Winds of Change.NET: The German Question: Darfur, Diplomacy & the European Media

March 16, 2006

The German Question: Darfur, Diplomacy & the European Media

by Joe Katzman at March 16, 2006 2:30 AM

The Carnival of German-American Relations is asking bloggers to submit their thoughts on the US-German relations. We've run more than a few stories on this topic over the years, from discussions to personal anecdotes to attempts to trace Germany's path to its present. But what about the future? I'll begin with yet another short but telling report from David's Medienkritik:

"In the repeated rush to judge the United States from the moral mountaintops of Europe, most German media have long forgotten Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. A morbid obsession with American crimes, real and perceived, has replaced most authentic concern for international human rights.

And the contrast couldn't be more extreme: While the German government busily promotes German industry at annual trade fairs in Khartoum, the German media quietly looks the other way as the Sudanese government continues its campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur. On the other hand, when previously unseen photos of Abu Ghraib recently emerged, the German media had an absolute field day. SPIEGEL ONLINE came out with a particularly exploitative cover and finger-wagging editorials popped up like so many mushrooms. (more...)

The full post has lots of links, and is worth checking out; take time to look at their sidebar, too, which is also a fount of useful if sobering information.

Now....

Where else have we seen this kind of thing before...? The only difference is that in the European media it's more blatant - and significantly more extreme.

David's Medienkritik has been onto this phenomenon for a while now, and so has the fine blog Transatlantic Intelligencer. This piece in Atlantic Review, meanwhile, decisively lays to rest the notion that this selective outrage is about higher standards for the West. It clearly is not.

Anne Applebaum referred to the phenomenon as "parallel information universes." Which is apt, but really it's just the beginning. Read enough, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that a lot of the stuff in the German and European media goes beyond the merely insular or hypocritical - and rises very nearly to the level of organized hate. Which is not entirely surprising to some of us.

Though it is interesting to watch what happens when you shine a light on some of the media perpetrators.

David is right about the damage that this sort of thing does over time. It's independent of the administrations or political issues of the day, and after enough persistence the damage becomes more or less irreversible. Unfortunately, the external US bogeyman is too useful to Europe's left, and to its elites, to be abandoned. Nor is it something America can talk them out of. Standing at the helm of a project doomed to failure by economics and inexorable demographics, their need for that bogeyman can only rise.

America's approach to economics and government is and will remain their #1 ideological threat. Which is why America is and will remain their #1 enemy.

This is unfortunate, but unchangeable. In practical terms, it means we haven't seen the last of this sort of thing by any means. Nor can we expect even basic honesty in quoting US public figures, as blogs like David's Medienkritik demonstrate regularly. The inevitable consequence will be a deepening of the "parallel information universes," a Europe that sees more fissures between itself and America - and an America that cares less and less, as it focuses on more important threats and areas of future opportunity.

Is there a way forward? Yes, but it's an unconventional one.

It begins by recognizing the limits of state and political outreach, and focusing on the larger information environment. It acknowledges that the Left and the EUrophiles can never become anything other than America's enemy, because of the mortal threat the US will always represent to their ideologies. The only solution, therefore, is to ensure that they do not control the debate. For without a true debate in Europe, Germany's press and Europe's will never get beyond caricatures of America.

Back on January 31, 2003, I wrote "The Blogosphere and the War in Europe." At the time, I said this:

"With what weapons, then, shall we fight in Europe? With moral condemnation when deserved. With a strong case to European publics, coupled with decisive military action internationally. With real economic and diplomatic consequences for nations who take "Axis of Weasel" stands. These measures are all appropriate. If executed well, they will shift internal debates and decisions in our favour - even as they defeat external threats we all confront.

Now for the flip side. If an unlimited front means that one's enemies are everywhere, this can be equally true of one's friends. France may be a founding member of the "Axis of Weasels," but she also gives us the irreplaceable Jean-Francois Revel and others. There are groups throughout the continent, substantial groups, who will support us. These people are not our enemies, nor are they evil. Together, we can punish their internal enemies in ways that support our mutual goals. Together, we can win.

