Von Dr. phil. Clemens Heni, 14. Oktober 2017

Times of Israel (Blogs)

In a debate in the German weekly Freitag 34/2017, published October 8, 2017, its publisher Jakob Augstein, known for his anti-Israel stance, and his colleague, Michael Angele, interviewed journalist Alan Posener and historian Jürgen Zimmerer about colonialism and the Holocaust.

Zimmer is a leading ideologue of post-colonial theory. This article analyzes his scholarly shortcomings. Framing colonialism as forerunner of Nazi Germany and the Shoah is antisemitic in effect, if not intent.

Many people obfuscate their anti-Jewish resentments by framing them as trendy or scholarly up-to-date. Antisemitism is a specific phenomenon. Antisemitism is not just a form of racism, it is a complete different category. Antisemitism is constructed on race theories, conspiracy myths, blood libels, tropes of Jewish power and countless other aspects. Antisemitism sees Jews behind capitalism and communism, behind the media, the current refugee crisis (“Soros”), behind 9/11 etc. Antisemitism is not about discrimination, prejudice or mobbing. Antisemitism is the “longest hatred” and a “lethal obsession”, as historian Robert Solomon Wistrich (1945–2015) framed it.

Racism, on the other hand, is based on discrimination, rule and power, not on extermination or conspiracy myths. Slavery was a horrible crime, but it was obviously not developed to eradicate people, let alone a specific people. It was means for exploitation.

In recent decades, it has become mainstream to deny the uniqueness of the Shoah and to accuse Jews as well as Israel to emphasize and even to study that uniqueness. Scholars such as Amos Goldberg from Israel accuse the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem for being exclusive. In his distorted view, the Shoah was not unique. He represents a huge trend in contemporary activism and scholarship regarding our colonial past. Some like Amelia Plumelle-Uribe talk about “concentration universe America” since 1492, accusing America for being a kind of Nazi Germany. This anti-American ideology is well received in Germany in particular. Others, such as Heinz Dieterich in 1991 spoke about a “500 Year Reich” (1492–1992), projecting German guilt of the Holocaust on to America and the West. That kind of ideology is no longer a hard-core left-wing esoteric ideology. It has become mainstream.

Scholar in cultural studies in the Netherlands, Imani Tafari-Ama, currently a fellow of the German Federal Foundation of Culture in the city of Flensburg in the north of Germany, is among the most aggressive deniers of the uniqueness of the Holocaust. June 11, 2017, in the German daily tageszeitung (taz) she claimed, „the diversion of Africans was the worst crime in human history, even bigger than the Holocaust.” That statement is one of the worst forms of contemporary antisemitism. Why? It denies that the industrial killing of six million Jews was unprecedented. That is a form of soft-core Holocaust denial, as scholarship frames it. Slave trade was a huge crime, both in its well-known Christian and in its often-denied Islamic versions. However, these crimes were not at all unprecedented (think about antiquity and slavery etc.), nor were they intended to kill an entire people.

Let us focus on historian Jürgen Zimmerer and his allies:

There is a special trend in historiography to distort the Holocaust by denying its unprecedented character and to frame the murder of Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa in 1904–1907 as Kaiser’s Holocaust. This is the title of a book written by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen in 2010. They claim:

“Our understanding of what Nazism was and where its underlying ideas and philosophies came from is perhaps incomplete unless we explore what happened in Africa under Kaiser Wilhelm.”

First, this approach is far from original. In 1975, historian Peter Schmitt-Egner published a study (in German) about Colonialism and Fascism, where he denied that antisemitism is an ideology sui generis. His attempt is obsessed with “class struggle” and capitalism, therefore colonialism is seen as the forerunner to equally capitalist fascism. Many leftists deny the sui generis dimension of antisemitism and National Socialist Germany. For them, bourgeois rule tends to be fascist and that is more or less the same kind of capitalist exploitation all over the modern world. Any specificity of National Socialist antisemitic ideology and the German antisemitic people are set aside. Post-colonial studies are the worldwide left-wing form of that denial of the unprecedented character of Treblinka, Babi Jar and Sobibor.

The Holocaust was not a form of “Social Darwinism,” nor were the Jews seen as the “weak,” as Olusoga and Erichsen think. Contrary to that, Germans saw Jews as superior, dangerous, and as preparing a world conspiracy. There is no connection between the “People without Space,” as one chapter in Kaiser’s Holocaust reads, and the Shoah, because antisemitism and the Shoah had nothing to do with land gain, imperialism or any other form of political, territorial, economic, cultural, social etc. purpose.

In 1992, historian Wolfgang Benz published in the first volume of his Yearbook on Research on Antisemitism an article by publicist Henning Melber, who argued in the same post-colonial vein. Melber emphasized German continuities and ignored the analysis of antisemitism as distinct from research on racism, colonialism, and the cui bono of that kind of violence and crime.

Historian Jürgen Zimmerer is a leading voice in comparing and equating German colonialism and Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. In 2003, he published an article wherein he stated that “genocides in the colonies” are in the same “category” as “National Socialist murder policies.” In 2011, Zimmerer published a collection of his essays on colonialism and the Holocaust, entitled From Windhuk to Auschwitz? He insists that as early as 1947 American civil rights activist and historian W.E.B. Dubois (1868–1963) said:

“There was no Nazi atrocity – concentration camps, wholesale maiming and murder, defilement of women or ghastly blasphemy of childhood – which Christian civilization or Europe had not long been practicing against colored folk in all parts of the world in the name of and for the defense of a Superior Race born to rule the world.”

