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An end to guilt and shame

By William T. Hathaway

In Sunday’s election in Germany a new party, Alternatives for Germany, broke through the established power structure to become the second strongest force in parliament. A key factor in its success was a call to overcome the postwar guilt and shame that have been predominant in the country. For many years these were a necessary reckoning with past atrocities, but this burden of blame has increasingly lamed the country and become a handicap to its progress. Leaving it behind is part of a gradual evolution that has been going on since the 1990s.

When I came to Germany in 1993 as a guest professor, I noticed that many students were eager to express their dislike of their country: Germany had done terrible things, and they were ashamed of it. They took pride in this dislike, as if it were a virtue, and they seemed to be trying to win my approval with it. When I pointed out they were feeling guilty about crimes their grandparents’ generation had committed 50 years ago, they responded, “It might happen again!”

I left Germany after 2½ years and returned in 2000. The attitude of guilt was still there, but not so universal. In classroom discussions a few students defended their country, but they were quickly overruled by the majority. Sometimes after class some students would apologize to me for this minority. They were embarrassed by it, found it shameful.

The minority grew over the years. Classroom discussions sometimes became heated arguments. The students who wanted to hold on to guilt seemed to do so out of civic duty. Those who wanted to abandon it had an impatient, enough-is-enough attitude.

In 2010 Shimon Peres, Israel’s president and Nobel-Prize-winner, told the German parliament the most important lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is, “Never again!” His statement was a warning that the Holocaust came not just out of the historical situation back then but out of something in Germans that is there even today. Germans have a personal responsibility for atrocities committed before they were born. This received widespread praise from the establishment.

The pro-guilt students felt affirmed by this. They insisted present-day Germans have to guard against these tendencies. These students wore their shame like a badge of honor.

In 2017 Alternatives for Germany gained entry to parliament with 12 percent of the vote as the third strongest party. The establishment parties and media went into full alarm at this threat to their power. They launched a defamation campaign with slanted news and outright lies, implying the AfD was full of Neo-Nazis who would again turn Germany into a pariah in the family of nations. AfD representatives became targets of hatred, their voters of contempt.

This polarized the country, including the students. Discussions became much more emotional, loaded with anger, self-righteousness and defensiveness. The society was going through a rending transition that has intensified in the past eight years, and the AfD is an important factor in it. In addition to their historical revisionism, they are nationalist libertarian-conservatives favoring less government and stricter asylum laws – a position that is gaining momentum worldwide.

After Sunday’s election the parties face the unwieldy task of building a coalition that can actually govern. The strongest force is the conservative Union with 28% of the vote. AfD is second with 20%, Social Democrats 16%, Greens 11%, and Left 8%. To isolate the AfD, the Union has refused to form a coalition with it, preferring to cobble together a three-way coalition with the smaller parties. But the differences among them are so deep that agreements will be difficult to reach. The political process will be deadlocked at a time when Germany needs decisive action. The resulting chaos will strengthen AfD all the more, and it may end up with an absolute majority after the next election. If the government falls apart, that could be soon.

In spite of the political wrangling, Germans are on the way to overcoming their guilt and shame. They’ll remember the atrocities of those twelve terrible years but know they are history. They’ll no longer be chained to the past.

William T. Hathaway was a guest professor at universities in Germany and has lived there for 27 years.

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Is Fascism on the Rise in Germany?

By William T. Hathaway

The German establishment is in crisis. Is has ruled for 80 years by charting a middle course between progressive and conservative policies. Labor and business have cooperated to achieve social and economic stability. But that consensus isn’t functioning anymore. The standard of living is declining, crime is increasing, fear and anger infect social discourse. Nothing the mainstream political parties have done has improved the situation.

The fundamental cause for this crisis is the decay of capitalism. This long-term trend is forcing European and North American governments into more intense exploitation: reducing benefits at home and aggressively manipulating the economies and politics of weaker nations. One of the mains tools for this is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which overthrows recalcitrant foreign governments and installs obedient ones.

These wars of regime change have generated waves of refugees fleeing the violence in their homeland. Germany has taken in millions of refugees from the NATO-sponsored wars, far more than any other country. This has created an enormous financial and cultural strain in a country that historically has had little immigration. It comes at a time when poverty is increasing and social services are being reduced. The once-generous welfare state is gradually being dismantled. This financial squeeze is worsening now because of expenses for the immigrants. The newcomers receive enough money to live on plus free healthcare, education and access to special programs. Some cheat on this, registering in several places under different names and getting multiple benefits. Many Germans resent paying for all this with high taxes while their own standard of living is declining.

The trauma of war and displacement has caused a few refugees to lose their moral compass. They do things here they wouldn’t do at home.

Two-thirds of the immigrants are young men, some of them convinced Allah has ordained males to dominate females. In their view, women who aren’t submissive need to be punished. Since being male is the only power many of them have, they feel threatened by women in positions of power, and they sometimes react with hostility. Thousands of women have been physically attacked — some murdered and raped and many aggressively grabbed on the breasts as a way of showing dominance. Tens of thousands of women have been abused — insulted, harassed, spat upon.

Many refugees are aware that Germany, as a member of NATO, supports these wars that have forced them to flee their homes. They’re not fooled by the rhetoric of “humanitarian intervention.” They know NATO’s motives are imperialistic: to install governments agreeable to Western control of their resources and markets. Although they are now safe, their relatives and friends are still being killed with weapons made in Germany and oppressed by soldiers and police trained and financed by Germany. Rather than a grateful attitude, some have come with a resentful one.