First, however, we must find ways of working together and talking to one another. The blogosphere can play a significant role in that effort, IF we're willing to step up to the challenge."

Promoting blogging is one good start, both because of the transparency it creates across language barriers and the options it gives people. As they become dissatisfied with the ongoing failures of the "one right view" and the usual suspects who promote it, they must have alternatives for expression. The catch here is the European telecom market, which still makes many peoples' Internet access a pay-per-minute affair.

At a higher level, free-thinking Europeans must have intellectual ammunition. Which is why pro-freedom think-tanks, magazines, et. al. in the USA and beyond need to start thinking more internationally, and casting a wider net for writers. European freedomist thinkers should become better known to US audiences, and vice-versa (Bernard Henri-Levy is an excellent model). Even as pro-freedom Germans find leverage by aggregating content from other languages, then translating and republishing it on generous terms to bring a less narrowly provincial view into the room. Technology platforms like Tech Central Station, that can be built once and easily shared across the Atlantic divide, are an excellent move.

The fissures are certainly there in Europe, and the moral, security, and economic failures of the EU political project will only improve the hunger for alternative views. This, in turn, creates opportunities for critiques of the existing statist orthodoxy. Anne Applebaum:

"Sometimes the views of Europe's political class, as expressed in the European media, are not identical to the views of the European general public, as expressed in referendums. Sometimes a wave of popular outrage in Europe produces unexpected protest votes, or oddball political leaders, or both.

There are gaps and chinks and differences of opinion, in other words, and it is in and among them that American diplomats should now be working. If we want moral and financial support from Europe for the transformation of Iraq, for example, we should argue our case -- if it isn't too late -- not just in private meetings with foreign ministers but in public forums, where the voters can hear us."

It's good advice, and given the other forms such critiques could take in Europe, it's probably worth some investment. Of course, it would also be very good advice to apply to India's rising tech-savvy middle class, friends of liberty in the Middle East, or even the Chinese Christian community. And when you get right down to it, every one of those groups is more consequential to America's medium- to long-term future than Germany, or Europe.

With time, attention, and resources all in finite supply, one can legitimately ask whether focusing efforts on opinion in Europe is really the best use of time and money for public and private organizations.

This is not to argue that we should do nothing. One can certainly recognize the ideas above as a starting point, and do things that aren't all that difficult or expensive. Taking that approach may help to build a good model for globalized networks of like-minded freedomists, by starting with a group that shares some important cultural baselines. Eastern Europe may offer particularly fertile ground in that respect.

On a government policy level, looking for policies that give friendly European countries more trade options and freedom of action are also worthwhile, as it makes the EUrocrats' jobs significantly harder. There are a lot of low-level ways to do that, and they should all be undertaken. Underneath the smiles and feigned friendship, the EUrocrats and Europe's left know who their enemy is. Underneath our smiles, so should we.

Barring major outside shocks that create a major political opportunity, therefore, or strong feedback from pilot projects that says the opportunity is larger than one thinks, I'm no longer convinced that a major push aimed at undermining and breaking Euro-sclerosis is worth top priority billing. Not for governments, and not from private pro-freedom organizations in North America. Other, friendlier and more consequential vistas beckon.

European freedomists should be wished well, therefore, and helped in a low-level way. In the end, however, the battle is theirs to fight. We cannot rescue them from their toxic media universe, or their toxic political choices. That work must be left to events, bringing hard choices in their train.

The focus and locus of our own battles are likely to lie elsewhere, as we look forward into the future.

