We cannot rely on the silenced to tell us about their suffering. - Hanan Ashrawi
I have a conflicted relationship with Germany and Germans. I’ve written about my own name “Deubelbeiss” before and have lived for years in the “aftermath” of Nazi Germany, writing and studying this so human cancer. See my book of poems with a forward - Last Train To Auschwitz.
I’m torn because while being so proud of Germans for how they dealt with their own history and guilt regarding the Holocaust - underneath, I always still felt the enduring German default to obedience, order, xenophobia was very much alive.
I wrote the poem below, one day in Nuremberg. I awoke on the sidewalk after a rowdy night of drinking, I awoke to the sound of brooms sweeping the street and to the clump, clump of boots on cobblestones. Looking up, it was a group of German tourists, in line, almost goosestepping, following their noble tour guide holding up the ubiquitous umbrella. It evoked my feelings of the evil underbelly of Germanic culture.
And today, this German underbelly of fascist “brownshirting” is an overbelly, fully visible - as the above video attests. A protest against murder and genocide, shut down in the name of “hate speech”. It’s bizarre, the twisted logic used by authorities to put down and arrest free men, freely speaking for justice in this world. It’s totally fantastical Germany’s unswerving support of Israeli evil and militarism.
Jews arrested as “anti-semetic” for questioning the slaughter of 1,000s of innocent people. Hmmmm. What’s going on?
All this while Germany signs major arms deals with Israel (both purchasing and selling). Are these interests what are being protected?
It’s disconcerting. Jews once again handcuffed and whisked away by the state apparatus - for being Jews! I say “for being Jews” because Judaism has historically always been a pacifist religion. One that exists “among nations” not as a nation. Isn’t it all so ironic? One also wonders who the state of Germany represents - Israel or its own people who by a large, large majority reject its hard core support for Israel and its evil genocide.
The German Interior ministry has often shown its Gestapo roots. Currently, they are banning many pro-Palestinian thinkers and threatening journalists and speakers like Yanis Varoufakis - former Greek finance minister. He was sent legal notice that any public use of Zoom by himself, on whatever topic, would bring legal action against himself. He zoomed and is awaiting a response. Read Varoufakis’ own speech he was going to give at the congress before German police stormed the venue.
Owen Jones, himself labeled “anti-semitic” for decrying the murders and executions of innocent women and children, has voiced his own shock about Germany’s actions well in this video.
It’s a weird world we live in. When you have the German state, in the name of defending “Jews”, supporting the genocide, the daily killing of innocent people. Many executed, run over by tanks, killed like blips on a computer screen. It’s just so damn upside-down, this morality.
And I do think it comes from deep inside the German soul. It’s need for black and white order, all ducks in the same row. So, it won’t budge from the belief that genocide is ok because hey, it is defeating those who hate Jews.
My only wish is for the true voice of the German people to be publicly represented. We can’t let the “mitlaufers” grow in Germany or elsewhere, those who are silent while the state apparatus, the fascists take over and run amok with liberties. And this goes for where you live to.
Brown Shirts