Excellent and insightful analysis. I wonder if we can apply Shlomo Sands’ insights about contemporary French society to Germany. That current Islamophobia, of which fanatical support of Israel’s actions is an expression, has replaced anti-semitism as the hatred of the ‘ other’. That current exponents of Islamophobia would be right at home with the anti-semites of the mid-twentieth century. The only difference is the target of the hatred - Muslims in the current case and Jews 80 years ago. In any case it means Germany has learned nothing, just like the US where previous extreme hatred of people of African descent has been replaced by a deep seated hatred and unacknowledged hatred of Arabs and Muslims.
I majored in German and lived for a year in Austria. It struck me very much then that 1) Germans had done a better job than Austrians in coming to grips with their Nazi past, but that (2) that atonement was imperfect. I noticed Germans and Austrians were very racist against Turks and other people from majority Muslim countries. Some of our fellow students asked us why Americans were prejudiced against Blacks. In response, a smart undergrad asked if the girl who was asking this question would ever go out with a Turk. Never! Was the response. And I think the Austrian girl couldn’t see her inconsistency. This was in the ‘80s, btw.
Thank you for this psycho analysis of the German state of mind. So very interesting and I will read it many more times.
Quote:
"The Palestinian victims of Israeli violence, whether apartheid or genocide, become a kind of psychological human sacrifice to appease the demons of German souls tormented by what earlier Germans have done. The horrifying irony of this “displacing colonialism of memory management” (as I have called this mechanism elsewhere) is, of course, that a perverted attempt to atone for one immense crime is leading to obstinate, if largely indirect participation in or at least justification of yet another one."
Germany desperately wants Israel to go all the way. 30 000 or 40 000 victims is not enough. They have to surpass Germany by all means, so that their own crimes seem less evil in comparison. And that Jews of all people commit these crimes even better. As they have been victims of German monstrosity it helps the German psyche to overcome their sense of shame. The victim of the past has perfected the crime and surpasses its own tormentor.
But as you said at the end pride comes before the fall. Such a great German proverb: Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall. That will be a very very deep fall.
As a german citizen living in exile since almost a decade, i am honestly in awe about the sheer madness emitted from this country.
„The virtually total failure of Germany’s intellectual and moral moorings (this German “Totalausfall,” to use a German term) in face of the Gaza Genocide calls for a fundamental rethinking of the what the German coming-to-terms-with-the-past has actually been.“
Its all been lies and purely instrumental.
Issues such as paying pensions for former forced labour workers (non jewish / mainly eastern europe) or the missing memorial for the millions murdered in the former SowjetUnion are clear indicators of this.
Must have been end of the 1990‘s the pensions issue came up last time because they finally started to pay a tiny ammount to the few thousand elderly left. I was in my late teenage years at this time and never could wrap my had around that.
The over presentation of the WW2 and the Shoa in media and education and at the same time not beeing able to pay those pensions to real victims (most have died at this point.) This issue, for me, was probably the single most important cause of its sheer simplicity. You talk about history and morality than fucking pay this few Mark/Euro so this few thousand people left can have a bit of comfort in there final chapter. It drove me mad. It still dose. There are endless examples like this. Also because there was a clear distinction between jews and non jews who revived compensations/pensions.
What is now happening in Germany is breathtaking. Worst part is, that people in my family, who i deeply care about, lost the plot completely and i mean completely.
Ukraine and Gaza are subjects that i personally can not discuss at all without completely loosing it.
Nice and complex analysis. WHat it comes through though, is the scary thought that if the German population were to know about the extermination camps created during WWII to eliminate those considered undesirable - the assumption here is that they didn't know, and there is not much direct evidence of Hitler ordering it or knowing about it - the population at large would have accepted it and embraced it the same way the genocide in Gaza is not a biggie and in fact is morally necessary.
