alternative culture jam

By William T. Hathaway

The current repression of dissent in Germany is startlingly similar to that in North America. In 2019 as the virus started to spread, the government ordered drastic measures against it. Several distinguished doctors and professors, including an MD who was a former member of parliament, asked the government for evidence and explanations justifying these measures. When they were ignored, they called a rally and gave speeches again asking the government for answers. The government ignored this too, but their press launched a smear campaign labeling these people as unscientific and incompetent. When several current members of parliament spoke out against the mandates, they were defamed and isolated.

The government forced the mandates through, and as the effects of these turned out to be more damaging than the virus, large-scale protests broke out. Politicians warned of the danger to our democracy from right-wing fanatics whom they claimed had taken over the protests. To defend democracy by disrupting the rallies, groups of Antifa tried to drown out speakers by shouting, “Halt die Fresse!” – “Shut your mouth!” Of course the real danger to democracy comes from trying to silence or exclude anyone, right or left.

Establishment media refused to publish reports of severe side effects from the vaccines. A government statistician who gave evidence that the mandates and vaccines were ineffective and harmful was removed from duty, as were police officers who took part in peaceful rallies. Professors who spoke at demonstrations were shunned by their colleagues and passed over for promotion. Doctors who certified that their patients didn’t need to wear masks were suspended from practice. Some careers were destroyed, many damaged.

People were stunned by the savagery of the response to their demand for more public input into virus policies. They discussed possible reasons for the government’s attack. Conspiracy theories began to circulate, some of them quite wild.

The government broadened its attack. The press was full of interviews with psychiatrists discussing the dangerous psycho-pathology of conspiracy theorists. Wherever vaguely possible, parallels were drawn to Nazi Germany. Aged Holocaust victims were interviewed about their trauma caused by such people. One victim, though, Vera Sharav, made a video saying the government was behaving like the Nazis, but her statement was ignored by the mainstream and appeared only in the alternative media.

Rationality disappeared from public discourse. A seething polarization began to spread. The government recognized a growing threat of losing its hold on the people.

It cut back on testing. The “pandemic” faded. Russia invaded the Ukraine. A new enemy replaced the “killer virus” as a focus for fear.

The government’s campaign of forced lockdowns, masks, vaccines, and repression has unnecessarily and massively damaged millions of people, far more than what the virus has done. But on the positive side it has also turned millions of people against the government, a prerequisite for real change. The next step is ours.

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William T. Hathaway is an emeritus Fulbright professor of American studies at universities in Germany. His new novel, Lila, the Revolutionary, is a fable for adults about an eight-year-old girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice.

By William T. Hathaway

Posted on streetlamps all over Germany are stickers showing fleeing silhouettes with the caption, “Refugees welcome – bring your families”. Some have been blacked out with felt markers or ripped partially away. The Germans have mixed feelings about refugees, as demonstrated in the earlier waves from the Mideast and the current one from the Ukraine.

Germany took in over two million refugees from the Mideast wars, far more than any other country. The equivalent for the US population would be eight million.

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 refugees. The two million 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 refugees 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. Over a thousand women have been physically attacked — some murdered and raped and many aggressively grabbed on the breasts as a way of showing dominance. Many more 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. Police and others have been killed and wounded by refugees. Organized criminal clans have become established in Germany’s lenient legal atmosphere. A few ISIS and al-Qaeda members slipped in with the refugees. They have bombed a Christmas market, attacked synagogues, murdered Jews on the street, recruited new members in mosques.

In the past 75 years Germany has become a peaceful country. The current violence is profoundly disturbing to them. It brings back terrible memories.

The violent refugees, though, are only a small minority. Most of the newcomers have a positive attitude. They are getting a fresh start in life, recovering from trauma, getting an education, learning new skills. They’ve been introduced to other cultural possibilities.

Women in particular are responding favorably to this new environment. Seeing how women here live, some of them are beginning to free themselves from patriarchal bondage. With help from German feminists they are developing the energy and determination to challenge male rule and change the conditions of their lives. And they’ll inspire their sisters back home.

The situation with the Ukrainian refugees is much different. The cultures are similar, so there’s less clash. The war hasn’t been going on for long, so there are few of them and problems have not yet developed. They are being celebrated as brave heroes standing up to an aggressive Russia intent on dominating Europe. Anti-Russian feelings have been strong in Germany for two centuries, so this propaganda finds ready acceptance. During the Cold War the German government beamed out the constant danger of Russian attack in order to justify the presence of US troops and nuclear weapons on their soil. Now they condemn Putin as the new Hitler. Atrocity stories of Russian troops get enormous coverage, those of Ukrainian troops against separatists in Donbass are ignored. Every small Ukrainian victory is cheered with blood-thirsty enthusiasm. Welcoming these refugees is part of the strategy for maintaining NATO dominance.

