Wenn wir brüderlich uns einen…

August 12, 2012 | Posted in History, notes, Philosophy, US History | Tagged with: , , | 22 Comments ↓

Democracy Is Obsolete — The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

In short: We condemned East Germany for a lot less than what we are doing to ourselves, right this moment. Whoever you vote for in November, that fact will not change.

National Anthem Of DDR


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22 comments on “Wenn wir brüderlich uns einen…”

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  1. I assume that you put up this re-print of Kuznicki’s nonsense primarily to hasten the departure of the of the picture of the glasses guy, rather than because you really thought Kuznicki’s thing was all that funny.

    Reply

    • I thought it was remarkably… what it is. Yes, getting the glasses guy off the top of the blog was also a goal. What an ugly sucker he was. But the Nietzsche cartoon had already done that.

      So I was looking for a title and ran across the DDR national anthem – which I think, incidentally, is one of the best-sounding I know of. Made me think of Parsifal – and the lyrics are like an epilogue to Goetterdaemmerung – appropriately! Here’s the literal translation:

      1. Risen from the ruins
      and turned toward the future,
      Let us serve you for the common good,
      Germany, united Fatherland.
      Our task is to overcome old distress,
      and we shall overcome it together,
      and we shall surely succeed,
      so that the sun, more beautifully than ever before,
      shines over Germany,
      shines over Germany.

      2. May happiness and peace be granted
      to Germany, our Fatherland.
      The whole world longs for peace,
      extend your hand to all peoples.
      If we unite fraternally,
      we will defeat the enemy of the People.
      Let the light of peace shine,
      so that a mother never again
      mourns her son,
      mourns her son.

      3. Let us plough, let us build,
      learn and achieve as never before,
      That, trusting in our own strength,
      a free generation shall arise.
      German youth, the best striving
      of our people united in you,
      Will revivitalize Germany
      And the sun, more beautifully than ever before
      shall shine over Germany,
      shall shine over Germany.

      Reply

  2. might be that you have a thing for “risen”

    I tried leaving a comment on that crud, but hours later it’s still unappeared.

    is that SOP ?

    Reply

      • first ever time on the site…..no links, not even a scornful tone and the comment box already had my handle and e-address loaded

        ——went back to site …and the frog has landed!

        sometime between 11:30 EDT and now ….comment hopped onto the page ….some three hours after marked submission.

        what was Kuznicki DOING with it during that time???

        (and BTW your comment of 12:42 was rather a nice answer to that silly nickwit)

        Reply

        • actually you said the same thing as me in about 1/10th the words…

          …I put a comment in at the bottom about looking at their moderation queue. I’m thinking it had something to do with the changeover in comment settings…

          …anyway, Froggy the Gremlin dominates as usual, unsurpassed among avatars. I suppose that Mr. K could have spent the time shivering in fear, but I suspect he or whoever just isn’t used to having to fish frogs or other beasts out of “pending.”

          Reply

          • I could afford the brevity as my comment was for one person and i know that person to not need more, whereas you were preaching to the larger audience …who certainly can use all the nicely worded explanation that you so nicely (and wordily) supplied.

            Reply

    • they recently switched to a new commenting system visible on the back end… wouldn’t surprise me if it’s some kind of glitch… also if your comment had links in it… might have gotten stuck on moderation… you also might have received some kind of ID verification e-mail

      Reply

    • And as for “risen,” no – I just liked the self-consciousness of E Germans, after WW2, composing a national anthem that rises up “out of the ruins” (“aus Ruinen”), and retains the focus on destruction and re-birth, except when it ventures into revolutionary communism in the line after the one I quoted, which is even more actively combative than in the translation – more “when we unite as brothers we strike the enemy of the people” not “defeat.” At the same time, it’s a German national anthem, not an East German national anthem. As you probably know, the West German national anthem (except for a few years when they tried to foist a different song on the Germans) was and is the old Deutschlandlied, but with the first two verses suppressed, since peoples kinda had and still have a problem with “Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles” as you may kinda recall.