That is not true and rather shows an anti-Jewish resentment in the first place. Never before did a country, let alone one of the most industrialized countries in the world, try to eradicate an entire people from the earth. Eliminationist antisemitism was the German ideology, which led to the Holocaust. There is vast literature about the uniqueness and specificity of the Shoah, but most post-colonial authors ignore that scholarship intentionally, as it would show their low scholarly standard and their post-colonial resentment against Jews in general and the emphasis on the uniqueness of the Shoah in particular.

Zimmerer emphasizes that another author posited comparable arguments like DuBois. This is the old superstar of post-colonialism-studies, Aimé Césaire, who wrote in 1950 that the crime of the Holocaust is (supposedly) seen as horrible not because of

“the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he [Hitler] applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs, of Algeria, the colonies of India, and the blacks of Africa.”

Césaire argued in an antisemitic way and denied that the Holocaust was an unprecedented crime since never before was it the aim of a government or a group to exterminate an entire people. The Holocaust was not based on a cui bono; there was no territorial, political, social, cultural or economic, let alone religious conflict between Germans and Jews. German ideology defamed Jews and wanted to kill them, the long history of antisemitism since antiquity was an essential component of this singling out of Jews.

Zimmerer deals little if ever with literature on antisemitism or the uniqueness of the Shoah. On the other hand, historians such as Steven T. Katz deal extensively with the uniqueness of the Shoah, without ignoring arguments who oppose that view. Zimmerer pleads for a “post-colonial and global approach” to Nazi Germany. He embeds National Socialism completely in the history of colonialism. The scholarly failure of this endeavor can already be seen on the cover picture: there is a picture of several Germans in uniform in 1941 looking at a model of a village, which was part of an exposition “Plan and Composition in the East.” At best, this could be discussed in relation to the Nazi “Generalplan Ost.” However, this has nothing to do with the Shoah. Auschwitz was not a plan for new villages. Treblinka was not about colonialism or exploitation: it was about the destruction of European Jews.

Colonialism was about racism, exploitation, and land gain, as well as about inner-imperialist and inner-colonialist struggle between world powers, including England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the Arabs and Turks (Ottoman Empire), and Japan, among others.

In 2010, historian Jakob Zollmann published his doctoral dissertation about Colonial Rule and its Limits. Colonial Police in German South-West Africa 1894–1915. He did field research in Namibia, too, and argues in line with other historians of colonialism in Africa that the German colonial state was rather weak and not at all totalitarian or fascist in a European sense. The most important aspect may be his claim that Zimmerer and his colleagues ignore that Africans have a history of their own, which may not be seen as a forerunner of Nazi Germany. This is a distortion of African resistance against the Germans, for example. Projecting Namibian history as nothing but the “birthplace” of the “Ostland”, as Zimmerer argues, is a denial of the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Zimmerer deals with a “post-colonial perspective on the National Socialist policies of conquest and rule,” completely distorting that the Shoah was neither about “conquest,” nor about “rule.” The administration of “German South-West Africa,” however, was indeed about rule, as Zimmerer is well aware, since he is the author of a book on German rule over Africans.

Both Zimmerer and Zollmann show in their work how Germans tried to establish rules for their colony and how they failed in controlling the entire territory. Local “gangs” were widespread in the countryside and the German police were well aware of their restricted influence. However, the conclusions both historians are drawing from official documents and diaries of the time are diametrically opposed. While Zollmann puts the story in a rather typical colonial context and not as a forerunner to Nazi Germany, Zimmerer interprets the colonial sources from his “post-colonial perspective on the Nazi policy of conquest and extermination”.

In 2007, Zollmann discussed the German debate about the relationship of colonialism and Nazi Germany:

“I would argue that the gradual re-orientation of German historians towards world history, international history, and the attendant paradigms of comparability, of transnationalism, of entangled and global history lies at the bottom of this (re-)new(ed) interest in the German colonial past.”

Zollmann also criticizes authors Reinhart Kößler and Henning Melber, who are “taking up Hannah Arendt,” and “actually construct a direct connection between settler colonialism and Nazi dictator-ship.” Post-colonial and post-structuralist theory uses Arendt in order to de-specify the Holocaust and to deny the unprecedented character of the Shoah. Particularly for non-Jewish authors such a kosher stamp for distorting the Holocaust is important.

Historians Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski reject the argument that there was a more or less direct connection from Windhoek to Auschwitz. They can show that the German war against the Herero and Nama (1904–1907) was a typical colonial war, neither unprecedented nor a forerunner to the Second World War, to say nothing of the Shoah. The Spanish-Cuban War (1895–1898) and the American-Philippine War (1898–1902) as well as the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902) were colonial wars that included mass murder and atrocities. These wars were directed against native populations who had attacked or were seen as a concrete (military) threat to the colonial power.

Furthermore, they claim that it’s remarkable that Zimmerer and those who follow the Windhoek to Auschwitz paradigm simply ignore the role played by the First World War 1914–1918. Even a murderer like Lothar von Trotha, who was responsible for the atrocities against the Herero in 1904, was harshly criticized in the German Kaiserreich.

Historian Jakob Zollmann analyzed the methodological, epistemological and theoretical mistakes in Jürgen Zimmerer’s approach:

“Indeed, Jürgen Zimmerer warns against, even rejects, an equation of the Holocaust with colonial genocide (…) German colonial experience is seen by Zimmerer to have acted as a cultural (re)-source (kulturelles Reservoir) from which the National Socialists would have drawn their ideas. These rather ominously formulated ideas of Zimmerer are repeated in his piece titled Die Geburt des ‘Ostlands’ aus dem Geist des Kolonialismus. And they do not become clearer here, as the ominous title – ‘Birth of the ‘Ostland’ conceived by the spirit of colonialism’, demonstrates. His title gives the impression of answering a question which has been posed by those who want to emphasize the continuities, not to say causalities, Zimmerer had just denied in his article. A ‘birth’ has only one reason – it is mono-causal by its very nature. By choosing this title, Zimmerer has de-scribed a situation of a ‘because/therefore…’ In his understanding the spirit of colonialism is the reason for the ‘Ostland’ – and all that has happened there, including the extermination of the Jews. No colonialism, no ideas of Germanised Eastern Europe, no Holocaust? Zimmerer’s arguments do not convince, they confuse – not only the reader, but also the issues.”

