Yesterday, I received my copies of the new book that I edited and co-wrote SPRACHGEWALT: Missbrauchte Wörter und politische Kampfbegriffe.
The book will be out in the bookstores next week, where they can already be pre-ordered at of-course also and on-line.
Here’sa short informative videoclip
And
if your prefer Amazon, here’s a link.
I was recently the guest of Treffpunkt Klassik Extra, a sort of <this is your musical life> German radio programme, in which I was allowed to bring 10 pieces of music and talk about the role they played in my life.
The programme, that gave me great pleasure, was broadcast a week ago and can now be heard as podcast here.
I have spent these recent days, in which the unsolved Israel Palestine problem exploded again, in Germany. I am more than shocked by how one-sided German media have reported this “round”. What you got in most mainstream German newspapers and on German TV is not serious journalism.
It is, of course, much more fun for a foreign reporter to live in Tel-Aviv than in Gaza. In that case, they need to find reporters who are willing to do this work. We should not complain about people turning to alternative sources of information, if we won’t deliver the full picture.
Unserved by German media, many Germans from Muslim countries understandably turn to media in their countries of origin. They might be more likely, even eager, to get the news from the German media, if that media was seen to be even-handed. Germany should think about – that would also be also in the interest of the rest of society.
It is election year in Germany and, not surprisingly, German politicians are competing with each other. It is difficult to compete on climate change and green issues, as these have by now become generally accepted by almost all parties. This is where Jews come in usefully.
In the past, those who opposed communism spoke of Jews as spreaders of the red plague, whilst the opponents of capitalism were able to point to the mega-rich Jews, Rothschild etc. Then, of course, there were the days, when it was “blame the Jews” for an out-of-control disease, for a poisoned well or for a child gone missing. Will an ardent archive-digger ever find a document in which a Prince’s adviser, teaches him about this useful instrument of blaming Jews to divert blame from himself?
They continue to instrumentalise us. Fortunately, they do so with devised love instead of with real hate. Germany – with the corpses still so close to the ground – is understandably an extreme example. Already in the last general election (2017) Germany’s fascist AfD party thought nothing of claiming to be the “only guarantor for a Jewish life in Germany”. In their case, guaranteeing Jewish life conveniently meant ridding the country of Muslims.
Now, after a week in which the Israeli air force pounded Gaza, killed a couple of hundred Palestinians, including more than 100 children, ALL German politicians from the extreme right to the left competed with each other in announcing their “I stand with Israel”. In the parliamentary debate about the situation, only one, only one party (the left-wing Die Linke) made the point that not only Hamas rockets but also the bombing of densely populated areas in Gaza by Israel is contrary to international law.
Not to be outdone by the fascist AfD, Bavaria’s prime-minister, Markus Söder, now wants to expel Antisemites. Going by the definitions of Antisemitism, which Germany has adopted, it would have to expel some 20-30% of its own population. That plan would probably not bring Söder many votes. But Söder, of course, has no such plan, he is simply winking at the right-wingers, who want asylum-seekers expelled. Translate “We will fiercely combat antisemitism” to “Vote for me and I will get rid of the asylum seekers for you”
German politicians should stop abusing Jews for their own needs.
