German Joys

Kiki and Bubu Explain The Post-Disciplinary Society

From the Austrian artists' collective Monochrom (g): socially-critical sock puppets, dubbed into English! [h/t Balkinization]

Obama Sweeps Duesseldorf, Gratefully Accepts its .0034 Delegates

I'm swamped with (real) work right now and don't want to keep banging on about U.S. politics, but I thought I should report that at last night's Democrats Abroad primary for Northern Rhine-Westphalia, held in O'Reilly's Irish Pub in Duesseldorf, Obama (hic) crushed Clinton 71% - 29%.

27 votes to 11, that is.  I think it was Oprah's surprise appearance that clinched it for the O-man.

Democrats Abroad Vote in Berlin

And the Tagesspiegel has the video (g). [h/t Ed P.]  Germans -- here's your chance to wince at / laugh at/ admire various varietals of American-accented German.  Note that (1) they all voted for Obama; (2) many of them look indistinguishable from Germans.  Nice protective coloration, fellow expats!

I'll be voting tomorrow at O'Reilly's in Duesseldorf during the early part of the evening (around 7:30-ish), so drop by if ya wanna meet me.  I'll be voting for Obama, naturally, because he represents Change We Can Believe In (although I personally prefer Belief We Can Change In).

Fools Vote the Person

To avoid any confusion here, let me make clear that I think that anybody who would vote for John McCain because they like him is a dope.  Except in a few isolated policy areas, McCain will follow right-wing policies if he's elected, and that's the only thing that counts.

"Independent" voter who will choose him mostly because they admire his flinty resolve or manly career -- and there will, unfortunately, be millions of these voters -- are fools.  Take it away, Stanley Fish:   

[V]oting the person rather than the party is about the dumbest thing you can do for a reason I elaborated in an earlier column (“Parties Matter”). The party affiliation of a candidate tells you what kind of appointments he or she is likely to make. Do you think that regulations of industry stifle productivity and damage the economy, or do you think that unregulated industries endanger the environment? Do you think that illegal immigrants are just that – illegal – and therefore should be deported when detected, or do you think that we should figure out a way to legitimize their status and make the best of what has already happened? Do you think that Iran poses a threat that must be countered before it is too late, or do you think that military action should be resorted to only after every avenue of diplomacy has been exhausted, even if it takes years or decades?

If you feel strongly about these and other matters, it is incumbent upon you to take into consideration the positions of the two major parties, for the successful candidate can be counted on to appoint to the offices responsible for answering these questions men and women whose views reflect the party’s platform. Voting the person, however attractive or impressive he or she may be, could very well get you four years of policies you detest. In other words, policy differences are party differences, and it is hard to see how you could be a responsible voter if you held your nose at a whiff of party politics. If you are really interested in the way things should go in the country, come off the high pedestal and join the rest of us in the nurturing (and, yes, dirty) soil of the partisan free-for-all.

Democrats Abroad Global Primary Redux

Are you one of the 6 million voting-eligible Americans living abroad?  Here's a short note to make sure any expats who read this blog are aware of the Democrats Abroad Global Primary, coming in early February in a country near you! 

Here's an article about this new program.  There will be 22 delegates for expats at the Democratic National Convention.

You can register and vote online at the Democrats Abroad website.  At the end of this post, I've pasted a list of the polling places in Germany for those who want to vote in person.  Maybe later, I'll post some thoughts about the candidates.

    Berlin area:
    Tuesday, Feb  5th,  7 to 10 pm
    Max und Moritz
    upstairs
    Oranienstrasse 162
    10969 Berlin 36 (Kreuzberg)

    Saturday, Feb 9th, 7 to 10 pm
    Max und Moritz
    downstairs
    Oranienstrasse 162
    1096 9 Berlin 36 (Kreuzberg)

    Frankfurt area:
    Saturday, Feb 9th, 10 am to 3 pm
    Upper Westside
    An der Welle 5
    60322 Frankfurt

    Göttingen area:
    Friday, Feb 8th, 6 to 8 pm
    Forum (SPD Haus)
    Nikolaistr. 30
    37073 Göttingen

    Heidelberg area:
    Saturday, Feb 9th, 10 am to 6 pm
    Heidelberg Center for American Studies
    Hauptstrasse 120
    69117 Heidelberg

    Kaiserslautern area:
    Sunday, Feb 10th, 3 to 5:30 pm
    Cafe Goldinger
    Von-Richthofen-Strasse 18
    66849 Landstuhl

    Munich area:
    Tuesday, Feb 5th, 6 to 9:30 pm
    Eine Welt Haus
    Schwanthalerstrasse 80
    80336 München

    NRW/ Düsseldorf area:
    Thursday, Feb 7th, 7 to 10 pm
    O'Reilly's Irish Pub
    Upstairs
    Marktplatz 6
    40213 Düsseldorf

    Stuttgart area:
    Friday, Feb 8th, 7:30 to 10:30 pm
    Ratskeller Stuttgart
    Marktplatz 1
    70173 Stuttgart

As for the Republicans Abroad...repent!

Some Nobody's Political Roundup

Ugh, politics.  I suppose it's unavoidable, so might as well get it over with.  Obama seems to have captured the European press' imagination, judging by the tongue baths he received in my free Air France copies of Liberation and Le Monde.  That, plus the  request of longtime reader Ed P., spurs me to share some thoughts on the American presidential primaries. 

First, Edwards.  Unlike the multicultural Obama, Edwards' Southern-populist appeal would seem to be hard for non-Americans to grasp.  His direct attacks on moneyed interests sound like FDR and Harry Truman.*  He comes the closest of any Democrat to suggesting that American society might have things called social classes, and that members of those different classes might have different interests.  This sort of argument is still considered avant-garde in the United States, so Edwards has to be given some credit for guts. 

However, this champion of the least, the last, and the lost lives in a 28,200 square foot (793 square meter) gated compound worth $6 million.  He made this money with personal-injury lawsuits.  Personal-injury lawyers like to portray their jobs as a noble crusade for the little guy, but this crusade also just happens to conveniently make the best ones fabulously weathly at the very same time.  I generally try to judge candidates by what they say they'll do rather than "who they are", but his gated compound is just too SuperSized to ignore.  I just can't take the man seriously.  Also, there's only room for one quirky-but-potentially-electable Democrat, and Obama seems to have sucked up all the oxygen in that room.