Historian Winfried Speitkamp, too, rejects the argument that German South-West Africa was a forerunner to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He criticizes Jürgen Zimmerer and Joachim Zeller who still see Africans like the Herero and Nama as passive victims alone, and ignore their resistance and particularly the specifics of African history and German (and other) colonial histories in Africa.  This is all the more important, because the mass murder of Herero and Nama was a result of their initial active resistance to colonial Germany.

The German crimes against the Herero and Nama were in no way connected to National Socialism and the Holocaust. Colonialism has nothing to do with the rise of German eliminationist antisemitism. Post-colonial theory is a huge failure, when promoting these historical lies, promoted by Jürgen Zimmerer and many others. They need to learn: there was no cui bono in the Shoah. Racism and colonialism were about a cui bono. Racism is and was about exploitation or land gain and so on, antisemitism and the Holocaust were about destruction and killing an entire people, the Jews. Racism means rule over people, antisemitism and the Shoah meant destroying an entire people. But most people in the post-colonial camp are unwilling to understand that difference.

However, we are not talking about scholarly mistakes alone. I fear most scholars and activists who deny the uniqueness of the Shoah have anti-Jewish as well as anti-Zionist resentments. That might be among the reasons why post-colonialism is such a huge trend in academia all around the world.

©ClemensHeni

NEUERSCHEINUNG am 30. September 2017:

Clemens Heni

Eine Alternative zu Deutschland. Essays

 

Berlin: Edition Critic, 2017

ISBN 978-3-946193-17-3 | Softcover | 14,8x21cm | 262 Seiten | Personenregister | 15€

Bestellbar in jeder Buchhandlung oder versandkostenfrei direkt beim Verlag:

info[at]editioncritic.de

 

Dieses Buch ist eine intellektuelle Zeitreise von Juli 2006 bis September 2017.

Es zeigt auf, wie es vom »Sommermärchen« 2006 über die Rede vom »Inneren

Reichsparteitag«, Pegida, den Austritt Großbritanniens aus der EU (Brexit), die

Wahl Donald Trumps zum US-Präsidenten bis hin zum Aufstieg der AfD kommen

konnte. Betont wird die Verantwortung der Medien und des Fernsehens für

diesen Aufstieg. Die demokratischen Parteien im Deutschen Bundestag müssen

sich das erste Mal in der Geschichte mit neonazistischen Positionen im Parlament

befassen – doch sind sie darauf vorbereitet?

 

»Wer nach einer Vergewisserung sucht, wo Deutschland heute steht, wird sie in diesem Buch finden. Mit scharfem Verstand und mit angespitzter Feder zeichnet Clemens Heni funkelnde Momentaufnahmen der letzten elf Jahre. Heraus kommt, wie bestürzend sich die zivile Achse des zuvor offenen Selbstverständnisses nach rechts verschoben hat. Wer die Hoffnung auf eine bessere Zukunft teilt, muss die Gegenwart schonungslos kritisch beleuchten. Daraus mag ›eine Alternative zu Deutschland‹ entstehen.«

Gert Weisskirchen, 1976–2009 Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages (MdB), 1999–2009 außenpolitischer Sprecher SPD Bundestagsfraktion, 2006–2008 persönlicher Beauftragter des OSZE Vorsitzenden im Kampf gegen  Antisemitismus, Prof. (em.).

»Clemens Heni erkennt in der aktuellen politischen Kultur dieses Landes noch immer die Spuren des Judenhasses und des von Deutschen begangenen und zu verantwortenden Mordes an den europäischen Juden. Ohne mit Heni in allen Fällen übereinzustimmen, führen seine Beiträge doch ins Herz der aktuellen Debatte über Deutschland und regen zu fruchtbarem Widerspruch an.«

Prof. Dr. Micha Brumlik, 2000–2013 Professor für »Theorien der Bildung und Erziehung « am Institut für Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft der Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, 2000–2005 Direktor des Fritz Bauer Instituts, Forschungs- und Dokumentationszentrum zur Geschichte des Holocaust an der Goethe Universität.

»Wo nationalistische Töne sich erheben, ein Schlussstrich unter die deutschen Verbrechen des vergangenen Jahrhunderts gefordert und Judenhass zu einer scheinheiligen Kritik an Israel sublimiert wird, holt Clemens Heni zum grossen Rundumschlag aus: gegen Zyniker, Großaffirmatoren, Antihumanisten und Holocaustverharmloser im Deutschland der Gegenwart. Selbst wenn man ihm nicht immer folgen mag, schreibt er doch mit viel Scharfsinn und Sachkenntnis. Fazit: Unbedingt lesenswert und gerade vor dem Hintergrund der Bundestagswahl von brennender Aktualität.«

Dr. phil. Michael Kreutz, Politologe und Orientalist

»Clemens Heni ist ein Ein-Mann-Korrektiv zum andauernden deutschen Geschichts-Roll-Back, wach, intelligent, unerlässlich in Zeiten der schwächelnden Demokratie.«

Georg Diez, Spiegel-Online-Kolumnist, Buchautor, 2016/17 Nieman Fellow der Harvard Universität, USA

Von Dr. phil. Clemens Heni, 21. September 2017

Times of Israel (Blogs)

On September 24, 2017, elections will be held for the German Federal Parliament, the Bundestag. For the first time since it was established in 1949, a neo-Nazi party will probably be elected to seats in parliament. It is the “Alternative for Germany” party or AfD. According to recent polls, the AfD will get some 8–12% of the votes, if not more. They might become the third biggest party in Parliament after the conservative CDU and the mainstream left-of-center SPD, who have been in a coalition in recent years with the conservatives.

