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      Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power

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      In 1983, long-haired MPs wearing knitted sweaters and carrying flowers entered Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. These obscure and humble beginnings of the Greens as an anti-establishment party are long gone from the German political scene. From 1998 to 2005, the party formed a governing coalition with Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrats (SPD) on a national level. Since then, the Greens have also carried responsibility in numerous state governments.

      The Green Party hasn’t been part of a national government for 16 years now, but it is eager to pick up the reins again. Increased public approval is fueling its craving for power. For about two years now, the Greens’ poll numbers have been hovering around the 20% mark. Compared to the party’s best federal election result yet, 10,7% in 2009, approval has almost doubled. At the pinnacle, in June 2019, some polling agencies projected 27% support for the Greens, pushing the party to the top spot, 3% ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).

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      With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, these approval ratings dipped temporarily as the ruling parties attracted most public attention while applying rigorous measures to combat the virus. Nonetheless, during the last couple of months, the Greens have recovered. The party is a force to be reckoned with during the upcoming September general election. What has prompted these skyrocketing poll numbers?

      Rising Stars

      In January 2018, two fresh faces entered the national political arena. Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck became joint party leaders for the Greens and have since become rising stars.

      Robert Habeck holds a doctorate in philosophy and is the former deputy head of state and environment minister for the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. With his trademark hairdo, three-day stubble and casual clothing, Habeck knows how to stage a good photo opportunity. One of the images that has gone viral on social media is of him ironing his shirt on the wooden floor shortly before attending a party conference. Despite facing ridicule by many, Habeck is apt at setting himself apart from politicians regarded as old school and out of step with young voters.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Annalena Baerbock, who is a member of the Bundestag, is also no stranger to self-promotion. Her lively personality and vigor contribute to the Greens’ modern public image. However, she distinguishes herself from Habeck by more in-depth policy knowledge. While the more charismatic Habeck tends to indulge in outlining the philosophical and ideological framework of Green politics, Baerbock likes to delve into the policy nitty-gritty, like Germany’s coal phase-out. This makes her a more popular figure within the party, while Habeck enjoys higher approval ratings among voters.

      It would be superficial to reduce the Greens’ soaring approval ratings to their party leaders’ public image. Both Baerbock and Habeck have pressed ahead with establishing the party as a socioecological alternative for centrist voters, veering away from a common perception that it could not reach beyond its traditional following. This mainly included educated, middle-aged voters with high incomes living in metropolitan environments.

      In an interview, Robert Habeck stated the party’s intent to detach itself from this misconception: “Our goal is not only to be a milieu party. We are now starting a new phase.” The Greens have benefited from climate protection, gradually receiving more public attention due to external events and activism by various groups, like the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Fridays for Future climate movement. With awareness of the issue of global warming increasing, the Greens are succeeding in reaching out to the “middle of society.”

      A Green Chancellor?

      As their traditional coalition partner, the SPD, is losing popularity, the Greens have been bustling to find new, more conservative political allies. After the 2017 general election, the Greens negotiated with the center-right CDU/CSU and the Liberal Democrats (FDP) to form a government. That was the continuation of the party’s strategic opening to all ends of the political spectrum, as the Greens had already formed coalitions with both parties in several state governments. In 2011, the party had already reached a significant milestone: Winfried Kretschmann won the state election of Baden-Wuerttemberg by appealing to conservative voters and became the first Green minister president, with the mighty CDU/CSU as their junior coalition partner.

      But the strategy of electability and reaching out to centrist voters does not come without its repercussions. Luisa Neubauer, the spokeswoman for Fridays for Future, a movement popularized by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, has criticized the Greens for abandoning their ecological core values and for delaying the steps required to combat climate change. Going head to head with the Greens, she asked: “If even the Greens can’t come up with a policy that has the capacity to take on the climate crisis — where else can you start?” The movement has also reprimanded the Greens for supporting the construction of a highway through a forest in the federal state of Hesse.

      Another accusation the party leadership faces is its failure to commit to the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C. Many leading party figures believe Fridays for Future’s radical demands are a hindrance to communicating the cause of climate protection to large parts of the population. Conversely, the movement, which regards itself to be “greener than the Greens,” disdains the party’s soft approach. Nevertheless, the Greens remain imperturbable in their quest to appeal to a broad majority of Germans. Due to consistently high polling numbers, the party intends to select its first-ever candidate for the chancellorship. Thus far, Baerbock and Habeck have resisted media pressure to decide who will challenge the CDU/CSU’s candidate.

      To the public eye, this delayed decision makes the Green leadership appear tentative and insecure. Indeed, the party seems unsettled by the consequences of its electoral strategy. Barring the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), all parties in the German Bundestag are courting the Greens. After the election of Armin Laschet as the CDU/CSU’s party leader, an alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Greens as the junior coalition partner remains the most likely path to power. This constellation would facilitate the Greens taking up the federal Ministry of Finance and delivering a budget that sets the course for ecological modernization.

      Within Earshot

      Preferred coalitions with the SPD and Die Linke (The Left) appear unlikely. Yet as voting behavior becomes increasingly volatile, the Greens must take all possible outcomes into account. That includes coalitions with the SPD and The Left, and the responsibility of holding the chancellorship as the larger party.

      The Greens are within earshot of historic electoral success. As Svenja Flaßpöhler, the editor-in-chief chief Philosophie Magazin, says: “Actually I would like to see the Greens enter government participation with courage … There is nothing to lose. The worst that can happen is that we are voted out of office again after four years. I miss this attitude a bit at the moment.”

      As shown, the odds are pointing toward success. Climate change has entered mainstream politics and is at the tip of most people’s tongues. Poll numbers are soaring, and the party leaders’ personalities reflect the current zeitgeist. The Greens should not shy away from the challenge of government responsibility. Part of this challenge will undoubtedly be the juggling act of maintaining their credibility as an environmental party while serving the electorate as a whole.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Will Britain Become Scot-Free?

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      Among the consequences of Boris Johnson’s greatest accomplishment, Brexit, the question looms of the possible imminent fracturing of the union of nations known as the United Kingdom. The act of shattering one union — the EU — may have launched a trend. 

