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Bulletin No. 39, February 29, 2012 Anti-Communist Goliath Vs Anti-Fascist David (This Time Female) By Victor Grossman Berlin I: CHRISTIAN WULFF How could it happen that a fervent anti-Communist, a pastor from East Germany, supported by all four traditional parties in Germany, is now confronted by an equally elderly, equally vigorous female David, whose "weapon" is her life-long fight against fascism? It all began with a coup d'etat, not in Central America or a South Sea islet but in Europe's mightiest nation. In the lead was no saber-waving equestrian conqueror or radical junta with bombs but a newspaper, famed for gossip, a daily nudie photo, and a far-right bias. The man overthrown, Germany's president, a mostly mild- mannered, not too effective gentleman, made two known mistakes - and maybe some less visible ones. Christian Wulff's first blunder, or blunders, consisted of several acts of minor bribery, favors, and self- aggrandizement, none pretty but all very petty compared with misdeeds involving far more digits by other politicians in Germany and virtually every country. A second mistake was Wulff's surprisingly courageous statement that Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, was now part of Germany. This flew in the face of all those now conjuring up a dangerous Turkish and Arab menace. Crude, violent, even fatal attacks were by neo- Nazis. Others worked with words; the newspaper BILD (German for "picture"), part of the Springer media empire and selling 11 million copies daily, was worst in spreading this hatred, and it led the pack against Wulff. Most of the media quickly climbed aboard and soon twisted general popular approval of Wulff into mocking rejection. But there are rumors of weightier blunders. Wulff dared to criticize the European Central Bank and even Angela Merkel (though in her party) because of their demands for "austerity" and cuts in the social network in Greece and elsewhere; his warnings that this would not solve problems but intensify them broke a major taboo! Far worse perhaps, Wulff, then minister-president in Lower Saxony, where Volkswagen cars are produced, and therefore representing his state's 20 % package of shares, may have played a key part in saving that giant company from being bought out by a group of banks, insurance companies and investment funds in Europe, Asia and the USA. This greatly angered some financial sectors, who are now suing for billions. Did it also help motivate BILD, or the Springer giant which owns it? This remains an open question. The BILD coup succeeded. Who was chosen to replace Wulff as German president? II: JOACHIM GAUCK When cameras are on Joachim Gauck usually smiles - or reflects pensively. In 2010, before he narrowly lost to Wulff in an earlier vote for president, a tear or two was often visible when he publicly recalled terrors he had faced in the nasty East German past. Now, about to replace Wulff, he no longer weeps, but that terrible past remains the basic content of his very eloquent speeches. His hatred is easily explained. His father, a Nazi party member and captain in the wartime German navy, was convicted of espionage and imprisoned in Siberia from 1951 to 1955. His embittered mother (an even earlier Nazi Party member) taught the family to reject everything in the East, where they lived. Yet Joachim Gauck did not do badly as a Protestant pastor. Three of his children were permitted to move to West Germany and even return to visit their parents, rare privileges in the years of the Berlin Wall. Equally uncommon was the permission to import an expensive West German van. A former State Security (Stasi) officer has described a very civil meeting to discuss these and more political matters; Gauck should have reported such a meeting to his bishop - but didn't. Whatever his true relationship with the Stasi, Gauck only jumped onto the actively "dissident train" against the GDR when its safe arrival was assured. But his jump was then vigorous and lucky; he became official administrator of the Stasi files, soon known as the Gauck Archive. In his ten years in that position he was notorious (or for some heroic) for ruining the careers and often the lives of former GDR citizens who had any contacts whatsoever with the Stasi - an extremely large number of people, including repugnant snitcher types but also many whose jobs simply necessitated such contacts or others who saw them as a patriotic duty in opposing take-over threats by West Germany - which finally proved to be no paranoid fear. Most famous of such Nero-like thumb-down decisions was the attack on Stefan Heym, an emigrant German writer who fought the Nazis as a US officer, moved to the GDR in 1952, gained great popularity but after various quarrels became a persona non grata under constant Stasi surveillance. In 1994 he was elected to the Bundestag for the Left party (then still PDS) and at 81, the oldest deputy, he was entitled to give the opening speech. But when the Gauck Archive told the media he had been a Stasi agent, Christian Democratic deputies refused to join a standing welcome, refused to applaud and ostentatiously refused to listen to the moving speech of the only Jewish deputy. The Gauck Archive charges later proved to be baseless. A top TV journalist asked Gauck whether it was right for him to totally condemn emigrant intellectuals who returned to the intensely anti-fascist GDR after 1945 rather than to West Germany, with its countless ex- Nazis in leading positions, and whether high-piled Stasi dossiers of paper were really as despicable or worse than huge piles of corpses left by the Nazis. In hesitant reply, Gauck justified