Just how savagely Germany has been spiritually castrated in
the past 50-plus years can be seen by yesterday's (March 19, 2001) Roger Cohen
article in the New York Times.
Cohen ever so nervously comments on Germany's flexing its patriotic muscle. The
article is titled "Schröder Joins a Hot Debate, Saying He's Proud to Be
German".
We offer it herewith customary Zundelsite comments after each paragraph to help you read between the lines.
Cohen:
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder joined a heated debate today over whether Germans have the right to feel national pride, declaring himself "a German patriot, who is proud of his country."
Zundelsite:
Schröder talks a good line, but beneath his slick words he and his secret police and politicized judiciary persecute German patriots with an oppressive state apparatus not seen since the Honecker-Stasi regime collapsed in 1989.
Cohen:
For decades after World War II and the Holocaust, Germans largely shied away from such public expressions of national pride. But in recent months a broad discussion has started over whether the success of the country's postwar democracy has legitimated declarations of national pride that would be considered normal in most other states.
Zundelsite:
It's a long overdue German reaction to endless Jewish finger- wagging by the likes of Rosenthal, Rabbis Hier and Cooper and their fellow travelers.
Cohen:
Mr. Schröder's remarks, published in an interview in Suddeutsche Zeitung, came in the midst of a political storm over patriotism and nationalism that has already led to unusually vehement criticism of the German president and calls for the resignation of the environment minister.
Zundelsite:
The Germans will free themselves regardless of what the New York Times and its scribblers will say. It's natural, and the time for normalizing things in German life has come!
Cohen:
The Social Democratic President, Johannes Rau, said in a television interview last week that people could be "glad" or "thankful" to be Germans, but not proud. "One can only be proud of something one had achieved," he said, adopting a cautious stance clearly intended to head off any resurgent German nationalism.
Zundelsite:
There is lots of things postwar Germans have achieved of which they can be proud. They rebuilt their devastated country, dug themselves out of the rubble - and will dig themselves out, scratch-and-claw, from Jewish-Allied domination.
Cohen:
Mr. Rau's post is largely ceremonial and he acts as the closest thing to this country's moral arbiter. In general he is spared direct criticism. But this remark sparked a wave of political protest from the conservative Christian Social Union and the liberal Free Democrats.
Zundelsite:
What did they protest? That Germans wanted to be proud to be Germans? No wonder they lost the last elections.
Cohen:
Thomas Goppel, the general secretary of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to the Christian Democrats, said, "One must ask whether a president who does not have this pride can represent a country of 80 million citizens." He accused Mr. Rau of "polarizing the country."
Zundelsite:
It's a mirror-fencing exercise. The Germans are throwing off their shackles. This is only the beginning!
Cohen:
Germany is increasingly divided between those convinced that this is a post-national state that should play a leading role within the European Union while avoiding expressions of national pride, and those who insist that German pride is a natural thing that the Holocaust cannot forever invalidate.
Zundelsite:
There is a third alternative which frightens people like Cohen and his European counterparts, and that is that the Germans' most populous and dynamic country in Europe will increasingly put Germany's imprint on Europe's institutions - as they have done already with Europe's economy.
Cohen:
Guido Westerwelle, the general secretary of the Free Democrats, also criticized Mr. Rau, saying: "We must not allow neo-Nazis and skinheads to define what national pride is. We democrats, from conservatives to social democrats, must show pride in our country."
Zundelsite:
Belatedly, they are discovering that national pride sells! It won't save the old sell-out parties! The German mood is more than sloganeering. A renaissance of pride in their country is at hand!
Cohen:
The extreme right in Germany, responsible for a wave of anti-immigrant attacks last year, has adopted as one of its slogans the phrase "I am proud to be a German." Badges saying this can be bought through the Web sites of various rightist parties.
Zundelsite:
Horror of horrors - badges that say "I am proud to be German!" Would it not be a good idea if what's left of patriotic America adopted the same slogan as well?
Cohen:
In recent months several conservative politicians have shown their determination not to allow the extreme right to establish an exclusive hold on this phrase. When he was appointed last year as the general secretary of the Christian Democrats, the main opposition party, Laurenz Meyer declared, "I am proud to be a German."
Zundelsite:
All the sell-outs and political con artists of yesteryear are sniffing the wind and realizing that they were booted out of office because they had sold their country down the drain on too many issues for too long. And they now think that mouthing patriotism will spell a return to power?
Cohen:
It was this declaration that last week spurred Mr. Schröder's impetuous Greens Party environment minister, Jürgen Trittin, to say that the balding Mr. Meyer "not only looks like a skinhead, he thinks like one." Mr. Trittin later apologized, but the Christian Democrats are demanding his resignation.
Zundelsite:
How often have we said it? The Revolution is eating its own children. The smear word of "skin head" is losing its power by such ludicrous usage. Are they not ashamed of themselves?
Cohen:
Several developments are feeding the increasingly bitter discussions over German pride. The absorption of 17 million former East Germans who grew up proud of their former Communist state has increased patriotic or nationalist feelings. More than a half-century has passed since the war and Germans are tired of seeing their history reduced to the 12 Nazi years.
Zundelsite:
Maybe Mr. Cohen and his friends should look in the mirror, for it is mainly they who have brought about this reaction with their constant agitation.
Cohen:
Berlin stands at the center of a new, undivided Europe and Germany's economic and demographic weight is unmistakable. So national pride seems if not natural, at least conceivable.
Zundelsite:
A belated realization - if a little wimpy! German national pride is real and natural, not just "conceivable"!
Cohen:
Mr. Schröder, whose political antennae are extremely acute, has certainly sensed the significance of these developments. His expression of pride was carefully qualified ˜ "I am proud of the achievements of the people and the democratic culture" ˜ but it showed which ideas he believes will draw most votes in Germany today.
Zundelsite:
German patriotism is not dead. It just lay covered under treaties heaved upon it by Germany's military conquerors of 1945. And now the German giant is stirring!
Ref: Schröder Joins a Hot Debate, Saying He's Proud to Be German http://partners.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/19CND- GERMANY.html?Partner=isyn dicate&RefId= zmgW_jEFnnunNutmY,S
Thought for the Day:
"German reunification is simply not a realistic possibility, and to talk about it or to advance historical arguments in its favor is to indulge in political fantasizing."
(Thus spake Richard Evans, 'The New Nationalism and the Old History -- Perspective on the West German Historikerstreit,' in Journal Of Modern History, Dec 1987, page 785)
A Zundelsite P.S. Two years before the wall came down! The same ideologically blinkered Evans is going to go down in infamy with his Thirty-Pieces-of-Silver testimony in the Irving trial!
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