      As the second most important political entity of the British union, Scotland sees its quest for independence as symmetrical with Britain’s withdrawal from Europe. The Scots have long felt as oppressed by the English as the Brexiters felt oppressed by Brussels. Moreover, Scotland has traditionally felt a strong kinship with Europe. It once took the form of the Auld Alliance, established in 1295 by France’s Philippe IV, as both nations opposed England. The idea of the alliance resurfaced in the troubled period after James II, the last of the Stuart kings of England, was forced to flee to France following the 1688 Glorious Revolution.

      More recently, following the hesitating but finally successful integration of Great Britain into the EU in 1975, Scotland reveled in its European status. In June 2016, the Brexit referendum that then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to hold shocked the world by producing a victory for the “leave” camp. Scotland, however, unambiguously favored remaining in the European Union by a score of 62% to 38%. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, immediately saw a reason to hold a second referendum for Scottish secession from the UK, an initiative that had been attempted but failed in 2014. Today, the polls indicate a clear majority of Scots will vote for independence. This time around it will be justified by the UK’s effective withdrawal from Europe. Scotland feels a deeper loyalty and kinship to Europe than to England.

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      The Scots are nevertheless divided. Breaking with England would revert to a situation that hasn’t existed since 1707, the year the Treaty of Union was signed. Creating a border between Scotland and England in the 21st century will likely be more of a challenge than the knotty quandary still facing Northern Ireland concerning the unsettled question of a border that may need to be enforced with the Republic of Ireland, which is still part of the EU. The Roman Emperor Hadrian may have presciently anticipated the question of Scottish independence when he ordered the construction of his famous wall in 122 AD.

      As disappointment with Brexit increases and polling shows the Scots as likely to show the same alacrity to exit their union as the Brexiters did with regard to the European one, the minority of Scottish “remainers,” known as unionists, are beginning to worry. To understand the nature of their panic,Al Jazeera quotes one unionist, Sheena Francovich, a retiree from Argyllshire on Scotland’s west coast: “As far as I’m concerned, we had a vote [in 2014] and we voted to stay part of the UK and that’s end of story. Nobody has ever convinced me that [independence] would make any economic sense. If there was another vote and people did vote [Yes] it would be a sad, sad day.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Economic sense:

      The idea that better economic conditions will result from a choice the person speaking has already made, despite having no access to the full range of factors that determine economic success or failure.

      Contextual Note

      Brexit has been officially in place for a month and a half. One commentator highlighted the gap that has become evident between the promises Prime Minister Boris Johnson made five years ago and the reality of what is turning into a new winter of discontent: “During the 2016 Brexit campaign, proponents promised businesses that leaving Europe would mean liberation from suffocating regulations and infernal bureaucracy that supposedly prevailed across the Channel. It was all a lie. Post-Brexit, British companies that trade with the EU now deal with expensive disruptions to their businesses, and watch as their export profits plunge.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Boris Johnson and his cohorts cannot complain that it’s all because they haven’t had enough time to prepare. The Europeans were ready to allow the UK more time, but it wasBoris who insisted that it was crucial to “get Brexit done.” The long-term consequences of Brexit, including the eventual dismantling of the United Kingdom, are unknown. But the short-term consequences have given an idea of the scope of the material and economic damage. It will take longer to assess the psychological and cultural damage. 

      This will, of course, be compounded by the incalculable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, not just on the economy, but on the entire youth of the nation. This is occurring at a curious moment of history, marked in recent decades by the vaunted interdependence associated with the idea of globalization. The edifice has begun to shatter, with nothing stable in view to replace it. Sheena Francovich may be right to say that any nation’s independence makes no “economic sense” — but neither does dependence.

      On Sunday, for the first time, pro-independence parties have won a majority in Catalonia’s regional parliament, putting pressure on Spain to take into account a powerful centrifugal force that has been building for some time. The Catalans are already watching closely the drama unfolding in Scotland, hoping the much clearer case for Scottish independence prevails. Fragmentation as a reaction to decades of forced globalization may become a dominant trend of the 21st century.

      It doesn’t even stop there. The world has entered into a new era of uncertainty concerning the way people imagine their future. This has always been the biggest intangible factor of stability for any society. Political and cultural disarray has become the norm throughout the West and across much of the globe, including another “united” nation, the USA. The events of January 6 in Washington, DC, may portend the disunifying of the entity celebrated as “one nation, indivisible,” a scenario difficult to imagine. There are nevertheless telltale signs of serious cracks in the national narrative that, unlike the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, famous for its crack, offer no reassurance about a tranquil future.

      Historical Note

      The UK became united only slowly and in a largely haphazard way. When Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, died in 1603 leaving no successor to perpetuate the Tudor line, the rules of monarchy required seeking a new king among her cousins, the Stuarts. The nearest of kin was the reigning king of Scotland, James VI, son of Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots, who was martyred by her cousin Elizabeth for remaining loyal to the Catholic faith. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, to seal his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, had assumed the equivalent of papal authority over the newly created Anglican Church. 

      The accession of the king of Scotland, who now became James I of England, established the Stuart family as future heirs to the throne. All did not go well. James’s son, Charles I, was dethroned and decapitated by Oliver Cromwell after a civil war in which the Roundheads (the anti-Anglican Puritans) defeated the Cavaliers (the royal army).

      When, following the restoration of the monarchy, James II, son of Charles II and grandson of James, declared his Catholic faith and, to add insult to injury, had a son with his Catholic wife, the defenders of Protestant England were upset enough to stage a coup. A bloodless revolution took place. The Protestant establishment celebrated it as the Glorious Revolution. Luckily for the revolutionaries, James II’s first daughter, Mary, had had the good sense to marry a Dutch Protestant, William of Orange, and the couple were called back from the continent to reign over England.

      Mary’s sister Anne became queen in 1702. Under her reign, the Acts of Union were ratified by the English and Scottish parliaments respectively, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The 18th century witnessed the rapid expansion of the British empire. Scotland tagged along with the triumph, though sometimes grudgingly. The last attempt at securing Scotland’s independence was led by the Stuart pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, who had returned to Scotland from France via Ireland. The Scots and their allies were defeated ingloriously at the 40-minute battle of Culloden in 1746 by the equally inglorious duke of Cumberland, known to this day as “Stinking Billy.”