So much of what you write strikes home with the US attitude towards Ukraine, as well, such as this phrase: "a single-mindedness, obstinacy, and collective intolerance of dissent", or the US's "deeply uncompassionate and even brutal response to the suffering of" Donbass, or (a brilliant paragraph...) "It is more urgent to understand why this spectrum of reactions ranging from malevolent indifference to venomous animosity is not only tolerated but sets the tone and determines actions (such as arms sales). The key problem is not, in other words, that there are aggressively ignorant, callous, or vile responses" to the nazi regime's many war crimes "but that they are widespread, dominant, and, literally, shame-less as well as free of social “cost,” shared between much of “above” and “below” and backed up by the media."
The phrase "Never Again(!!!)" - only applies relative to the victimization of Jewish people, apparently.
It should be noted that the current German policies towards Occupied Palestine, and in support of Banderism - are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Third Reich.
The differences between the ideology of Bandera, and his fellow Ukrainian (and arch-Zionist) Jabotinsky, are primarily whom they identified as the master races, and the lands which they sought to be transformed, into an ethnically "pure" nation State.
Sadly, this pathology, which you've identified admirably in the German society - extends throughout the NATO Empire. And of course many of the Nazis who escaped the gallows at Nuremberg, found sanctuary in the US and Canada, and even in the command structure of NATO, itself.
It bears mentioning that Zionism was a project begun by atheists and assimilationists of Jewish heritage - working closely with Imperialists, anti-Jewish Bigots, and Luciferian Occultists - which long predates the rise of Hitler's Reich. And it's often noted that it was elites in London and the USA, who fostered the rise of both. Any Rabbi faithful to the Torah can explain why Zionism is a rebellion against the Almighty, and a heretical appropriation of Judaism.
Excellent you have fixed a necessary and important connection between the racism and hatred of German policies to the Palestinians and the Slavic Russian peoples. This duopoly of policy is concurrent with the economic dislocation and despair inflicted by the German elite on its subjects.
Very accurate travel around the myth of the "german guilt". A very well constructed cultural and social charade. You are on the point signaling the mix of "shame" and "wounded pride". They were hidden behind the mask of "guilt", "lerning-from-the-past", "humbleness" and "pain inflicted because processing the demential past". But a ferocious "Stolz" was there, in the darkness of the unaccepted tensions. But there are another aspect inherent to the german culture and identity: addiction to follow rules. "Rules", every one of them, are something unfatomable important for the average germans. The society function as an "oiled" panopticum. Technocracy seems to bo inherent to "the life": everyone is an "expert" in complete papers and formulars, to present all in a "perfect" way.
To comete a normal human "error", is something who denigrate the sinner of such an "offense" to the "normal" well of being. I can not avoid the image of being a witness of an "epidemic of mania". And maniatics need routines and security, feel protected.
Comfort Zone is a Holy Cow, every attempt to move somebody from there, is a subversive action. In this Comfort Zone, live another Holy Cow: Israel. Could it be that to support Israel as "legitime" gives back a sensation of "legitimacy" to the germans about their past too? "Everybody can excercise their right to self defense, and why this would mean to be genocidal?"
Lazzyness is another component: the adherence to a "normality", even a "new normality", is an attempt to continue with the statu quo, as long as possible. Better not question a single thing. And if someone is tortured or repressed or even killed ... "something they did to deserve it" (in Argentina in the ´70 it was what the people said when somebody dissappear taken by paramilitar forces ... generally then tortured/killed/missing for the records).
Germany became a clear mindless and increasingle fascist society. To be "political correct" is consider a great virtude: today it means to not challenge the official narrative at all. Not to express "anti-semitic" things, not to question what is forbidden to do so. Follow the regime directives. Flow with the new normality.
So dangerous.
Not a sign of this tradition of "intelligence".
We will see what the courageous and rightgeous Nicaragua can do in the ICJ.
But for now, for the Palestinians, for the Gazans, Germany is an enemy. For Human Rights and Moral Values, too. The western in general, made not contribution to educate the new generations in a humanistic way, and if we have now some other exponents of morality and values in the west, it is thanks to pure personal inner work, intuition, empathy and moral compass.
