If you are looking for the ultimate in anti-American stupidity, for unbridled, undisguised anti-American mudslinging in the German media – where do you go?
SPIEGEL ONLINE? Well, not a bad choice, considering some of their towering dwarves of anti-Americanism, such as Marc Pitzke. But SPIEGEL ONLINE has its good and (mostly) bad days, you know. Awful on average? Definitely! Often downright abominable in their biased presentation of American politics? You bet! But the worst? Well, I’d place them in the top 3 among German media, but they don’t have the stature for rank #1. (Also, there is the occasional brilliant article from Henryk M. Broder.)
Stern? Another safe bet for the top 3 of Germany’s worst anti-American media outlets. But again, no contender for the #1 spot. Too bland, too much of a copy of former champions.
Nope – if you’re looking for the real thing, the ultimate, not-to-be-disputed champion of German anti-American trash journalism, you don’t need to search among run-of-the-mill left-wing media.
You have to look no further than your respected conservative elite newspaper.
The image of Ronald Reagan, as
invoked by the FAZ cultural section
Introducing German media’s “Epicenter of Anti-American Madness”: the cultural section of “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) – the same folks who had the audacity to publicize the analogy of Abu Ghraib and Auschwitz. In “Untergang des Abendsterns” (“Downfall of the West Star”) Dietmar Dath hits another low point of anti-Americanism in the FAZ cultural section.
Dath presents an elaborate and terribly boring critique of the latest Star Wars episode, “Revenge of the Sith”. I do not suggest actually reading Dath’s confused piece (you would at any rate need to be fully fluent in German left-wing psycho-political babble) but it’s worth taking a closer look at Dath’s attempt to link the Star Wars film plot to, of all people, Ronald Reagan and his SDI initiative.
Enjoy Dath’s enlightening analysis:
What is “Star Wars” about then? … No film enthusiast, professor of pop culture or science fiction expert has come even close to understanding the true purpose of the whole thing; instead it took a former movie star and president of the United States of America: Ronald Reagan.
In the early 1980s, he strongly promoted the so-called Strategic Defense Initiative (“SDI”), (…)
For purposes of media propaganda, the new program was dubbed “Star Wars” and Reagan explained what that meant in a speech on March 23, 1983: “Let us turn to the very strengths in technology that spawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today.”
Finally, someone telling it like it is. Forget the idle talk of liberality, plurality, and so on that supposedly got us where we are today – it was technology, nothing more. This is exactly what “Star Wars” is about: the dream of achieving better and better horns of technological plenty, without anyone having to worry about the corresponding relationships between people. Just leave them as they are and call them the “Old Republic”. Progress is a blessing, not the consequence of hard work; prosperity is magic, not the result of politics. The entire free West bought into this dream; it was the most important weapon of motivation against the evil empire and its inferior technology, its lack of tropical fruit and churches.
Lucas should be praised for devising the unforgettable characters, sweeping imagery, silly dialogue and impossible roar of engines in the vacuum of space that elevated this insanity to the level of art. After all, without such aesthetic visual aids, how could later generations (should there be any in the first place) understand and forgive us for what we have done?
Can you believe this? Ronald Reagan’s (eventually successful) containment policy against a highly dangerous and – indeed – evil empire described as technological madness? Reagan despising the virtues of a free society, to advance nightmarish technological ventures? The anti-communist policies of the US in the pre-Gorbachev era deemed insanity?
Compare Dath’s mindless and highly inflammatory “analysis” with what Ronald Reagan actually said in crystal clear terms in his speech of March 23, 1983.
Reagan’s goals were to preserve peace and freedom and reduce the risk of a nuclear war – for the US and its allies. The SDI plans were intended as a deterrent against the expansionist and imperialist policies of the former Soviet Union. Knowing what we know today about the motivations of the Soviet leadership of the time, it was quite appropriate to build a technological shield against the growing communist missile threat.
Without the resolute policies of the US and its allies during the Reagan period, West Germany might well have ended up as another communist colony in Europe. Hard to say what then would have happened to the left-wing journalists of the FAZ’s cultural section… At the very least they wouldn’t have been able to watch Star Wars episodes.
Which, in turn, would have stopped them from producing film reviews like the one from Dath (whose name, BTW, reminds me of a certain character in “Star Wars”).
Damn, now there’s one reason why a communist Germany might not have been such a bad concept after all…
(Translation by Lain Coubert)
