Germans’ program, if they have or needed a program at all.

2) Is there a chance for anti-German criticism to become a multinational influence?

“Germany” is not only a country, but also an idea, i.e. German ideology (“Deutsche Ideologie”, the title of a book of Marx/Engels from 1845/1846), resulting in Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust. This German ideology is the ideology of anti-Enlightenment and anti-Semitism. The Germans are the leading historical executioners of that ideology, but, as we see today, this insanity is not limited to them. Rather and currently, the Islamists are its leading force, and the Germans “merely” their abettors.

Solidarity with Israel, fighting anti-Americanism, defending the war on terrorism and criticism of Europe’s appeasement of Islamic reactionaries and Ba’ath fascists are some of the primary anti-German activities. The fight against the Terror of Islam is an international war. The Germans would call it “Weltkrieg”, “Totaler” or “Heiliger Krieg”. These are not issues limited to a nation.

3) What divisions exist among the anti-Germans?

What fails to unite them? The main problem within some anti-German groups, or between them, is that some anti-Germans, who were mostly left-wing, are trying to be both leftist and anti-German. They’re trying to practice a kind of coexistence between these two contradictory “identities”, i.e. to conserve their left identity. They don’t understand that to “be” anti-German is to be at odds with any kind of identification.

4) How adamantly in favour are the anti-Germans of post-9/11 Anglo-American foreign policy? Are there criticisms?

The war on terrorism is a war to counter the most serious danger that presently faces the liberties that the American and European revolutions in the 17th ad 18th centuries had brought to the West. It was not possible to appease the Nazis, and it is not possible to appease the Islamists. The enemy is determined to terrorise all humans until Sharia law is enforced worldwide. Iran is planning an atomic holocaust. Today no force other than the US Army has the power to militarily resist, and the Bush Administration is determined to lead an international coalition in the fight to counter this horror.

I criticise the American president for being friendly with a former German chancellor who was one of the leaders of the international peace-front to protect Saddam Hussein. I criticise the American foreign secretary when she praises Germany’s appeasement of Iran, claiming that its “constructive dialogue” with the Islamists constitutes a serious attempt to prevent the Revolutionary Guards from building nuclear missiles. And I criticise the Bush Administration when it says that a Danish newspaper was wrong to publish cartoons that satirise and attack the prophet of Islam and jihadists.

Of course there are many serious problems that confront American foreign policy. How should the US reconcile the electoral victory of Hamas with the goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East? Does it think that anti-Semitism will disappear once there is democracy? That would be a gravely mistaken assumption. Is there no anti-Semitism in America or Great Britain? Do the American and English governments have any idea as to how the anti-Semitic delusion works? I have my doubts.

But such criticism doesn’t lead me to reject the idea of a democratic revolution in the Middle East, because genuine Iraqi and Iranian democracies can offer better conditions for fighting anti-Semitism than can regimes that explicitly and/or implicitly support anti-Semitism. In a democracy there can be schools, for example, that teach lessons that do not include hating the Jews. If there is freedom of speech then there can be denunciations of anti-Semitism alongside anti-Semitic propaganda – not currently possible in Iran.

And democracies have more rules than those regimes that merely allow for (and set the rules of) the election of parliaments. There is no democracy in Lebanon or Palestine today, for example, because the appearance of an armed militia in a parliament or government is incompatible with any form of democracy. Therefore, the disarming of Hizbullah and Hamas is a necessary element for the Middle East’s democratic revolution.

If the present and future planners of the war on terrorism do not take into account all the aspects, including the criticism of anti-Semitism, the conflict can end in a big tragedy. But even such a tragedy cannot be greater than the possibilities of the appeasers aborting or limiting the war on terrorism and preventing a victory over Islamic fascism.

5) How long has anti-German support existed for the US, the UK and Israel?

It’s not really a question of time, of how long. The anti-Germans “constituted” themselves during Germany’s reunification, i.e. in 1989/1990. The criticism of the German reunification was their first main political intervention. The second was their “assistance” of the war against Iraq in 1991, when Saddam Hussein said he will strike Israel using Russian Scud-3 missiles (enhanced with German technology) armed with chemical warheads. The third main intervention (regarding foreign affairs) was the criticism of Germany’s division of Yugoslavia, including Germans’ political and eventually military backing of the separatist rebellions in Croatia ( under the fascist Franjo Tudjman), in Bosnia (under the Islamist Alija Izetbegovic) and in Kosovo (the Islamist/fascist UCK). The anti-Germans criticised America’s advocacy of Germany’s Yugoslavia policy, resulting in the victory of much of the same forces that now confront America (and Europe).

