Imagine My Surprise
Please see update below.
Nobel prize for literature winner and Germany's moral spokesman Gunter Grass had something to say this past June. The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui was on the spot to report the facts:
Of course, looking back, it's not so much what the great intellectual Grass said in June in front of his admiring audience that is so important, but what the great truth-teller and moral conscience of Germany forgot to add.
In the end, though, the truth about Grass came out. And, lo and behold, while we Americans are international war criminals, running around killing every Third World peasant we can find, while Grass was leading the charge against neo-Nazism and xenophobia, it turns out that in this little thing called "reality"....
...Grass was a fucking Nazi.
Not just a foot soldier, mind you. Not just some poor, young German schmuck who got drafted and believed in his government.
Nope. Grass was a member of the WAFFEN-SS. Something the great moral authority and judge of America just forgot to mention in his speeches denouncing the unique evil of the United States. And accusing it of genocide.
You know, the United States. The country that smashed Grass' Nazi project and ended the horrific genocide committed by the sophisticated, nuanced, superior German people.
From today's Telegraph:
Imagine my surprise.
I'm just shocked that Grass went from being a dumb-ass national socialist who thought the United States was an enemy to be fought to being a fashionable Stalinist socialist who thinks the United States is an enemy to be fought.
Sometimes my well-meaning liberal friends ask me why I think the United States is so hated around the world. They ask me if it means something that so many Europeans hate our guts.
Yes, it does mean something.
UPDATE I:
I want to be clear what I think is Grass' failing in this incident. It is not simply a question of being a member of the Waffen-SS.
There are certain types of Waffen-SS membership that automatically by their nature place the member beyond the pale of civilization. For example, those who volunteered for Waffen-SS Einsatzgruppen units, those who volunteered for the foreign units (33rd SS, Charlemagne; 23rd SS, Nederland, etc.), those who served as concentration camp guard units, etc.
There are also other types of Waffen-SS membership that do NOT automatically by themselves place the member outside the bounds of acceptable human conduct. (Purely my opinion, of course). As has been noted here, many joined out of nationalism, an urge to join the elite units that were "defending" Germany, a desire to fight the Bolsheviks, youthful idealism, etc. These people are blameworthy and guilty of a serious moral failing, but not, by that action alone, beyond the pale.
It is obvious to me that Grass' Waffen-SS membership is of that second, serious-but-less-serious-than-it-could-be type. I understand that he was 17, that he volunteered and that he was assigned to the Waffen-SS unit in question by the authorities.
It is not just that fact that I am objecting to here. Rather, it is the fact that such a person would then, after the war, pose an an artist with the right to judge the actions of foreigners and other countries WITHOUT REVEALING that he himself has had personal exposure to an episode which defies easy moral judgments.
In short, he extended himself the moral credit he refused to even consider worthy of others.
In other words, a typical leftist.
MICHAEL - With regard to your post specifically, I simply do not agree that Grass does not speak for a large number of Germans. He holds a position of influence and respect well above that held by Norman Mailer and his ilk here in the United States.
I realize that there are millions of Germans and other good Europeans with their heads screwed on straight. But, at the same time, it seems obvious to me that these good people are a decided minority and are almost invisible in the intellectual and political discource of that once-great continent.
While there are pockets of resistance and good sense, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Europeans have fully bought into a political world view which is statist, anti-liberty, childish and, frankly, dangerous.
I wish it were otherwise, and I do see signs of hope, but I have no illusions on that score. Especially when it comes to the eerie staying power of rank anti-Semitism.
Nobel prize for literature winner and Germany's moral spokesman Gunter Grass had something to say this past June. The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui was on the spot to report the facts:
Gunter Grass, celebrated German novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, sculptor and commentator, is a living legend. When this Nobel laureate speaks, people listen.
His address in Berlin to the annual Congress of International PEN, the worldwide organization of writers, had been much anticipated, especially given his long admonition to intellectuals to speak up on the political and moral issues of the day.
He himself has done so all his life, most famously against the Nazi past and contemporary neo-Nazism and xenophobia. He has not always been right, of course, having opposed post-Cold War German unification.
Grass, at 78 still spry and energetic, quickly gets into his topic, "The hubris of the world's only superpower," and proceeds to offer a sweeping critique.
His words find resonance among the writers gathered here, including another Nobel laureate, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.
"Armed force is used by this superpower to defeat the terrorism it is itself responsible for," Grass says, citing Osama bin Laden, the by-product of American support for Afghan jihadists in the 1980s. "The war (on Iraq), deliberately started in blatant disdain of the laws of civilized societies, produces still more terror."
"Yet George W. Bush is searching for new enemies and targets.