The media in Germany is responsible for allowing neo-Nazi ideology into the mainstream. All media channels pushed the right-wing extremist ideology by inviting neo-Nazis from the AfD on a daily basis (!) into their studios. That never happened before in the history of the democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). At the one and only TV debate between chancellor Angela Merkel and her challenger Martin Schulz from the Social Democrats, the four leading TV channels ARD, ZDF, RTL and Sat1, behaved rather like the right-wing extremist AfD. They asked questions about non-Germans, they connected terror and immigration as such and they pushed the entire agenda of the AfD, without framing it quote in those terms. The threat of neo-Nazis being elected to the Federal Parliament of Germany was not worthy of a single question. Journalist Stefan Niggemeier tweeted that over half of the 97 minute show sounded “like an AfD-questionnaire”. The failure of the four leading journalists involved, Sandra Maischberger, Maybrit Illner, Peter Kloeppel and particularly Claus Strunz (Sat1) was shocking to many critical observers in Germany. Many other leading TV journalists have also flunked the est. Take Frank Plasberg, for example. On September 18, 2017, he invited right-wing extremist Alice Weidel to his show treating her like a mainstream figure. We will soon learn who Mrs. Weidel is.

Political scientist, professor Hajo Funke from Free University Berlin is also shocked about German media and accuses Plasberg and Illner for their pro-right-wing extremist agenda, which should have no place in public TV, as both work for the two leading TV stations ARD and ZDF respectively.

Who or what is the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and what do they stand for? The party was founded in 2013 by capitalist-nationalist Bernd Lucke. Soon, more outspoken and right-wing extremist forces took power, starting with the election of Frauke Petry as head of the party in 2015. Since 2014 the party has been elected to many state parliaments within Germany (Germany consists of 16 states or Bundesländer). The AfD is anti-EU, defames abortion, promotes ultra-nationalism, racism, hatred of the other, embraces the German past, including the Nazi time, and is supported by thousands of very dangerous neo-Nazi punchers. Since 1990 until 2013 alone, 184 people have been killed by neo-Nazis in Germany for political reasons. The victims are German-Turkish people, leftists, punk-rockers, Muslims, homeless people, refugees, among many others.

The AfD’s head of party, Frauke Petry, wants to reintroduce the core Nazi word “völkisch” in German discourse. The two leading campaigners for the AfD campaign, Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland are both rather more right-wing extremist than Petry. In an e-mail Weidel wrote in 2013, that members of Angela Merkel’s cabinet are “pigs” and “puppets of the winners of World War II” and Germany is not “sovereign”, the latter being typical neo-Nazi and so-called Reichsbürger (Citizens of the German Reich) language.

The head of the AfD in the Parliament of the State of Saxony-Anhalt (Sachsen-Anhalt), André Poggenburg, has openly used Nazi language against the left in a speech in Parliament. Markus Frohnmaier, who is a candidate for the Bundestag in the state of Baden-Württemberg, head of the Young Alternative, the youth organization of the AfD, and a spokesperson for Alice Weidel, has close connections to neo-Nazis such as the  “German Defence League” (GDL), and has said that he and the AfD would together “clear the country out” of the left.

Dubravko Mandic, an immigrant, who came to Germany in the 1990s from the former Yugoslavia, now agitates against immigration and admits, that the AfD has “concerns” similar to those of the neo-National-Socialist Party (NPD — Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands). Mandic is a candidate for the Bundestag in Baden-Württemberg, in the city of Tübingen. Mandic even frames his and the AfD’s “network” as a “right-wing radical network between the AfD and the Identitarian Movement”.

The Identitarian Movement is based, among other tropes, on the ideology of Renaud Camus from France, who agitates against a supposedly “replacement” of Europeans and the West by people from the Middle East, mainly Muslims. Even some Jews follow this concept, not just in America, the UK, Australia or Israel, but also in Germany. Neo-Nazis and the alt-right in Charlottesville used that slogan and chanted that “Jews will not replace us”, as they believe Jews are behind all evil. This is the same antisemitic ideology of AfD politician and book author Wolfgang Gedeon who promotes the antisemitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” For him, all evil comes from the Jews, America, Zionism, Muslims, homosexuals and the left.

Jens Maier, AfD candidate for the Bundestag in Saxony, trivialized the mass murderer Anders Breivik and admitted that a book by the neo-Nazi Fjordman inspired him.

At the head of the list for the Bundestag of the AfD in the state of Thuringia is Stephan Brandner. He is a particular vulgar and extremely aggressive agitator. He wants chancellor Angela Merkel to be locked up, and indirectly frames his own party as “Jewish”, by accusing the left-wing Antifa as being “SA”-style Nazis. The SA were the infamous Storm Troopers, who were essential to bringing down the Weimar Republic and helping Hitler and the Nazi Party to gain power in January 1933.

Frank Magnitz, candidate for the Bundestag in the city of Bremen, shares fantasies about the destruction of all of Islam by sharing a picture with the inscription  “If you could push this button and remove Islam from the world forever, would you do it? Like and share for yes!” You see a group of praying Muslims and on the left side a red button. Pushing the button means you support the destruction of Islam and all Muslims. These neo-Nazi fantasies of killing an entire religion is part of the entire project of the AfD. This man too might become a member of parliament.

