German imperialism’s new drive for world power
By Johannes Stern
For weeks, the media and establishment politicians in Germany have been denouncing criticism of right-wing extremists as an attack on freedom of expression. While right-wing terrorist networks are murdering and threatening Jews, Muslims and even Green Party politicians with death, the world of politics and the media are protecting the intellectual arsonists who have sown the seeds of right-wing terror.
The hysterical campaign reached its climax when students in Hamburg protested at the end of October against the founder of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD), Bernd Lucke, returning to his chair at their university.
AfD deputies such as the Islamic scholar Hans-Thomas Tillschneider and the AfD’s chief ideologist Marc Jongen, as well as the racist agitator Thilo Sarrazin and the right-wing extremist historian Jörg Baberowski—notorious for declaring that “Hitler was not cruel”—are also being portrayed as victims of an alleged dictatorship of opinion.
Continue reading at www.wsws.org
The crisis in Ukraine and the return of German militarism
By Johannes Stern
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Russia has warned the pro-Western regime in Kiev against mounting military operations against anti-government protests in eastern Ukraine, unleashing a new wave of anti-Russian warmongering in Berlin.
Even before the special session of the UN Security Council called by Russia, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble accused Moscow of “fomenting the unrest in Ukraine,” and threatened, “Russia must know that the West is not to be blackmailed.”
Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chairman and Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel went even further. He used a commemoration of the First World War in Berlin’s French Cathedral to stir up hatred against Russia. Together with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, he accused Moscow of placing in question “fundamental political values.”
Continue reading at www.wsws.org
Once more on the issue of anti-Semitism in Germany
By Johannes Stern
During Israel’s onslaught on Gaza this month, German politicians were in propaganda mode around the clock. They defended the murderous bombardment of Gaza with the claim that Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, they denounced all protests against Israel’s war policy as anti-Semitic, even when organisers explicitly spoke out against anti-Semitism.
The WSWS made clear in a previous comment that criticism of Israel’s brutal actions has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. On the contrary, the assertion that the Zionist regime’s terrorising bombardment of a largely defenceless population is taking place in the name of all Jews is drawn straight from the traditional arsenal of anti-Semitism.
“An anti-Semite is not someone protesting against the crimes of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has struck an alliance with extreme right-wing parties, has one foot in jail and can only stay in power through endless provocations,” we wrote. “An anti-Semite is someone who equates ‘the Jews’ with the policies of the Israeli government.”
Continue reading www.wsws.org
Wolfgang Schäuble: A criminal figure of German and European politics passes away
Upon learning the death of Wolfgang Schäuble, German Minister of Finance during the European Debt Crisis, Yannis Androulidakis, a Greek journalist posted the following comment on Facebook:
In 2010 I was 34 years old, I had returned to Greece, I had started working and I had just had children. In front of me, beyond the strategic goal of libertarian socialism, a life was opening up in which I could live from my work, travel a lot, be creative in my free time.
Instead, I spent my best years in a straitjacket of financial suffocation, going months unpaid, moving to smaller houses so I could pay for them and staying in them more than I would have liked, resulting in relationships developing there flawed from the very beginning; I didn’t make a tenth of the trips I dreamed of, I spent my creativity chasing after some pocket money to make it through the month, I was filled with the neuroses of hard living and I watched my friends suffer the same.
Continue reading at www.defenddemocracy.press
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