      The inescapability of history is always a fascinating theme to me.

      Reply

      • THere’s a metric ton of irony, in your statement, the Nazis prevailed because the Communist attacked the most direct anti fascists in the Social Democrats, part of the Second International, then Stalin used
        the Nazi threat, after a certain interlude, to legitimize his stance as the only legitimate opposition to them , The Abwehr then used the contacts in the Weimar era, among Russian forces, to plant a coup
        suggestion to Stalin,

        Reply

        • The DDR was an in many ways catastrophic misbirth of an already unimaginably catastrophic history. Irony in that context would have been something of a relief, if a minor one, and external to a work like the anthem. Neither changes the fact that Communism had a long and in some ways quite respectable indigenous history in East Germany especially, arguably more so than in any other place in the world, including Russia.

          Reply

  3. CK MacLeod: And as for “risen,” no – I just liked the self-consciousness of E Germans, after WW2, composing a national anthem that rises up “out of the ruins” (“aus Ruinen”), and retains the focus on destruction and re-birth,

    maybe soon, after the destruction of the white supremacist government running Arizona, they’ll be songs extolling their capitol city rising from the ashes.

    Reply

  4. I pointed out this many moons ago, it seems, yes Marx thanks to Engels great generosity, was able to hang out in the British
    Libraries, butcher Hegel to his purpose, that’s what qualifies as ‘respectability in your eyes, Lenin of course sought to move the process along,, and the German General Staff obliged him.yet again, generations later,

    Reply

    • Actually, I wasn’t thinking much about the earnest labors of Karl and Fred, but a long history of organizing, striking, fighting, getting assassinated, and so on. Wouldn’t say they were on balance respectable, but they did many things that were quite respectable, and represented a real interest in the German political landscape. Before then, the Allied forces found them and their masters respectable enough to fight with. It shouldn’t be any harder to admit that the Kommis had a real constituency than to admit that the Nazis were also quite popular for an extended period.

      Reply

    • “The Allies were fooled”? They were supposed to, what?, join the Nazis in the heroic defense of Western Civilization against the Jewish Asiatic Bolshevik menace? Not sure what the document at the link is supposed to indicate, or the relevance of the very old slogan “no enemies on the left.” I don’t believe that it was used much by the OSS or by those delivering supplies to the Russians under Lend-Lease.

      Reply

  6. N o, as with the Lenin link, it was not out of altruism that they fought they aided the Allies, was because they had bet the wrong way, by the late early 30s, all the parties in Europe were totally subordinated to Stalin, and their main enemy was the Social
    Democrats, the irony doesn’t occur to you.

    Reply

    • I think you’re confusing diverse facts, and, sorry to say, but “late early 30s” is kind of an imprecise term. How wrong the Party may have been at various times, or all along, doesn’t have anything to do with the simple fact that it represented a real constituency.

      I don’t see much “irony” in the fact that the CP was ruthless towards its main rivals on the broad left, and I don’t usually go looking for altruism in history. I’m content to be taken by surprise. Events in the interwar period seemed to support the notion that a political struggle to the death, quite literally, was already under way, and heading to an overwhelmingly violent climax. The facts were thought to justify ruthless measures against those weakening the Red Front, as well as difficult but supposedly pragmatic decisions like the Non-Aggression Pact. One thing for sure is that the world doesn’t care much how we feel about it all. We might as well take advantage of the distance to learn whatever is to be learned without letting utterly pointless and obsolete partisan commitments get in the way.

      Reply

  7. No, they stuck a bloody knife into the Weimar Republic, because they thought they would be the victors, the leadership did, the rank and file didn’t know, ‘They chose poorly’ in the short run, enabling the Nazis, then later pretended to be guarantors of Democracy, the same was true of most other parties in Europe, in the interim, they declared themselves antiwar from ’39-41.

    Reply

    • Nice Dolchstoss theory. Kind of Son of Dolchstoss. In my own view, based on my own study, the Bolshevik menace was more a confection of rightwing AND leftwing propaganda than a major factor in events – a significant but ultimately quite secondary cause of the fall of Weimar.