The leading neo-Nazi politician of the AfD, though, is a Björn Höcke, who is not running for the Bundestag, speaks in a manner imitating Joseph Goebbels, and who frames the Holocaust Memorial as “a memorial of shame,” that no country in the world would place in the center of its capital.

Others, such as Vera Lengsfeld, a blogger and former MP, who  blogs at “Axis of the Good” by journalists Henryk M. Broder and Dirk Maxeiner, is promoting the AfD by joining head of party Petry at an event in the city of Pirna. According to the daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin, this event is co-organized by a group called “Pro Patria Pirna”, which is an ally of the “One Percent Movement” of Kubitschek and his colleague, the right-wing extremist journalist Jürgen Elsässer. However, a last minute decision by the city of Pirna, owner of the location where the event was slated to take place, cancelled the event in its entirety.

Holocaust denier Wilhelm von Gottberg, who is 77, is on the list of the AfD in the state of Lower Saxony.

There is a nasty climate in Germany these days. Right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis can shout the most antisemitic, racist and pro-German slogans on the streets such as “Deutschland Erwache (Germany Awake)” or “Alles für Deutschland (Whatever it takes for Germany)”, both Nazi slogans and legally forbidden in Germany.

Again, agitation against the left supports the AfD, directly or indirectly. Even anti-BDS parties such as the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin, which had passed an anti-BDS and pro-Israel resolution in April 2016, while voting for Michael Müller to be their head of party, did not help counter the anti-left agitation. The Jerusalem Post and the Simon Wiesenthal Center threatened Müller with being on their Top Ten list of “antisemitic” slurs for2017, if he would not distance himself from BDS and if he would not act against the al-Quds march in Berlin every year. Müller is a pro-Israel politician. He went to Tel Aviv with a delegation in 2015 to increase trade with the Jewish state. He got the anti-BDS resolution passed in 2016 and was patron of “Israel Day” in the heart of Berlin at Wittenbergplatz, alongside with then Israeli ambassador Yakov Hadas-Handelsman. But for some strange reason, none of this prevented the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Jerusalem Post from considering him a possible candidate for the top ten antisemitic and anti-Israel slurs of 2017. Why? Because he is a leftist. Müller is very anti-Nazi, to be sure, and in 2016 urged the public in Berlin not to vote for the right-wing extremist AfD.

Mainstreaming neo-Nazi ideology involves some very rich and influential people in Europe. According to a report by investigative journalist Tomasz Konicz, the AfD gets money and support from Mövenpick Company and from the “Swiss Goal Corporation” which itself includes leading AfD politicians as Jörg Meuthen, Markus Pretzell and Guido Reil. Billionaire August von Finck junior (born 1930), among the richest people in Germany (he lives in Switzerland), is a supporter of the AfD The Finck company then went ahead and bought the name of the gold company “Degussa”, the very same Degussa that delivered Zyklon B to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. “Evonic Degussa” would melt down the gold from the teeth of the murdered Jewish victims. Today, many Germans run riot about an economic crisis and rush to buy gold. Gold happens to be a more stable currency. August von Finck Jr’s father was a Nazi who “Aryanized” Jewish banks, including the Rothschild Bank and Dreyfus & Co. in Germany. “The Junior”, though, is known for his support for several right-wing parties in recent decades, the most recent being the AfD. AfD politician Beatrix von Storch was for example a member of a “Citizens’ Convent”, dedicated to a hardcore neoliberal campaign against the welfare state. They were supported by the Finck company, as the saga has been analyzed by Konicz.

Journalist Robin Alexander from Die Welt already emphasized in 2013 the connection of billionaire von Finck and the AfD. August von Finck is also owner of Mövenpick hotels & resorts. von Finck was a former ally of the “capitalist establishment” in Germany, from Franz-Josef Strauß (Christian Social Union, CSU) to the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) to chancellor Merkel. He was a big beneficiary of a tax reform in 2009, carried out by Merkel and the Liberal Party. Ideologically, the von Finck family has a long history of pro-Nazism, perhaps now reaching its culmination in support for the AfD.

Journalist Marcus Engert of BuzzFeed News has analyzed 396 AfD-candidates, exposing the extremist right-wing agenda of many. Professor Hajo Funke says he fears that the Bundestag is not fit to deal with neo-Nazis in Parliament. We never had organized neo-Nazism in a apoliticalparty making it into the Federal Parliament. Of course, Germany had dozens if not hundreds of former individual Nazi Party (NSDAP) members in Parliament since 1949 and small Nazi (not neo-Nazi) parties in Parliament from 1949 through the 1950s. This ugly German history is well known, including Nazis as leading politicians such as Hans Globke, who was responsible for the Nuremberg Race Laws and then became minister under Konrad Adenauer in the 1950s, or Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, who was a Nazi Party member (NSDAP) and then chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1966–1969, who was famously slapped by anti-fascist Beate Klarsfeld on November 7th, 1968. Or take Hans Filbinger, also from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who was prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg (1966–1978), a member of the pro-Nazi “Bund Neudeutschland”, a Catholic antisemitic organization, and a member of the Nazi party. Then there is Carl Carstens, also a member of the Nazi party. He was President of the German Parliament (1976–1979) and then President of Germany (1979–1984).