      Though the Scots quickly gave up on the hope of a Stuart restoration, they have never really forgotten the humiliation of Culloden. Brexit, for many Scots, is another Culloden.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Storming of the US Capitol Through Identitarian Eyes

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      As history unfolded before those refreshing their Twitter feeds and watching live TV, attempts to define the storming of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, immediately emerged, including those by the radical right. Among the various radical-right voices that tried to frame the event, evaluations going beyond, for example, the clownish (though not undangerous) stories of QAnon activists offer insights into the workings of more complex radical-right ideological programs, including glimpses of imagined futures. Following the media-savvy Martin Sellner during a few days of digital activism, from Wednesday, January 6, to Sunday, January 10, illustrates how one of the main proponents of the Identitarian Movement makes sense of and utilizes the insurrection, and highlights the concerns and hopes he connects to the event.

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      Sellner is, of course, a leading figure in the “movement” (and still head of the Austrian branch), contributes to, for example, the main German new-right periodical, is a prolific producer of digital content and a man who, having been in contact with the Christchurch terrorist, has been banned from major social media platforms and now disseminates opinions via Telegram (about 58k subscribers) and BitChute (about 17k subscribers). Sellner began commenting on the event on Telegram in the early evening (CET) of January 6 and, over the next few days, offered discussions with fellow members of the radical right and commentary. (The following quotations are taken from Sellner’s Telegram channel, a column he wrote and various recordings that are available through his BitChute channel).

      Not a Coup

      In a column published the day after the storming that Sellner describes the event not as “a historical, but a hysterical moment,” a “chaotic, planless happening,” an act of “political masturbation and discharge of emotional urges” — not a “coup d’etat,” an “armed uprising” or a “terrorist attack.” This latter part is connected to accusations against the “mainstream press” and its alleged double standard, including in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement (the “Madness of Black Lives Matter”). According to Sellner, the latter aims for the destruction of property and lives, while the events of January 6 were a “mostly peaceful protest.” Indeed, referring explicitly to Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle,” a book he has long drawn on, Sellner regularly speaks of the power of the media to define reality and truth, and the weaponization of the event against “patriots.”

      While such condemnation of the so-called “lying press” is hardly new, Sellner also criticizes the unfolding of the protest itself. Here, he mourns a lack of planning and leadership and, unsurprisingly, calls for an “activism elite” that can channel the idealism of these “patriots.” Referring also to QAnon, he calls for overcoming conspiracy theories that have prevented “patriots” from assessing the situation realistically and taking responsibility in their own hands. Fully in line with his metapolitical orientation, Sellner proclaims that there is no “silver bullet” but a need to fight for hegemony.

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      This points to alternative forms of protest, and he repeatedly raises the idea of a (“symbolic”) “siege.”  That is, Sellner envisages an alternative January 6 that would have not ended in a counterproductive storming of the Capitol, but in a sustained demonstration of strength via a “protest camp” in Washington to influence the political system.

      Celebrating powerful imagery of protesters on the stairs of the Capitol, the course the event took thus appears as a missed opportunity to “awaken the people” and to put the elite in its place. Indeed, one type of victim present in Sellner’s narrativization is a rather broad group of “patriots,” of those who lack a voice, those who are “economically marginalized” and who have no political representation. Ultimately, this covers all those suffering from the establishment, the “disenfranchised, delegitimized people who are not allowed a chance … the indigenous, the Europeans, we are not given a chance, everything is taken away from us, one wants to annihilate us, one wants to destroy us, one wants to, entirely openly with an announced revolution remove us from history.”

      The apparent need to rescue the ethnic collective from an unbound “left-liberal-globalistic ideology” is also visible in another recording as it is this ideology that supposedly results in the “destruction of organically-grown communities, destruction of nation-states.”

      The Old Is Crumbling

      Another type of victim includes particular individuals, from Ashli Babbitt, who was shot during the riot (not forgetting to mention that she was shot by a “black policeman”), to the radical-right activist Nick Fuentes and Donald Trump for being banned from social media. The former president’s future is repeatedly thematized, noting that Trump has seemingly given in (at least in his fight over the election), though acknowledging that this might simply be an act of self-preservation. While Sellner initially speculated that Trump could reveal “dirty background secrets of the globalists” during his last days in office, the imagined threat posed by the enemy is stark: they “really want to completely finish him off … [and beat him] to the rocks like Prometheus: whoever dares to stand up against the globalists will be finished off.”

      Ultimately, he assumes that that revelations are unlikely to happen as Trump loves his life and fortune. As this “total digital annihilation” unfolds, Sellner regularly comments on Big Tech, speaking, for example, of Silicon Valley as the “glowing city of the hill … they are really the masters of the planet, if they want.”

      Such an ending would leave little hope for the radical right, but like every good attempt to forge and mobilize, hope is presented too. Sellner reports of a “civil war” within major tech companies and claims that 2021 could see “vital progress in the area of alt-tech,” the financing of their “own platform,” possibly even their own “fin-tech structure.” This hope goes hand in hand with what he calls a “repression-accelerationism” and the claim that “we have to go through a time of suffering.” With no way back, Sellner calls for a renewed struggle for hegemony and, citing the poet Friedrich Schiller, proclaims early on, “The old is crumbling down — the times are changing — And from the ruins blooms a fairer life.” As these lines are typed, it remains unclear what future will emerge from the storming of the Capitol and, thus, what fairness will blossom.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Is Turkey’s Ruling Alliance on the Attack or the Defensive?

      by

      Since January 4, Istanbul’s prestigious and politically liberal Bogazici University has been gripped by student unrest. The protests were initially provoked by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to appoint a member of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) as rector. The government has responded harshly, detaining students, raiding homes, criminalizing protesters and their supporters as “terrorists,” and vilifying the university and its students as deviants from the “nation’s true values.”

      Condemnation was not limited to the government: On February 7, Alaattin Cakıcı, an organized-crime boss and a former member of the ultranationalist Grey Wolves, tweeted a hand-written note stating the protests aimed to “harm the state and the People’s Alliance [AKP/MHP], which is the guarantor of our state.”

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      This episode of interference in the university’s administration is not an isolated incident. Under the state of emergency decree of October 2016, all rectors at public universities are now selected directly or indirectly by the president’s office, in conjunction with the Turkish Higher Education Council. The extensive purges that followed the 2016 coup attempt have created opportunities for the president to distribute academic posts to his supporters. Erdogan also regards the universities as central pillars of the “nation’s cultural hegemony.”