This manifested during YU wars in the 90s when Germany falsely accused Serbs, twice a victim of Jewish genocide in the 20th century, of committing genocide against Muslims
I discovered you through the Duran and was impressed with what I heard. For once, a German who could see through some of the smoke coming out of the media. But I am British, but learned my democracy in Germany, where I lived and worked for several years and in a job that required me to speak German. Many of my British friends in Germany didn’t speak German because they could speak English with their colleagues. Imagine being in Britain where a German professional could speak in German with his British colleagues because it was easier for the German? Germany, whatever its faults are, it is not Britain, and it is not by a very long way.
In opening your article, you say, “Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Germany has shocked much of the world by its callous response. In essence and with far too few exceptions, the German elites — in government, media, and culture as well” but I truly wonder if it is the German ‘elite’ (which, as mentioned above, is not Britain, where the elite, the establishment is what Mr H*tler sought to establish) or whether it is other forces blaming Germany for being the US or, come to that, the UK? Two nations for whom genocidal activities come naturally.
I hasten to add that there are people in Germany who share these ideas – but I can attest from personal experience as a foreigner who lived and worked in Germany, that there are far fewer of them in Germany as a proportion of the population than there are in the UK. But still, Germany always gets the blame because the media claims that they ‘started two world wars’ whilst burying any of the truths to the contrary. Cue the trolls who know only what the US-controlled media tells them…
But for all the furore about what people are saying, has Germany sent any bombs for the Israelis to use in their attack on civilians in Gaza? Because Britain and the US most certainly have – but they are not being blamed by the media for their callousness.
A most cogent analysis of a topic that had been baffling me.
As another commenter - M. MacPhail - writes below, the lack of compassion or sympathy of the broad mass of Germans for the Palestinians seems to rest on Islamophobia (even though many Palestinians aren't Muslims). Similar to the situation in France and the UK.
And, as the author states, this is a facile way to expunge "Germany's guilt" about the Holocaust through a vicarious sacrifice of the Palestinians ("wir sind keine Antisemiten, wir unterstützen doch Israel"). Even though the Palestinians are the innocent, indirect victims of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis. As the late, great journalist André Vltchek wrote, it would have been more logical to make, say, Bavaria as opposed to Palestine the homeland for the Jews..
The irony here, as the author notes, is that the German state will countenance yet another genocide and cause more contrition for Germans of future generations. Should be noted that in addition to the Holocaust, there was also the Herero and Nama genocide in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the last century and the genocide of the Christian Armenians by Germany's World War I ally, the Ottoman Empire.
Even though I'm personally descended from Germans I feel zero guilt, first because my parents and other ancestors had nothing to do with Hitler's atrocities and second because my father actively fought as a soldier against Nazi Germany in World War II (later taking part in the postwar military occupation of the country). Given that he knew the German Nazis rather well, it was interesting that he considered the Israeli Zionists to be the "Nazis of the Middle East" in terms of their ruthlessness and aggression. Events have proved him right.
Thank you for your explication of this extremely disturbing phenomenon and making it more comprehensible to those of us without your direct knowledge. I can't come up with an analogy that captures the near impossibility of the majority of the German nation changing its views even if the genocide continues unabated and achieves its evil goals. Actually, that might make many Germans even more steadfast in their unhinged hubris if I understand Dr. Amar's analysis properly. One question: There are Germans of varying ethnicities who oppose the complicity in genocide and take to the streets (there are videos online of police attacking them of course). Is that protest movement being linked by any organizations to the increasing economic struggles of ordinary Germans? Looking for some silver lining....
Excellent and insightful analysis. I wonder if we can apply Shlomo Sands’ insights about contemporary French society to Germany. That current Islamophobia, of which fanatical support of Israel’s actions is an expression, has replaced anti-semitism as the hatred of the ‘ other’. That current exponents of Islamophobia would be right at home with the anti-semites of the mid-twentieth century. The only difference is the target of the hatred - Muslims in the current case and Jews 80 years ago. In any case it means Germany has learned nothing, just like the US where previous extreme hatred of people of African descent has been replaced by a deep seated hatred and unacknowledged hatred of Arabs and Muslims.