Today, following the September 24, 2017 Federal Election, postwar Germany will for the first time face neo-Nazis in the Bundestag. Contrary to the 1960s, these days we have no Beate Klarsfeld who will tell these antisemites, racists, and pro-Holocaust representatives that their activism will not go unchallenged. These days, neo-Nazism is much more widespread compared to the climate in the 1960s. Today, we have young and old neo-Nazis joining forces in an unprecedented way. In the 1960s the old Nazis never had a chance to form their own party and to be elected in the Bundestag. 2017, neo-Nazis will fulfill that mission: Honoring the German Army, affirming the Holocaust and fighting democracy.

The core of the AfD is not to fight jihad or Islamism, as these folks after all share the very authoritarian personality characteristic of radical Islamists. Both groups detest democracy, the political left, women, gender, heterogeneous societies and multicultural societies. The German mainstream media helped to push a neo-Nazi agenda and for the first time, even some Jews are joining the right-wing extremist agenda of those who embrace the German Wehrmacht, which was part of the killing troops during the Holocaust.

That is all you need to know about September 24, 2017.

—

*The author would like to thank political scientist Nils Gerster and professor Dovid Katz for help with this article.

©ClemensHeni

Von Dr. phil. Clemens Heni, 27. Juli 2017

Der Berliner Tagesspiegel (Nantke Garrelts) berichtet mit der reißerischen Überschrift „Buchladen schließt nach Attacken von links“[i] über die Schließung der Neuköllner Buchhandlung „Topics“, einer von zwei Israelis betriebenen Einrichtung in der hippen Weserstraße. Die Grüne Bezirksbürgermeisterin von Kreuzberg, Monika Herrmann, findet die Schließung demnach „verstörend“. Einer der Betreiber des Ladens, Doron Hamburger, teilte dem Tagesspiegel schriftlich mit, ein Gespräch mit „mehreren Vertretern der antifaschistischen Szene scheiterte“.

Linke gegen einen von Israelis geführten Buchladen: das ist natürlich für die Springer-Tageszeitung Die Welt (Hannah Lühmann) ein gefundenes Fressen.[ii] Lühmann schreibt unter der Überschrift „Nach Drohungen der Antifa muss Buchladen schließen“: „Die Enkel von Holocaustüberlebenden werden in Berlin von wild gewordenen Antideutschen vertrieben“ und resümiert:

„Amir und Doron wollen jedenfalls nicht mehr; sie haben sich entschieden, aufzugeben. Die beiden sind natürlich weit davon entfernt, rechts zu sein, der Vorwurf ist völlig abwegig. Man hat das Gefühl, sich mit Leuten zu unterhalten, die nach dem suchen, was intellektuell stimulierend ist, und die nicht in den langweiligen Bahnen vorgeformten Diskurshipstertums bleiben, das leider vielfach das weltanschauliche Milieu junger, linker Akademiker ausmacht. Mit Leuten, die nachdenken, neugierig sind, offen, radikal, die sich für die moralische Ambivalenz interessieren, und für das Dunkle.“

Lühmann ist total begeistert, dass das Topics „Abgründe ausloten“, also gerade nicht aufklärerisch und antifaschistisch, sondern kokettierend über Faschismus und Nazismus reden wollte.

Die neurechte Junge Freiheit berichtet ebenfalls geknickt über die Schließung des Topics, immerhin war schon mal ein JF-Autor dort Referent (wie der Freitag berichtet),[iii] und auch die Wochenzeitung Die Zeit schreibt sehr wohlwollend und mit einer Attacke auf die bösen „Antideutschen“ über die beiden israelischen Buchhändler. Der Zeit-Autor Armin Langer[iv] hingegen war bislang eher für seine Trivialisierung des Islamismus und muslimischen Antisemitismus (namentlich in Neukölln) bekannt.

Die Deutsche Welle (DW) informiert auf Englisch (Ben Knight) über das Aus des Buchladens,[v] die Berliner Zeitung (Tanja Brandes) ist ebenso entrüstet und betont die „psychischen Folgen der Hetze“ gegen die Betreiber[vi] und der Freitag (Mladen Gladic) redet von „intoleranten Linksaktivisten“.[vii]

Kritik an der geplanten Evola-Veranstaltung kam offenkundig am 27. Februar 2017 via Facebook (worüber sich die Gruppe selbstironisch lustig macht) von der Gruppe Top Berlin,[viii] die ein vielfältiges Spektrum an linker Gesellschaftskritik zu repräsentieren scheint, Kritik an der islamistischen Hamas und anderen Formen des Antisemitismus wie auch Veranstaltungen zum Gedenken an die Shoah gehören dazu.[ix]

Ob jedoch die sich radikal vorstellende Kritik von Top Berlin, die Gruppe ist Teil des bundesweiten Bündnisses „Ums Ganze“,[x] versteht, dass ihre Kritik an jeder Staatlichkeit auch Israel und den Zionismus meinen müsste und somit dem Antisemitismus Vorschub geben würde, ist unklar. Es gab anarchistische Zionisten wie Gershom Scholem, der gleichwohl erkannte, wie überlebensnotwendig (!) Staatlichkeit ist, wenn man sich nicht wehrlos von arabischen, muslimischen oder sonstigen Judenhassern abschlachten lassen möchte. So ist eines der Motti von Top Berlin „No Border, no Nation“ angesichts Israels völlig realitätsfern und selbstmörderisch. Der von Ariel Scharon initiierte Sicherheitszaun schützt Israelis vor Selbstmordattentaten und anderen (Mord)Anschlägen. Top Berlin ist also kaum eine „antideutsche“ Gruppe, sondern eher Teil der traditionellen radikalen Linken.

Die Kritik von Top Berlin bezog sich zudem ausschließlich auf Evola. Doch der Skandal ist noch viel krasser.