      Ramping Up Repression

      The attack goes beyond the universities, however. Ankara is determined to suppress all opposition. About 90% of the country’s media outlets are linked to the AKP through personal and/or financial ties. Prosecution of social media users for insulting the president is common. A new law from 2020 permits multiple bar associations, aiming to create an institutional wedge between pro-government and opposition lawyers. Ankara has also expanded its oversight over civil society organizations and worked to rein in local governments by replacing elected mayors in Kurdish municipalities with government-appointed trustees, cutting funding for opposition-held councils. It also works to contain civil society through prosecution, police violence, propaganda and, recently, even open support from mafia figures. The aim is to create a political community of supporters operating as agents of regime control.

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      In reality, the AKP is far from achieving cultural hegemony, as Erdogan himself admitted last year. In fact, popular discontent is growing. The pandemic has exacerbated Turkey’s already mounting economic woes and limited the AKP’s ability to redistribute resources to its supporters. Big business is complaining, while many small and micro-businesses are in debt. The official figure for youth unemployment reached 25.4% last November. Even AKP supporters are not immune to discontent over the rising cost of living.

      The unexpected success of opposition parties in the 2019 local elections and their united front against the presidential system further complicate the picture. The government’s divide-and-rule tactics have so far failed to bring opposition actors fully into line. Moreover, tensions and cracks within the ruling alliance are increasingly visible. For all these reasons, Ankara is in attack mode and on the defensive at the same time, which explains its disproportionate reaction to the Bogazici protests. It is no coincidence that government officials and pro-government journalists have consistently compared them to the Gezi protests of 2013 to which the AKP responded with similar criminalization, vilification and repression.

      The ghosts of the Gezi protests continue to haunt Ankara. One stark manifestation of this is the Kafkaesque trial of Osman Kavala, a Turkish businessman and human rights defender who was detained in 2017. The charges included “attempting to change the constitutional order and to overthrow the government” by leading and financing the Gezi protests. A second wave of arrests followed in 2018 for alleged links to Kavala. While the Gezi defendants were acquitted in February 2020, an appeals court overturned the acquittals of nine in January 2021. On February 5, the court rejected a request for Kavala’s release and merged the cases against him. On the same day, Erdoğan accused Ayse Bugra, a retired faculty member of Bogazici University who happens to be married to Osman Kavala, of being “among the provocateurs” of the student protests.

      Europe Should Not Turn a Blind Eye

      Europe should voice stronger criticism of Ankara’s repression of its citizens. While first and foremost a matter of principle, calling Ankara out is also in the EU’s own interests. While European policymakers have often enough prioritized stability over democracy in relations with authoritarian states, in Turkey’s case, that logic is associated with two problems. For one, it is unclear whether an authoritarian but stable Turkey would cooperate harmoniously with the EU. Even more importantly, the stability of authoritarianism in Turkey is uncertain for several reasons.

      Firstly, Turkey’s economic capacity depends heavily on popular consent, in particular because the country lacks the kind of natural resources that can be exploited through coercion. Secondly, the country’s sociopolitical diversity makes it difficult for the AKP to thoroughly penetrate the civil sphere, making future protests highly likely. Finally, the personalization of power and the tensions within the ruling alliance make the government vulnerable. While the EU certainly cannot force Turkey to democratize, it can and should hold Ankara more accountable, especially at a time when it is turning to the EU for economic support.

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Beating Back the Far Right

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      After four years of shock, confusion and paralysis, the United States is finally taking action against the far right. Perhaps most dramatic has been the de-platforming of Donald Trump: the suspension of his Twitter and Facebook accounts and the targeting of his prominent followers across social media platforms. Even a few months ago, such a radically sensible action would have been inconceivable. Kick a president off of social media?

      But such are the indignities visited upon sore losers. Not surprisingly, these moves have significantly decreased the amount of misinformation in the public sphere and made it that much more difficult for white nationalists to organize actions.

      How QAnon Followers Saw the US Inauguration

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      The events of January 6 also led to Trump’s second impeachment. The Senate trial, which took place last week, may not have resulted in a conviction, but it forced the Republican Party to choose between upholding the Constitution and supporting a president who tried to overthrow democracy.

      The penalties for remaining the party of Trump are slowly beginning to mount. The corporate world has moved against the ex-president by canceling events at his resorts and hotels and suspending financial services with his company. Several high-profile donors have abandoned the most vocal congressional adherents of the phony election fraud narrative, like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Not only has Simon & Schuster canceled Senator Hawley’s book contract, but the chief promoter of MAGA texts at Hachette — who published screeds by Donald Trump, Jr., Corey Lewandowski and Jeanine Pirro — was recently fired.

      Some politicians have faced steeper penalties. For their participation in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, West Virginia State Delegate Derrick Evans was pushed to resign and Jorge Riley was forced out of his position in the California Republican Assembly. At the federal level, House Democrats and 11 of their Republican colleagues recently voted to strip Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. That seems like a mere slap on the wrist for someone who has promoted the assassination of her political opponents. But it’s something.

      A defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, all of whom spread conspiracy theories about the company’s voting machines used in the 2020 election, has already claimed one success. Fox canceled Lou Dobbs, one of its many factually compromised show hosts. Dominion is readying another round of suits against as many as 150 targets including Newsmax, One America News Network and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Justice Department has opened up “domestic terrorism” cases against a number of the participants in the January 6 insurrection. Congress is beginning to consider new legislation on federal penalties for domestic terrorism.

      The campaign against the far right isn’t exactly a full-court press. Greene continues to push Trump-like pronouncements on Twitter, and all the attention she’s gotten in recent weeks has only enlarged her platform. Corporate boycotts are not affecting the bottom lines of politicians like Hawley, who depends more on individual donors (he actually saw a big increase in donations after January 6). Trump retains his hold over much of the Republican Party, especially at the state level as the censures of Liz Cheney in Wyoming and Doug Ducey in Arizona indicate.

      In other words, the far right is down but not out. The much-feared round of violence at the state level in the wake of January 6 did not happen. Rallies and marches in support of MAGA or Trump or QAnon have not materialized. When Twitter suspended Trump’s account, a demonstration outside the company’s San Francisco office brought out dozens of police officers and exactly one protester. But neither the Proud Boys nor the white activist militias have disbanded. And according to a poll at the end of January, 64% of Republicans would join any party that Trump sets up.

