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Getting Closer
Streeck, Wolfgang
http://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/getting-closerDate Written: 2022-11-07 Year Published: 2022 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX24762 The Greens -- recently called "the most hypocritical, aloof, mendacious, incompetent and, measured by the damage they cause, the most dangerous party we currently have in the Bundestag" by the indestructible Sahra Wagenknecht -- are rather more afraid of nuclear power than nuclear arms. Abstract: - Excerpt: There have been further ominous events of this kind. In an accelerated procedure lasting only two days, the Bundestag, using language supplied by the Ministry of Justice held by the supposedly liberal FDP, amended Section 130 of the Criminal Code, which makes it a crime to "approve, deny or diminish (verharmlosen)" the Holocaust. On 20 October, an hour before midnight, a new paragraph was passed, hidden in an omnibus bill dealing with the technicalities of creating central registers, which adds 'war crimes' (Kriegsverbrechen) to what must not be approved, denied or diminished. The coalition and the CDU/CSU voted for the amendment, Die Linke and AfD against. There was no public debate. According to the government, the amendment was needed for the transposition into German law of a European Union directive to fight racism. With two minor exceptions, the press failed to report on what is nothing other than a legal coup d'état. ... It may not be long before the Federal Prosecutor starts legal proceedings against someone for comparing Russian war crimes in Ukraine to American war crimes in Iraq, thereby 'diminishing' the former (or the latter?). Similarly, the Federal Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution may soon begin to place 'diminishers' of 'war crimes' under observation, including surveillance of their telephone and email communication. Even more important for a country where almost everybody on the morning after the Machtübernahme greeted their neighbour with Heil Hitler rather than Guten Tag, will be what in the United States is called a 'chilling effect'. Which journalist or academic having to feed a family or wishing to advance their career will risk being 'observed' by inland security as a potential 'diminisher' of Russian war crimes? ... In other respects as well, the corridor of the sayable is rapidly, and frighteningly, narrowing. As with the destruction of the pipelines, the strongest taboos relate to the role of the United States, both in the history of the conflict and in the present. In admissible public speech, the Ukrainian war -- which is expected to be termed "Putin's war of aggression" (Angriffskrieg) by all loyal citizens -- becomes entirely de-contextualized: it has no history outside of the 'narrative' of a decade-long brooding of a mad dictator in the Kremlin over how to best wipe out the Ukrainian people, facilitated by the stupidity, combined with greed, of the Germans falling for his cheap gas. As this writer found out when an interview he had given to the online edition of a centre-right German weekly, Cicero, was cut without consultation, among what is not to be mentioned in polite German society are the American rejection of Gorbachev's "Common European Home", the subversion within the United States of Clinton's project of a 'Partnership for Peace', and the rebuff as late as 2010 of Putin's proposal of a European free trade zone 'from Lisbon to Vladivostok'. Equally unmentionable is the fact that by the mid-1990s at the latest, the United States had decided that the border of post-communist Europe should be identical to the western border of post-communist Russia, which would also be the eastern border of NATO, to the west of which there were to be no restrictions whatsoever on the stationing of troops and weapons systems. Subject Headings |