Risk and Extortion LIV: The Constitution of Lies

Staatsräson and Article 1 of the Grundgesetz in Germany

The growing gap between political and media elites, working on behalf of a small group of very rich people, and the masses they are supposed to be managing, must be a cause for concern. This is logical. You cannot expect, for example, people to die for their country if they do not believe that the government supports their interests. When a growing majority of popular criticism of Israel  across Europe are confronted with prominent political and media figures who continue to speak in the language of Hasbara – which is drenched in shamelessness, hypocrisy and cowardice – it does not merely affect the issue of criticism of Israel, but spreads to all other areas. We have already seen that during the Covid Pademic, sceptical voices were deploying the trope of “political and media elites” as having access to means of government and administration that bypass democratic due process. Regardless of what political ethos fuelled this criticism – there is obviously a strong foothold in right-wing political cultures among those opposing lockdowns, face-masks, vaccinations etc – the erosion of trust in government and media is going to affect every aspect of the state.

The most likely outcome will be the opposite of democratization of government. The way in which in Germany, protests against genocide and Israel’s disregard for the dignity of human life (Article a of the German Grundgesetz) are being criminalized and vilified – as if Article 1 is meaningless when it contradicts with Staatsräson – is a clear indicator of the rising authoritarianism of the German state. This is not just limited to protests against the German support for and complicit in genocide and war crimes, but also to, for example, the role of the German State in supporting the ecocidal activities of fossil fuel industries with violence if necessary. Anti-Terrorism laws have been used against all kinds of protests against the government and corporations.

The biggest lie of the German State might be that it supports Article 1 of the Grundgesetz. The “Unantastbarkeit der Menschenwürde” has never been unconditional. It has always been selectively used and thus also ignored. The German support for the genocide in Gaza is a direct violation of Article 1, but pointing this out is also taking the risk of being labelled a “terrorist”. Terrorists seem to disqualify as human beings entitled to the protection of Article 1. This is of course the playbook of Zionism. For 80 years, Zionism has labelled the indigenous population of Palestine “terrorists” because they want to establish a Jewish state. They have succeeded in turning “terrorist” into an ethnic identity associated with Arabs and Muslims, just as they have effectively displaced antisemitism from its true origins in Europe and projected them on anyone who opposes Zionism, especially people from West Asia.

Yesterday, I happen to stumble across a German you-tube video celebrating police violence against a teenager who stuck up his middle finger to a police camera. The comments were calling for “lefties” to be sent to internment camps. I had to stop myself from asking them if they would suggest the reopening of Dacha, the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany that was created to lock up political opponents of National Socialism. Let there be no mistake, those militia-type sentiments, expressed by cybercowboys from the safety of their mothers’ basements, are like Hasbara, drenched in shamelessness, hypocrisy and cowardice. They are the living proof that Holocaust-Remembrance Education has not only failed in its stated purpose, it has actually reproduced the conditions of its repetition. Because it was never considered systemically relevant that “lefties” were the first victims of concentration camps, there seems to be no problem for this “solution” to be expressed as a popular sentiment today. “Lefties” are of course also protesting against the genocide in Gaza and the role of the German state as complicit in war-crimes. The reincarnation of the S.A. – this time via social media – calling for concentration camp style internments of these lefties is of course going to lead to violent public confrontations, allowing the state to exercise even more authoritarian rule. History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.