West German tolerance of Nazi killers by suggesting that "for survivors of Auschwitz, leaving such mountains of corpses and so much guilt behind them, perhaps it was necessary at first to sort of catch breath and not face it all immediately." The journalist was shocked at his confusion of victims with killers and his thin excuse for letting guilty Nazis go scot-free or rise to new leadership while those Gauck viewed as guilty of GDR repression should expect no mercy! In the 23 years since 1990 Gauck never ceased attacking the GDR or, with it, all hopes and dreams of any system change. He demonstrated this at the opening of the Salzburg Music Festival in 2011, where the keynote speaker was to be Jean Ziegler, the Swiss economist and UN human rights advocate. Then it was found that his planned speech linked anger about the control by 500 private corporations of 52.8 % of the world's gross national product with words about the southern hemisphere, where 4.8 billion of the world's 6.7 billion people live, and a child dies of hunger every 5 seconds. Two big banks and a major foodstuff company, festival sponsors, got Ziegler fired - and replaced by a more than eager Joachim Gauck. After eulogizing the beauty of music in a dreary world, Gauck turned to praise a system of "free people in liberty and without censorship, with no requirement that the artists pledge good behavior, where freedom of art and the artist was truly lived" and "great art is imbedded in the living breath of freedom". Meanwhile adherents of Ziegler had to abandon plans to distribute his forbidden speech at the entrance. Gauck hit his main point again: "In future we Europeans, as scalded children, will prefer the plain black bread of Realpolitik to the sweetest pastry of ideologies. It is wiser to yearn less for a perfect society than work painstakingly for a simply better society - or, if you will, a less bad one." What he meant by "less bad" became clearer last year when even conservative politicians paid lip service to the OCCUPY movement, suddenly so popular in Germany. But not with Gauck, for whom all criticism of the banks was "unutterably ridiculous" and "will quickly fade away". "The dream of a world which dispenses with ties to the market is a romantic illusion", he insisted, and then added his favorite definitive, fatal blow: "I have already lived in a country where the banks were occupied". His conclusion: "Whoever chooses - of all options - to take freedom away from the business sector will always lose more than he gains." His constant attacks on progressive ideas applied to many issues. Gauck supported the use of German troops in Afghanistan as a patriotic duty. When told that a well-known church bishop - for some years she headed the Lutheran-Evangelical church in Germany - had stated that "Nothing is going well in Afghanistan" and called for German withdrawal, Gauck's response was: "Of course you can say that nothing is going well in Afghanistan. But where is everything going well? Here in Frankfurt maybe?" When asked his views of the openly racist book by the politician-banker Thilo Sarrazin, viciously attacking Turkish and Arab people as less intelligent, less useful and destructive to Germany's existence, Gauck, though careful not to endorse the book, praised Sarrazin for his "courage" in raising questions which a language of "political correctness" would otherwise hide away. And to make his views a little clearer, he spoke of areas in German cities with "all too many immigrants and all too few native Germans". Yes, he was certainly very "pro-German" -in line with issues stressed by the political right. He spoke of the "gross injustice cemented by the Communists in 1950 when they recognized the Oder-Neisse border" of Poland (actually a decision by all major powers in the Potsdam Agreement in 1945 and finally accepted by the Federal Republic in 1970). He welcomed a "long neglected recollection in Germany: Germans as victims. After decades of dealing in many facets with German guilt, questions are now reappearing about the German victims of the air raids, about refugees and expellees. But even with this development, like a reflex, we are warned not to relativize the guilt of Germans, a worry which seems superfluous to me." Gauck's words were almost always chosen with care, but their tendency was very clear - to play down the Nazi past, play up the terrors of communism or socialism, and thus warn against any alteration of present day status quo - except only an intensification of pressure against the Left in any hue or trend. Now that it has become evident that the Verfassungsschuetz, the FBI- like office of Constitution Protection, neglected or even participated in pro-Nazi activities while directing its attention against the Left, Gauck rationalized: "If the Verfassungsschuetz is observing certain persons or groups within this party it will have good reason for doing so." Gauck's openly rightist views make the avid support of the Social Democrats and Greens more than peculiar. Indeed, they even won support for Gauck from the big- biz Free Democrats, who first hoped that by thus spunkily defying their coalition partner, Merkel, they might improve dimming hopes of remaining on the political stage. But then even Merkel's party, which opposed him two years ago and feebly supported Wulff for a month or so, finally climbed aboard for Gauck, making it all four "proper" parties backing him. The aim of the Greens and SPD was to isolate, split and weaken the Left by pushing the idea that anyone opposing Gauck was still avidly pro-GDR and pro-Stasi. This endeavor was backed by most of the media, always happy to crusade against the Left - or any