Category: Culture

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.

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

‘All is to be doubted.’ —Descartes

There’s an inherent challenge in organizing anarchists and even in defining a single philosophy of anarchism, when the concept itself holds the kernel of an extreme, radical individualism.

The American Heritage Dictionary leaves no wiggle room for this far-right state-denier, citing first the “theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished”; next, referring broadly to “active resistance and terrorism against the state, as used by some anarchists”; and finally—like the terrible twos forever—“rejection of all coercive control and authority.” The cautious dictionary browser is advised to move along, go back to your home.

Still, the principles expressed are a useful starting point, if one cares to linger awhile. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. That said, let’s come to the heart of the matter: the Sovereign Individual, who may volunteer whatever cooperation or association the anarchist society needs to function.

As a more positive definition, the “libertarian” label comes to hand: “1) One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state; 2) One who believes in free will.”

With that last zinger the needle has zoomed right past moderate to extra diverse and all-inclusive: capitalists and communists, artists and dictators, lovers and killers, Christians and Satanists. So let’s retreat to the more meaningful focus: the contest between the King and I.

What does it mean to be “sovereign”?

The dictionary fairly includes here the democratic attributes (self-governing, and independent) as well as the usual, state-based brand. Important to both is the central, almost sacred role bestowed upon one (state or individual) who is sovereign: “paramount, supreme.” The term also implies “permanent”—like the claims of the eternal Church, the undying Reich, the UN Security Council, the Neoliberal “end of history.” And like, on the anti-state side, the perennial pushback from the Ron Pauls, the Alex Joneses, the Julian Assanges; the Dutch farmers and Canadian Truckers and New Zealand Maori.

In a notable essay Jeffrey Tucker makes the case for a sensible bifurcation of the loose tribe of rugged individualists into two camps of different characters, with opposing visions and styles in their defiance of socially sanctioned authority: “Against Libertarian Brutalism: Will libertarianism be brutalist or humanitarian? Everyone needs to decide.” Yes, even the capitalist and communist builders of concrete monstrosities (the brutalists) claim the right to exercise their free will; along with the more pastoral and peaceful wing, the humanists. So moral judgement, an assumption of humane majority norms, is brought to bear. Tucker rests on a premise of benevolence in “civil standards of values and etiquette,” instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater under the stripped-down banner of boorish, intolerant and abusive “liberty.”

Tucker’s article betrays in its subtitle a contradiction even in this most basic classification of libertarians (and here we will especially want to include anarchists): “Everyone needs to decide.”

Is that imperative any different (except in moral judgement) from Georgie Bush’s infamous, “Yer either with us or yer with the terr’ists”? It reminds me of the radical student manifestos of the 1960s, the lists of demands: “We must… The US must… The university must…” After such demands are met with silence, inaction, and downright repression, they tend to carry less weight as a tactical strategy. Maybe it’s because they are self-contradictory at the outset: challenging authority with the pretense of reverse authority.

Opting out of the political arena altogether (as far as one cares to take that road) is what I call the metapolitical alternative. The artist or mystic cannot far engage with doctrinal refinements, calls to group action, mission statements, or campaign strategies. Truer to principles of individual sovereignty, this breed of anarchist sniffs the odor of creeping systemization; of grassroots institutions growing authoritarian legs of their own; of growing legions of followers conjuring their own expectations of reputation, allegiance, compromise, monetization.

Movements imply leaders as well as followers. What leaders can be entrusted to represent everyone present—even if they were capable of sufficient transparency to recuse themselves from a deciding vote? And what is a leader without authority to lead?

Then there is the problem of doctrine, policy, and the inherent limitations of group identity. Even naysayers develop a code through which to communicate the world to each other: an in-group jargon for their ears while shunning the mainstream narrative.

The dilemma resembles the benign but unavoidable paradox of the Quakers (a “Society of Friends,” after all). Even in their practice of honoring “that of God in everyone,” they develop an inbred persona as a society (peace-loving, principled, pious). Historically they expressed their tribal character with quaint dress, and by using the democratic personal pronoun “thee.” In written doctrine or priestly title, they take pride in having none; though the elders in every meeting carry “weight” and speak in aphorisms baked into Quaker lore.

With the self-limitations of any “-ism” to avoid, maybe anarchism belongs more to metaphysics than to politics. Where even the religious affiliation among a society of friends, or a weekly gathering of subversive types at the coffee shop or pub, is a step too far into the fatally co-opted material matrix.

Is the sovereign individual then reduced to a lonely existence in blissful communion with Nature, or Spirit, removed from the strife and verbal wrangles of their primate band?

Maybe, in theory… but what is theory without practice, or Spirit without Nature? The last human standing in this debate is the first human.. And that implies clan and tribe, at least (not a lone wolf, likewise mythic). The forms of voluntary association dance through the ages, all the way to today’s primitive skills workshop, chic eco-retreat, or direct action affinity group. The defining characteristic of “sovereign” is its limitation in the context of one’s social milieu. How far does one’s will to power extend? The globe, the empire, the nation, the family, the self?

We come to the essence of individual sovereignty, the third-chakra domain, what Nietszche called “the Will to Power.” What do we want to achieve with our influence, or protect with our care?

At the primal core, we can beg off the false gods and idols of our society, and assert the purity of truth, of the absence of our desire for power in the world. Empty will yields empty power, however, without life force; and besides, it’s a contradiction when the zealous nihilist substitutes that passive goal for everything else. It’s still a goal, a desire, a fixation.

With a more positivist orientation, leaving behind the political sphere can allow the uncompromised life force to find expression instead in other areas of life. The doors are open to savoring the texture of our relationships; honing the harmonic craft of our everyday voice and creative expression; reflection and appreciation of life’s wonders and mysteries; expansion of identity to embrace all that is. Naturally, while still maintaining the integrity of that health and home.

After good health, and the comforts of home (chakras 1 and 2, most basic in the hierarchy of needs), the still unsatisfied ego asserts the will to power. Where will it turn its immense reach, its drive for significance? If the question is bypassed, it’s left blank for other aspirants of power, other players in the tournament of wills, to fill out as they choose. Through the breach of missing political will, alas, rush the demons of material lust: the taxman, the axman, the lawman, the outlaw…

Our most basic will for sovereignty compels us to react. We witness, we respond.

Perhaps anarchists’ lack of political punch (too wary of organization and leadership) is not only its weakness, but also its strength, resiliency, natural immunity to corruption, true principles held unconquered in the hearts of its practitioners.

We do not hasten to erect paper fences, toy cannon. We meet directed force with moving water.

We volunteer our service to the cause of human defense, loyal not to rebel princes but to principle.

We shake the world bear awake, and learn from how she remakes the world in her image.

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This essay first appeared at Nowick Gray’s Substack, New World Dreaming.