In 1999, during the Kosovo War, I wrote an article opposing America’s bombing of Belgrade. I didn’t criticise the American interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in principle, but I criticised the Clinton Administration for intervening on the wrong sides. The last time I wrote about the Balkans was in November 2004.

6) Do any ties exist between anti-Germans and "conventional" pro-Israel advocates (i.e. American neoconservatives, American Christian evangelicals)?

Insofar that they are pro-Israel. Have you heard of any more connections? I’m in no sense an expert in Christian fundamentalism, but I heard that one motive for evangelicals to be “pro-Israel” is that they hope it would be easier to convert Jews to Christianity than to do so with Muslims. In other words, they wish to turn Israel into a Christian state. I have nothing to do with people who want to destroy Israel as a Jewish state.

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)?

Anti-Germans fight for the freedom of minorities, homosexuals, women and all human individuals

Currently they are most oppressed in Islamic states and Islamic communities within European democracies, i.e. under the rule of Sharia.

There are no formal links with such movements, because if you ask a representative of such an organisation claiming itself to, say, defend women’s rights about what his or her group thinks about forcing women to wear veils in Islamic communities and little girls getting married to old pederasts (like Ayesha and the prophet) etc. – what will be the response? Answer: the idea of universal rights is imperialistic or “eurozentristisch”, and that therefore the umma has the natural right to live under Sharia. Even more, Muslims must live under Sharia, because that was the Muslims’ way to live, just as Negroes had to live in the jungle and monkeys in the trees. What those movements for minority rights are demanding is the protection of the species (“Artenschutz”). Some claim to treat animals as humans, considering themselves animal conservationists (“Tierschützer”). Others claim to treat humans as animals; they make up the minority rights movements.

8) Where would most anti-Germans locate themselves on the left-right political spectrum? Do they consider this dichotomy to be valid?

This dichotomy makes no sense at all, unless you say that the further “left” one considers him or her self to be, the more anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist he or she is. The Nazis, who are considered fundamentally right-wing, were the most consistent executioners of Lenin’s anti-Imperialism, the most consistent executioners of the left’s romantic anti-Capitalism, consisting of nothing else than hating the rich and speculators, i.e. the Jews. And leftists today (the Islamists, the Nazis and other fascists notwithstanding) are the most consistent appeasers of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

9) Where else do anti-Germans differ from the conventional left aside from post- 9/11 Anglo-American foreign policy (and for that matter, Israeli government policies)?

The traditional left dreams for a strong state, collectivism in all its forms, the volk, and the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat. It rails against the tremendous might of money, viciousness of the rich, and the values of shareholders. There is no link between the left’s anti-Semitic anti-Capitalism and anti-German’s criticism, that is exactly the criticism of that ideology.

10) How exactly does Marxism and critical theory influence anti-German criticism?

How “exactly”? Please let me write a book or two. The anti-Germans continue to be anti-ideological through the critical theories of Marx, Freud, Adorno and Einstein (okay, Einstein is another theme, but in some sense is still a part). From Marx we learned to criticize “Die deutsche Ideologie” and the political economy, from Freud to criticize ourselves (and to laugh about ourselves too), and from Adorno to criticize modern anti-Semitism, as the result of the “Dialektik der Aufklärung”, and the left. Adorno and Horkheimer themselves learned a lot from Marx and Freud. From critical theory we have the most serious and deepest understanding of movements such as Nazism and Islamism and Adorno’s categorical imperative: To establish one’s thinking and behaviour so that Auschwitz will never recur and nothing similar to it will ever happen.

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?

Refer again to my answer for question one of this interview, the influence of anti-German criticism towards the left is very virulent. That criticism destroyed, or at least split, many traditional anti-Zionist “Antifa” groups. To hoist the Israeli flag during the demonstrations of the traditional “Antifa”, accompanied with the criticism in anti-German publications, was the most effective method of achieving the goal of separation. It provoked hate and violence against us (not us per se but what those symbols symbolize) all the way.

From my own experience as an author I can tell another story. I was invited to Vienna, Austria, to give a lecture on Iran’s atomic weapons program and European appeasement. Some 50 “anti-Imperialists” (self-proclaimed friends of Hamas and Hizbullah from Austria’s radical left) thwarted the meeting before it even began and prevented its progression with pure violence, physically injuring one of the organizers. The lecture was held again in the rooms of Vienna’s Jewish community and could only take place with heavy security and assistance from Austrian police.