progressives. For anyone who recalled better days of the SPD and the Greens it was not a pretty sight. III: BEATE KLARSFELD And the Left? Weakened in past months by internal quarrels, it faced the choice: quietly accept the foregone conclusion of Gauck's victory on March 18th - or put up a counter-candidate, with no chance of winning but with an opportunity for unaccustomed media coverage. The latter policy seemed the proactive one. It was not easy to find a candidate willing to face strenuous barn-storming and an expected barrage of attacks in a David-Goliath battle against all four other parties. On Monday, after difficult debate, they chose Beate Klarsfeld, 73, who courageously agreed to enter the fray. The reason for the debate was that Klarsfeld, not a member of the Left party, holds views greatly opposed by some (but not everyone) in the party. She lives in Paris and has spoken out for Sarkozy, which however is less contentious in Germany than her support of current Israeli policy - a very divisive issue within the Left party. She even favored attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, possibly even Iran. But even the most vigorous supporters of human rights for Palestinians swallowed their reservations; in the end the vote for Klarsfeld was unanimous! The reasons were obvious. Since she cannot possibly win, her foreign policy views are hardly relevant. But for the past 45 years Beate Klarsfeld has been a human symbol of anti-fascism! As an au pair in Paris the young Berlin woman met, fell in love with and married a Jewish Rumanian-Frenchman who as a boy saw his father dragged off to be murdered in Auschwitz. The two resolved to expose and attack former Nazis who had risen so high in West Germany. They did not have to search far: Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a Nazi Party member from 1933 until 1945, worked in the radio propaganda department of the Foreign Ministry and was responsible for that ministry's connection with the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels, a top Nazi. In 1968 Kiesinger was on top as West Germany's chancellor. For the Klarsfelds this was intolerable. Pretending to be a journalist, Beate slipped into the Christian Democratic convention, ran to the stage and slapped Kiesinger in the face, calling out "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi!" While being dragged out she kept shouting, "Kiesinger! Nazi! Resign!" Kiesinger held his hand to his cheek - and refused to comment on the incident until his death. The episode was truly historic. She was arrested (but not sent to prison) for this and countless future actions with her husband - and later their son and daughter - against Nazi war criminals and anti-Semitism, in West Germany, in Poland, and in all the South American dictatorships of the 1970's where top Nazis were prospering (often in collusion with West Germany and sometimes the USA). The Klarsfelds found Klaus Barbie, the murderer of many French Jews and Resistance fighters, and got him deported to France and sentenced. Other actions prevented West Germans in leading positions from staying on top. They arranged for exhibitions with the names, faces and sufferings of Jewish children sent to their deaths. Although the Klarsfelds pulled no punches in exposing and prosecuting the guiltiest men, and thereby hit some still powerful in Paris, they were awarded officership in the French Legion of Honor. In Germany the Left Party twice proposed awarding them the German Cross of Merit but two Foreign Ministers, the Free Democrat Westerwelle and the Greens' Joschka Fischer were able to prevent this. And now Beate Klarsfeld - despite differences with many members and leaders - became candidate for the Left party. Although she has never as yet attacked her opponent in any way, she has said: "With my candidacy the candidate Joachim Gauck now faces someone who symbolizes something different, the prosecution of former Nazis." The decision has already livened up a hitherto one- sided election process. The co-chair of the Greens, Cem Özdemir, was quick with an attempt to split the Left once again on the question of Israel-Palestine; thus far no-one seems to have taken him up on the issue. It is the only weak issue available, for none of the four main parties supporting Gauck can really attack Beate Klarsfeld. They cannot red-bait her as a "Stalinist", since she is clearly not a Red (she was stupidly denied entry to the GDR at one point) nor tie her in any way to the Stasi. Indeed, they must be very cautious in attacking her at all because of her anti-fascist record and the current scandal about government agencies keeping close watch of leftists but somehow overlooking (or even cooperating with) neo-Nazis, including murderous ones. No, Klarsfeld has no chance of winning; in the special, big Electoral Assembly which must choose a president the Left will have only 125 votes against 1110 for the four main parties. But voting is secret, and Gauck's popularity ratings, despite press jubilation, have been anything but glorious, even in his home town. Some delegates, especially less opportunist Greens and Social Democrats who disapprove of Gauck, admire Klarsfeld, or both, may just break party ranks and vote their conscience. Any number above that of the 125 Left Party delegates would represent a success; a large number could be very embarrassing for the four Gauck parties. The results are due in less than three weeks. Gauck means a German rightward push. Votes for Klarsfeld could provide needed balance. ___________________________________________ Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. 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