Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Consequences of German Guilt

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June 3, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

17:11

The Consequences of German Guilt

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	And that Zuchompeneuturchen and the first commissioner is a very important thing to do.
	Guten Abend.
	Sagan is currently on holiday and has invited me to host a video on his channel as reparations for the Blitz.
	The footage showed at the start of this video is of the Minister President or Governor of the State of Turingen, Border Ramelo, holding a speech at the arrival of refugees and migrants in the city of Saarfeld.
	As you saw yourself, the references to the Nazi past of the state he is governor of are frequent and used almost as a justification for the current refugee and migrant policy, expressing an attitude of we have to prove to ourselves through these actions that we have escaped a dark and sinister past.
	This is a perfect example of something called German angst, angst being the German word for fear.
	German angst is somewhat of a reaction resulting out of German guilt and involves a hysterical attempt to try to do everything as righteous as possible for the purpose of standing in a good light internationally or in the state itself or in the country and to avoid any possible comparison with our past and by doing so often ending up making things more complicated and potentially even worse.
	For example in 2014 what the UNHCR really needed was a cash influx because they were running out of money to take care of the Syrian refugee population in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.
	Our hysterical overreaction was to adopt a policy of open borders and declare that everyone arriving would be welcome to show to the world how generous we are in what was essentially one gigantic virtue signal.
	That is German angst.
	And the result is that it will cost a lot more to take care of the new arrivals than it would have to take care for them in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
	With the first estimate being 50 billion euros in costs for the German taxpayer.
	The majority of people who arrived in Germany claiming to be Syrian refugees were not Syrian refugees, meaning that actual Syrian refugees were left out on the line.
	The open border policy allowed ISIS to smuggle terrorists into Europe resulting in attacks and prevented attacks.
	Relations between European countries are severely cooling down over Germany's decision, and social strife in the upcoming years is pretty much guaranteed.
	An irrational decision coming out of German guilt to signal to the world how morally superior we supposedly are ends up having dire consequences for an entire country and continent.
	Beyond the international stage and on a smaller national level, it is obvious how much of an impact the darkest chapter of our history books has had on our society.
	One recent example is the social conflict that we had around the participation in the Afghan war and the NATO intervention in Kosovo, where the idea of German participation within a war for the first time in 60 years still managed to cause great controversy and debate within the public.
	The German government for a long time used the intentionally vague phrase Auslands Einsatz, or foreign mission, when talking about German troops in Afghanistan.
	And it wasn't until the return of German soldiers in coffins that the German government acknowledged that the country was in fact at war.
	The image of the German soldier itself and the possibility of Germany being at war has been an extremely controversial topic throughout the past 60 years, as can be seen by the fact that West Germany erupted in riots after the decision was made to create a new German army after 1949.
	In civil society, the very idea of what it means to be German and how our history should impact our daily lives is a controversial subject.
	How much responsibility does the individual German citizen have to take for the crimes committed by Germans 60 years ago?
	And how much do we let our thinking over our history shape the society we live in?
	Last year, the President of the German Republic gave a speech during Remembrance Day, declaring that there is no German identity without Auschwitz.
	He gave this speech shortly after a poll reveals that 58% of the German public want what is known as Schlustrich, which means putting the matter to a rest.
	The result of this was a brief but fierce debate that was carried out within segments of the public over how much the Holocaust should influence the structures of our society.
	During this brief debate, the TV journalist Anja Reschke, in a brief commentary on the German TV channel R Erd, was given airtime for a comment in a segment dedicated for political opinion pieces, in which she proclaimed the following.
	Actually, a Schlusstrichtin documentation, the film, the concentration of the European Union, the campaign of crematorium,
	the berg von Leichengesind, Bilder von Skeleton, with ambition, often the camera von Darmalt, and in the case of Mustafa Schluss,
	In keiner.
	Klar, lieber erinnern wir uns an Karl den Großen, Bismarck oder die Wiedervereinigung.
	Aber Auschwitz ist nun mal passiert.
	Wisalten der Auskechnit das Kapiter de Judenfafonkinter.
	This is an Abadzu Einsig that.
	Ichwanichtabai and Trotstem Habich Michamt Al Schwider Diesel Wales identity Obwil Uranic.
	Nat is in film continuum, also Ungeschalt.
	Undwasie Pegida demonstrant in Resen, the Aufrig Upedifier Auslander in Deutschland.
	Gans Erlich Darmiranden.
	And this idea that being German means that you have an obligation to be ashamed has been deeply ingrained within segments of our society over the past sixty years.
	It was indeed important after the end of the Second World War to take responsibility for the crimes committed by the Nazi regime and all those who followed its orders.
	It was important to rebuild the bridges that had been burned and to rebuild our image in the world.
	And it was also of the utmost importance to make a clear and unambiguous judgment on the Holocaust.
	Yet I today do not feel any shame, and I do not see why I should.
	Consider this, I am the son of an English immigrant.
	As such, I had a grandfather who gave his blood, sweat, and tears to defeat fascism.