As for Obama, he gives good speech, and can do the God talk that Americans crave without seeming fake.  He looks suave and professional and inspires confidence.  Also, I give him props for not immediately cashing in his law degree in return for Mammon.  Instead, he went into a tough part of Chicago and worked for poor people.  He's not the most progressive big-three candidate (Edwards is), however -- his policy positions are very hard to distinguish from Hillary's. 

Hillary has the schoolmarmish air of someone who's spent a lot of time around people who are not as bright as she is.  The more anti-intellectual and insecure American voters -- and there are a lot of them -- dislike such people.  Although Hillary's worked on her charisma lately, there's still a large reservoir of unfocussed hostility toward her, making her the easiest candidate to beat in 2008.  Also, her foreign-policy blustering has me thinking she'll be tempted to overcompensate to show her toughness, which is the last thing we need right now.

As for the Republicans, they're a pretty measly bunch.  I'm torn between wanting to see Huckabee get the nomination because he'd be such an amusing target and desperately not wanting him to get the nomination because huge numbers of Americans agree with his ludicrous harebrained exotic religious beliefs and vote on that basis, meaning that he could actually win.

But there's one thing to keep in mind.  Whoever the Democratic nominee is, that person will be hammered with crude attack ads during the entire summer and fall of 2008.  If Obama gets the nod, expect Americans to get to know the big scary black man who sold him all that pot and cocaine he's admitted to using (hashish is actually "shit" in French, so Obama is described in Liberation as an "ado qui a touché au shit et à la coke").  That will be only the beginning.  The personal attacks, plus the old-standby national-security fear mongering, will make inroads, as they did in 2004.  Whether that will be enough to tip the scales in the Republicans' favor is anyone's guess, but Republicans monger fear because it works, and the weaker the candidate, the more need for mongering.

And now for something completely similar.  Fellow expats, don't forget to think about voting in the Democrats Abroad global primary.  Here's the poster for the one in my neck of the woods:

* A little Truman for you: "The Republican Party, as I said a while ago, favors the privileged few and not the common everyday man. Ever since its inception, that party has been under the control of special privilege; and they have completely proved it in the 80th Congress. They proved it by the things they did to the people, and not for them. They proved it by the things they failed to do."

Why is Henry Kissinger so Famous in Germany?

Over at Altantic Review, Joerg Wolf has a good post quoting a recent interview with Henry Kissinger and a Foreign Policy piece arguing that Americans no longer have the will to see through long-term commitments of troops to combat operations abroad.  Neither do Europeans, for that matter.  Difference is, American voters can still be persuaded to let their leaders start military conflicts.  European voters are much more skeptical of military force as a tool for international problem-solving.

That's an interesting debate in itself, but I refer you to the Atlantic Review post for more.  The question I want to ask is: why is Henry Kissinger such a presence in Germany?  He's interviewed on German television and media frequently, and his views are usually treated with solemn respect.  I suppose the easiest explanation is that he still speaks his native language, and any prominent figure who can speak German (Peter Ustinov, for instance), will draw disproportionate attention in Germany.  Further, the people who run German media grew up seeing Kissinger on television every day (many probably protested his policies every weekend).  In the U.S., Kissinger receives much less media attention than he does here.  He still has some influence, but the last time he made the news in any serious way was when he resigned from a government commission convened to investigate 9/11 because of potential conflicts of interest stemming from the client list of his international consulting firm, Kissinger Associates.

This firm, by the way, has contracts with many multinational corporations.  We don't know which ones they are, because the firm refuses to reveal its client list and, reportedly, requires clients to keep their relationship with the firm secret as well.  You'd think basic journalistic practice would require this fact to be at least mentioned whenever Kissinger airs his views on foreign policy.  In Germany, however, it never is.  None of the people I have ever discussed Kissinger with here in Germany were aware that he runs a consulting firm whose clients have an interest in steering American foreign policy in particular directions.  Nor, for that matter, do German interviewers ever ask him questions about the matters discussed in Christopher Hitchens steaming little 2002 book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.  (Large excerpts of which can be found online here and here.)  Whether or not you agree with every one of the many items in Hitchens' indictment, the book makes serious allegations that, to my knowledge, have yet to be refuted.

Rule by Grown-Ups

Franz Muentefering, the head of the German Social Democratic Party, decides to step down to spend more time with his ill wife.  A blow for the Social Democrats, since "Muente" was probably the most colorful politician in Germany.  During the media frenzy about the affair, the Vice-President of the German Parliament, fellow Social Democratic Wolfgang Thierse, defends (G) Muentefering's decision by saying "To leave his wife sitting alone in the dark in Ludwigshafen, like [former Chancellor] Helmut Kohl did, is hardly ideal." 

This was a reference to the late Hannelore Kohl, wife of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.  She suffered from a severe light allergy, and took her own life in 2001.  Thierse was immediately criticized from all sides, including his own party, for referring to the private life of a fellow public figure.  He realized his error, and sent a letter to Chancellor Kohl apologizing for the remark.  Kohl says Thierse "apologized to me with good form.  I accept the apology.  As to other aspects of the matter, I will say nothing."

Class displayed.  Case closed.  Back to things that matter.

Are Germans' Views on Crime all that Distinctive?

I'm doing research on Germans' views on criminal justice at the moment, and I thought I'd share a few interesting facts. You sometimes hear Germans say things like "we Germans" are against the death penalty or that "Germany" is against the death penalty. And, in fact about 50-55% of Germans currently say they are are opposed  to the death penalty when they are given the abstract question "Are you for or against the death penalty?"  About 25-35% state that they are in favor, according to most recent polls. 

However, as with all polling questions, the specific phrasing is critical, as are the "national mood" and press coverge just before the poll. An example: on page 9 of this paper, a criminologist from the University of Kiel relates a 1996 poll which featured the following three questions:

Are you basically for or against the death penalty?

Are you for the death penalty for someone who commits the sexual murder of a child, or are you against the death penalty in all cases?

Are you for the death penalty when someone abducts and murders another person, or are you against the death penalty in all cases?

The answers were:

For the death penalty in general: 37%

For the death penalty for sexual murders of children: 60%

For the death penalty for murder after abduction: 50%

This is not surprising; ncreased support for the death penalty when survey respondents are asked about a horrible kind of crime is always higher than support for the death penalty in the abstract. The late 1990s saw a large increase in punitive sentiment in German society (including a 13-point rise in support for capital punishment).  Support for capital punishemnt has gone down since then, but nevertheless, a 2007 survey reveals that 86% of Germans would like to see those convicted of molesting children locked up for life (G).