I majored in German and lived for a year in Austria. It struck me very much then that 1) Germans had done a better job than Austrians in coming to grips with their Nazi past, but that (2) that atonement was imperfect. I noticed Germans and Austrians were very racist against Turks and other people from majority Muslim countries. Some of our fellow students asked us why Americans were prejudiced against Blacks. In response, a smart undergrad asked if the girl who was asking this question would ever go out with a Turk. Never! Was the response. And I think the Austrian girl couldn’t see her inconsistency. This was in the ‘80s, btw.
Thank you for this psycho analysis of the German state of mind. So very interesting and I will read it many more times.
Quote:
"The Palestinian victims of Israeli violence, whether apartheid or genocide, become a kind of psychological human sacrifice to appease the demons of German souls tormented by what earlier Germans have done. The horrifying irony of this “displacing colonialism of memory management” (as I have called this mechanism elsewhere) is, of course, that a perverted attempt to atone for one immense crime is leading to obstinate, if largely indirect participation in or at least justification of yet another one."
Germany desperately wants Israel to go all the way. 30 000 or 40 000 victims is not enough. They have to surpass Germany by all means, so that their own crimes seem less evil in comparison. And that Jews of all people commit these crimes even better. As they have been victims of German monstrosity it helps the German psyche to overcome their sense of shame. The victim of the past has perfected the crime and surpasses its own tormentor.
But as you said at the end pride comes before the fall. Such a great German proverb: Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall. That will be a very very deep fall.
Thank you for this piece!
As a german citizen living in exile since almost a decade, i am honestly in awe about the sheer madness emitted from this country.
„The virtually total failure of Germany’s intellectual and moral moorings (this German “Totalausfall,” to use a German term) in face of the Gaza Genocide calls for a fundamental rethinking of the what the German coming-to-terms-with-the-past has actually been.“
Its all been lies and purely instrumental.
Issues such as paying pensions for former forced labour workers (non jewish / mainly eastern europe) or the missing memorial for the millions murdered in the former SowjetUnion are clear indicators of this.
Must have been end of the 1990‘s the pensions issue came up last time because they finally started to pay a tiny ammount to the few thousand elderly left. I was in my late teenage years at this time and never could wrap my had around that.
The over presentation of the WW2 and the Shoa in media and education and at the same time not beeing able to pay those pensions to real victims (most have died at this point.) This issue, for me, was probably the single most important cause of its sheer simplicity. You talk about history and morality than fucking pay this few Mark/Euro so this few thousand people left can have a bit of comfort in there final chapter. It drove me mad. It still dose. There are endless examples like this. Also because there was a clear distinction between jews and non jews who revived compensations/pensions.
What is now happening in Germany is breathtaking. Worst part is, that people in my family, who i deeply care about, lost the plot completely and i mean completely.
Ukraine and Gaza are subjects that i personally can not discuss at all without completely loosing it.
Thank you for your text.
Righteous vegan behaviour.
Nice and complex analysis. WHat it comes through though, is the scary thought that if the German population were to know about the extermination camps created during WWII to eliminate those considered undesirable - the assumption here is that they didn't know, and there is not much direct evidence of Hitler ordering it or knowing about it - the population at large would have accepted it and embraced it the same way the genocide in Gaza is not a biggie and in fact is morally necessary.
I am ashamed for their shame.
A brilliant essay. Thank you!
So much of what you write strikes home with the US attitude towards Ukraine, as well, such as this phrase: "a single-mindedness, obstinacy, and collective intolerance of dissent", or the US's "deeply uncompassionate and even brutal response to the suffering of" Donbass, or (a brilliant paragraph...) "It is more urgent to understand why this spectrum of reactions ranging from malevolent indifference to venomous animosity is not only tolerated but sets the tone and determines actions (such as arms sales). The key problem is not, in other words, that there are aggressively ignorant, callous, or vile responses" to the nazi regime's many war crimes "but that they are widespread, dominant, and, literally, shame-less as well as free of social “cost,” shared between much of “above” and “below” and backed up by the media."