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Tracked: March 25, 2006 2:47 PM

Carnival of German-American Relations, Second Edition from Atlantic Review

Excerpt: This is a long carnival post, because we received so many excellent submissions about various aspects of our transatlantic relations from both sides of the Atlantic (and the Pacific), in English and in German. We would like to present you the large variet

Comments

#1 from Tom Holsinger at 1:29 am on Mar 16, 2006

Joe,

As long as the leading opposition party in the U.S. is dominated by lefties, there is nothing effective the U.S. can do. The Marshal Plan worked only because it had bi-partisan support. Ditto for the CIA's covert support for non-Communist European political parties in the late 1940's and 1950's. Worse, the State Department is now opposed to America too.

This means government action is out. Private action as you envisage would be too small in relation to the need, and it would be wasteful due to lack of coordination. Our covert operations in Europe in the late 1940's and 1950's were coordinated.

But I'm not saying nothing effective can be done, just that it can't be political. Furthermore it needs to be moral first. You can't educate moral midgets, and that is what European elites and their media mouthpieces are.

I suggest that we start at the bottom and work our way up.

I.e., try to re-Christianize Europe. Send missionaries there. Get American church groups involved.

"Those who believe in nothing will believe in anything." Give them something to believe in. That sort of private action Americans know how to do, and it doesn't need coordination - just retargeting of some of our existing missionary efforts in Latin America, Asia and Africa to Europe. The Mormons are already there.

And check out this thread on Daniel Drezner's blog:

http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002631.html

#2 from Bob Murphy at 6:19 am on Mar 16, 2006

I think western Europe's problem is terminal, that they have reached the stage where they have become a self-correcting aberration. They are in a death sprial demographically. They have become so effete they are no longer viable life forms.
I am more concerned about the fact that the European disease is taking hold in the Anglosphere.
There it can be stopped/cured, perhaps.
And central Europe has not succumbed and deserves every bit of support we can afford to give them.
I was in the US Army in Germany for three years in the mid 60s, only 20 years after the war. I loved the place. I was lucky enough to operate all over West Germany in four man recon patrols on foot with rucksacks. And to know enough about European history to understand what I was seeing.
But the place is dead on its feet.
A guy who writes under the name "Spengler" in the Asia Times has a particularly bleak view of western Europeans and their future. He is probably right.
"For today's Europeans there is no consolation, neither the old pagan continuity of national culture, nor the Christian continuity into the hereafter."
"They have no ambition but to die quietly, no concerns except for those amusements which might reduce boredom and anxiety en route to the grave. They have no passions except hatred born of envy. They hate America, a new kind of universality that succeeded where the old Christian empire failed. They hate Israel, which makes the Jewish people appear all the more eternal in stark contrast to Europe's morbid temporality. They will pass out of history unmourned even by themselves."

#3 from Joe Katzman at 6:37 am on Mar 16, 2006

Tom,

Benedict XVI appears to be on exactly the same page: start with the moral dimesnion, and Europe's soul and sense of self. Begin to fix that, and all else becomes possible again.

Will it work? Hey, some would say it will take a miracle.

Step one is rebuiding his church. The moves I'm seeing say he's doing that. Step two is getting serious about evangelization in Europe, and a direct attack on "the dictatorship of relativism," as he put it just before they elected him (which is WHY they elected him).

If you pay attention to his diplomacy toward the Muslim world, this will include outreach atempts aimed at bringing disaffected Muslims to Christianity, with religious freedom and reciprocity (two more themes you can expect to hear more of in the church's diplomacy with the Muslim world) as the underpinnings.

If he's smart, and he is, there will also be a campaign to bring in African Christian immigrants facing increasing persecution in Africa and other parts of the world - usually from Muslims- INTO Europe. This does 3 things:

1] Works with the demographic/ economic imperatives to create a group of immigrants with a different demographic effect than Muslims

2] Helps keep the Church on a course of faith rather than earmed-over leftism, and

3] Also lays down a base of support in Europe for future years, when religious competition in places like Africa will very probably turn violent on a large scale. At that point, having networks of support flourishing in industrialized countries will matter.