I suspect that ordinary Germans have ideas about criminal justice that are not that far removed from citizens in other countries.  There is a dramatic difference in support for the death penalty between Germany and some of its neighbors to the East.  However, that difference in support would probably be reduced if you asked questions about specific kinds of very serious crimes, as was done in the 1996 poll.  Put another way, 35% of Germans and 70% of Poles might say they favor the death penalty in the abstract, because the average German probably associates capital punishment with George W. Bush or China. But when you focus their attention on the latest Lustmord that dominated headlines in their neighborhood newspaper, average Germans and Poles will probably begin to think a bit more alike.

Oh, and one other interesting fact. According to the 1998-2002 Allensbacher Institute public-opinion research yearbook, (p.677), the political party whose members are most likely to support capital punishmment are...the post-Communist PDS (42%). Go figure.

Me Vote for Pretty Candidate!

I sometimes get a bit of grief for not responding to comments more often. Let me say that I follow the comments on this blog closely. I'm often delighted or amused by what I find there. Also sometimes irritated, which is also a good thing. However, anyone who's ever actually run a blog knows that the key to keeping up active readership is to post something new as often as possible -- preferably every day. My day job often leaves me little time to tend to good old German Joys. Thus, when I have limited time, that time is better used, on blogalicious grounds, to post something new.

However, I would like to take up some comments Don made about my post of a few weeks ago on Bryan Caplan's new book, in which Caplan concludes a lot of things (summary here), one of them that Northern European voters seem to be more rational than their counterparts in other democracies.

Don took issue with my description of European political discourse as more rational and well-informed than in the U.S.:

European discourse more politically sophisticated? What do you mean by discourse, Andrew? Conversations with your landlady, Stammtisch debates, German media discussions?

Let us consider U.S. media and blogs as an example of public discourse. One list of links can be found under http://aldaily.com/ on the left side. Many are international, but most are U.S. Now, compare that list to media and blogs under http://www.goethe.de/wis/med/lks/ enindex.htm#1734508. In terms of variety and depth, not to mention energetic creativity and breadth of scholarship, the U.S. is ahead IMHO.

Blogs aside, though, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. I have now followed current affairs in Germany and France for a few years, in the original languages. The difference in quality and depth of information available to the average person in those countries and in the U.S. is sobering. That's why I have no trouble accepting Caplan's thesis. I haven't read Caplan's book yet, but I'd wager what he's talking about is the fact that average Europeans generally have a more accurate idea of what their nations' policies are, and what the various political parties stand for.

There is no debate among political scientists that the average American voter is incredibly ignorant. Ilya Somin recently brough a lot of the strands of research together in this readable Cato Institute policy analysis: "When Ignorance Isn't Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy."* He quotes political scientist John Ferejohn: “Nothing strikes the student of public opinion and democracy more forcefully than the paucity of information most people possess about politics.”

Somin brings together literally dozens of examples of the ignorance of the average American concerning basic facts relevant to American domestic and foreign policy. Some examples:

• 70% of Americans, as of November 2004, did not know that Congress had recently expanded federal coverage for prescription drugs, the largest, and most highly-publicized domestic policy initiative of the Bush Administration.
• Just after the hotly-contested 2002 Congressional elections, only 32% of voters knew that the Republicans controlled Congress before that election.
• Just after the hugely-publicized takeover of Congress by the Republicans in 1994, 57% of American voters did not recognize the name of Newt Gingrich, the leader of the Republicans at that time.
• In 1964, only 38% of American voters were aware that the Soviet Union was not a part of NATO.

"Majorities," summarizes Somin, "are ignorant of such basic aspects of the U.S. political system as who has the power to declare war, the respective functions of the three branches of government, and who controls monetary policy." (p. 4)

And his examples are just the tip of the iceberg. According to a 2001 PIPA study, Americans estimate that America spends 20% of its annual budget on foreign aid, overestimating the actual amount by about 40 times. As Bryan Caplan points out in the essay I linked to, 41% of Americans think foreign aid is one of the two biggest items in the American budget. Not surprisingly, many Americans want the allegedly "massive" foreign aid budget cut. PIPA ran a survey before the 2004 Presidential Election (unfortunately, the link I have no longer works, but I saved a copy of the syllabus on my computer) in which Bush supporters, by large majorities, stated their incorrect beliefs that President Bush had signed the Kyoto Treaty, supported the creation of an International Criminal Court, and favored the inclusion of labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. 56% percent of Republicans now favor referring Darfur war criminals to the International Criminal Court, even though the President they (presumably still) support opposes American participation in the court. 68% of Republicans believed, incorrectly, that President Bush actually favored American participation in the ICC in its present form.

The examples could go on and on. This isn't a debate about which policies are wisest -- it's a debate about whether voters even know what the policies are. Huge numbers of Americans do not have basic information about the political process.

There are plenty of reasons for this, but I would chalk a large part of it up to American television, the main source of news for the average American. Except for a few channels, it's all for-profit. These stations are competing for viewers, which means they are under pressure to package news in ways that attract viewers. This means heavy on the sex, violence, and scandal, and keep it short and snappy. Average length of a story on broadcast nightly news in the United States: 138 seconds, including the anchor's introduction.

Does anyone really doubt this? It slaps every European visitor to the USA in the face as soon as they turn on an American television. It slaps me in the face every time I return to the U.S. When I traveled throughout the U.S. with European friends in the summer of 2001, they were amazed to see that every channel they switched to, in every hotel we stayed in (and in the waiting rooms and restaurants that had televisions blaring into them), the story was...Chandra Levy. Yes, Chandra Levy.

Herzog on the Pathologies of the German Press

A while ago, I was leafing through the playbill to the Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus' stage adaptation of Bunuels classic 1962 film The Exterminating Angel - a typical afternoon's pursuit here at the Joy Division.

There, I found a reprint of a speech (G) given on April 26, 1997 by then-Federal President Roman Herzog. The Federal Presidency is an odd office. He's the titular head of state, and thus performs the sort of official functions a king might perform in a monarchy. His role has also, however, developed into the scold/cheerleader/conscience of Germany. Federal Presidents usually have a political background, but are supposed to put that off, as much as possible, when they take office. They're meant to look at Germany from an Olympian perspective, praising what is admirable and denouncing what is not.

