Schottische Unabhängigkeit, der TAZ rassistische Berichterstattung, und die kulturelle Hegemonie

Nachdem der schottischen Premierministerin Nicola Sturgeon Ihr Programm vorlegte, mit Unterstützung des schottischen Parlaments ein neues Unabhängigkeitsreferendum für Ende 2018 anzuvisieren, konterte die TAZ am Tag darauf (14.03.2017) mit einer einseitigen Berichterstattung, die ohne Scheu mit rassistischen Klischees hantiert. Nach einer absichtlich irreführenden Überschrift – „Vom Brexit zum „Scexit“; wir wissen ja, dass 62% der in Schottland abstimmenden Menschen beim Brexitreferendum für ein Verbleib in der EU wählten, und dass es Sturgeons Regierung genau darum geht –, stellen die verantwortlichen JournalistInnen, im fotographischen Form, das Urklischee des vermeintlichen Andersseins der Schotten dar. Ein Schotte im Schottenrock stellt sich für die Kamera zwischen Kopfhöhen Buchstaben, worauf auf der linken Seite „Yes“, auf der rechten Seite „No“ zu lesen sind. Er steht vor einem einsamen Waldhang, es gibt weit und breit kein weiteres Mensch zu sehen, und er lässt die schottische Fahne wehen, falls wir es gerade mit unserem Bildverständnis besonders schwer haben.

Yahya Hassan: who needs a new poetry of hate?

An 18 year old Palestinian immigrant growing up in Denmark, Yahya Hassan, publishes last October his first book of poems. Thanks to a interview in the Danish daily newspaper Politiken at the start of November, subtlely titled I F***ing Hate My Parents’ Generation, sales of the book caught fire. By Christmas, the book has sold 100 000 copies, which, as the German journalist Jörg Lau correctly points out, is the equivalent of a poetry debut selling one million in a country like Germany or the UK, if you compare the size of the German or UK population with that of Denmark. By April this year the German translation was out, published by Ullstein, and translated by Annette Hellmut and Michel Schleh. Unsurprisingly, there's no English language translation out yet; and I'd be very surprised if any English language poet with any name whatsoever would be willing to touch it. It's the kind of poetry that could very quickly loose you a name:

''I DON'T LOVE YOU, PARENTS, BUT I HATE YOU FOR YOUR BAD LUCK / I HATE YOUR HEAD-SCARVES AND I HATE YOUR KORANS / AND YOUR ILLITERATE PROPHETS / YOUR INDOCTRINATED PARENTS / I HATE THE LAND THAT WAS YOURS AND THE LAND THAT BECAME OURS / THE LAND THAT WAS NEVER YOURS AND THE LAND THAT WILL NEVER BE OURS / WHY DO YOU WHISPER INTO MY INFECTED EARS / THAT I SHOULD OBSERVE THE TREES? / I WANTED TO HANG YOUR HAPPINESS IN THOSE TREES.''

(I've quoted here in my own translation from A. Hellmut's and M. Schleh's German translation, as quoted in Die Zeit newspaper of 16.04.2014. I refer to the German law of quotation (Zitatsrecht) for my right to quote this poem.)

Those capital letters are Hassan's, not mine: he only writes in capitals. Jörg Lau didn't quote this passage in capitals, but in a poetically conservative mixture of lower and upper case, and that makes me suspicious: did Ullstein chicken out of publishing a fully capitalised version, because they thought that would be one can of beery-rage too much for the German audience? I certainly won't be buying this book, but I will be making what for me is an exceptional trip to a German book shop, to get an answer to this capital question.

If all of this sounds like bad satire, it isn't sadly. Stranger than the book itself is, I find, the rapturous reception of the book by the German establishment critics. Jörg Lau writes, for example, 'This book has strains of a lyrical Bildungsroman, it reads like the story of a self becoming itself, through the medium of poetry.' If the type of Bildung Yahya Hassan went through means you come out writing poetry like this then I wonder how we can cut back on that type of education in Europe.

Willy Brandt: Does disappointment in social democracy ever really have a beginning?

For the millions in the English speaking world who feel chronically let down by social democracy — particularly post Blair and post the exposure of the Obama illusion — it may be a comfort to discover that many German social democrats became disappointed with social democracy much earlier. Willy Brandt, who, from 1969 to 1974 became the first social democratic Chancellor since the Weimar Republic, would have been 100 this year. The German papers have been full of eulogies for the man; so it was refreshing to find the poem I've translated below giving a different perspective on Brandt, first published in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, in December 1966. That was the month in which Brandt entered as a junior partner into a coalition government lead by Kurt Kiesinger, by this stage a CDU leader, but a man who'd previously had a moderately successful career inside the NSDAP, the Nazi party. 