The phrase "Never Again(!!!)" - only applies relative to the victimization of Jewish people, apparently.
It should be noted that the current German policies towards Occupied Palestine, and in support of Banderism - are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Third Reich.
https://imgflip.com/i/8g08yg
https://imgflip.com/i/8cy7gm
The differences between the ideology of Bandera, and his fellow Ukrainian (and arch-Zionist) Jabotinsky, are primarily whom they identified as the master races, and the lands which they sought to be transformed, into an ethnically "pure" nation State.
Sadly, this pathology, which you've identified admirably in the German society - extends throughout the NATO Empire. And of course many of the Nazis who escaped the gallows at Nuremberg, found sanctuary in the US and Canada, and even in the command structure of NATO, itself.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/02/03/how-a-network-of-nazi-propagandists-helped-lay-the-groundwork-for-the-war-in-ukraine/
https://imgflip.com/i/8gwo01
It bears mentioning that Zionism was a project begun by atheists and assimilationists of Jewish heritage - working closely with Imperialists, anti-Jewish Bigots, and Luciferian Occultists - which long predates the rise of Hitler's Reich. And it's often noted that it was elites in London and the USA, who fostered the rise of both. Any Rabbi faithful to the Torah can explain why Zionism is a rebellion against the Almighty, and a heretical appropriation of Judaism.
https://imgflip.com/i/8ckwiw
https://nkusa.org
Feel free to swing by and join in on the meme-ing fun...
https://imgflip.com/m/Anti-Zionist-Action
Excellent you have fixed a necessary and important connection between the racism and hatred of German policies to the Palestinians and the Slavic Russian peoples. This duopoly of policy is concurrent with the economic dislocation and despair inflicted by the German elite on its subjects.
Very accurate travel around the myth of the "german guilt". A very well constructed cultural and social charade. You are on the point signaling the mix of "shame" and "wounded pride". They were hidden behind the mask of "guilt", "lerning-from-the-past", "humbleness" and "pain inflicted because processing the demential past". But a ferocious "Stolz" was there, in the darkness of the unaccepted tensions. But there are another aspect inherent to the german culture and identity: addiction to follow rules. "Rules", every one of them, are something unfatomable important for the average germans. The society function as an "oiled" panopticum. Technocracy seems to bo inherent to "the life": everyone is an "expert" in complete papers and formulars, to present all in a "perfect" way.
To comete a normal human "error", is something who denigrate the sinner of such an "offense" to the "normal" well of being. I can not avoid the image of being a witness of an "epidemic of mania". And maniatics need routines and security, feel protected.
Comfort Zone is a Holy Cow, every attempt to move somebody from there, is a subversive action. In this Comfort Zone, live another Holy Cow: Israel. Could it be that to support Israel as "legitime" gives back a sensation of "legitimacy" to the germans about their past too? "Everybody can excercise their right to self defense, and why this would mean to be genocidal?"
Lazzyness is another component: the adherence to a "normality", even a "new normality", is an attempt to continue with the statu quo, as long as possible. Better not question a single thing. And if someone is tortured or repressed or even killed ... "something they did to deserve it" (in Argentina in the ´70 it was what the people said when somebody dissappear taken by paramilitar forces ... generally then tortured/killed/missing for the records).
Germany became a clear mindless and increasingle fascist society. To be "political correct" is consider a great virtude: today it means to not challenge the official narrative at all. Not to express "anti-semitic" things, not to question what is forbidden to do so. Follow the regime directives. Flow with the new normality.
So dangerous.
Not a sign of this tradition of "intelligence".
We will see what the courageous and rightgeous Nicaragua can do in the ICJ.