Probably the biggest scold of the past few decades has been Roman Herzog, who was President from 1994-99. His political origins lay in the mainstream-conservative CDU/CSU, so he's a cherished whipping-boy of the left. Whatever you think of him politically, there's no question that he was one of the greatest scolds that ever scolded. In this 1997 speech, Herzog begins by describing the optimism he encountered on a recent trip to Asia, and then comparing it with German society, where he laments: "the loss of economic dynamism, the paralysis (Erstarrung) of society, and an unbelievable mental depression." Instead of approaching new technologies and challenges soberly, he continues,

...we fall prey to fear scenarios. There’s hardly a single new discovery which does not first provoke questions about the risks and dangers – but never about the opportunities. There’s hardly a single reform effort that is not immediately suspected of being an “attack on the social state.” Whether atomic energy, genetic technology, or digitalization: we suffer from the fact that our discussions are distorted into unrecognizability – to some extend ideologized, to some extent simply “idiotized.” Such debates no longer lead to decisions. Instead, they end up following a ritual, which always seem to play out in the same seven-step pattern:

1.            In the beginning, there is a reform proposal which would require some sacrifice from some interest group.

2.            The media registers a wave of “collective outrage.”

3.            Now (at the very latest) the political parties jump onto the bandwagon, one of them in favor, one against.

4.            The next phase produces a blizzard of alternative proposals and empty symbolic gestures of all kinds, going all the way to mass demonstrations, petition drives, and questionable blitz-polls.

5.            A general lack of orientation follows; citizens become insecure.

6.            Now, from all sides, come the appeals toward “prudence.”

7.            Finally, at the end, the problem is put off. The status quo is maintained. Everyone waits for the next big subject.

These rituals would be amusing to watch, if they didn’t also dangerously cripple the ability to actually make decisions.  We fight about the unimportant things, in order to avoid having to concentrate on the important ones.

I find Herzog's description spot-on. In fact, you can classify many German news stories precisely according to which of the above 7 steps they embody. Now you know why I rarely read German newspapers...

Social Democracy Week Part III: Walter Benn Michaels on Inequality and Diversity

Speaking of socialists, what about the American left in general?

It exists, of course. However, as Walter Benn Michaels (an English professor at the University of Illinois) argues in this essay, they often seem to care more about ethnic diversity than social equality:

We love race -- we love identity -- because we don’t love class. We love thinking that the differences that divide us are not the differences between those of us who have money and those who don’t but are instead the differences between those of us who are black and those who are white or Asian or Latino or whatever. A world where some of us don’t have enough money is a world where the differences between us present a problem: the need to get rid of inequality or to justify it....

But the fact that we all like to think of ourselves as belonging to the same class doesn’t, of course, mean that we actually do belong to the same class. In reality, we obviously and increasingly don’t. “The last few decades,” as The Economist puts it, “have seen a huge increase in inequality in America.” The rich are different from you and me, and one of the ways they’re different is that they’re getting richer and we’re not. And while it’s not surprising that most of the rich and their apologists on the intellectual right are unperturbed by this development, it is at least a little surprising that the intellectual left has managed to remain almost equally unperturbed. Giving priority to issues like affirmative action and committing itself to the celebration of difference, the intellectual left has responded to the increase in economic inequality by insisting on the importance of cultural identity. So for 30 years, while the gap between the rich and the poor has grown larger, we’ve been urged to respect people’s identities -- as if the problem of poverty would be solved if we just appreciated the poor. From the economic standpoint, however, what poor people want is not to contribute to diversity but to minimize their contribution to it -- they want to stop being poor. Celebrating the diversity of American life has become the American left’s way of accepting their poverty, of accepting inequality.

Socialist Takes Over (a Tiny Part of) America

Congratulations to the State of Vermont, which just elected the United States' first-ever socialist senator, Bernie Sanders:

"Bernard Sanders (I) [Independent] is the first self-proclaimed socialist to become a U.S. senator. The eight-term congressman, known to voters as Bernie, ran on a populist platform, promising to empower farmers, veterans, the elderly and the indigent. [...]

While campaigning, Sanders told reporters that the United States should learn from the democratic socialist models in Northern Europe."

Appropriately, Sanders' opponent was a "near-billionaire" businessman who a ctually did call Sanders a "red." You can visit Sanders' website, Bernie.org, here. Don't miss the socialist video game. Who says they're all humorless radicals?

Vermont is sort of like the Saarland of the USA, so don't read too much into this story...

The Party is Always Right!

Some people have accused this website of being little more than Communist propaganda. Damn straight, comrade!

Here's some more: perhaps the most famous propaganda song of the former German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany. It's called, appropriately enough, the Song of the Party (The Socialist Unity Party, that is). You can listen to it here. (.mp3 file; 2.7m).*

The song was written in 1950 by Louis Fuernberg, a the son of a Jewish merchant family from Moravia, a part of Czechoslovakia which then had a substantial German-speaking population). Fuernberg joined the Communist party when he was 17, and formed an agit-prop group called "Echo from the Left." When World War II broke out, Fuernberg emigrated to Palestine. His family remained in Czechoslovakia and were all murdered after the Nazi invasion. After the war, Fuernberg made his way through Czechoslovakia to East Germany, where he became a well-known playwright and novelist. He died in 1957

Below the fold, I've provided the German lyrics, with a literal English translation. I have not even attempted to make the translation rhyme or match the meter of the original German. That's really too bad, but of course it's Communist propaganda, folks, not Goethe.

You may find the song laughable or chilling, but it illustrates a typical propaganda technique. The "party is always right," goes the refrain. Not because everything it does is right, mind you, but because, as a whole, its purpose is to "fight[] for the right" and bring "freedom and peace" to the "poorest of the earth." Any stern measures the Party might have to take against decadent bourgeois individualists (remember, the Party never "flatter[s]" us) are justified by the overarching positive goals the Party pursues.

The lines about the Party giving us "sun and wind," however, are just plain bizarre.

Freedom for Mohnhaupt and Klar?

Yesterday on my local radio station there was a call-in show on the future of two convicted terrorists of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The RAF existed for almost thirty years, but its heyday was in the late 1970s, and especially in 1977, when the group staged a series of kidnappings an assassinations that caused a serious crisis atmosphere in Germany. This period was known as the "German Autumn."