But of course it is important to take them in, to shelter them from this latest capitalist butchery. Like the Arabs, most of them are fine people, and many will stay and contribute to the society in their new home.

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William T. Hathaway is an emeritus Fulbright professor of American studies at universities in Germany. His new novel, Lila, the Revolutionary, is a fable for adults about an eight-year-old girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice.

Racism Über Alles?

‘The entire policy platform of the left has been replaced by Pharma Über Alles.’ —Toby Rogers

In the current climate of debate over a broad spectrum of issues ranging from health policy to civic protest, racism has been redefined not to mean what it used to, hateful prejudice, but something more politically useful: demographic “underrepresentation.” The abstract notion of racial proportion has reached status as the supreme social value in leftist and mainstream discourse, supplanting freedom itself, now slandered in turn as a relic of “white privilege.”

While targeted struggles against racist attitudes and institutions deserve respect and attention, it doesn’t mean all other struggles for freedom should be discounted or even demonized. Why not solidarity among all races championing freedom, instead of trying to drive a wedge and deny one movement’s struggle and construing it as competing with another? The strategy reeks of a “divide and conquer” agenda from above, where the oligarchic managers of narrative control and the media gatekeepers are of an all-too-predictable skin color.

We are magistrates (Black woman lawyer)

Official criticism of the Canadian Truckers’ Convoy is a case in point. The myopic focus on a stray Confederate flag among thousands of Canadian flags points to cognitive obsession, if not outright desperation to find fault and tar a whole movement with a single brush.

Surprise! Black Canadians Support Trucker Protest! (Jimmy Dore)

The caricature of the trucker’s movement as racist came straight from the top, Fuehrer Trudeau, as a cynical manipulation of public perception. Missing from the “liberal” invocation of racism was any irony over the real policy at stake in the truckers’ protest—segregation, based on mandated vaccination.

‘This is slavery…. It is profoundly evil.’ (Dr. Charles Hoffe)

Deeper still is the hypocrisy of contemporary racism itself. If a popular movement is condemned because of the predominant skin color of its participants, is that not itself a racist attitude? To view a wide range of unrelated issues primarily through the lens of race implies that the perspective is itself racist; it betrays a prejudice based on race.

Similarly, the classic political categories of Left and Right have been hijacked. Typically now the label “far-right” is applied to any dissenter of government policy, conjuring fear and the threat of violence. Again the projection deflects blame from the projector. The government and corporate media have relentlessly stoked a climate of fear for two years, and threatened the public with fines, prison and coerced injection if they don’t line up in the service of the medical cartel.

‘Pharma-Induced Mass Psychosis (PIMP) has completely reordered existing political categories. There are now right wing progressives and right wing Marxists who identify with genocidal billionaires and hate the working class even while parroting the usual left talking points…. There actually is no left, there are people following a heavily-promoted script. And the left script is actually written by large corporations.’ —Toby Rogers

Against this truly “far-right” coalition of big government and corporate power (Mussolini’s definition of fascism), stands a popular and overwhelmingly peaceful protest of ordinary and working-class people, along with doctors and lawyers and other professionals of high standing—and we are supposed to call them the fascists.

Despite the spirit of community care and solidarity demonstrated in the Convoy and similar public protests, where the real division is recognized as the 99% against the 1%, the people are called a “mob” and accused of the crime of “otherizing.” If we are being truthful instead of parroting the lies of our political and narrative masters, we see that the people’s stand for freedom is not the seed of fascism. It is the fruit of the fascism that has been wielded against us for the past two years and counting.

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For examples of the kind of rhetoric I critique here, see Jim Miles, Canada, Truckers, and Freedom, and Ken Orphan, Fascism is a Fire that Will Burn the Entire House Down.

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In Covid Narrative Remix: Two Years of Dissent, Nowick Gray critiques the global agenda with the voice of the natural human spirit. These compiled articles from The New Now/Agora (2020-2022) shed light on the narrative sabotage carried out as the primary strategy of the war on humanity. Against that weapon of moral destruction, pen turns to sword in the ongoing battle for truth and freedom.

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Nowick Gray is a regular contributor to The New Agora and also offers perspectives and resources for alternative culture and African drumming. Subscribe to his Substack (New World Dreaming) or visit his  writings website at NowickGray.com.