Germany Is Occupied by America

October 3rd was the Anniversary of the Reunification of Germany. Having arrived in Leipzig just days earlier, I decided to take a long walk with my friend Olliver Wichmann. Though we covered nearly 20 miles that day, we saw no national flag on display, only an East German one in Grünau, a neighborhood of huge, Communist-eraapartment blocks.

“This is remarkable, Olliver. In the US, you can’t walk a mile on any day without seeing flags.”

“Generally, the only Germans who display flags are far-right ones. During big soccer matches involving the national team, it’s also OK to display flags.”

Nationalism has become a dirty word for many Germans. Along the Karl-Heine-Kanal, I spotted a sticker that said in English, “FIGHT NATIONALISM AND NAZIS,” then beneath that, “BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY.”

The huge influx of Middle Eastern and North African refugees has triggered a backlash among German nationalists, however. Each Monday, there is a large rally in Dresden and Leipzig. The lead marchers in Leipzig carry a banner that proclaims:

“FOR HOMELAND, PEACE AND GERMAN CORE CULTURE.

AGAINST RELIGIOUS FANATICISM.

AGAINST ISLAMIFICATION AND MULTICULTURALISM.”

These flag waving folks, LEGIDA, have also declared that they are neither left nor right, and certainly not Neo-Nazis. At each Leipzig rally, they are met by an equally large contingent of counter demonstrators who whistle, shout, shake tambourines or bang on drums to drown out their opponents’ speeches. Hundreds of cops are on the streets to keep the two camps apart.

Downtown, there are bars with names like Texas, Big Easy and Papa Hemingway. One night in Staubsauger [Vacuum Cleaner] Bar on trendy Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, I caught the young bartender reading Mumia Abu-Jamal’s We Want Freedom: Ein Leben in der Black Panther Party. Franziska studied media in college. I also chanced upon a Mumia sticker along the Karl-Heine-Kanal. He’s bigger here than in his native Philly, apparently. Mumia was also made an honorary citizen of Paris in 2001.

Liebknecht, by the way, was a founder of the German Communist Party. After Reunification, most of the street names in Leipzig were left alone. It is curious that Kathe Kollwitz, a very minor artist, is given a busy thoroughfare, while Max Beckmann, among the greatest painters of the 20th century and a Leipzig native to boot, is relegated to a short, serpentining lane. Like other European countries, at least Germany does name its streets after painters, writers and musicians, even foreign ones. When you name a street after a cultural figure, you also educate the people, but in the States, we waste too many street names on trees, stones, animals or real estate promotional monikers.

On October 5th, I tried to observe a LEGIDA rally. Following a handful of Polish house painters walking home, I managed to pass through two police barricades, but still couldn’t get close enough to see anything but the cops. Seeing me photographing, a group of giant men in black uniform approached my sorry ass. Maybe they were not Polizisten but the German basketball Mannschaft. I did as Dirk Nowitzki commanded and deleted his and his buddies’ likeness from my camera.

With so many streets blocked and cops everywhere, Monday in Leipzig these days means slower or practically no business for many stores in the vicinity. As tension ratchets up, who knows if we will see street battles? America’s accelerating collapse ensures that there will be more US-instigated wars, which will send even more refugees into Germany to exacerbate the already rancorous division within its society.

In small, depressed Saxony towns like Riesa, Trebsen and Bautzen, the National Democratic Party of Germany has made serious inroad. Its main slogan, “THE BOAT IS FULL—STOP THE ASYLUM SEEKER FLOOD.” An extremely xenophobic area is also known a National befreite Zone [National Liberated Zone]. Since such a realm is not marked by fixed boundaries but by the mindset of its people, you won’t know if you have strayed into one until you’re suddenly greeted, say, by a highly unpleasant welcome.