Der vorgesehene Topics-Referent und Freund des Betreibers Doron Hamburger, DC Miller, hätte also am 2. März 2017 in der Buchhandlung Topics in der Neuköllner Weserstraße über Evola referieren sollen. Am 28. Februar sagte der Laden die Veranstaltung ab, wie man in einer Stellungnahme auf Facebook lesen kann. Dort meldet sich auch der vorgesehene Referent DC Miller zu Wort. [xi]

In seinem Text für die Veranstaltung schreibt Miller über Evola, dieser habe zwar bekanntlich Beziehungen zu Faschisten und Nazis gehabt, er sei „aber“ halt auch „Dadaist, Philosoph, Historiker und Magiker“ gewesen, ja sei von Rechten als „unser Marcuse, nur besser“ bezeichnet worden. Theoretiker wie der Russe Alexander Dugin, ein Übersetzer Evolas ins Russische, oder der Amerikaner Steve Bannon, ein Einflüsterer Trumps und Symbol der Alt Right im Weißen Haus, seien Anhänger des faschistischen Theoretikers. Das schreibt Miller nun nicht in einem aufklärerisch-antifaschistischen Duktus oder wenigstens in einem distanziert-neutralen Text, sondern in einer euphorischen, begeisterten, affirmativen Tonlage.

Am 22. Februar hatte die englische Tageszeitung The Guardian kritisch über die Galerie LD50 und deren Bezüge zum Neonazismus berichtet.[xii] Namentlich erwähnt der Guardian Brett Stevens, der eine rechtsextreme Konferenz im LD50 im August 2016 mit vorbereitete und an eben jenem 22. Februar 2017 als Reaktion auf den Guardian-Bericht noch einmal klarstellte, was seine Position ist:

„Ich bin Anders Breivik aus anderen Gründen unendlich dankbar, als viele vermuten. Die meisten Rechten, die gewalttätig werden und sich der Gefahr eines weißen Genozids bewusst sind, tendieren dazu, den Anderen umzubringen; ich singe ein Loblied auf Breivik, weil er gerade anders handelte, er erschoss Mitglieder von UNS, die Linke geworden waren und machte klar, was für einen Preis man zahlen muss, wenn man links wird. Breivik trieb die Leute davon weg, bei dieser pathologischen, kultmäßigen Gang von Zivilisationszerstörern mitzumachen.“[xiii]

Diese Bejahung von Terror und Mord ist unfassbar und wohl nur in USA, wo er das wohl im Netz publizierte, straffrei. DC Miller jedoch möchte genau einen solchen Hetzer wie Brett Stevens reden lassen. Und das Topics wollte DC Miller reden lassen. Das ist der Skandal, der für die Welt, die Zeit und den Tagesspiegel keiner ist.

Am 25. Februar 2017 protestierte eine lautstarke Gruppe von über 100 Antifaschist*innen gegen die Galerie LD50 im Osten Londons im Bezirk Hackney, übrigens einer Partnerstadt von Haifa. Der Bürgermeister von Hackney, Philip Glanville, spricht sich gegen die Galerie aus, wie das Magazin Vice (Yohann Koshy) berichtet.[xiv] Slogans wie „Death to Nazi Hipsters“, die laut Vice Demoparolen waren, sind angesichts von Nazigewalt nachvollziehbar, aber sicher nicht sinnvoll, die Betonung der Kombination von vorgeblich apolitischen Hipstern und Nazis ist gleichwohl von einiger Bedeutung.

Vice betont, dass die Galeriebetreiberin, Lucia Diego, zugibt, Brett Stevens erlaubt zu haben, für die Konferenz zu werben. Auf die Vice-Nachfrage, warum denn dann sogar Anmeldungen zu ihrer Konferenz im August 2016 über den E-Mail Account von einem Brett Stevens aus USA gingen, der selbst Redner, aber in London nicht dabei war, gab es keine Antwort mehr.

Die New York Times (Christopher D. Shea) berichtete noch am Tag der Demonstration in London über die Proteste gegen die Galerie LD50 und zitiert die spanische Betreiberin, die seit 12 Jahren in England lebe, dass sie zwar „Antisemitismus, Homophobie und Misogynie“ nicht teile, aber die „Linken“ würden doch „Juden, Homosexuelle und Frauen“ viel zu „doktrinär“ verteidigen.[xv]

Der für Neukölln von Topics vorgesehene Referent DC Miller spielte auf der Demonstration gegen das LD50 den Helden und protestierte am Samstag, den 25. Februar 2017, alleine für die Galerie und hielt einen Pappkarton mit der Aufschrift „the right to openly discuss ideas must be defended.“[xvi] Da lacht die Internationale der Holocaustleugner.

Die allgemeine rechtsextreme Agitation, eine Ausstellung kurz nach der Wahl Trumps zu allen möglichen Pro-Trump Äußerungen der extremen Rechten während des Wahlkampfs, wie auch die rechtsextreme Konferenz im August 2016 sind der Hintergrund, vor dem die 2015 eröffnete Galerie LD50 in London so massiv in der Kritik steht. Die irische Künstlerin und Schriftstellerin Megan Nolan schreibt, dass Kunst sehr wohl ihr Recht habe, aber wenn „Faschismus im Gewand der Kunst“ daherkomme und die „Menschlichkeit von uns“ oder der „Nachbarn“ (im Osten Londons) bedrohe, dann sei Widerstand nicht nur „akzeptabel, sondern obligatorisch.“[xvii]

Was wir im Zuge der Reaktionen auf die angekündigte Schließung des Topics erleben, ist eine ganz neue Volksgemeinschaft in Deutschland: extreme Rechte (Junge Freiheit), vorgeblich liberaler Mainstream (Die Zeit), konservative, rechte Mitte (Welt) und viele andere Zeitungen und Autor*innen promoten einen von zwei Israelis betriebenen Buchladen, der einen Referenten vorgesehen hatte, der wenig zuvor eine Londoner Galerie verteidigte, die mit Leuten wie Brett Stevens kooperiert, der ganz offen den Massenmord an Jungsozialisten durch Anders Breivik im Juli 2011 feiert!