Crime has increased, especially violent crimes such as knife attacks. Hundreds of people have been killed and wounded by refugees. Organized criminal clans have become established in Germany’s lenient legal atmosphere. A few IS and al-Qaeda members slipped in with the refugees. They have bombed marketplaces, attacked synagogues, murdered Jews on the street, recruited new members in mosques. Although only a fraction of immigrants are criminals, they’re the ones who make the news.

In the past 80 years Germany has become a peaceful country. The current violence is profoundly disturbing to them. It brings back terrible memories.

The mainstream German parties and media are committed to these wars and therefore refuse to substantially reduce immigration. One party in parliament, however, is demanding an end to mass immigration and to the NATO wars that are causing it. As a result, 25% of the population has abandoned the establishment and now support Alternatives for Germany.

The mainstream is panicking and waging a defamation campaign against the new party, saying it is anti-democratic and far-right extremist. It’s true that the AfD has attracted extremist voters, but the establishment uses them to smear the whole party. AfD leadership and most of its voters are libertarian conservatives who want to reduce the role of government and protect the cultural integrity of the country. They’re not narrow-minded bigots. Their chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian with a woman partner who came originally from Sri Lanka. The party’s platform clearly states their deportation program applies only to criminals and to people who have entered the country illegally, and then only when their home country is no longer at war. These facts are ignored by the established parties and media, who are trying to crush this threat to their power. Since the US media gets their information from the German media, it’s no wonder they present a false view of the AfD, labeling it as fascist.

Fascism is not on the rise in Germany. That’s a perennial scare story. What is rising is public outrage. The form that will eventually take remains to be seen.

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William T. Hathaway was a Fulbright professor of American studies at universities in Germany and has lived there for 27 years.

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The Last Tourist, Revisited

Or, one great replacement deserves another.

We must begin with the misrepresentation and transform it into what is true. That is, we must uncover the source of the misrepresentation, otherwise hearing what is true won’t help us. The truth cannot penetrate when something is taking its place. – Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted in Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Children of the Sun

In the wake of the 2005 bombings in Bali, tourism plummeted. Two years later I braved the residual threat, to scout remote sands on the north coast, only to be besieged by (mosquitoes and) a covey of touts laden with merchandise to sell, and no buyers (except me, finally bargaining for one shirt, suitable for samba). The experience inspired the title of my travel book, The Last Tourist, as it seemed I was the last of a breed of international travelers seeking exotic lands, at the end of an era of carefree globetrotting and jetsetting.

As fate would have it, I found myself in Bali again in 2020, lucky to board one of the last flights out before the Great Scamdemic shut down borders worldwide. Was this really it, then, the last fling of tourism for real?

Not so fast. It took a couple of years of pushback and greater awakening, but at last international travel resumed, even mask-free, and despite renewed warnings of this or that new improved plague, financial crash, war and rumor of war, here I am on Mexico’s Nayarit coast, soaking up sun and watching the Super Bowl like all the other snowbirds from Canada and the US, speaking English everywhere and paying North American prices for food and accommodations.

Yes, maybe tourism is finished, as tourism. Instead the consumer culture itself has migrated south, replacing the culture that was here like a great wave or relentless series of incoming waves, even as the waves of global migrants pour the other direction like an unstoppable undertow of commensurate replacement—south-to-north to equalize the flow north-to-south.

You might say it’s a kind of tourist karma. Tossed in a word salad composed of Spanish and English, we are drenched in a dressing for World Salad, mixed like oil and vinegar, now stirred, now shaken.

The once-peaceful, hippie-chic village of San Pancho, which I first visited ten years ago, now is thumping and bumping with nightly street bands, churning out an eclectic mix of Steppenwolf, Billy Joel, Santana, Cuban rumba. A block from the bucolic lagoon, the din of construction and deconstruction drills, sledgehammers, and saws prevents any afternoon napping; while the nights are still interrupted by roosters crowing at any hour, and mornings full of salsa chatter from the hotel staff in the courtyard.

We trade the cold rains of the Northwest coast for humid warmth, mosquitoes, a hard and lumpy bed. It’s a vacation! Elbow to elbow on narrow sidewalks and crowded restaurants, with others of our kind, sunglassed, sandaled, looking for a working ATM. The Tuesday market is basically Boomerville. The surf is rough but no worries, if you’re super careful you can get out as far as knee deep before getting pummeled with a violent slurry of sea and sand. But sunsets! When it’s not too cloudy.

Sittin’ on the beach of the bay, watching the waves roll in: a perfect abstraction of constancy and variation. An unceasing demonstration of nature’s omnipotence, and grand indifference…

Mind on idle, or gathering mold, is this the last time I will be a tourist? In the two-hour lineup at the aeropuerto on arrival here, the bison-farming couple from Whitehorse moaned, “Never again.” But as perceptions and demographics shift, soon we may feel like tourists in our own land.

Our land? Who am I kidding? We’re all tourists there, and here, and everywhere now.

Can’t you hear it in the crow of the rooster, the buzz of the mosquito, the roar of the chainsaw, the groaning traffic, the constant human chatter, the barking dog, the chest-throbbing bass? Can’t you see it in the NY baseball cap, the gangsta shorts, the flowered shirt, the menu in two languages, the wine list, the license plate, the hotel lobby, the hospital ATM on the blink blaring a shrill alarm?

Who’s complaining? Not me. I get to write about it, snap some pretty pictures, and fly home to my snug and quiet northern nest.