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WSWS : German press turns anti-American
Editorial of Gleichheit, published by the Socialist Equality
Party of Germany
By Peter Schwarz
13 March 2002
The March/April edition of the German magazine Gleichheit,
reproducing important articles from the World Socialist Web
Site, is soon to be published. The new edition will take as its
theme “Europe and America”. It contains several contributions
analysing the significance of the war in Afghanistan, as well as
a detailed article by Peter Schwarz concerning the growing
tensions between Europe and America. The following is the
editorial of the forthcoming edition.
Over the last few weeks a significant change of opinion can be
discerned within influential circles in Germany. The traditional
feeling of attachment to the US, characterised by a general
harmoniousness since the end of the Second World War, has
soured into a sceptical and even hostile attitude. In particular,
publications normally regarded as belonging to the liberal or
social-democratic spectrum —Frankfurter Rundschau,
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit—have taken on
an increasingly anti-American tone which is also finding an echo
in government circles.
When Chancellor Gerhard Schröder pledged the Bush
government “unqualified solidarity” in the war against terrorism
after September 11, his statement was received with hardly any
criticism. But since then it has become clear that the US
government is not prepared to coordinate its political and
military moves with its allies. Commenting on the general state
of disillusionment, the magazine Der Spiegel asserts: “The
calculation by Europeans that the zealously promised
‘unqualified solidarity’ would strengthen its ability to influence its
‘big brother’ has proven to be an illusion.” And Die Zeit
suggests: “The Europeans have deceived themselves. George
W. Bush has not changed from Saul to Paul. The Afghan
campaign rapidly developed into the triumphal display of
unilateralism.” According to Der Spiegel, what is predominating
in governmental circles recently is “the view that pure power
politics rather than the fight against terrorism” lies behind
American moves in the Middle East.
In the latest edition of Die Zeit, Theo Sommer states that
Europe should react to America’s “arrogance of power” with
“self-confidence, calm and determination”. He believes that the
European Union should “resist America’s unreasonable
demand to reduce world politics to the military component” and
instead “strive for patient diplomacy, multilateral solutions and
the strengthening of the United Nations”—in other words, it must
forge its own alliance against the US. Sommer stresses that in
no way should Europeans allow themselves to become
“America’s global deputy sheriff”.
Germany’s federal government is also heading for confrontation
with the US. During a cabinet meeting, Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer, until recently firmly committed to the
transatlantic partnership, gave warning of a day “when
Europeans will have to make it clear that the Americans are no
longer pursuing our kind of politics”.
Behind this swing in opinion lies the realisation that the
geopolitical interests of Europe and America cannot be
reconciled permanently. The further the US extends its military
operations in Central Asia and the Middle East, the weaker
appears the official justification that it is fighting a war against
terrorism. The stationing of American troops in an increasing
number of former states of the Soviet Union, together with
threats of war against Iraq and Iran, reveal that the US
government is striving to dominate strategically important
regions and sources of raw materials, which are also vital to the
European economy. In its latest issue, Spiegel magazine
quoted an unnamed European foreign minister, saying he
certainly did not want “to insinuate that [the US government] was
planning a permanent occupation of oilfields in the whole
region—but in order to protect themselves, there will eventually
be no other course open to the Americans and this will have
unforeseeable consequences for the Middle East region and
world peace as a whole.”
While American and European troops in Afghanistan fight side
by side, contradictions and tensions between the respective
ministries and state departments are sharpening. Under these
circumstances, criticism of aggressive American foreign policy
also serves to mobilise support for the equally aggressive aims
of German and European foreign policy. In order to pursue this
objective, a deliberately anti-American tone is being assumed.
The accusation of anti-Americanism is also being directed at
the German government by right-wing politicians like Friedrich
Merz, chairman of the CDU (conservative Christian Democratic
Union) parliamentary faction, who regard any criticism of US
governmental policy as sacrilegious. But criticism of the
reactionary policy of the Bush administration is, in itself, no
more an expression of anti-Americanism than criticism of the
policies of Chancellor Schröder is an expression of
anti-German sentiment. Anti-Americanism begins when the
American people as a whole are held responsible for Bush’s
policies, when any opposition between the ultra-right forces
buttressing the Bush administration and the majority of the
population is denied.