Whether Benedict and his church can be a modern day "Miracle Max" (Mel Brooks in The Princess Bride) and fix a mostly-dead European culture by restoring its soul remains to be seen. But Europe is not lost yet, and those fighting for its future have a powerful ally. On some level, the Left recognizes this - which explains their utter derangement at his ordination.

#4 from PacRim Jim at 7:48 am on Mar 16, 2006

Europe's past: Invention of the scientific method. Colonialism. The world war. Music. Literature. Fascism. Socialism. Communism.

Europe's future: Mecca, five times a day, and years of book and art burning.

Thus Europe will vanish into the history books. Sic transit gloria mundi.

#5 from J Aguilar at 1:33 pm on Mar 16, 2006

Pac (#4)

Add such terrible things as Classic Liberalism (now neo-liberalim), Capitalism, Democracy (twice, though full development was achieved at the other side of the pond)...

BTW, an Islamic state cannot support Europe's population of 600-700 million souls.

I saw two years ago in the WDR (that means something like "Western German TV") news about the coming, I thought then, of the Antichrist to that country. Well, after a while watching it I found out that they were refering to Donald Rumsfeld. With such state owned mass media, any inmoral position can be defended in Europe.

#6 from Michael at 3:44 pm on Mar 16, 2006

PacRimJim touches on a point that has wafted through my head from time to time.

So much essentail Western legacy physically resides within Europe.

Can it somehow be saved or is it destined to be destroyed by savages al la the Libriary of Alexandria?

#7 from Trent Telenko at 6:42 pm on Mar 16, 2006

Joe,

There a lot of existing anti-bodies in the European body politic against the Catholic church.

It has to be evangelicals and other christian sects that were never "established churches" in Europe to spear head this effort.

The Catholic church can play a role, but it will have to be with non-European priests from Latin America and Africa.

#8 from Joe Katzman at 8:09 pm on Mar 16, 2006

The Catholic Church faces antibodies, but also established channels that are positive; it's a mixed bag. And as demographics, socialism, and the creeping failure of state order via skyrocketing crime, riots, et. al. make themselves felt, I suspect a lot of nominal Catholics may see their Church's constancy in a different light.

Having the evangelicals there to create competition is great, and very important, because it breaks the "official church" stasis and introduces American-style competition. Which has left the US religious scene a lot more vibrant than its Euro counterparts.

Finally, we're already seeing priests from Africa and Latin America in Canada (not just Catholic, either!), and they're doing well. I'd bet strongly that it's already happening in the US as well, and it would be a natural complement to increased immigration into Europe from Africa and Latin Ameirca. But I'd be surprised if the Catholic Church isn't already quietly on that one in Europe.

Did I mention that quite a few Chinese Christian missionaries were learning Arabic? This is going to get plenty interesting before it's over.

#9 from Dave Schuler at 9:25 pm on Mar 16, 2006

Years back, I lived and worked in Germany for a while in North Rhine-Westphalia—a very Catholic part of Germany. I went to church at the cathedral there. It was just me and a handful of octogenarians—mostly women. They're undoubtedly dead now. I wonder who's attending Mass at the cathedral now?

#10 from PC at 2:00 am on Mar 18, 2006

A huge arrogance In US Foreign Policy, and major changes in doctrine, supported by incompetent execution have lead to the problem we are now having with our European Allies. In short, this administation has screwed it up, royally. As long as we continue down this path, we are going to continue to lose allies.
The truth is that before these guys took office the United States enjoyed huge support around the globe. We had Europe helping us in almost every major diplomatic and military struggle. Now, we basically call their views irrelevant, and thump our chests in arrogance, and then wonder why, they are not supporting us?
Bush sr was a master at Foreign Policy. Clinton was loved by Europe. We have made some very foolish mistakes diplomatically that have taken us from the post 9/11 nationalistic pride and world support, to dismall policy approval ratings both domestically and abroad. Blaming it on a lack of Religion in Europe, is just nuts. We enjoyed huge support from Europe under Bush 1 and Clinton. They did not lose their faith overnight folks, they lost their faith in US.
I doubt very much, we can get back what this WH crew has foolishly squandered because of a lack of maturity, brains and competence. Calling Europeans "low life forms" may make some bloggers in here feel better about it, but it is not going to change reality. The West needs unity to survive. Enjoy your next portion of "freedom fries".