      Even as the US establishment begins its tentative detox of the public sphere, the handwringing has also begun. The de-platforming of Trump has raised concerns over the tyranny of unregulated social media giants. The campaigns to limit the platforms of Hawley and Greene have generated a fear that the silencing of minority opinions will be applied to radical voices on the left as well. Critics worry that the labeling of the January 6 insurrectionists as “domestic terrorists” will inevitably be used against communities of color and others protesting racial inequities.

      The threat of white nationalist movements is not hypothetical. Four years of Trump have provided ample evidence of what can happen when these movements gain mainstream legitimation. But the anxieties over how “cancel culture” can be applied to the left and communities of color are also legitimate, as erstwhile football star Colin Kaepernick can readily confirm.

      The Biden administration has already begun its de-Trumpification of the US government by reversing the previous administration’s policies, removing Trump appointees and cutting off high-level access for right-wing crazies like Giuliani, Steve Bannon and members of the MAGA media.

      But the banishing of the far right back to the fringes of American society is going to require a different set of strategies. And here, the United States could learn a few lessons from other countries.

      Quarantining Politicians and Parties

      Although several European countries ban Nazi or neo-Nazi parties, a more effective tactic to reduce the political influence of extremist parties that fall just short of fascist has been to quarantine them. In Belgium, for instance, the major parties have an informal agreement not to partner with Vlaams Belang, a far-right Flemish nationalist party. This agreement became increasingly difficult when Vlaams Belang received the second most votes in the last parliamentary election in 2019. Austria abided by a similar “cordon sanitaire” until 2000, when the conservative People’s Party invited the far-right Freedom Party into government. The European Parliament has nevertheless borrowed the cordon sanitaire strategy to prevent members of the far-right Identity and Democracy bloc from holding any key posts such as the presidency of committees.

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      In Germany, the major parties have similarly avoided any coalition arrangements with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the German government, presided over by the conservative Christian Democrats, has deployed another interesting tactic against the AfD. Last spring, the country’s domestic intelligence agency declared one wing of the AfD “extremist” and placed its leaders under surveillance. “But many saw in Thursday’s announcement a step toward broader measures targeting the entire Alternative for Germany party, setting the stage for a battle between the state and a party whose influence has steadily grown even as it has radicalized,” writes Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times.

      In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn grew to become the third-largest party in the parliament. The government successfully pursued a legal strategy to criminalize the organization, charging it with murder, racketeering, illegal possession of firearms and attacks on migrants. In the end, 37 members of the party, including 17 MPs, were convicted of crimes and imprisoned. By the 2019 election, the party couldn’t get enough votes to have even one representative in parliament.

      If Trump ends up creating a new political party, a public pressure campaign could be mounted on the Democrats and Republicans to follow a strict policy of no talks, no committee assignments and no joint actions with any entity that Trump touches. Whether the disgraced ex-president follows through on his threat, a similar approach should be applied to all Republicans who continue to embrace a “stop the steal” agenda. Biden should make clear that his efforts at bipartisanship should exclude those who believe his administration to be illegitimate.

      Purging the Far Right from Security Forces

      When the National Guard was called in to secure the Capitol for Inauguration Day, two members were removed from duty because of possible ties to right-wing extremist movements. This additional vetting was deemed necessary because nearly one in five participants in the January 6 insurrection had links to the military. As a first step in addressing the longstanding problem of far-right proselytizing, the new head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, has already notified the armed forces to conduct a one-day stand down to address extremism in the ranks.

      The United States could learn from the example of Germany where the country’s special forces, Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), had become a veritable haven of far-right sympathizers. The working group investigating the KSK discovered “soldiers who expounded unconstitutional views, a ‘toxic leadership culture’ among superiors, and the unexplained disappearance of 62 kilograms of explosives and large quantities of ordnance from KSK depots.” As a result of the investigation, the German government disbanded one entire company of the KSK and reorganized the remaining units. It has also tightened its screening process.

      In the US, only thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and other efforts to bring accountability to policing did the FBI begin collecting data in 2018 on the use of force in law enforcement. The next step is to purge police ranks of racist extremists, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

      Hate Speech and Digital Controls

      Because of First Amendment protections, the United States does not have any hate speech laws. However, such provisions can be found in the private sector, such as universities.

      Other countries, however, have sought to penalize hate speech in a number of different ways. Germany has outlawed “incitement to hate” or Volksverhetzung, which applies to verbal attacks on national, racial, religious or ethnic groups but also, according to a 2020 ruling, the denigration of women. Denmark, too, has recently expanded its hate speech law to include extremist language directed at gender identity and gender expression. Since the 1970s, New Zealand has had a law on the books criminalizing the incitement of “racial disharmony,” and the government has been considering additional measures following the Christchurch killings in 2019.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But legislating against hate is notoriously tricky. Canada repealed a hate speech law that tried to balance a commitment to free expression with equally strong commitments to multiculturalism and equality (but has more recently explored reviving it). France passed an online hate speech law last spring only for the country’s constitutional court to strike down large portions of it.

      Dealing with hate speech became even more urgent when the far right discovered how to use social media to recruit, organize and inject its messages into the conservative mainstream. In the US, the home of the largest social media platforms, there has been no move to legislate against extremist content online as long as it isn’t criminal (like libel, threats to kill or child pornography).

      Rather, in typically American fashion, policing has been left to the private sector, which determines who to “de-platform” and what posts to take down. Initially, the mainstream social media platforms only suspended the accounts of those on the lunatic fringe, like Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy or Milo Yiannopoulos formerly of Breitbart News. Facebook and Twitter were reluctant to take a more proactive approach to white nationalists not only for fear of being labeled “censors” but because it would also have meant banning Republican politicians who voiced similar sentiments.

      By 2020, however, Facebook and Twitter reversed themselves because politicians like Trump were openly challenging American democracy. Well, actually, Trump and his cohort had been doing so from day one, thanks to an indirect assist from the social media giants. But after the November election, Twitter and Facebook could rationalize their moves because Trump had become a lame-duck president.

      De-platforming demonstrably works, whether measured by the bankrupting of Milo Yiannopoulos, the reduction of an audience for groups like the Islamic State and QAnon, or the virtual disappearance of Donald Trump from public discourse. It doesn’t qualify as censorship, since Twitter and Facebook are not public spaces. They are corporate spaces, and the corporation decides who speaks there, just like The New York Times decides who to publish.