"Dictatorships, and there are plenty to choose from, are referred to as rogue states and threatened vociferously with military strikes, including the deployment of nuclear weapons. But it only further stabilizes the fundamentalist power systems in those countries.
"Whether the term 'axis of evil' is used to refer to Iran or North Korea or Syria, politics could not be more stupid and hence more dangerous. Yet the entire world is watching and pretending to be powerless."
Grass quotes liberally from the blistering speech given last year by British playwright Harold Pinter in accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature: "The United States supported and, in many cases, engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after World War II - Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile ...
"Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place in those countries ... but you wouldn't know it. The crimes of the U.S. have been systematic, constant, vicious, and remorseless but very few people have actually talked about them.
"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's brilliant, even witty, a highly successful act of hypnosis. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?"
Of course, looking back, it's not so much what the great intellectual Grass said in June in front of his admiring audience that is so important, but what the great truth-teller and moral conscience of Germany forgot to add.
In the end, though, the truth about Grass came out. And, lo and behold, while we Americans are international war criminals, running around killing every Third World peasant we can find, while Grass was leading the charge against neo-Nazism and xenophobia, it turns out that in this little thing called "reality"....
...Grass was a fucking Nazi.
Not just a foot soldier, mind you. Not just some poor, young German schmuck who got drafted and believed in his government.
Nope. Grass was a member of the WAFFEN-SS. Something the great moral authority and judge of America just forgot to mention in his speeches denouncing the unique evil of the United States. And accusing it of genocide.
You know, the United States. The country that smashed Grass' Nazi project and ended the horrific genocide committed by the sophisticated, nuanced, superior German people.
From today's Telegraph:
Germany was rocked by the revelations last night that Gunter Grass, its greatest living author and doyen of the Left, was a member of Hitler's elite Waffen-SS.
The Nobel laureate, who has been the country's moral guide for decades, admitted in an interview published today that he became a member of the infamous Nazi corps at the age of 17.
The 78-year-old said he was driven by feelings of guilt to reveal the details of his "shameful" past in his autobiography, Peeling the Onion, due to be published next month.
"It was weighing on my mind. My silence over all these years is one of the reasons why I decided to write this book. I forced myself to do it," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
Asked why he was breaking his silence after more than 60 years, Grass said: "It had to come out finally." He added: "It will stain me forever."
Imagine my surprise.
I'm just shocked that Grass went from being a dumb-ass national socialist who thought the United States was an enemy to be fought to being a fashionable Stalinist socialist who thinks the United States is an enemy to be fought.
Sometimes my well-meaning liberal friends ask me why I think the United States is so hated around the world. They ask me if it means something that so many Europeans hate our guts.
Yes, it does mean something.
UPDATE I:
I want to be clear what I think is Grass' failing in this incident. It is not simply a question of being a member of the Waffen-SS.
There are certain types of Waffen-SS membership that automatically by their nature place the member beyond the pale of civilization. For example, those who volunteered for Waffen-SS Einsatzgruppen units, those who volunteered for the foreign units (33rd SS, Charlemagne; 23rd SS, Nederland, etc.), those who served as concentration camp guard units, etc.
There are also other types of Waffen-SS membership that do NOT automatically by themselves place the member outside the bounds of acceptable human conduct. (Purely my opinion, of course). As has been noted here, many joined out of nationalism, an urge to join the elite units that were "defending" Germany, a desire to fight the Bolsheviks, youthful idealism, etc. These people are blameworthy and guilty of a serious moral failing, but not, by that action alone, beyond the pale.
It is obvious to me that Grass' Waffen-SS membership is of that second, serious-but-less-serious-than-it-could-be type. I understand that he was 17, that he volunteered and that he was assigned to the Waffen-SS unit in question by the authorities.
It is not just that fact that I am objecting to here. Rather, it is the fact that such a person would then, after the war, pose an an artist with the right to judge the actions of foreigners and other countries WITHOUT REVEALING that he himself has had personal exposure to an episode which defies easy moral judgments.
In short, he extended himself the moral credit he refused to even consider worthy of others.
In other words, a typical leftist.
MICHAEL - With regard to your post specifically, I simply do not agree that Grass does not speak for a large number of Germans. He holds a position of influence and respect well above that held by Norman Mailer and his ilk here in the United States.
I realize that there are millions of Germans and other good Europeans with their heads screwed on straight. But, at the same time, it seems obvious to me that these good people are a decided minority and are almost invisible in the intellectual and political discource of that once-great continent.
While there are pockets of resistance and good sense, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Europeans have fully bought into a political world view which is statist, anti-liberty, childish and, frankly, dangerous.
I wish it were otherwise, and I do see signs of hope, but I have no illusions on that score. Especially when it comes to the eerie staying power of rank anti-Semitism.
