Yes, the plan was to brighten the pre-Christmas week with something up-lifting. It has changed, wouldn’t you know it.
Yes, there were matters important enough to discard my good intentions, namely events in Germany with lessons for us here in the U.S. as well.
And yes, lots to read and digest today. I will reward the patient readers with Poulenc’s choral Christmas music in the end, however tangential it might be. It is of ethereal beauty.
Two seemingly irreconcilable events happened some days apart, both echoing a darker German past. One was the election of Germany’s first mayor as representative for a right-wing extremist party (as officially declared by the German FBI,) the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), in Pirna, Saxony.
The other was a shitstorm descending around the recipient of this year’s Hannah Arendt Prize for political thought, Russian-American journalist and writer, Masha Gessen. After they published an essay in the New Yorker that critically examined current events in the Middle East and compared them to a fascistic historical context, all hell broke loose. Jewish organizations in Germany officially complained and the foundation that awards the prize officially distanced themselves and retracted the invitations to a planned celebratory reception, as did the host city of Bremen. The prize itself could not legally be withdrawn, and a presentation of the award happened in the end, under much reduced publicity and with the police attending to “protect attendants.”
Let me provide some background on both events.
Pirna is a city the size of Portland, OR, in Saxony, a state known for its considerable base of right-wing extremists who carry anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments on their banner. The first round of this year’s mayoral elections (a 7 year cycle) saw three candidates split the vote pretty evenly. One from the conservative party CDU, one from the center-right Freie Wähler, a party mostly operating on communal levels, and Tim Lochner, a carpenter with no political experience, representing the AfD. He won the run-off election last Sunday, since the other two parties were unwilling to compromise and withdraw one of the candidates in order to consolidate the reciprocal vote which would have spelled a certain loss for the extremist. Clinging to power against the odds (as well as very low turnout) threw the election to a neo-fascist.
This is particularly horrifying in light of the history of the city.
Pirna was one of six sites that served as the laboratory for killing human beings in gas chambers on an industrial scale, before transferring the method to concentration camps. A psychiatric facility, located in the old fort/castle Sonnenstein above the city, housed mentally ill and people with disabilities from the 1800s to 1939. It was declared an euthanasia institution in the context of the “Aktion T4” (the systematic killing of “unworthy life”) and between June 1940 and August 1941 almost 14.000 patients from all over Germany and an additional 1000 prisoner transfers from the Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps were gassed in the basement showers. It took until the year 2000 (!) to inaugurate a memorial to the victims in situ.
So here the city elects a mayor who is affiliated with a party known to carry the legacy of national-socialistic times with gusto, hoping to re-install the “values” of the Reich, normalizing racism, violence and anti-democratic leanings, among others. His first actions upon taking office? “I will meet with all individual members of city hall and check their loyalty.” Sounds familiar?
Major Jewish organizations commented on the election results, including the International Auschwitz Committee, seated in Berlin. They see the outcome of the election as a bitter signal to democratic parties that their willful competition with each other plays into the hands of extremism, enabling the steady march of the right-wing extremists into positions of power across all of Europe. (Ref.) Think of this in our own election year, with the likes of No-Labels potentially wreaking havoc, but also inner-democratic-party fighting weakening what needs to be a united force not to loose the election to Trump. It will take astonishingly few votes to shift the outcome – here is a detailed analysis.
The warning is on the wall: only mobilization to vote and consolidation of democratic forces can stop the destruction of democracy.
***
Cancelation of speech is a time-honored tool of autocratic regimes. That does not prevent officially democratic societies to go there as well, Germany among them, with explicit, much more restrictive laws governing speech that is deemed as inciting hatred or, in particular, anti-semitic. Article 5 of our Grund Gesetz (the German Constitution) defines freedom of speech. The second paragraph of Article 5 restricts freedom of expression “in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honor.” Big difference to the US regulations concerning freedom of speech.
Currently, people on all sides of the political spectrum agree that there is a wave of repression of political thought occurring in Germany.
“Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, virtually every major institution in Germany has been engaged in a wave of repression of ethnic minority communities — the scale and intensity of which is unprecedented in Germany’s postwar history. The targets are Palestinians, other people of color and Jewish anti-Zionists alike.”
In today’s climate, Jewish refugee Hanna Arendt herself, highly critical of the political positions of Israel and full of controversial opinions about contemporary Zionism, from 1942 until her death in 1975, would likely be silenced in Germany. Masha Gessen’s provocation, triggering the uproar around the prize they were awarded, was this paragraph of taboo comparison, from an essay in the New Yorker:
“But as in the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe, there are no prison guards –Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term ‘ghetto’ would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
Some people would have predicted this to happen, scholars of history like A. Dirk Moses, the Anne und Bernard Spitzer Professor für Politikwissenschaft am City College of New York, among them. Here is a warning from 2 years ago, a critical view of Germany’s attempt to deal with the guilt of the past, a desperate grasp for redemption.
“For many, the memory of the Holocaust as a break with civilization is the moral foundation of the Federal Republic. To compare it with other genocides is therefore considered a heresy, an apostasy from the right faith. It is time to abandon this catechism.” (Ref.)
His description of the German “Catechism.”
- The Holocaust is unique because it was the unlimited Vernichtung der Juden um der Vernichtung willen(exterminating the Jews for the sake of extermination itself) distinguished from the limited and pragmatic aims of other genocides. It is the first time in history that a state had set out to destroy a people solely on ideological grounds.
- It was thus a Zivilisationsbruch (civilizational rupture) and the moral foundation of the nation.
- Germany has a special responsibility to Jews in Germany, and a special loyalty to Israel: “Die Sicherheit Israels ist Teil der Staatsräson unseres Landes” (Israel’s security is part of Germany’s reason of state)
- Antisemitism is a distinct prejudice – and was a distinctly German one. It should not be confused with racism.
- Antizionism is antisemitism.
Masha Gessen, Jewish herself with a greatgrandfather murdered by the Nazis in the Bialistok ghetto, violates the rule that equates anti-zionism with antisemitism and, further more, proves willing to engage in comparisons, questioning aspects of the uniqueness of a singular event. I am linking to their brilliant speech, given in the context of the truncated award ceremony, that explains the legitimacy, importance and necessity of such comparisons. If you cannot open the link (in english) I can send you the full text. ) Also, here is a smart interview with them, can be switched to English.)
Gessen’s message: historical events unfold over time. At some point it might be too late to prevent unimaginable horrors when our lack of imagination is surpassed by reality. But we, now, no longer have to imagine – we know what is possible.
Consider it another, urgent warning.
“The Holocaust was singular in part because of how many people were killed over a short period of time. But even the Holocaust took years. People lived, had hopes, tried to make sense of what was happening, and resisted…. Over time, political positions changed, imagination changed, the idea dawned that a Holocaust would be possible ….
We are not any smarter, kinder, wiser, or more moral than people who lived ninety years ago. We are just as likely to needlessly give up our political power and to remain willfully ignorant of darkness as it’s dawning. But we know something they didn’t know: we know that the Holocaust is possible….
And this is why we compare. To prevent what we know can happen from happening. To make “Never Again” a political project rather than a magic spell. And if we compare compellingly and bravely, then, in the best case scenario, the comparison is proven wrong.“
Here are Poulenc’s motets.
Don’t drop the ball….