      But this raises two problems: To whom are Twitter and Facebook accountable? And why aren’t there rules governing the internet more generally, since the web is certainly a public commons?

      Facebook instituted an oversight board last year that looks at decisions with an eye toward possibly overturning them. Three of the first six cases have involved hate speech. Here’s one of them: “A user posted two screenshots of tweets by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, which said ‘Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.’ Facebook removed the post for hate speech violations, but the user’s appeal indicates they wanted to spread awareness of the prime minister’s ‘horrible words.’” Perhaps more consequentially, the oversight board will soon make the call on whether to restore Trump’s Facebook account.

      As for generating rules for the web more generally, that’s a tougher challenge, given the anarchic, libertarian spirit that has presided over the enterprise since its inception. But here’s one interesting “fix” that New Zealand has instituted: Any Kiwi who views extremist content online is now automatically directed to websites that help people leave hate groups.

      Going After Terrorists

      For two decades, the US has conducted a “war on terror” largely against “radical Islam” in countries like Afghanistan and Syria. It has ignored state supporters of such groups, like Saudi Arabia, when they’re allies, while going after governments like Saddam Hussein’s that were mistakenly identified as al-Qaeda boosters.

      Meanwhile, the US government largely ignored home-grown, right-wing extremists who organized with near-impunity particularly during the Trump era. So, why are some people unhappy about calling the right-wing extremists who overran the Capitol on January 6 “terrorists”?

      “The use of these words only elevates a harmful counterterrorism framework that has historically been used to target Arab, Muslim, and Black communities,” writes Rania Batrice in The Boston Globe. “Call them white supremacists. Call them a violent, murderous mob. Call them insurrectionists. Call them fascists. Call them traitors or treasonous. But please remember that the words used have an impact on broader, already oppressed communities.”

      I am sympathetic to this argument. But is it not problematic that the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list does not include any far-right extremist groups? A number of these outfits — the Proud Boys, the Atomwaffen Division, the Base — have an international presence. Canada just labeled all of them terrorist outfits. An FTO designation would permit greater international cooperation to disrupt the global networking of the far right.

      Yes, I’d like to see the United States criminalize white supremacy and fascism. But the terrorism designation, for all its problematic history, focuses not so much on words but on actions. And in the US, it has historically been easier to go after the far right for what it does, not for what it says.

      Whatever language we use, however, it’s critically important to keep up the pressure to delegitimize the far right. Extremists are trying to maintain a toehold in power via Hawley, Greene and others in the hopes that Trump will run again or some equally malign candidate will emerge in 2024. It’s time to resurrect a global anti-fascist consensus to name, shame and throw these guys out of the game.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Giuliani pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden family, new transcript reveals

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      A new transcript has surfaced of the former Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into the Biden family.The transcript of a 40-minute call between Giuliani and two Ukrainian officials, was obtained by Time magazine, and served as a reminder of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, even as his second is under way in the Senate.The trigger for the first impeachment was a call Trump made to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he hinted US military aid might depend on Zelenskiy’s willingness to “do us a favour” and launch an investigation that might cloud the image of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of an Ukrainian energy company.In both impeachment trials, Trump is accused of using the power of the presidency in an attempt to secure a second term. The charge against him has escalated from improper pressure on a foreign government to inciting an insurrection, but Republican senators are expected to save him from conviction this time as they did in the first trial a year ago.Giuliani’s call to the Ukrainian officials came three days before Trump’s, on 22 July 2019, to two Zelenskiy aides. One of them, Igor Novikov, sent the transcript to Time earlier this month.“Let these investigations go forward,” Giuliani told them, according to the transcript, which Time said it has verified. “Get someone to investigate this.”The former New York mayor is more restrained in his language than Trump. According to the transcript, he does not make overt threats but repeatedly warned the Ukrainians “to be careful”.“For our country’s sake and your country’s sake, we [need to] get all these facts straight,” Giuliani added. “We fix them and we put it behind us.”The Zelenskiy government resisted the pressure from the Trump administration, and the transcript was supplied to Time as Kyiv seeks to build its relationship with Biden.Novikov has said he will assist a federal investigation of Giuliani reported to be under way in New York, as well as an effort to strip Giuliani of his license to practice law.“That is because I believe Mayor Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine threatened our national security,” Novikov told Time. He left the Zelenskiy administration in August but has retained close ties. “It is our responsibility to make sure that any effort to drag our country into our allies’ domestic politics does not go unpunished.”A lawyer representing Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning, and Time reported that Giuliani did not respond its own questions about the transcript.Last week, President Zelenskiy shut down three Ukrainian media networks he accused of spreading Russian propaganda, and which had played a role in the spreading of groundless allegations about the Bidens during the US presidential campaign.“The past is the past,” President Zelenskiy told Time. “I care deeply about the future of our relationship with the United States, so I want to focus on that.” More

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      in World Politics

      Russia Joins the Red Sea Scramble

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      Russia has come back to the crowded Red Sea. On November 11, 2020, the Russian government announced its agreement with Sudan to establish a naval base at the city of Port Sudan. While the Russian navy already enjoys access rights to the port, the concession with Khartoum envisages the creation of a Russian logistics center that will host up to 300 personnel and four naval units, including nuclear-powered vessels, for a renewable period of 25 years. In exchange for the concession, the Kremlin will send military advisers to train Sudanese forces and will be allowed to use Sudanese airports and airspace to support its base in Port Sudan.

      Israel’s Comeback in the Horn of Africa

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      On top of that, Moscow will be in charge of security at the base, giving it the chance to install advanced radar and air defense systems. Although it will be much smaller in size compared to the naval base of Tartus in Syria, the facility in Port Sudan will become a pivot of Moscow’s maritime projection spanning from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

      Red Stars Align

      Russia’s landing in Port Sudan represents the convergence of several strategic goals. Traditionally a land power, Russia is vying to bolster its maritime prowess. The comprehensive program to modernize its fleet brought in 23 new vessels in 2019 and 40 in 2020. Most of them are more modest in size than the Soviet-era battle cruisers being decommissioned as Moscow leans toward a small-ship fleet — one that can hardly keep pace with the US or the Chinese navies, according to analysts.