	On my German side, my great-grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into a concentration camp for making a joke about Hitler.
	Does this alleviate me of the guilt that everyone supposedly has to feel over the sins of their grandparents?
	Do I have three quarters less guilt than everyone else?
	No, because there is nothing to feel guilty over in the first place.
	I find the idea that our society should be set up in a way that makes moral judgments over people and forces an aspect into their identity merely on the basis of things that their ancestors did to be contradictory to the very principles that a free and open society should be built upon.
	In this country, a Jew is my fellow citizen just as much as everyone else.
	I find the idea that we are somehow this savage uncivilized people who are destined to ravage the world and set it ablaze if there is no lid kept upon us to be just as backwards as the idea that a race and nation has the divine destiny to conquer and rule the world.
	Societies have no destiny and no predetermined path to go.
	And should I ever have children who would then be the first generation in this country to not have to be confronted with grandpa's dubious past, I would never raise them to believe that the crimes of their dead great-grandfather's generation must be part of their daily lives and identity.
	When I walk past one of the many Holocaust memorials in Berlin, Dachau, Belsen, and elsewhere, the thought that goes through my mind is the simple but true judgment that was made sixty years ago never again.
	It would be almost insane to conclude that the Holocaust is the eternal determining factor of our people and culture, and that we have to constantly make sure that this German savage that supposedly hides within each and every single one of us doesn't start goose stepping again.
	The idea that we have no agency and that by merely being part of a culture and speaking a certain language we have to constantly be afraid of ourselves.
	Wouldn't that notion run totally against why we decided to rebuild our society as an open, free and democratic nation?
	If we constantly had this massive swastik hovering above our heads and merge deep into our consciousness, that would have to constantly remind ourselves of it and let it determine how we build and interact within our society.
	Isn't there a disgusting irony to the fact that we were rid of the swastika that proclaimed to have the sole authority over determining what it meant to be German, only for us to preserve it as a constant presence within our society to determine what it means to be German.
	Not only does this line of thought contradict the very principles of what an open society should be, but it also leads to hypocrisy and to outright furthering the very forces that the people who keep this notion alive profess to fight.
	Here's an example of this.
	The clip you just saw showed members of the Lebanese migrant community in Germany expressing views that would usually get you thrown into prison for up to 12 years in this country.
	Every year many from the Muslim immigrant community in Germany march through Berlin and many other German cities in Hezbollah rallies, denying the Holocaust, praising the Nazis and just in general behaving like the SA Brownshirts did seventy years ago.
	Raising your arm for a fascist salute in the name of German Nazism will get you into severe trouble as a German citizen.
	Raising your arm for a fascist salute in the name of Allah will get you into no trouble whatsoever because they are not German or better put because they do not identify as German and if you do not identify as German it is apparently tolerated to be an outright fascist.
	Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe from thousands of Jews leaving France where they are being robbed, have their property burned up beaten into bloody pulps or even outright murdered to the UK where anti-Semitism seems to be more and more acceptable and elsewhere in Europe where countries have imported a large anti-Semitic Muslim population which is tolerated by wider segments of the European left, of which some clearly have an anti-Semitism problem.
	The guilt narrative that is floating around our society and which professes that only we are the ones who can perpetuate these views and that only we are the ones who have to take responsibility not just for our own actions But for those of others and for those who have long been dead, that attitude, that narrative, is preventing us from honestly addressing and confronting actual fascists.
	It seems as if people who perpetuate that narrative believe that besides the Germans everyone else in the world would just get along fine and without any conflicts or problems, and that the sole cause of all problems is Germany and being German itself, and therefore it must be constantly checked and kept under the lid.
	It would be somewhat ironic if today's German Jewish community, which has been able to build itself within a society in which they can live over the past sixty years, would be forced to leave this country due to the actions of recently arriving Muslim migrants whose views we refuse to question due to our irrational fear of ourselves.
	The idea that we as a people have an inherent guilt bound to our existence through the sole virtue of being part of a language and culture is therefore causing actual harm and conflict within our society because it is inherently irrational, just like every other dogma.
	We have built a free society and an open society over the past seventy years, a constitutional republic that in its principles, just like any other free society, stands in stark opposition to everything the Nazis ever stood for.
	It would be not just a mistake but also outright wrong to make the darkest chapter of our history books the one big determining part of our identity, not just as a nation, but as a people.
	Why should we continue to make our identities as individual citizens of this country a slave of history and the slave of the darkest chapter in our history book?
	You have agency, you have the right to self-determination, and we live in a society that judges you by your actions and not by the tongue you were born with.
	As such continuing a narrative of guilt to indefinitely and irrationally keep us from examining our society in an objective and honest light is detrimental to what an open, free and democratic society should be.

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