#11 from Robin Roberts at 2:45 am on Mar 18, 2006

PC,
It was Europe's foreign policy that became irrelevant - even an outright failure - not the US'

Europe wants to have its cake and eat it too, sometimes literally. The problems we have had with Europe come from our attempts to make them deal with the consequences of their own irrational and hypocritical policies.

The Balkans were an early example. For years, Europe lacked the ability to do anything constructive in the Balkans - and often was acting in ways that increased the slaughter. Finally, they had to beg the US to clean up their mess - and then the Clinton administration you praise dithered for years before doing so.

I care not what "faith" Europe lost, it lost credibility long ago.

#12 from J Aguilar at 1:46 pm on Mar 18, 2006

Michael (#6)

Can it somehow be saved or is it destined to be destroyed by savages al la the Libriary of Alexandria?

Europe was destroyed once by the Barbarians (the Germans). Much was lost then, and history stopped for one thousand years, but eventually Europe reemerged, based in pretty the same ideas: they pervived.

Trent (#7)

but it will have to be with non-European priests from Latin America and Africa.

Oh no please! You know, here in Spain we are tired of receiving so many frustrated Jesuits from Latin America, crying on our shoulders because they could not carry out the Revolution there.

I am not surprised that so many Latin American inmigrants are now Evangelists.

Joe, Dave (#8, #9)

I agree, there has been a problem inside the Catholic Church. The left wing has imposed its messages. The election of Benedict XVI has been a blow to them, because although they have controlled much of the "public relations", most of the Catholic Church remains fairly ortodox, so they chose Cardinal Ratzinger, whose previous post was Lord Protector of Ortodoxy.

This duality between Leftists and Conservatives within the Church has translated into a mixed message that generates confusion among followers. Benedict XVI should tackle it (I think he was elected for doing so), stop trying to not bother the European left and put black on white.

This weakening of the Church message, of course, has favoured moral relativism and the expansion of Left ideology. They have managed to turn off or at least dim the moral lighthouse for hundreds of millions of Europeans that is the Catholic Church. Hayek said that in the ideology fights of today's world we should be sure of our creed. Turning those reference points off leave the ship of the individual being lost in the middle of a storm and ready to be boarded by Socialist ideas.

I don't think that this applies to the European elites, well educated, quite often in the States, maybe not directly America supporters but fairly pro-American World Order. But the Left knows that they are a minority and Democracy is about majorities...

What has happened during the last years in Europe? Just one word. The Left has managed to spread its ideology not only into the Catholic Church, but into the State owned media, the public Universities - especially Journalism and History studies - and many other institutions and media corporations... until the day Internet came out.

All their strategy of controlling reference points to turn them off or broadcast their ideology is threatened by Internet. The Net's intrinsic freedom makes it impossible to control, you only can censor it. If you manage to close an opposition website, another can arise swiftly. Finally you can find "right wing" (better Classic Liberal) answers to today's problems. The "right wing" ideology is deepeing its roots in Internet, and old forgotten writers, which confronted Socialism and National Socialism, such as Hayek and Mises, are being recalled. Though Socialism has flooded even Conservative parties in Europe and the process won't be easy, at least we have know new reference points, solidly founded in rock and yielding millions of candelas into the darkness of ideas.

Please note that another point that might favour this process is, yes, European Integration. As the European population gets more tangled, a common language has to arise. For instance, in Switzerland, with four official languages (French, German, Italian and Romance) English is imposing as lingua franca in Swiss corporations. (Similar as it happens in India). People speaking the same language (well, I hope nearly the same) understood each others problems and way of thinking fairly better. This will be slow, but in the end may ease transatlantic relations.