Shortly after the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016 on the National Mall, I was speaking to some patrons of a successful nonprofit about the importance of candid racial dialogue in politics and in the places we live, work and worship.
One of the participants had recently toured the museum and had a pointed question. Why, she wondered, were all the exhibits that visitors first encounter dedicated to slavery? Among other things, she was referring to a reconstructed cabin built by former slaves from Maryland and a statue of Thomas Jefferson next to a wall with the names of more than 600 people he owned.… Seguir leyendo »
No hubo incredulidad ni indignación. Cuando llegó la primera noticia de que un hombre blanco había matado a una mujer delante de la sinagoga y a un hombre dentro de un local de kebab en la ciudad de Halle, mis reservas de incredulidad e indignación estaban ya vacías. Lo único que quedaba era el doble dolor de la vergüenza y la náusea. Vergüenza porque, para mi generación, la reflexión crítica sobre la Shoah fue el principal punto de referencia de nuestra educación moral y política y había dado forma a nuestra ansia de una sociedad (y una Europa) democrática, antinacionalista, incluyente y antirracista.… Seguir leyendo »
When I was growing up there was no racism in Germany. In the 1980s every child learned at school that race was a construct that fascists had used to justify segregating and killing people. So if race didn’t exist, it naturally followed that racism didn’t exist either. If you wanted to talk about it people looked at you as if you were the Nazi.
All this is changing. It is dizzying to watch my motherland grapple with the concept of race. And, to be honest, to grapple with it myself because when you stop speaking about something you stop thinking about it eventually too.… Seguir leyendo »
El furor se desahoga sobre quien aparece como indefenso”, decían Max Horkheimer y Theodor Adorno en La dialéctica de la Ilustración. La frase vuelve a la mente de quien ha visto las terribles escenas de Chemnitz y cómo una multitud llena de odio perseguía y agredía a personas solo por haber sido señaladas como “diferentes”, “extranjeras” y “extrañas”. La violencia sin límite se dirige contra quienes están cada vez más indefensos porque la sociedad no los reconoce como iguales. Los desfiles de líderes neonazis, vándalos violentos y representantes políticos de Alternativa para Alemania y otras formaciones menores de extrema derecha o los ataques en mercados han ocurrido en Sajonia, pero las conexiones y la movilización superaban los límites regionales.… Seguir leyendo »
Des enregistrements vidéo montrant des groupuscules d’extrême droite allemands pourchassant, harcelant et attaquant des minorités ethniques, des journalistes et des contre-manifestants face à une police dépassée se sont répandus sur les réseaux sociaux la semaine dernière.
Dans une vidéo, un policier prévient un réfugié libanais parmi les contre-manifestants : « Si la foule attaque, nous ne pourrons pas garantir votre sécurité. » Dans la ville est-allemande de Chemnitz, dimanche 26 août, des manifestations ont rapidement éclaté après qu’un Allemand a été poignardé à mort lors d’une bagarre et que deux demandeurs d’asile, un Syrien et un Irakien, ont été arrêtés pour le crime.… Seguir leyendo »
The “beautiful game” has been revealing many ugly truths about racism and identity in Europe.
In the aftermath of the World Cup, the French and German national soccer teams have found themselves at the center of a renewed debate about race, assimilation and national identity that has highlighted the precarious position that many nonwhite immigrants and first-generation people find themselves in while living in the West.
On Sunday, the player Mesut Ozil announced in a series of powerful and pained social media posts that he was quitting the German national team due to racism and mistreatment from the German media, sponsors and the German Football Association (DFB).… Seguir leyendo »
Últimamente hemos dado en llamar supremacismo a lo que en otro tiempo se llamó racismo por la sencilla razón de que ya nadie o casi nadie se atreve a usar la raza como argumento de superioridad. Pero en realidad la raza es lo de menos en el racismo. Lo esencial es creerse o sentirse superior. Luego viene el encontrar un argumento que justifique la superioridad en la forma de alguna marca o característica que permita distinguir a los superiores, por el muy elemental motivo de que para considerarse superior hay que señalar a aquellos que no lo son con un hecho diferencial.… Seguir leyendo »
To many Germans, the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month and the American president’s reaction to it came as a shock. Even those who have come to expect little of Donald Trump — he’s a uniquely unpopular figure among Germans — were aghast. “It’s racist, far-right violence, and that requires determined and forceful resistance no matter where in the world it appears,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
What a strange moment, when the German chancellor lectures the American president on how to deal with neo-Nazis. But it’s also an instructive one, in that it highlights how the two countries deal with extremism.… Seguir leyendo »
Europe is being torn apart; divided by the aftershocks of the financial crisis, Europeans seem able to find common ground only in a common enemy. To hear Geert Wilders of the Netherlands or the U.K. Independence Party in Britain tell it, the crisis is not just about refugees: The influx of primarily Muslims is a threat to Western civilization itself, on par with the Arab invasions of the seventh century and the Ottoman invasions of the 16th.