Now two of the most infamous RAF prisoners, Brigitte Mohnhaupt (looking icily suave in the 'man'-hunt photo at left) and Christian Klar, might soon be released (G) after serving twenty-four years behind bars. Mohnhaupt, one of the leaders of the German Autumn attacks, is serving a sentence of five terms of life imprisonment plus fifteen years. She'll have a hearing before the Fifth Criminal Senate of the Stuttgart Regional Court on January 22 to determine whether she should be released early on parole. Klar, convicted of nine counts of murder and 11 counts of attempted murder, submitted his application for executive clemency years ago, when Johannes Rau was the President of Germany. Rau's successor, Horst Koehler, has signaled he might be near a decision.

Back in the day, these two were ideologically disciplined, stone-cold 'urban guerrillas', capable of planning and carrying out  sophisticated operations against heavily-guarded state and industry targets. Executing their targets, if necessary, was no problem to them, although not all of the murders charged to their account were execution-style.

Critical, Satisfied, Threatened German Voters

The Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung ("Friedrich Ebert Foundation") is a German think-tank closely identified with the mainstream-left German Social Democratic Party. They recently released a report called Society in the Process of Reform (G-pdf) in which they indexed the political opinions and worldviews of a large, representative sample of German citizens.

They came up with the following typology, which I've translated for you.

The Performance-Oriented Individualists (11% share of the voting public) are opponents of state intervention in the economy and desire a society which primarily rewards individual accomplishment. Two-thirds of these are men. Politically, they prefer the conservative camp and are more likely than average voters to vote for the [free-market oriented] Free Democrat Party.

The Established High-Performers (15%) represent primarily the upper-middle class free-market conservative milieu from smaller towns.  They are strongly oriented towards performance and accomplishment, and have a stronger-than-average connection to the [mainstream conservative] Christian Democratic Union party.

The Critical Educated Elite (9%) represent the youngest, best-qualified, and most left-wing group. This part of society has the largest component of people who are active in society and in party politics. Over four-fifths of them vote for one of the three left-wing parties that are currently represented in the German Parliament.

Snail-Friendly Formerly Socialist Indian Chiefs

First there was Karl May, the odd 19th-century German novelist who brought 'the Western' to Germany. Even though he'd never been to the United States, May's amazingly vivid descriptions of the rugged landscape of the West, and the ruggeder men who tamed it, were popular with German children. All Germans, and I mean all, can recite volumes about the loyal Indian scout "Winnetou", and the various palefaces who explored the West with him, including "Old Surehand" and "Old Shatterhand." The books remain in print to this day. In fact, Karl May has sold more books than any other German-language author.

Then there were American Westerns. Then came West German Westerns, which were successful. Then came Westerns...from the East! East Germany, that is. East Germany's historical role was the Potemkin country, the dolled-up store-display Communist dictatorship that showed the rest of the world that anything the West could do, the Soviet bloc could do just as well. (At least one Soviet-bloc country that is, which was relatively highly-developed and helped by massive infusions of Soviet economic aid). There were East German car brands, medical congresses, detective shows, management consultants, and even dance crazes (the Lipsi: "a dance invented by a committee, a bizarre hipless camel of a thing").

So there had to be socialist Westerns, and there were. In these Westerns, the Indians were wise, peaceable beings who didn't even have a word for "property," and the cowboys, except for a few noble exceptions, were sadistic liars or unwitting tools of the capitalist robber barons. The Indian chief was usually played by the muscular Gojko Mitic (l), the son of a Serbian peasant family who became a (socialist) world-wide star in such movies as Chingachgook the Great Snake and The Son of the Great Bear.* Although Mitic could speak fluent German, his dialogue was always dubbed, in order "not to discriminate against the Indians." (G).

Nein, George W. Bush is not a Nazi

Godwin's Law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Fatih Akin, the German director of the rather grueling but not uninteresting Gegen die Wand (English title: Head-On), which won the Berlin Film Festival in 2004, is a walking illustration of Godwin's law.

He had a T-shirt printed up that replaces the 'S' in Bush's name with a swastika, and has been wearing it during a film shoot in Hamburg. It is illegal to display the swastika in any context in Germany, so Hamburg prosecutors are investigating (G). Akin defends his T-shirt in the most recent Spiegel magazine: "Bush's policies are comparable with those of the Third Reich. I believe that in Hollywood, under Bush, certain films have been directed on behalf of the Pentagon, in order to normalize things like torture and Guantanamo. The Bush Administration is gunning for a third world war, I'm convinced of that. In my opinion, these people are fascists."

I don't have much interest in addressing rhetoric like this, because it's poking a stick into a nest filled with dumb and angry wasps. But the "Bush is a Nazi" meme comes up enough that it seems to merit a closer look. The federal Justice Minister under the former German coalition government, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, had to step down after comparing (G) Bush to Hitler in September of 2002. At a conference I recently attended, an American professor from a big, mainstream American university earnestly tried to convince German colleagues that George W. Bush was "worse than Hitler." Germans then tried to convince this American (!) that the comparison was inappropriate, a pretty amusing spectacle.

Two points: (1) The Germans are right: the comparison of George W. Bush with Hitler, or the claim that the Bush Administration's policies are "comparable to the Third Reich," is unfathomably stupid; (2) The claim also plays into some unsavory tendencies in revisionist discourse, a fact which may not be obvious to non-Europeans.

How Can Europeans Contribute to U.S. Causes?

If you don't fancy George W. Bush's policies, but you live in Europe, can you somehow donate to groups who oppose him?

Over at the American website Daily Kos, there's a short discussion about How can a European contribute money to US liberal causes?. Summary: You can't give to politicians, but you can give to independent non-profit organizations. While doing so, you might consider sending some Euros to the Texas Defender Organization, whom I used to work for, who are fighting the death penalty in Texas. They even accept paypal!

A Field Guide to Neo-Nazis

Sorry not to have posted much lately, I took a little trip to Rome, where I learned that the main Italian Communist party wants to provide everyone with free DSL internet. Refreshingly forward-looking of them!

But now back to Germany. I've lived almost three years here, and I have yet to see a neo-nazi. I'm a bit disappointed. They're hard to find. Neo-nazis have about the same position here as they do in the States: they're part of a miniscule sub-group that occasionally gets headlines, but plays a marginal role in daily life, unless you happen to live near them and not have white skin. They're especially rare in relatively prosperous parts of former West Germany, where I live.

