What does the most gigantic economic rebuilding program of all time announced in the US under the title "Build Back Better" have to do with the increasingly fierce internal American culture war over issues such as abortion or theories of race and racism? At first glance, nothing, but for the world power, its leadership and its people, apparently a great deal. In our article on the subject, you can read about what the US is actually suffering from and why its leaders are so single-minded in thinking that they have to take care of the "soul of America."
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…
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.
There is no summer slump in American political life this year. After all, the president will be elected in the fall. And because the post of the world’s most important ruler is at stake, the leader of the world power par excellence, every twist and turn in the American election campaign enjoys the attention of the whole world. And there has been no shortage of twists and turns so far: the first direct clash between the two candidates turns out to be such a disaster for the Democrats that Trump’s renewed election victory seems to be a safe bet. But just a few weeks later, nothing is certain: after Biden assures that only the Almighty himself can stop him from running again, he suddenly renounces in favor of his — even more unpopular — running mate Kamala Harris; contrary to all expectations, she is met with a wave of enthusiasm in the party and among the electorate. Just a few weeks later, she overtakes Trump in several polls.
That sure was traumatic for the nation. For the first time since 1814, the Capitol in Washington is ransacked, but this time not by foreign soldiers acting on the orders of a hostile, undemocratic monarch. On the contrary, it’s ardent American patriots, bursting with love for “freedom and democracy,” who are going at it certain that they are only claiming their good democratic right to “four more years!” under the rule of their favorite president.
“I’m voting for the president I’ll make more money under” (an unnamed hard-working American on German television)
That is pretty close to America’s true soul: to the false materialism going with the capitalist competition that the land of unlimited opportunities excels at. But it is not even half the truth when it comes to the second wave of Donald Trump’s election campaign for “America first!” after 2016. The officially launched ‘culture clash’ between populist lies and democratic hypocrisy is about nothing less than the nation’s morality — that is, about the obedience of the people that the global might of the state is based on in the land of the free.
Apparently, you can’t reveal it often enough. It doesn’t matter that the man has almost a full term behind him. Seasoned journalists still see the final verdict about Donald Trump as being that he is above all a man with no sense of decency. Three and a half years of America first!, his implementation of impressive visions and revisions of American world politics, of the ‘homeland,’ and of the most powerful office in the world — everything he does on and around the job is perceived solely as evidence of a defective moral sensibility.
It’s strange how so-called populists have acquired the reputation of being a danger to democracy. The list of their sins includes stirring up discontent as grist for their mills, dividing the people and declaring themselves to be their only true representative, telling the people what they want to hear, making unrealistic promises to them and offering ‘simple solutions’ to complex problems, engaging in nationalistic and xenophobic rabble-rousing, cultivating an authoritarian personality cult and showing no respect for the rule of law.
It’s strange because populists carry on so extremely democratically. It’s as if one knew of a democratic competition of political parties other than one where good democrats with a pronounced will to power not only seize on popular discontent wherever it is loudly proclaimed, but also track it down, dig it up, and incite it in order to direct it against the those in office and in favor of themselves. It’s as if one didn’t know very well that a democratic politician shows no limits to his shame when it comes to going from on high among the masses in order to be celebrated as one of them.
The journalists of the world have two closely related adjectives for Trump’s style of rule: unseemly and undemocratic. The editors of GegenStandpunkt do not want to make the new resident in the White House more decent than he is. But a look at his conduct in office during his first hundred days shows quite clearly that there is nothing un- or even anti-democratic in Trump’s style of rule; and the standards that the guardians of democratic decency bring against Trump are not one bit better.