German Anti-Americanism Watch: Wild West Conditions in Dallas

The apologists told us that German anti-Americanism was all about Bush, and would disappear as soon as Obama became President. Dream on! Here’s a charming example that turned up on Spiegel’s website yesterday. In her unctuous opening sentence, the narrator provides the proper “context:” “Here’s a video of the sort that we’ve become all too familiar with from America.” The German media never fail to take advantage of such incidents to throw out some anti-American red meat to the legions of haters in their audiences. I helps the bottom line.

Meanwhile, today we learn that a witness was stabbed to death in a courtroom in Dresden. Can anyone find a holier-than-thou dig about how this is “typical of German conditions” in the US media? I didn’t think so. One would have thought that, by now, the Germans, of all people, would have learned the drawbacks of smearing a whole people for the actions of a few.

The Night of the Long Knives

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s bloody suppression of Ernst Roehm and his stormtroopers. There are many accounts on the web written long after the demise of the Third Reich, but it’s a lot harder to find contemporary reports in newspapers and magazines. Today, almost four decades after a man with vision laid the foundations of Project Gutenberg, a massive and ever-growing library of books is at our fingertips online. Perhaps the day will come when the newstands of bygone eras will be as accessible as the libraries are now. I hope so. Contemporary news accounts are often far from accurate, but they have the great virtue of being free of the “filtering” so often found in the ideological narratives that pass for “history” these days. One gains a great sense of perspective by occasionally escaping the political correctnesses and narratives of ones own time and immersing ones self in the political correctnesses and narratives of days gone by.

Iran and the Anti-American Narrative

As the America bashers foam at the mouth over fairy tales about the Great Coup in Iran in 1953, they turn a blind eye to gross Iranian meddling in the affairs of other countries happening in the here and now.