But for now, for the Palestinians, for the Gazans, Germany is an enemy. For Human Rights and Moral Values, too. The western in general, made not contribution to educate the new generations in a humanistic way, and if we have now some other exponents of morality and values in the west, it is thanks to pure personal inner work, intuition, empathy and moral compass.
This manifested during YU wars in the 90s when Germany falsely accused Serbs, twice a victim of Jewish genocide in the 20th century, of committing genocide against Muslims
Dear Mr Amar
I discovered you through the Duran and was impressed with what I heard. For once, a German who could see through some of the smoke coming out of the media. But I am British, but learned my democracy in Germany, where I lived and worked for several years and in a job that required me to speak German. Many of my British friends in Germany didn’t speak German because they could speak English with their colleagues. Imagine being in Britain where a German professional could speak in German with his British colleagues because it was easier for the German? Germany, whatever its faults are, it is not Britain, and it is not by a very long way.
In opening your article, you say, “Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Germany has shocked much of the world by its callous response. In essence and with far too few exceptions, the German elites — in government, media, and culture as well” but I truly wonder if it is the German ‘elite’ (which, as mentioned above, is not Britain, where the elite, the establishment is what Mr H*tler sought to establish) or whether it is other forces blaming Germany for being the US or, come to that, the UK? Two nations for whom genocidal activities come naturally.
I hasten to add that there are people in Germany who share these ideas – but I can attest from personal experience as a foreigner who lived and worked in Germany, that there are far fewer of them in Germany as a proportion of the population than there are in the UK. But still, Germany always gets the blame because the media claims that they ‘started two world wars’ whilst burying any of the truths to the contrary. Cue the trolls who know only what the US-controlled media tells them…
But for all the furore about what people are saying, has Germany sent any bombs for the Israelis to use in their attack on civilians in Gaza? Because Britain and the US most certainly have – but they are not being blamed by the media for their callousness.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-world-war-ii-nazi-germany-was-financed-by-the-federal-reserve-and-the-bank-of-england/5530318
A most cogent analysis of a topic that had been baffling me.
As another commenter - M. MacPhail - writes below, the lack of compassion or sympathy of the broad mass of Germans for the Palestinians seems to rest on Islamophobia (even though many Palestinians aren't Muslims). Similar to the situation in France and the UK.
And, as the author states, this is a facile way to expunge "Germany's guilt" about the Holocaust through a vicarious sacrifice of the Palestinians ("wir sind keine Antisemiten, wir unterstützen doch Israel"). Even though the Palestinians are the innocent, indirect victims of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis. As the late, great journalist André Vltchek wrote, it would have been more logical to make, say, Bavaria as opposed to Palestine the homeland for the Jews..
The irony here, as the author notes, is that the German state will countenance yet another genocide and cause more contrition for Germans of future generations. Should be noted that in addition to the Holocaust, there was also the Herero and Nama genocide in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the last century and the genocide of the Christian Armenians by Germany's World War I ally, the Ottoman Empire.
Even though I'm personally descended from Germans I feel zero guilt, first because my parents and other ancestors had nothing to do with Hitler's atrocities and second because my father actively fought as a soldier against Nazi Germany in World War II (later taking part in the postwar military occupation of the country). Given that he knew the German Nazis rather well, it was interesting that he considered the Israeli Zionists to be the "Nazis of the Middle East" in terms of their ruthlessness and aggression. Events have proved him right.
Thank you for your explication of this extremely disturbing phenomenon and making it more comprehensible to those of us without your direct knowledge. I can't come up with an analogy that captures the near impossibility of the majority of the German nation changing its views even if the genocide continues unabated and achieves its evil goals. Actually, that might make many Germans even more steadfast in their unhinged hubris if I understand Dr. Amar's analysis properly. One question: There are Germans of varying ethnicities who oppose the complicity in genocide and take to the streets (there are videos online of police attacking them of course). Is that protest movement being linked by any organizations to the increasing economic struggles of ordinary Germans? Looking for some silver lining....
Interesting.