      History’s a gangbang, and there are no paternity tests applicable to its great outcomes.

      Reply
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Noted & Quoted

Keith Spencer: …data shows that a centrist Democrat would be a losing candidate – Salon.com
(3)
Political Philosophy, Politics2020 Election
Keith Spencer: …data shows that a centrist Democrat would be a losing candidate – Salon.com
(3)
Political Philosophy, Politics2020 Election

TV pundits and op-ed writers of every major newspaper epitomize how the Democratic establishment has already reached a consensus: the 2020 nominee must be a centrist, a Joe Biden, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris–type, preferably. They say that Joe Biden should "run because [his] populist image fits the Democrats’ most successful political strategy of the past generation" (David Leonhardt, New York Times), and though Biden "would be far from an ideal president," he "looks most like the person who could beat Trump" (David Ignatius, Washington Post). Likewise, the same elite pundit class is working overtime to torpedo left-Democratic candidates like Sanders.

For someone who was not acquainted with Piketty's paper, the argument for a centrist Democrat might sound compelling. If the country has tilted to the right, should we elect a candidate closer to the middle than the fringe? If the electorate resembles a left-to-right line, and each voter has a bracketed range of acceptability in which they vote, this would make perfect sense. The only problem is that it doesn't work like that, as Piketty shows.

The reason is that nominating centrist Democrats who don't speak to class issues will result in a great swathe of voters simply not voting. Conversely, right-wing candidates who speak to class issues, but who do so by harnessing a false consciousness — i.e. blaming immigrants and minorities for capitalism's ills, rather than capitalists — will win those same voters who would have voted for a more class-conscious left candidate. Piketty calls this a "bifurcated" voting situation, meaning many voters will connect either with far-right xenophobic nationalists or left-egalitarian internationalists, but perhaps nothing in-between.

From: There is hard data that shows that a centrist Democrat would be a losing candidate | Salon.com

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Eli Zaretsky: Trump’s Charisma – LRB Blog
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Eli Zaretsky: Trump’s Charisma – LRB Blog
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Political Philosophy, Politics2020 Election

Understanding Trump’s charisma offers important clues to understanding the problems that the Democrats need to address. Most important, the Democratic candidate must convey a sense that he or she will fulfil the promise of 2008: not piecemeal reform but a genuine, full-scale change in America’s way of thinking. It’s also crucial to recognise that, like Britain, America is at a turning point and must go in one direction or another. Finally, the candidate must speak to Americans’ sense of self-respect linked to social justice and inclusion. While Weber’s analysis of charisma arose from the German situation, it has special relevance to the United States of America, the first mass democracy, whose Constitution invented the institution of the presidency as a recognition of the indispensable role that unique individuals play in history.

From: Trump’s Charisma

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Matt Yglesias: Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying – Vox
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Operation American Greatness
Matt Yglesias: Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying – Vox
(0)
Operation American Greatness

[E]ven Fox didn’t tout Bartiromo’s big scoops on Trump’s legislative agenda, because 10 months into the Trump presidency, nobody is so foolish as to believe that him saying, “We’re doing a big infrastructure bill,” means that the Trump administration is, in fact, doing a big infrastructure bill. The president just mouths off at turns ignorantly and dishonestly, and nobody pays much attention to it unless he says something unusually inflammatory.On some level, it’s a little bit funny. On another level, Puerto Rico is still languishing in the dark without power (and in many cases without safe drinking water) with no end in sight. Trump is less popular at this point in his administration than any previous president despite a generally benign economic climate, and shows no sign of changing course. Perhaps it will all work out for the best, and someday we’ll look back and chuckle about the time when we had a president who didn’t know anything about anything that was happening and could never be counted on to make coherent, factual statements on any subject. But traditionally, we haven’t elected presidents like that — for what have always seemed like pretty good reasons — and the risks of compounding disaster are still very much out there.

From: Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying - Vox

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