      Nevertheless, Russia is arming new units with high-tech systems, like the Poseidon marine drones and the new 885M Kazan nuclear-powered submarine, which will reinforce the navy’s capability to operate at regional level in support of ground and air forces. This element suits the Kremlin’s strategy of intervention in crises, from Syria to Venezuela, and might be particularly useful in the Red Sea region.

      But the fleet itself is only half of the picture. Maritime power equally requires a network of naval bases where vessels can safely dock and be supplied. To date, Moscow not only set a firm foothold in the Mediterranean — a longstanding goal of Russia’s foreign policy — but also rose up as the preeminent maritime power in the region thanks to its naval base in Tartus and its military presence in eastern Libya in particular.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Now, as the Mediterranean regains centrality and the Indian Ocean witnesses growing power competition, the Red Sea has become a strategic pivot for countries with global ambitions like Russia. This is the rationale behind the long-sought naval base in Sudan, which will allow Moscow to span its military capabilities — and hence its influence — from the Black Sea, down through the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

      Finally, the base in Port Sudan is a major achievement of Russia’s Africa policy. During the first Russia-Africa Summit in 2017, President Vladimir Putin pledged $20 billion in investments, skillfully attaching no conditionality to them. More importantly, he harnessed military cooperation as a crucial asset of Russia’s diplomacy in Africa. Building upon its successes in Syria and Libya, the Kremlin began to offer weapons and military services through the semi-private military company, Wagner, replicating a strategy adopted by South Africa and its Executive Outcomes PMC to expand its influence across the continent in the 1980s and 1990s. In exchange, Russia secured access rights to strategic natural resources, mainly uranium, gold and rare earth elements in the Central African Republic and Sudan, 80% of whose arsenals are filled with Russian weapons.

      In Sudan, Moscow struck a deal with former President Omar al-Bashir to provide training to the Sudanese army and support military operations in Darfur, the Blue Nile and South Kordofan; a Russian base on the Red Sea was allegedly part of the accord. Despite the fall of Bashir’s regime following widespread protests in 2019, Moscow navigated Sudanese politics and maintained strong ties with the president of the Sovereign Council, General Burhan, eventually obtaining the base in Port Sudan.

      Regional Power Play

      The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden have been an arena of intense geopolitical competition among global and regional powers in recent years. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey have all scrambled to establish military outposts in the Horn of Africa. Russia makes no difference. Its quest for a military presence along the Red Sea led Moscow to enter into negotiations with Eritrea, Djibouti and even Somaliland over the past few years, but without success. Now, the base in Port Sudan has some notable implications for regional security and power competition.

      Russia has managed to stay outside regional disputes. Before Omar al-Bashir was ousted, Turkey and Qatar were about to finalize a concession in Suakin, just 50 kilometers south of Port Sudan. Under Saudi and Emirati pressure, the transitional government put the agreement with Ankara and Doha on hold. With a Russian presence in Port Sudan, Turkey’s chances of obtaining an outpost along the Sudanese coast become even slimmer. Consequently, the competition between Turkey and Russia will likely increase in the Horn of Africa, at least until the two powers will find an understanding as they did in Syria and Libya.

      The UAE and Saudi Arabia have a more nuanced position. The two countries have invested heavily, both economically and militarily, in the Red Sea. The Russian attempt to build a base in Eritrea reportedly went awry after Riyadh and Abu Dhabi stepped in to drag Eritrea from the field of Iranian influence. This suggests that a solid Russian presence in the Red Sea might be seen as an element of disturbance. Yet the UAE has already cooperated with Moscow in eastern Libya, backing General Khalifa Haftar, and has signed a strategic partnership in 2018, which also paved the way for the sale of Russian weapons to Abu Dhabi.

      Saudi Arabia might see Russia’s military engagement in the Red Sea as an opportunity. As the Houthi rebels in Yemen have proved capable of targeting ships and the Saudi oil infrastructure as far as Jeddah, Russia might become a useful ally in enforcing maritime security in the southern Red Sea region.

      Implications for the US

      Despite strong ties with Washington, the Gulf monarchies do not see Russia as a threat. Russia’s policy of non-interference, combined with its political stability, are generally perceived by autocratic regimes in the Middle East and beyond as less intrusive and dangerous. Conversely, the United States and the European powers often attach conditionalities to economic and military cooperation. Such tensions might be on the rise as the Biden administration pledges to keep a keen eye on human rights and democracy when it comes to foreign relations, with Saudi Arabia being already under the spotlight.

      Therefore, the Gulf monarchies and other actors in the region are more likely to cooperate with rather than confront Russia and possibly leverage these ties to water down requests from Washington and the like. This seems to be the case for Sudan as well, which has recently conducted deeply transactional negotiations with Washington around being delisted as a state sponsor of terrorism. The announcement of the Russian base probably accelerated the implementation of the accord too.

      Besides political considerations, the Red Sea is already particularly crowded — the US and China both maintain military bases in Djibouti. Now the US will have to deal with Russia’s accrued military presence in a pivotal region. The main reason of concern is Russia’s increased capability to operate militarily in the proximity of two of the most relevant chokepoints of the world, Suez and Bab el-Mandab. Since 10% of the world’s trade and 9% of oil shipments cross these points every day, controlling them is of crucial importance for global economic stability and security. In the long term, Russia’s footholds in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea will affect the US control over Suez and Bab el-Mandab, bringing an intensification of global power competition and potentially turning these chokepoints into flashpoints.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      When Auschwitz Loses Its Meaning

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      Andy Warhol is credited for the bon mot that in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Robert Keith Packer would probably agree. A nobody from Virginia, Packer made international news for the sweatshirt he wore during the recent assault on the US Capitol. Sweatshirts bear all kinds of imprints, such as the name of a university. The imprint on Packer’s sweatshirt was a little bit different. It read “Auschwitz Camp.” Below there was the claim that “Work Brings Freedom.” The back identified the wearer as “Staff.”

      Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

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      It stands to reason that these days, wearing this kind of sweatshirt is not entirely politically correct. Unless, of course, you do it on purpose with the intent to send a strong message, to make a point. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in semiology, or history or cultural studies to interpret the meaning behind the message conveyed by Packer. Auschwitz has become the universal symbol of genocide in the service of safeguarding not only the purity and integrity of the race, but of its very survival. More on this later.