It’s no coincidence that my country, Germany, has also seen a resurgence of a once-common, but more recently discarded, term: “das Abendland.” In English it is usually translated as “the Occident,” but its literal translation is quite poetic: “the Evening Land.”… Seguir leyendo »
The story, about a mob of Arab men rampaging through the well-heeled streets of Frankfurt and sexually assaulting German women as they went, must have been irresistible — so irresistible that Bild, a popular newspaper, published it early this month with little scrutiny.
The problem, as the local police soon found, was that it was “completely baseless”. There was no record of any assault. The article relied entirely on interviews with a restaurant owner and one woman, whose motives for inventing these allegations remain unclear.
Bild retracted the article last week. No matter: The damage had been done, the fictitious tale having found many believers, either eager or fearful, among the German public.… Seguir leyendo »
Una de las razones, en mi opinión, por las cuales no se acaba de entender bien el auge del extremismo de derechas de los Pirineos para arriba es la propensión a explicarlo mediante la asimilación comparativa con los movimientos totalitarios europeos de la primera mitad del siglo XX. Al tildar de fascismo o nazismo a lo que no lo es ni pretende serlo, nos cerramos la puerta al cabal entendimiento de un fenómeno cada vez más extendido en Europa.
Ahora mismo se percibe en no pocos países europeos un refortalecimiento de corrientes empeñadas en desmontar el Mayo del 68; y, por consiguiente, todo lo que aquello supuso en cuanto a ruptura de tabúes, hedonismo, relajación de las costumbres, rebeldía, permisividad, emancipación femenina, antimilitarismo, ecologismo; en fin, de drogas, sexo y rock and roll.… Seguir leyendo »
«Es nuestro deber defendernos con armas. También dispararemos a mujeres y niños». No es una frase de una película de Peckinpah o de una turbia serie policiaca. En ambos casos, habría una compenetración lógica entre la violencia hablada y la violencia filmada. Pero, ¿qué ocurre cuando falla esa reflexión porque quien profiere la obligación de matar mujeres y niños es un político de carne y hueso? En efecto, su autora, en este caso, es Beatrix von Storch, vicepresidenta del partido 'AfD' ('Alternativa para Alemania'), un partido que se llama a sí mismo de centro-derecha y que según las actuales encuestas ha rebasado ya a los Verdes en intención de voto, situándose en un 12%, lo que le convierte en la tercera fuerza política alemana, doblando a los liberales (en torno al 5%) y por encima también de La Izquierda (los antiguos comunistas y socialdemócratas desengañados, en torno al 8%).… Seguir leyendo »
Germany is not lacking in right-wing sentiment these days, but most people are careful about how they deploy their anti-immigrant rhetoric. And then there’s Björn Höcke.
Last month Mr. Höcke, a leading figure of the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland, gave an openly racist speech on the “differing reproductive strategies” of Africans and Europeans. It was not the first time he had drawn on National Socialist themes, but this time he caused uproar, even in his own party, which has asked him to resign his membership.
Whatever happens to Mr. Höcke, though, his willingness to use overtly racist language has revived an age-old fear in Germany.… Seguir leyendo »
I am a patriot. Being German, those words don’t come easily, particularly for a leftish, skeptical urbanite like myself. And particularly not now, just a few days before we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But yes, I love my country.
The reason I say it out loud, now, is that I feel I have to defend Germany against those on the streets of Dresden who also call themselves “patriots” — “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West,” to be precise, which is the name of a loose alliance that brings thousands to the streets every Monday.… Seguir leyendo »
The first news agency reports on the murder of Marwa al-Sherbini informed the German public that a defendant had murdered a witness in the district court of Dresden. The reason was a quarrel in a children's playground.
No mention that the witness was a Muslim woman. No mention that the playground quarrel had culminated in the defendant shouting at the woman "Islamist", "Muslim bitch" and "terrorist". The German press reported on the case on the back page and fell asleep. A few days later it was awakened by thousands of Egyptians who protested vociferously against the "Islamophobia" of the Germans. Islamophobic?… Seguir leyendo »
"The martyr of the hijab" is what Egyptians are now calling Marwa al-Sherbini. The 31-year-old veiled Egyptian wife of a postgraduate student in Germany was fatally stabbed – in court – by a German man identified only as Axel W, who had been prosecuted for calling her a terrorist (among other things) while she was playing with her three-year-old son in a park. Marwa's body was interred in Cairo yesterday and her wake was attended by thousands, some of them chanting: "There is no God but God and the Germans are the enemies of God."
The case has sparked anger in the Arab world and Egypt in particular for its perceived under-reporting in the western media and a belief that the attack, described by German authorities as an isolated one perpetrated by a "lone wolf", is the culmination of consistent nurturing and legitimisation of Islamophobia in Europe.… Seguir leyendo »
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