Byzantine Blog

Feigning Shock

The recent revelation that “Germany's Conscience” and a beloved public figure Günter Grass was a proud member of the elite Waffen SS unit of the fascist army, which was entrusted by Adolf Hitler with the mission of running the Nazi concentration camps during the WWII has shocked and disappointed Germans and Austrians.

Among those who were neither surprised, nor disappointed are Serbs who have already had their rude awakening regarding Grass' true colors seven years ago, at the very start of NATO aggression on Serbia. The same year celebrated German “humanitarian” and supposed leftist has received the Nobel Prize, two days into the ferocious bombardment of Serbia, Grass used his overwhelming influence in the German-speaking world and his stature of a literary giant to give his blessing to the carnage:

Finally! this attack on Serbia is long overdue! It is already late, I just hope not too late. Obviously, we on this continent are not capable of doing anything regarding democracy, humanity and human rights without the Americans.

Beating the Fascist Tin Drum

The revolt Grass' words have caused among the Serbs has moved many of his Serbian readers to return his books. Flooded with messages and calls, Serbian daily Novosti has initiated the action “We are Returning Your Books, Herr Grass.” This is how “The Tin Drum” writer was exposed to the same experience Norwegian Hitler-supporter Knut Hamsun (another Nobel Prize winner) had to go through, few decades earlier.

Unlike Germans and Austrians (or the rest of the world, for that matter), Serbs didn't have to wait for Grass' public confession -- Serbian Minister of Culture Dr. Zeljko Simic saw through the thin layer of varnish of German writer's “humanity” back in 1999:

Resentfully, I can conclude Günter Grass' statement is in full accordance with the nurturing of the fascist tradition of thought. It represents the culmination of the Nazi outlook on the present day civilization. Beating on his fascist tin drum, Grass is inviting Europe to resort to even more brutality in the aggression against Serbia and Yugoslavia.

German Hypocrisy

The only thing that is bewildering and quite repugnant in the whole story is the hypocrisy of the German and Austrian public that is, suddenly, so deeply shocked and needs to “come to terms” with the fact Günter Grass The Nazi was also an active fascist sixty years ago. Why would they be shocked?!

Wasn't another famous German, the current Pope Joseph Ratzinger, also a member of the Hitler's army? The fact obviously didn't hurt his prospects of climbing up the clerical ladder in Vatican, right to the point of “infallibility” although the uniform he wore was never a secret.

Didn't the previous Pope, Karol Józef Wojtyła, beatify a convicted war criminal and a fascist, Croat cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, whose clero-fascists took part in the slaughter of 750,000 Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia during the WWII? And didn't that Pope went to beatify this verified monster right after Croatian Ustashe successfully cleansed another 350,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995? So, where was the outrage, what happened with the shock-mechanisms of the German, Austrian and other moralists then?!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

Germans and Austrians who are these days “struggling to come to terms” with the fact their “Conscience” in the shape of Günter Grass is rather dirty, should reach for a mirror and have a better look at themselves, instead of continuing to externalize their own fascist attitudes.

After all, it wasn't so long ago that their government of “Green Slaughterers” (Peter Handke) rushed in to be the first in the world to grant independence to Neo-Nazi Croatia in its unhistorical, Tito/Hitler borders and without negotiations. It wasn't so long ago that the notorious holocaust denier and the war criminal Franjo Tudjman and his Croatian Ustashi were supplied with the brand new Made-in-Germany guns and tanks in the midst of arms embargo, which they used to ethnically cleanse Croatia and to aggress and occupy 30% of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It wasn't so long ago that the new incarnation of the Fascist Croatia went into a collective trance singing “Danke Deutschland” and it wasn't for nothing when it did.

It also seems rather recent that German mass-media outlets and the most prominent German newspapers were so shamelessly pitching Croat anti-Serbian propaganda that some of them, like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were ridiculed for the lack of any semblance of journalistic ethics and called, appropriately, Zagreb Allgemeine Zeitung. Even more recent is the firing-up of the German Luftwaffe fighter jets for the first time after the WWII, when these same Germans and Austrians that are now barely able to recover from the shock regarding their favorite Fascist Drummer, happily jumped at the opportunity to bomb Serbs once again and finish what their fathers and grandfathers were busy with throughout the large part of the last century.

The True Conscience

The visible German tremor over the calls to the Nobel Foundation to revoke Günter Grass' Nobel Prize and the entire we-read-the-books-not-the-writer refrain plays like a vulgar travesty on the scene of the “world of culture” when viewed from the perspective of another contemporary author who writes in German, Peter Handke.

It was really just yesterday that the pure genius of the written word, Peter Handke, who won the Heinrich Heine Prize fair and square was denied the award by the German officials and the entire German/Austrian public which went into a foaming fury over the very thought Handke should be the recipient of the Prize he fully earned. And this time around, the appallingly duplicitous German/Austrian mob of “Intellingentzia” (the ruling Wall*Mart Intelligence, as Gilles d'Aymery puts it) chose to punish the ingenious writer simply for refusing to shut up and go along with their favorite pastime: Serb-bashing.

For, unlike the SS Waffen Günter Grass, Handke is far from being Hitler's elite soldier and has no connection to the Nazi concentration camps -- quite opposite Günter the Fascist and the Fake Humanist, Handke happens to be the TRUE conscience of Germany and Austria. That is precisely why he is being so ferociously ostracised and most passionately hated exactly in Germany and his native Austria.

Unlike Günter the Nazi Liar, Handke's only sin is his humanity and integrity, the fact that he refused to join the chorus led by The Opportunistic Fascist Drummer in vilifying the Serbs beyond recognition, the fact that he condemned the inhumanity and bestiality with which Serbs were demonized, destroyed and systematically ruined. Handke kept telling the truth, in spite and in the midst of the mass-hysteria and anti-Serbian bias that is still dominating German/Austrian mass media.

Nevertheless, in the case of Peter Handke there were no outcries from the same corner we are hearing loud and clear today, and not one from the Fascist Grass' we-read-the-books-not-the-writer fans remembered to apply the same measuring stick to Handke's work. If Günter Grass was half the man Peter Handke is, he would return his Nobel Prize, just like Handke did, down to every penny. But the Old Fat Nazi has demonstrated he cannot even think of any gesture that would spring from personal integrity and sense of honor -- except for lip-service and cheap words, he has nothing else to give.

Swastika Forever

So, while Germans and Austrians are choking up on the “news,” it might be a good time for them to face some seriously unpleasant truths: Günter Grass wasn't a fascist 60 years ago, rather he never ceased to be one, and that very mindset and his Nazi-bent is the main reason he was so adored in Germany and Austria. There is no need to feign disgust, or to feel cheated by Grass' lies and pretence, since the majority of contemporary German/Austrian intellectuals, writers and public figures are in no way better -- while they might have not worn Hitler's uniforms, the swastika from Grass' lapel seems to be eternally imprinted on their foreheads, and mystically materializing in their words and actions.