The moral hubris of the master race is back in Germany. This “New Fascism” is not being driven by the far-right AfD, but by the “good Germans”, the middle class authoritarian liberal metropolitan elite.
Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Parts of this article are drawn from an article previously posted on BRAVE NEW EUROPE’s BNE Community Newsletter exclusive for authors and donors.
The German Green party’s affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation on 13 December withdrew from the ceremony for the Hannah-Arendt literary prize it was going to award to Masha Gessen. The reason was that the Jewish author had written an article for the New Yorker magazine in which Gaza was equated with the ghettos the Germans had created in Europe during World War II. For the “good Germans” of the Böll Foundation this was anti-semitic.
European progressives such as Yanis Varoufakis, Adam Tooze, and Daniela Gabor declared their disbelief that an organisation with which they maintain warm relations – progressive soulmates – had done this.
This seems to be almost a daily event in Germany. In recent months German liberal institutions have been trying to outdo each other in ferreting out and denouncing anti-semites, mostly Jews. Museum exhibitions, speaking engagements, book prizes, and artist commissions have all been canceled for what the Germans consider anti-semitic sentiments of the artists and authors. In November Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the British Labour Party, was banned from speaking at a conference in Berlin by the hosting state run theatre due to his “stance on the Middle East”.
This is most remarkable. We now have the children and grand-children of the perpetrators of the holocaust not only once again banning Jews from speaking in public in Germany, but giving themselves the right to determine which Jews are “anti-semitic” and those who are not. The right of free speech has been binned in Germany. Criticism of human rights violations such as genocide and ethnic cleansing by Israel are seen as hate crimes. Better yet, it is common for these “Good Germans” to brand any critics of Israel as Nazis. The moral hubris of the master race is back.
It is equally remarkable how the Germans always seem to be on the wrong side of history. After their boundless support for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and their genocide against the Jews, Romanis, and Slavs during their Third Reich in an orgy of violence, they are today giving their unqualified support to the destruction of what Gessen referred to as the Gaza Ghetto and genocide against the Palestinians in an orgy of violence.
So how did we get here and who are the protagonists of Germany’s “New Fascism”? Oddly it is not the far-right party AfD, which is not sure who they hate most, the Jews or the Muslims. These are the the “good Germans”, the middle class authoritarian liberal metropolitan elite, like those in the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The foundation has been inexorably moving to the right over the past fifteen years, along with the Green party, especially with regard to their ever increasing warmongering. There is no political party in Germany that is so fervently propagating the war against Ukraine, as well as vociferously denouncing a negotiated peace. This most recent decision by the Böll Foundation was just another small step in this direction.
This is however not just about the Greens and their neophytes. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are being driven on with a fanatical avidity by Germany’s metropolitan professional class, which dominates Germany’s political class and political parties, not to mention state and corporate media.
It was the EU Commision’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, who without a mandate broke ranks and on 13 October, by which time Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza had already killed almost 2,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly children and women, to visit Israel in what she termed a show of solidariy with the Jewish state.
Von der Leyen promised that “Israel can count on the EU!” and the next day expressed her support for “Israel’s right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorists, in full respect of international humanitarian law.”
What she meant was that Israel could do whatever it wanted and their back would be politically covered and the EU would assist in filling its arsenal. Germany, after the US, is Israel’s second major supplier of armaments.
These statements were all the more astounding, as she suddenly justified the same actions by Israel that she had recently wholeheartedly condemned Russia for in the war in Ukraine. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the EU Commission President labelled Moscow’s attacks on its eastern neighbour as “pure terror” and actions constituting “war crimes,” condemning them on numerous occasions.
For example von der Leyen accused Russia of carrying out targeted attacks in Ukraine against civilian infrastructure, as well as having a “clear aim” of cutting off men, women and children from water, electricity and heating” despite the cold winter.