It is this latter interpretation which runs through numerous lead
articles and commentaries in the German press. Wolfgang
Koydl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung declares: “In Europe and
elsewhere people like to hold George Bush personally
responsible for America’s hoodlumism. Sometimes he’s seen
as a cowboy, sometimes as a Rambo.... But Bush isn’t the
exception.... It may be that he received no—or only a
narrow—majority in the presidential elections; nevertheless he
currently defends the moral values of a religious, prudish,
hard-working America better than the saxophone-playing
philanderer, Bill Clinton.” Der Spiegel’s editor, Rudopf Augstein,
absurdly claims that “It is the American mentality that we will
never be able to change to the end of mankind.” And Die Zeit
allotted Jedediah Purdy, a young American graduate, a whole
page of the newspaper to vent his feelings on the issue, where
he writes: “Bush stands for the tradition of the good hearted in
American politics”. This, according to Purdy, is the
“predominating political culture” which expresses a specific
American tendency “to yield up the legal protection of liberties”.
These claims are a mixture of presumptuous ignorance and
intentional muddling. They ignore the enormous social
contradictions tearing American society apart, just as they
disregard the fact that Bush failed to achieve a majority in the
election and only became president thanks to the ruling of a
predominantly right-wing Supreme Court.
Last year the WSWS published an article entitled
“Anti-Americanism: The ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools”, in which was
written: “To present ‘the US’ as some predatory imperialist
monolith ... can only confuse and disorient. It not only serves as
a barrier to genuine internationalism, it overlooks the
contradictory character of American history and society.... The
United States is a complex entity, with a complex history,
elements of which are distinctly ignoble, elements of which are
deeply noble.”
In the light of German history, the conception of an unalterable
American mentality, tending towards hooliganism and the
surrendering of freedom, seems patently absurd. In contrast to
Germany, where a victorious democratic revolution has never
occurred, the US has witnessed two revolutions—the American
Revolution (war of independence) and the Civil War. These
traditions have profoundly influenced social consciousness and
found expression in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and
elsewhere. The few genuinely democratic elements to be found
in today’s German constitution are primarily a consequence of
the allied victory in the Second World War. The German
government will not hesitate to jettison them again when
conditions demand—as Interior Minister Otto Schily’s two
bundles of tightened security measures clearly show.
The notion that Bush embodies the average American is an
absolute lie. Even if one disregards that he blatantly stole the
presidential election and received nationwide about 600,000
votes fewer than his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, the fact
remains that only a quarter of the American electorate voted for
him. About half withheld their vote owing to the absence of a
visible alternative to the two mainstream candidates.
The gulf dividing Bush and his right-wing coterie from the mass
of the population has grown wider since the election. Bush has
determinedly continued the policies of his predecessors who
systematically diverted distribution of national income from the
poor to the rich. The present war in Afghanistan is not only
serving the aims of foreign policy, it is also Bush’s only answer
to problems on the home front. Without the continual stirring up
of chauvinism accompanying the war, the social contradictions
rending American society would have erupted long ago.
Poll results, which accord Bush considerable popularity, are
extremely deceptive. Above all, they reflect the fact that no
serious political opposition exists, since the Democrats and a
compliant media have aligned themselves so completely with
Bush and the real mood of the population is unable to find a
conscious outlet. But such a situation can soon change, as
recently happened in the case of Bush’s Italian counterpart,
Silvio Berlusconi.
The anti-Americanism being fanned by the German press
serves to drive a wedge between the European and American
peoples and to whip up support for the imperialist foreign policy
of the German government. As in America, the growth of
militarism in Germany constitutes an attack on the German
population, which will have to bear the costs in the form of
welfare cuts and the dismantling of democratic rights. A struggle
against this is only possible on the basis of an international,
socialist programme uniting the workers of Europe and
America.
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