Das sind die Töne im neuen Deutschland. Wir haben es hier mit einer anti-linken Volksgemeinschaft zu tun, die Juden oder Israelis benutzt, um Kritik am Faschismus oder Nazismus und dem Massenmord an Linken in Norwegen zu diffamieren und sich hinter Unterstützer (DC Miller) von Verteidigern und Fans (Stevens) eines antilinken, neonazistischen Massenmörders (Breivik) stellt. Die bösen sind die Antifas, die den Agitator DC Miller kritisieren. Antifaschismus ist böse, nicht Faschismus. Das ist Deutschland. Never again kommt zu spät.

Dieser von zwei Israelis betriebene Laden Topics machte freudestrahlend mit, weil sie selbst mit einer Verteidigung eines Massenmords an Linken oder dem Promoten von faschistischen Autoren ganz offenkundig kein wirkliches Problem haben und alles unter die erbärmliche und gerade von Holocaustleugnern seit Jahrzehnten propagierte „freie Rede“ rubrizieren. Da lacht die Anti-Antifa deutscher Neonazis.

Es ist gut, dass ein Laden wie Topics zugemacht hat.

Das reaktionäre, antilinke, pronazistische Denken, das Liebäugeln mit historischen Faschisten wie Evola und das Goutieren des Massenmords an Jusos durch Breivik von Freunden der Topics-Betreiber indizieren hingegen eine politische Kultur in Amerika im Zeitalter des Trumpismus und in Deutschland, die bleiben wird.

Sicher ist so ein Liebäugeln und Goutieren in der Bundesrepublik mit jüdischem Koscherstempel besser zu verkaufen, so wie auch der Israelhass sich mit jüdischem Koscherstempel (vornweg: Adorno-Preisträgerin Judith Butler) besser promoten lässt, aber Deutschland hat doch reichlich Erfahrung damit, antilinke und pronazistische Ideologie gerade ohne und gegen Juden oder Israelis zu formulieren.

 

[i] Tagesspiegel, 23.07.2017, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/berlin-neukoelln-buchladen-schliesst-nach-attacken-von-links/20096078.html (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[ii] Die Welt, 24.07.2017, https://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article166945195/Nach-Drohungen-der-Antifa-muss-Buchladen-schliessen.html (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[iii] Junge Freiheit, 24.07.2017: „‘Es ist schlimm genug, eine Veranstaltung über die Idee einer suprafaschistischen Person in deinem eigenen Geschäft auszurichten, aber es ist nochmal etwas völlig anderes, wenn sich dein Geschäft auch noch inmitten von Neukölln befindet, einem Einwandererviertel‘, beschreibt Hamburger den Grundtenor der Kritik. Er habe sich daraufhin gefragt, ob es besser gewesen wäre, in Marzahn oder Lichtenberg über Evola zu diskutieren (ls)“, https://jungefreiheit.de/kultur/gesellschaft/2017/israelischer-buchladen-muss-nach-antifa-attacken-schliessen/ (eingesehen am 27.07.2017). Link zu dieser neu-rechten Agitationsseite absichtlich deaktiviert.

[iv] Die Zeit, 25.07.2017, http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2017-07/topics-berlin-neukoelln-juden-israelischer-buchladen-schliessung/komplettansicht (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[v] Deutsche Welle (DW), 24.07.2017, http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-bookstore-shuts-down-after-leftist-boycott/a-39818955 (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[vi] Berliner Zeitung, 24.07.2017, http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/berlin/neukoelln-warum-ein-buchladen-israelischer-betreiber-schliessen-muss-28022990 (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[vii] Freitag, 24.07.2017, https://www.freitag.de/autoren/mladen-gladic/are-the-kids-alt-right (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[viii] https://www.facebook.com/TOPB3rlin/posts/10154945432445256 (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[ix] http://top-berlin.net/de/tags/antisemitismus (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[x] https://umsganze.org/ueber-uns/ (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[xi] https://www.facebook.com/topicsberlin/posts/2005480709696833 (eingesehen am 26.07.2017).

[xii] The Guardian, 22.02.2017, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/22/art-gallery-criticised-over-neo-nazi-artwork-and-hosting-racist-speakers (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[xiii] Brett Stevens, 22. Februar 2017, http://www.amerika.org/politics/the-guardian-doubles-down-on-lugenpresse-narrative-about-ld50-gallery/ (eingesehen am 27.07.2017), Übersetzung vom Verfasser. Ich habe den Link zu dieser Naziseite deaktiviert.

[xiv] Vice, 28. Februar 2017, https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/78qzpx/should-free-expression-include-normalising-far-right-ideas (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[xv] New York Times, 25. Februar 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/arts/design/london-gallery-ld50-alt-right-show-protest.html?mcubz=0 (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[xvi] Man kann DC Miller mit seinem Pappkarton hier sehen: https://pics.me.me/the-right-to-openly-discuss-ideas-must-be-defended-k-20808184.png (eingesehen am 27.07.2017). Ein Bericht zur Demonstration ist hier zu finden: Hackney Gazette, 27.02.2017, http://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/politics/ld50-gallery-anti-fascist-protesters-march-through-dalston-1-4907083 (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

[xvii] Megan Nolan, 3. März 2017, https://thebaffler.com/latest/ld50-nolan (eingesehen am 27.07.2017).

©ClemensHeni