Alongside Brandt's willingness to work with an ex-Nazi, there were two other main points of his coalition politics which Delius, the poet, and many others who had previously supported Brandt now found unacceptable. The first was the introduction of state of emergency legislation, referred to in the second stanza of the poem. The second was the cooperation over employment bans for political radicals, which, in practise, primarily meant Communists, or members of organisations dominated by Communists, including the Society for the Victims of the Nazi regime and for Anti-Fascists. Brandt's cooperation on this issue culminated in his Redundancy for Radicals legislation of 1972, which focused on public sector workers. 1100 people either lost their jobs or were refused jobs as a result of this act, with 2200 disciplinary procedures and 136 redundancies among teachers alone (for more details use your browser's translator software to read the Wikipedia 'Radikalenerlass' page on the subject.)

These were policies which Brandt was supporting back in 1966 already, when Delius wrote this poem. These were the policies which caused an irreparable break between many Germans, who had seen themselves as social democrats, and their former party, the SPD.

Abschied von Willy                                                             Farewell to Willy

Von Friedrich Christian Delius                                     By Friedrich Delius, trans. Henry Holland

Brandt: es ist aus. Wir machen nicht mehr mit.        Brandt: we are through. We're not playing any more. 

Viel Wut im Bauch. Die Besserwisser grinsen.            Ready to punch out. While the know it alls are grinning.

Der letzte Zipfel Hoffnung ging verschütt.                  The final coin of hope falls on the scrap heap.

Für uns ist längst krepiert, was Sieben Schwaben    What still seems good for Seven Swans like you

wie euch noch gut scheint, euch zu kopulieren.        is decrepit stuff for us, a corrupt corpus.

Den Spieß herum, es gilt zu formulieren:                    So put the foot on the other boot, shout it clear and raucous: 
Wer Notstand macht, der will den Notstand haben.   Who legislates an emergency state should know he's going to get that.                                                                                                       

Wer jetzt nicht zweifelt, zweifelt niemals mehr.        If you've no doubts now, you'll not be doubting never.

Was jetzt versaut ist, wird es lange bleiben.                      What's screwed up now, will stay that way for long.

Von Feigheit. Dummheit lässt sich nichts mehr schreiben,         On cowardice and stupidity I can not write forever

Kein Witz kommt auf. Verzweiflung nur und Spott, die treiben      With punch-lines lost; just despair, and scorn, endeavour

Uns zurück, wohin ich gar nicht will,                                           To push me back where I don't want to idle,

Verflixt noch mal, ich stecke im Idyll.                                           For chrissake, God, I'm stuck here in my idyll.

'Stuck here in my idyll': these words might also fit to Brits today who still see themselves as social democrats, but who wouldn't even consider touching the post Blair Labour Party with a barge pole. It may be a good position from which to launch satire. It's a poorer position from which to launch politics. 

If you want to get read, get censored ...

... that's the suprising by-product coming out of Christian Füller's officially ''censored'' -- i.e. by the newspaper in which it should appear -- but now everywhere available article on paedophilia, as an integral part of the German Green's ideological roots . The article was scheduled to appear in last Saturday's left-wing liberal daily TAZ newspaper, but was pulled at the last minute by the TAZ's chief-editor, stating that it was ''full of false factual claims". All the other main papers got hold of this story and rightly shouted 'censorship!' Guaranteeing that Füller's article will now be looked at by far more people than the TAZ's usual 60 000 paying readers.

Sand Castles: the Anglo-American novel.

Last week, the lead article in Die Zeit's culture section,the Feuilleton as they call it, put the boot into the Anglo-American novel: a spectacle I always enjoy. It must be that clever, "makes-you-want-to-turn-the-page" arty-ficiality of folk like Franzen & Ian McEwan; the totalitarian tendency it has.

The seventy year old Hungarian novelist Péter Nádas appears to know a fair few things about totalitarianisms, of both the eastern & western variety. Die Zeit's lead article was dedicated to reviewing his 1800 page Parallel Stories, also out now in English translation from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It's in this review that the critique of the Anglo-American novel is made, by the reviewer, Iris Radisch (Die Zeit, 9.2.2012) together with Nádas. This is my translation of Iris Radisch's critique: 

"[In Nádas's novel] murders and conflicts are not solved, stories aren't told to their ends and characters are abandoned, no longer followed. Nothing - really, not one thing - is given closure, is allowed to explain itself, to round itself off. As if that was the most ancient, Ur-task of literature! - to take a handful of those infintely many grains of sand which make up our lives and fill them into little forms, to pat these down and - decorated with a punch-line - unload them again on to the sand mound.

Péter Nádas calls this bourgouis sandcastle novel - which until today remains the mission statement of angloamerican literature - "a manoeuvre to distract us." It contains nothing but well-trained little stories about nicely-dressed feelings and well-pruned thoughts, designed to keep the chattering classes in a good mood, "while the rest of the world can get on with its arms-deals in peace."  "

Well said, Péter Nádas! Certainly an interesting PR strategy, for winning over those North American and British readers.