But maybe I have seen a few, and didn't know it. They're hard to spot, since German law bans symbols commonly associated with the Third Reich. The ban creates a game of cat-and-mouse: the authorities ban a symbol or slogan, only to have right-wing groups replace it with a coded substitute which has so many meanings (or whose meaning is so obscure), that the courts rule it has no direct connection to the Third Reich.

Yesterday, I picked up a field guide to these codes at my local bookstore: Versteckspiel: Lifestyle, Symbole, und Codes von neonazistischen und extrem rechten Gruppen ("Hide and Seek: Lifestyles, Symbols and Codes of Neo-Nazi and Extreme Right Groups"), published by the non-profit group "Agency for Social Perspectives."

Mainstays of the iconography are derivatives of Nazi symbols, such as swastikas that have 3 or 12 arms instead of 4, or which have otherwise been slightly altered. Propaganda posters featuring tanks divisions, rows of square-jawed heroes or hordes of young men marching in uniform never seem to go out of style, even if now the youths are marching for the "Folk-Faithful Northern Youth Movement of Germany"  References to Nordic mythology and runes are also popular, especially when accompanied by drawings that look like heavy-metal album covers.

German Social Democracy Redux

Well, the commenters seem unconvinced by my brainstorm, and make many good points that I hadn't really thought of.  There's also this, from a review of a book by Tony Judt about modern Europe:

Western Europe became a place of social planning, nationalized economies, and strong states not because democratic socialism was in the Continental genes but because there were no reserves of private capital and few viable non-governmental institutions around to put the world back together again. The “European model,” Judt says, was mostly an accident. There was no great political vision; necessity and pragmatism ruled the day. As [Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, wrote in 1947], you cannot eat ideology. A lot of what Americans take to be traditionally European is simply an artifact of the postwar scramble for survival—for example, national branding.

Germany: Rawlsian Nation?

I was just reading my friend Marcos' doctoral dissertation, which looks at human nature as conceived by various contemporary political philosophers, when a thought struck me.

The thought's half-baked and probably not original, but that's never stopped me before, so here goes.  The American political philosopher John Rawls is most famous for his book A Theory of Justice, which proposes a contracts-based approach to the question of political participation and equality.  One of the most famous ideas in the book is Rawls' thought-experiment concerning the "original position" and the veil of ignorance.  It goes like this, crudely oversimplified (here it is, just plain simplified):

• The point of the exercise is to develop a basic social contract that will provide the optimal level of rights protection;
• The first step of the exercise is to imagine a society in the "original position": that is, a collection of individuals who have not yet formed a society, and are bargaining fairly and rationally about what rules that society will have;
• They stand behind a veil of ignorance: that is they cannot predict which position they will ultimately have in this society.  When they "step through the door" into the society they created, they do not know whether they will end up being a doctor, a banker, a janitor, or unemployed.

European Perceptions of the Death Penalty

It's been a while since I posted much original stuff, so now I'm giving you a huge post -- a super-deluxe triple-bonus pack of pure German Joys content.  Plus, it's on a brisant political issue -- the death penalty -- which I hope will please those of you who are more politically minded.  So, let's go!

The state of North Carolina executed Kenneth Lee Boyd yesterday, marking the 1000th execution in the United States since the re-introduction of capital punishment in the 1970s.  I thought I'd take this occasion to write down a few thoughts on how capital punishment in the USA is viewed here in Europe.  I have an unusual perspective on this because I am a lawyer and used to work full-time writing appeals on behalf of prisoners who are sentenced to death.  I oppose the death penalty, although you might not guess it from the rest of this post!

Because I happen to know a whole lot about the subject, I am often invited to speak about the death penalty before various groups in Germany.  I usually go, if my schedule permits.  At first, I enjoyed meeting new people and discussing this issue with them.  I still enjoy meeting the people, but I don't enjoy the discussions so much anymore.  I began to notice people repeating the same questions: "Why can't Americans see how racist the death penalty is?"  "How can it be that a country which is proud of its justice system lets so many innocent people be convicted?"  These questions were coming from smart, caring people; people who were "engaged" with the issue, as the Germans say.  Some had organized local activist groups, or had pen-pal relationships with condemned inmates.   Yet these and other questions betrayed a certain naivete that concerned me.

Kissinger on Merkel

Henry Kissinger writes an editorial on the new German government today in the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune. 

I pay attention to anything Kissinger says for a few reasons.  First, he's razor-sharp analytically.  Second, he's an elder statesman like Brent Scowcroft, which means you can generally assume the views he expresses also represent the views of a large segment of the American and international establishment.  Perhaps he has even consulted with them concerning the phrasing and emphasis he applies to various points. Third, like many other non-Germans who can speak German, Kissinger enjoys an astoundingly high profile here.  Fourth, Kissinger writes like a German in English.*Second, how many (informally) accused war criminals ever get to write editorials in major papers?

I'll give you the executive summary.  At first, Kissinger was discouraged by the fractured vote results and the need to patch together a grand coalition made up of parties "normally in strident opposition."  Now he's cautiously optimistic.  Merkel has made her way up in the ranks of the CDU against stiff opposition and without a natural base of support, so she's made of tough stuff.  Domestically, the grand coalition will probably develop the will to impose reforms at some point, because each member of the coalition realizes that if "if they frustrate each other, the coalition will break up, and each of them would face the dilemmas that obliged them to form the coalition in the first place."  Everyone knows a meltdown of the coalition would drive even more support to fringe or client-based parties, leading to a disastrous phase of Italian-style gridlock.  Germans want to bring Italian cars back home, not Italian politics.

President Bush vs. the Onion?

The Onion is the best satire magazine in the U.S.  One of their targets, of course, is President Bush.  They routinely produce stories which included a picture of the Presidential Seal.  The problem is, you're not supposed to use the Presidential Seal except for things Presidential, so the President's lawyer wrote the Onion to protest, as the New York Times reports:

Citing the United States Code, [the President's lawyer] Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement." Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.

The Onion was amused. "I'm surprised the president deems it wise to spend taxpayer money for his lawyer to write letters to The Onion," Scott Dikkers, editor in chief, wrote to Mr. Dixton. He suggested the money be used instead for tax breaks for satirists.

...

"It is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, The Onion intends to 'convey... sponsorship or approval' by the president," wrote Rochelle H. Klaskin, the paper's lawyer, who went on to note that a headline in the current issue made the point: "Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of Country."