There are those who say that these nativists, xenophobes and Neo-Nazis altogether are such a tiny minority, they’re more noise than substance. A Leipziger in his 30’s assessed, “I’d say 90 to 95% of the people here have no problems with immigrants. We need them since they will contribute to our economy. Many of them are highly educated. The LEGIDA and PEGIDA rallies are getting smaller and smaller, and they’re not all local people. Many of these far right fanatics travel around to attend these rallies. Outsiders may think these rallies are a big deal, but they’re really not. We’re doing fine.”

Sharply disagreeing with the above, a friend emailed me from Frankfurt, “Tensions are rising in Germany—while hundreds of thousands flee to us, Germans are beginning to understand that it will cause massive problems in the future […]

Germany still is a rich country—but that doesn’t mean, that all Germans are rich.

On the contrary, the number of poor Germans has been rising for the last 20 years—and the number of homeless people has doubled in the last five years (still only 400,000—but way too high in my view).

Now the little German worker with his shitty job or the poor pensioner, who can buy less and less with his money each year, because pensions are frozen and prices are rising, is seeing these thousands and thousands of mostly young men coming in—and they see them getting health care for free, having doctors treat them for free, that they all have these trendy smartphones, that they do not need to buy a ticket for the bus or the train, because they are refugees, while HE, the German, has to pay some extra money for the doctor and has to pay for the bus etc.

It is mostly well meant, what German officials and actors and ordinary people do, to help the refugees—but since nothing is done in the same way for German homeless people and since some Germans have to leave their apartments for refugees (there were some cases where people in social housing had to leave, because the landlord or the government wanted to put in refugees—in Munich, where my brother lives, they wanted to use a facility for coma patients, but backed off when the parents of these patients complained)—in short, it is a social disaster rising.

There are no jobs for these people. Most of them are not qualified for the labor market here. There are no houses for them. In fact, the German housing market for people with little money is down—so the poor will compete with the refugees.

At the moment most of them are in former military areas or even tents. When winter comes, the mood will get worse on both sides.

[…]

At the moment, anyone saying something against the refugees is considered to be either a bad man or even a Nazi—and because of this, a critical view is seldom expressed in the media.

And this also contributes to the anger of many people, because in their view, the refugees keep coming, THEY have to pay for it (rising taxes will come—

it is only a matter of time)—and so it is the perfect storm, which is brewing here.

Unfortunately most Germans are so ill-informed about politics etc. that they will not get the bigger picture—that it is a great chess game we are in—and we are an expendable pawn.

Germany has done its part in US plans—now (meaning the next years) the chaos shall rise so that we will accept anything and everything our masters present to us as a solution, when the real riots come.

Martial law? Yes please! No civil rights anymore? Please!

Alright—we will protect you. Just give us all your money and your freedom—There! Have it! Please protect us!

It’s kinda odd to watch that, Linh—I just hope, that my parents will peacefully pass away, before the real chaos starts.

We shall see.”

So it’s not alles easy, baby. A long, bitter winter is swooping down. I’ve said all along that the only way to solve the refugee problem is to stop bombing one country after another, so to save its own Arsch, Europe must say fick dich to Uncle Sam and regain its autonomy. If you help America bomb, you’ll also reap the chaos that comes with it. Let’s close with Rammstein, a Neue Deutsch Härte band named after the US Airforce base in Germany where most of the drone strikes worldwide are coordinated. Deutschland, you have blood on your hands again, but it’s not from your own choosing. Sense!

“We’re all living in America,

America ist wunderbar.

We’re all living in America,

Amerika, Amerika.

We’re all living in America,

Coca-Cola, Wonderbra,

We’re all living in America,

Amerika, Amerika.

This is not a love song,

this is not a love song.

I don’t sing my mother tongue,

No, this is not a love song.

We’re all living in America,

Amerika ist wunderbar.

We’re all living in America,

Amerika, Amerika.

We’re all living in America,

Coca-Cola, sometimes WAR,

We’re all living in America,

Amerika, Amerika.”

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