Following Ukraine’s disastrous Spring Offensive with horrendous losses for the Ukrainian army, when NATO nations have given up on any further major gains by the Ukrainian army, it is once again Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, who at the NATO foreign minister summit at the end of November called for preparations for the next Ukrainian offensive in 2024. The same Baerbock who after declaring “We are fighting a war against Russia”, is showing the same fanatacism with regard to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians: “These days we are all Israelis”.
The German media is no different. In an interview by the CEO of the German publisher Axel Springer, Matthias Döpfner, with the Israeli rapper Ben Salomo, Döpfner’s German flagship newspaper Die Welt proudly headlined the podcast with “Free Palestine is the new Heil Hitler”. German media normality.
If a German newspaper had the headline “Israel has the right to defend itself is the new Heil Hitler” the consequences would be severe. Turning on German television or radio, reading a German newspaper or magazine today reveals a throwback to the propaganda of Nazi Germany.
This “New Fascism” has tradition. It was the German middle class that was crucial in putting the Nazi’s in power and keeping them there. Many professions such as lawyers, academics, and doctors had the highest membership rates in the Nazi Party. Many escaped punishment thanks to inverventions by colleagues in the United States and Britain. As the US needed West Germany as an ally and provider of troops against the Soviet Union almost all prosecutions were dropped allowing these loyal followers of Hitler to resume their positions during the Nazi regime as honourable members of German society, a legacy that has become toxic.
Ninety years ago German society was set on rotting out anything non-Arian and now it has set out to eradicate everything that is by their definition “anti-semitic”. Both had the same goal: the destruction of any political opposition to Germany’s reigning class.
Germany’s political class is standing with its back to the wall. The current German government, a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals (FDP), is the most disliked I have ever experienced in Germany. The Liberals may not make it over the 5 percent hurdle to re-enter the Bundestag. The Social Democrats are heading towards 10 percent after 25 percent in the previous election. Only Green voters, who feel represented by New Fasxism are remaining loyal to their party. The conservative Chsritian Democrats are making gains, but not nearly as much as would be expected. The only party drawing support are the far-right AfD, who over 20 percent of the Germans see as the real opposition. So the current government tries to survive by promoting hate, the basis of fascism. First of the Russians, now anti-Semitic Jews. Who is next?
Resorting to the anti-Semitism ploy is not simply an odd quality of Germany. We saw something very similar during the British general election of 2019 when the progressive Labour candidate for Prime Minister, Jeremy Corbyn, who had good chances of winning, was slandered as an anti-semite. The accusation was beyond absurd, but that did not matter. It was a question of preserving the rule of the governing class. We are seeing the same artifcial hysteria in the United States financed and expedited by the Israel Lobby. In Germany this is however being executed with the same thoroughness and fanatacism that was used to instate the Third Reich.
To be honest, I do not think the majority or even close to the majority of Germans support the proxy war in Ukraine or Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. The Financial Times recently published a poll from May of this year.
The result is illuminating. In Germany only 17 percent sympathised with Israel while almost as many, 15 percent, sympathised with the Palestinians. The other two thirds either sympathised equally with both (26 percent) of were not sure (a whopping 43 percent). One may argue after the killing of civilians by Hamas on 7 October (although it is becoming increasingly unclear how many deaths the Israeli army was responsible for) and the massacring of civilians by the same Israeli army in both Gaza and the West Bank to “defend” itself, that some may have changed their minds. But that is the point of propaganda, to so inundate a population with lies and half truths that they start to believe them. It also includes prohibiting them from being exposed to any other information, by forbidding it, as we are currently seeing in Germany.
One can say, as many did before World War II, let the Germans do what they want. It is their nation and as long as it remains there, it is their issue. This is just an exercise in the ruling class re-consolidating its power during troubled times. This certainly has a logic behind it, although last time it turned out to be the wrong logic. What one forgets is that in the meantime round 350 million Europeans sit in the same boat with Germany via the EU, an EU in which Germany is the hegemon and they primarily finance. Who pays has the say. Von der Leyen’s declarations in Israel are an example.
As we know from the past, ignoring fascism is not a good idea, especially when it is in Germany.
Be the first to comment