How did the Bush White House find out about the allegedly improper use of the alleged seal?

"Despite the seriousness of the Bush White House, more than one Bush staffer reads The Onion and enjoys it thoroughly," he said. "We do have a sense of humor, believe it or not."

Dr. Rifkin: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Unemployment

Well, I hope some people enjoyed the little trip into the "dark fieriness" of one of my most beloved composers, Gabriel Fauré. 

But let's face it, if you want to keep your blog readers, you've gotta get polemical.  And this blog is, technically, supposed to be about Germany.  So here we go.  Strap on your seatbelts, adjust your tin-hats, and get ready for an old-fashioned stemwinder.

But before we set out, pleast note: I am making an argument as a devil's advocate here. I may agree with some of the points made, but mainly I wanted to throw out a half-baked, but perhaps interesting analysis, and see how people react.

1.  Germany will never again have full employment

Germany's going to have over 10% unemployment for the foreseeable future. It may go up to 15%. To solve this problem, the new coalition government needs to (1) find the will to implement reforms; and (2) implement the right ones. Let's not forget, Germany implemented a lot of painful reforms under Schröder, and unemployment went up. France introduced the 35-hour work week, and we all know where that went. 

Is the new government going to get #1 and #2 right?  Of course not.  Why?  Because the only way to seriously reduce unemployment is to introduce reforms that have no chance of getting majority support in Germany.

Future U.S. Headlines Explained Now

Germany has been pretty consumed with the formation of its new government.  Therefore, perhaps, it's not been particularly occupied with the collapse of the old government in the United States.  I am speaking of the potential coming indictment of senior White House staffers which will be handed down this week.

Now, to make some things clear first.  The special prosecutor investigating the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, may not accuse anybody of a crime at all.  Nobody knows exactly what he plans to do, and if he announces that he has not discovered any evidence of wrongdoing, this entire scandal will be gone in days.  But most people think he will indict (anklagen) senior White House officials.

German readers probably don't understand the background very well.  It's complicated; few Americans would either.  So here's a simplified outline.  I've put the major ideas in bold, just as in plenty of German websites:

1. As we all know, before the second Gulf War began, the Administration of the United States -- especially Vice President Dick Cheney -- said they believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
2. As part of the attempt to prove this, people associated with Cheney asked the Central Intelligence Agency to send someone to Niger.  There had been rumors that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase Uranium in that country.

There is, unfortunately, rather a lot more below the fold.  Remember, I really did try to keep this simple...

Coalescing Nicely

So it's Angela Merkel in the top spot, and various Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in the ministries.  I found it interesting to watch the negotiations unfold.  In the United States, it's always clear the next day who won the election (except for 2000, when the tinfoil-hatters* had over a month to speculate -- before their worst nightmare actually came true).  Whenever I'd seen news from the UK or Germany about coalition negotiations, in fact, I'd always registered mild surprise: it's been 3 weeks, and they still don't know who's running the country?  Shouldn't there be looting by now?

As for the Grand Coalition [GC], I understand that it could well turn out to be too hesitant and timid to tackle the "basic reforms" Germany needs (everyone agrees Germany needs them; nobody agrees on exactly what they are), but it seems to me the most legitimate choice.  Look at it this way.  Take the average CDU/FDP coalition or Red-Green.  Both parties, when their votes are added together, just squeak over the 51% margin necessary to form a government.  The junior partner, because its cooperation is desperately needed, is often able to gain a disproportionate amount of influence in the coalition negotiations.  What this means is that the country is governed by a political grouping that 49% of the people didn't vote for, and the junior coalition partner, a party whom 91-92% of the voters did not want running the country, ends up with 3-4 ministries; often including the foreign ministry.

Finally, Germany again has a Leader...

...who is a devoted admirer of Richard Wagner.  Fancy that: a post which actually does fit into the categories of both music and politics.

Alex Ross, the film critic of the New Yorker, notes in this blog post with astonishment that Angela Merkel was able to give an interview to the FAZ which "ran to nearly five thousand words, and [] was devoted entirely to the subject of Wagner." (his emphasis).  [Ross is surprised because he comes from a country in which, if you asked the average politician for his opinion of the work of Richard Wagner, you might get a response like: "He's great.  I really liked him in Hart to Hart and that movie about the thingies."

Ross provides a hasty translation of the original, which is good, because the link to the original is broken.  Here is a summary of Merkel's interview in German, in which she notes that her husband introduced her to Wagner in 1991.  In summary, Merkel loves the idea of Bayreuth, thinks the associations of Wagner with the ideology of national socialism is a dead issue, and doesn't particularly like the stagings of Christoph "Bad Boy" Schlingensief, although she criticizes him very politels.  In Ross's hasty translation: "Herr Schlingensief had many very interesting ideas, but I found that the piece now radiated too many stimuli, a multilayeredness of perceptions, which had a distracting character."

I'm beginnning to like this Merkel more and more...

A Red, Green & Blue American

Susan Neiman is an American who came to Germany in 1982 to study Kant.  Since then, she's spent much time in Germany and in Israel as an academic. She's currently the head of the Einstein Forum Potsdam, a sort of institute that brings together prominent international thinkers from various fields for interdisciplinary projects and discussions.

She's just written a short book called Fremde Sehen Anders (roughly, "Strangers see Differently") to give Germans an idea of how their land is viewed abroad, and timed its release to occur just before the most recent German elections. The Zeit, at least, was rather taken with the book; they've put it in their top 5 recommended non-fiction book list, and have featured Neiman prominently. You can read a short review of the book on their website here, and read an interview with her here (both in German).

Neiman begins the book by noting something that puzzles those who get to know the German public opinion climate more than superficially: the wide gap between how educated Germans perceive their country and how visitors do. "Whether in the Feuilleton or in the Kneipe, Germans of all classes and regions are all in agreement as to one thing: the country's going to the dogs." (11) The German press displays a "chronic depression," and she sees a kind of sado-masochism" in the way the press viciously assaulted the Red-Greed administration in its last months: "The loudies cries of joy [at the downfall of Red-Green] came not from the opposition, but from Red-Green's earlier adherents. They couldn't wait to celebrate the end of their hopes." (12)

An Uncommonly Civil Mini-Crisis

I've got to hand it to German politicians.  The election on Sunday led to no clear winner, no mandate.  Emotions ran high -- well, as high as they generally run in Germany, which is no hotbed of hotheadedness.  Just after the vote, the leaders of all five major parties got together on national television and, in the presence of two journalist-moderators, and debated each other about the future of the country.  Already, that had the American part of me saying "They did what now?  Jesus, does that ever sound like a recipe for getting pulled off-message!"