      Work Makes Free

      “Arbeit macht frei” — “Work makes free” — the slogan that graced the entrance of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, from Dachau to Mauthausen, from Auschwitz to Flossenbürg, was a cynical notion that had nothing to do with reality. More often than not, “work” was used by the Nazis as a way to send their victims to death. For popular consumption, however, the Nazi narrative suggested that for the first time in their lives, Jews would be forced to perform “useful” labor rather than taking advantage of the hard work of their “hosts.” In 1938, after the Nazis incorporated Austria into the Third Reich, Jews were forced to clean Vienna’s streets with toothbrushes.

      Embed from Getty Images

      I don’t know whether or not Packer was aware of this. The fact is that within the context of Donald Trump’s promotion of white supremacy and his campaign’s characterization of his opponent as a dangerous socialist, the imprints on Packer’s sweatshirt convey a clear message: The only way to assure the survival of white America is to eradicate all those who threaten its supremacy. At the same time, politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in general should finally be forced to do useful work rather than living off hard-working, tax-paying (white) Americans.

      I guess, many among the Confederate flag-waving mob, proudly displaying their allegiance to QAnon and other equally ludicrous conspiracy theories, fundamentally agreed with Packer’s message, even if they probably had no clue about what it entailed. As Thomas Edsall has recently put it in the pages of The New York Times, behind the conspiracy theory-inspired assault on the Capitol was the attempt “to engineer the installation in Washington of an ultraright, ethnonationalist crypto-fascist white supremacist political regime.”

      As a German, I know a little bit about this kind of regime. I grew up in a small town in southern Bavaria, which was severely damaged by American and British bombers in the last months of the war. Not far from the town, in the forests, there were the ruins of huge bunker installations where slave laborers were working on assembling fighter planes. The workers came from a satellite camp that was part of the Dachau concentration camp, many of them Jews. Many of them died of exhaustion and malnutrition. Once dead, they were dumped into mass graves. Immediately after the war, my father was among the young men forced to dig up the corpses and rebury them in a proper cemetery. He never talked about the experience. I learned about it from my mother.

      The Jewish Question

      I doubt that the likes of Roger Keith Packer have ever bothered to get a sense of what Nazism really entailed. It seems to me that for him and his comrades in spirit, Auschwitz has become an empty signifier devoid of real-life meaning and, therefore, perfect as a vehicle for resentment. The fact, however, is that Auschwitz stands for something — namely a bureaucratically efficient, quasi-industrial annihilation of hundreds of thousands of human lives for no other reason than that they happened to belong to a “race” the Nazis deemed equivalent to a highly noxious bacillus. This was the core of Nazi ideology on race, most prominently espoused by Heinrich Himmler, the undisputed head of the SS.

      Among the top echelons of German Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is among the most notorious. An unassuming agronomist with round spectacles, he was a far cry from the Aryan ideal official ideology espoused. And yet he was the most fervent promoter of the “Aryan race”: blond, blue-eyed, close to the soil, epitomized by the SS — a new order of quasi-medieval knights, ascetic, dedicated to their leader and prepared to give their lives for a greater cause. According to a contemporary urban legend, Himmler considered himself as an incarnation of Heinrich I, a medieval king who is credited with being the first to unite the disparate German “nations” under one flag.

      Today, of course, Heinrich Himmler is almost exclusively known for his eminent role in promoting the destruction and extermination of Europe’s Jewish population — a “task” he considered his ultimate mission in the service of the German people. At the end would stand, or so he envisioned, the “final solution to the Jewish question,” the complete eradication of anything that might remind future generations of the presence of Jewish life in Europe.

      Practice and Practitioners of Holocaust Denial

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      Heinrich Himmler was exceedingly proud of his ability to execute this “historical mission” of saving the German “race” from being destroyed from the inside by the Jewish “bacillus.” We know that because he himself said so, in his notorious speech to high-ranking members of the SS in Poznan, in occupied Poland, in October 1943. The speech is remarkable for its candor, a candor quite unusual for official references to the Holocaust.

      Himmler not only acknowledged the “extermination of the Jewish people,” he also charged that Germans had “the moral right,” the “duty” to the German people “to kill these people who wanted to kill us.” In fact, he noted, “we have carried out this most difficult task out of love for our own people.” This, he continued, was “a chapter of glory in our history which has never been written, and which never shall be written.”

      Anyone who reads or listens to Himmler’s speech understands that the physical liquidation of Jewish life in Europe was central to Nazism. Hitler himself had made that quite clear in a speech in 1939, commemorating his Machtergreifung, his seizure of power in 1933 — an event, he attributed to divine providence. It is in this vein that Hitler touted his prophetic clairvoyance, particularly with regard to what would happen to Europe’s Jews. If the “international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe,” he insisted, “should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Three years later, high SS officials in occupied Serbia proudly proclaimed that it was the first country where the “Jewish question” had been successfully solved.

      “Chapter of Glory“

      There can be no doubt that leading Nazis considered the liquidation of Jewish life in Europe the most significant accomplishment of the Nazi regime. In fact, toward the end of the war, at a time when German troops were under increasing pressure on the eastern front, Nazi authorities continued to divert vital resources such as trains to assure that the death machinery could continue unimpeded. After all, as Himmler had put it, the annihilation of Jewish life in Europe was a “chapter of glory” that would indelibly be associated with the Nazi regime.

      Curiously enough, intellectual Nazi apologists such as David Irving and pedestrian neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States want nothing to do with the Holocaust. In fact, the most fervent champions of the National Socialist cause are adamant in their disavowal of what their heroes considered their greatest accomplishments. As Hitler put it in his last will, “I call upon the leadership of the nation … to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry.” Yet Hitler’s contemporary would-be acolytes don’t seem to be eager to embrace Hitler’s racist heritage — an instance of opportunism, hypocrisy, or both?

      These days, genocide is no longer considered a Kavarliersdelikt — a cavalier’s delict. As a result, Packer’s sweatshirt has stood out and, for good reason, gained widespread media attention. It suggests that the physical elimination of fellow human beings is okay, perhaps even an honorable feat, as long as it is done in the name of the greater good — in this case, the defense of white supremacy. It boggles the mind that the United States, which after all was instrumental in defeating Nazi Germany, has been fomenting a type of ideology derived from the worst of German racist thinking. But then, after all, Donald Trump has always been proud of his German heritage.

       *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More