When German chancellor Friedrich Merz announces that in these hard and challenging times Germany must “learn the language of power,” two things are clear: this is not about phrasing political statements in different ways. The intended meaning becomes clear in the accusation leveled against the president of the enemy state currently at war, Russia: He only understands the “language of force,” and consequently, this is how he must be dealt with, rather than with the language of diplomacy. The “lesson” announced by the chancellor here is thus about how to position and assert his nation as a global actor capable of wielding force — both in its dealings with Russia and on the world stage in general. Secondly, it is also clear for the Federal Republic’s Commander-in-Chief that a policy involving threats and the use of military force is not, in fact, a new language that has to be learned from scratch; rather, it is a practice already honed over four years of conflict with the Russian adversary. Considerably more of this is required: this is what Merz wants Germany to learn.
Iran did not ask for America’s war, and as far as it is concerned war could have been avoided, but if America thinks it has to wage it, the Iranian people will prove that this war is unwinnable for America. First of all, Iran has always been great and beautiful, and that is why, secondly, America’s attempts to diminish it — starting over seventy years ago — were not only bound to fail but have actually made Iran — “one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history” — even stronger than it ever was. The Iranian president is talking about nothing less than the raison d’être of the state of Iran.
Trump is declaring a state of general emergency for the great America he thinks has been so totally mismanaged. This is supposed to enable him to make sure the nation can once again make the most of the global dominance and omnipotence that his predecessors betrayed and bungled — in other words, stole from the American people. The latter have long got used to foreign drugs and home-made food stamps instead of chasing after dollars and making themselves useful for America’s greatness. Trump is fighting migrants, the welfare state, wokeness, and the political opponents he blames for the spread of all these plagues, to help his Americans be great again, that is, truly American.
What historical inquiry yields is the finding that ‘we’ are a product of history and must understand ourselves as such. What needs to be ‘understood’ is that this ‘we’ stems from a higher necessity. The core of historical thinking is that the collective ‘we’ historians assume or even explicitly name in their considerations, whose fate they follow in a spirit of intellectual partisanship — ‘our identity’ — has a purpose that is rooted not in our present existence and doings but beyond them, in the past. According to the logic of this thinking, the meaning of the community of values we get to belong to has arisen from history and consists quite simply in us becoming or having become what we are today. The mission of this community of values is to realize and assert itself, and fulfilling this mission, if one follows the same logic, justifies the community’s existence.
It is part of our highly esteemed democratic culture that citizens constantly voice criticism, not only in private but also in public, forever envisaging and calling for a better world. But that doesn’t make it happen, the consequence being that there is a considerable standard repertoire of complaints that persists. Which unfortunately doesn’t mean that citizens who complain know how criticism works. They keep making the same mistakes, causing them not merely to muck up the initially theoretical business of criticizing. With their cockeyed way of objecting they develop a kind of will that makes them perfect everyday supporters — of everything they take such a dim view of. And what has flourished no less than such critical carping is the assortment of standards for rejecting criticism — to the point of prohibiting it…
Marx claims that those who actively shape capitalist competition and those who go along with it have a necessarily false consciousness. Not of this or that, or of all kinds of things — it would be hard to find any necessity for that — but of the necessities that quite generally and unshakably govern people’s material existence in this world: earning money and making a living with it. In other words, a distorted perception of the universal constraint that everyone knows, has to reckon with and cope with in practical terms.
What it really comes down to in our society is, at bottom, always clear: each side fixates on its source of income and fights for what it yields using the other side's dependence as leverage. So far, so good — or bad. But what is reversed here? Where is false consciousness at work? Especially necessarily false — what kind of necessity is there?
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It is popular to think that human life itself is an inscrutable contradiction between existence on earth, where no real, freely chosen purpose in life can ever “ultimately” work out and everything is unpredictable and unfair, and a deeper, hidden but quite indestructible meaning — a ‘what for’ of such absolute validity that it brings reason and reality to their knees, but allows people to be perfectly happy.
Accompanied by humanitarianism, judged from a legal point of view, disputed on moral grounds
Israel’s Gaza war — a challenge to the powers and moralists of the imperialist world[1]
Israel is going forward with its war against Hamas' state-founding terrorism in Gaza. So more and more of the population's living conditions and the population itself are being destroyed because with this war Israel is defining and treating this population as a swamp of terror. Gaining momentum alongside this is the wrangling over the question of which of the atrocities of this war are necessary — and which are superfluous and should therefore be blamed on Israel as a violation of good manners in state killing and destruction. The provisional highlight in this context is the accusation of “genocide,” because according to the relevant legal texts, nobody should be doing such a thing at all. The debate about whether Israel's terror-extermination campaign in Gaza is still within the green range of military violence permitted under international law or whether it is already criminal — is obviously so edifying for those involved in it. GᴇɢᴇɴSᴛᴀɴᴅᴘᴜɴᴋᴛ does not take part. Instead, it explains how ends and means also belong together in this war; it explains further the imperialist content of the concerns about legality and admonitions of the supporting states as well as the mistakes and achievements of the public and private moral statements on the ongoing war.
The German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is not the only party in the world that boasts a polemical excess of patriotism.[1] Parties of this kind are successful everywhere, ones that promise to put their country at the top as it deserves, however the comparison goes; to put it “back” where it used to be according to their philosophy of history.
The technological and economic advances that capitalists have been achieving — largely not on their own but rather through their states’ action — are in many ways of the utmost importance to these states, especially and above all others the mighty ones. These advances urgently require their supervision, control, and direction because they are essential for their own competition with each other, whether on the economic, world-market strategic, or military level — in short, essential for their “future.”