But all of the leaders showed up, none of them had a teleprompter, and they agreed to be quizzed by journalists.  At least some of the time, they actually more-or-less answered on anothers' questions.  Fancy that!  And you know what?  They debated Serious Issues, and remained perfectly civil throughout.  Everyone called each other Mr. or Mrs., or Kollege (my colleague), or used the appropriate title.  There were a few interruptions, and some heated moments, but that was it.  The only real breach of etiquette was that Chancellor Schroeder seemed a bit too brassy and defiant.  But overall, they talked about the possibility of forming coalitions, and their parties' ideas about how to solve Germany's problems, and other grown-up things.

You're All Wrong, says Kaletsky

It's interesting to note the gulf between observers of German politics coming from the English-speaking world and Continental observers.  Many observers from the Anglo-Saxon sphere are puzzled by what appears to be the persistent ignorance of basic macroeconomic principles of Continental economic decisionmakers such as the European Central Bank. 

German Words of the Week: Verunsicherung, verwählen, Verstimmung

In this week's lesson, we learn the extraordinary versatility of the German prefix "ver-"; and we assess the results of yesterday's inconclusive election. 

After some serious setbacks in regional voting for his Social Democratic Party, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder arranged to lose a confidence vote in the German parliament in July.  This enabled him to move forward the date for elections to yesterday, September 18th.  There was about a six-week phase of intense campaigning before the vote.  At first, the conservative candidate, Angela Merkel, had the decisive advantage.  The polls showed her party with a narrow majority when twinned with its preferred coalition partner, the Free Democrats.  She portrayed herself as a bold reformer, with the necessary ideas to break Germany out of its continuing economic stagnation and reduce the nation's 12 percent unemployment.  Part of her plan was to pick Paul Kirchhof, a law professor who had long favored a flat-tax scheme, ably described by Ed Philp in this post.

Some perspectives on Angela Merkel

Daniel Johnson of the New Statesman on the 68er.  The rest of the article discusses Merkel, and is equally opinionated...

The students of the 1960s identified [many aspects of post-war German society] with the Nazis, and by the 1980s, under their growing influence, the "don't mention the war" syndrome of Konrad Adenauer's Germany was reversed, so that the process of "overcoming the past" became a national obsession. The symbol of German rehabilitation was no longer the Mercedes, but the memorial.

If they were right to reject the suffocating silence about the Nazi past, their response did not make Germany more whole, or a healthier place. From having been the hardest-working nation in Europe, it became one of the laziest. In the land of Luther, Kant and Bach, the churches stand empty, the universities are mediocre, and there are few writers, artists or composers of international repute. At the same time the postwar identification with the American victors - Kohl's idea of fun was and is listening to the United States Air Force Band - has turned into a visceral anti-Americanism that Schroder is happy to exploit and legitimise.

A prediction about Friedrich Merz

I've followed the career of Friedrich Merz, the 'shadow' CDU finance minister (as the English call it) fairly closely, since he seems to me to be one of the most interesting politicians on the scene in Germany.  Based on my careful analysis of Ms. Merkel's speech in Berlin, as well as press coverage of the Merz/Kirchof 'tandem' issue, and my analyses of the artwork of Kurt Schwitters (who, after all, created a 'Merzbau'), I predict that if Angela Merkel is elected, she will name Merz to be Finance Minister.

Just a prediction; we'll see if time bears it out...

Ed Philp, Kirchhof and the Flat Tax

Just got a little bit of time to look at Ed's interesting posts from my time in Slovenia.  In his long post about the election, he makes a pretty convincing case for the Kirchhof plan, which is not something even high-ranking CDU officials seem to be capable of doing at the moment.  There was a Tagesgespraech just 2 days ago on WDR 5 about the Kirchhof plan.  The callers were about evenly divided between people who (1) had wild misconceptions about what the plan entailed; and (2) who complained that, even though they had been following political news closely, they had yet to read a detailed account of exactly what the plan entailed, except for the soundbites about 25% and "Abschaffung der Steuerbegunstigungen" (getting rid of tax write-offs). 

To be fair, the journalist who was invited on the the program, Elisabeth Niejahr from Die Zeit, pointed out that they'd run several huge articles explaining the details.  That's why I subscribe to Die Zeit, which is one of the finest newspapers in the world.  But, of course, not all German media are so thorough.  What we're seeing, I think, is typical lazy journalism. Some German media did a reasonable job covering the specifics of Kirchhof's proposals, but many others did not.  The story only became really interesting when personality conflicts surfaced.  It's a lot easier to write about personalities than policy, and that's precisely what many German media outlets are doing.   Is Kirchhof twisting in the wind?  Will Merkel distance herself from him?  What about Merz?  Was it political kabuki all along? 

Anti-anti-Americanism

Having just got back from Slovenia, I was delighted to see the relative lack of anti-Americanism there among the people I met, at least in terms of their personal interaction with me.  In fact, a good friend of mine, whom I visited there, was generally pro-American, and supported policies of the current U.S. Administration with which I disagreed.  I have to admit, it was refreshing to see this, after enduring the sneering, patronizing tone of much German coverage of the United States in the German press. 

As my Slovenian friend said: "Don't believe this stuff about anti-Americanism just being about George W. Bush and his unpopular policies.  I was here in Slovenia after 9/11, and the comments Slovenian intellectuals made among themselves were filled with vicious glee and self-righteous Schadenfreude.  The European form of anti-Americanism is not primarily about George W., although he certainly is unpopular.  It's more about European resentment -- resentment at the fact that the U.S. actually has a lot of power in the world, whereas many Europeans feel they should have a lot of power."

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany

Yes!  It exists!  Read more about it here.  (Note their complaint that the "bourgeois" German press maintains a "deathly silence" toward their existence.)

But most of all, go visit their campaign poster section, and enjoy a trip down Marxist memory lane.  So colorful!  So piquant!  Actual pictures of Marx and Lenin!  A demand for a 30-hour workweek with the same salary!  And, best of all, socialist workers in overalls with healthy, cheerful, big-boned N