The origin of the Al Qaeda myth

I realised that quite a lot of the Australian people are caught in a kind of hypnosis - with the keyword "terror" used to sell the abolition of civil rights. Yet, once you forget your fear for a short while and dare dealing with the topic "terror" in depth, with analysis instead of the fear-mongering offered by main stream media, you might be able change your attitude, and your habitual reaction the next time somebody tries to sell you fear.



The video is a snippet of the (imho) excellent BBC documentary The power of nightmares, which was shown earlier this year on SBS. With a broadband connection you might watch this on Google video, if you missed it on SBS. I happily burn you a disc containing the three parts, if you're interested and not scared about the brainwashing a BBC documentary might give you.

Nobody told the Germans that they were living in a fascist state while it happened. I encountered while travelling the globe that this 12 dark years of German history still dominate the opinion about Germany and Germans. Hitler is better known than Goethe, Beethoven, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger or Heine. I met more admirers of the Gröfaz (Grösster Führer aller Zeiten / Greatest leader of all times) outside Germany than inside. (That doesn't mean that there's no Nazis in Germany, just that people don't share there racist opinion as easily as elsewhere.)

Nobody told the Germans in East Germany that they were living in a totalitarian state (which was called "German Democratic Republic" (GDR) and had compulsory voting). However, in Nazi Germany there were people like Schindler, who didn't need historians to tell them that something is utterly wrong with the proceedings of their government, but hadn't lost their empathy for other human beings and endangered their life by acting against the "law", and weren't brainwashed by governmental propaganda.

No government ever spread the word that they wanted to screw their population as good as they could, though historians have no problem digging up examples when this happened. Nowadays, we are conditioned to believe in "experts", and unless experts have more airtime to state that something is wrong in the state of Denmark, we dare not to compare the current situation with what we could have learned in history.

Nazi Germany and the GDR used their secret services to suppress democracy, dissent and governmental criticism. Secrecy due to "national security" was the cornerstone of their tyranny, and empowered the Gestapo and Stasi to arbitrarily detain people. Probably that causes me to get suspicious when I hear Philip Ruddock talking, who thinks it's okay that people don't get presented any evidence when they are charged for major offenses. Or to keep them in prison without charges. Or to accept the jurisdiction of fascist courts under the Military Commissions Act.

Another cornerstone was surveillance. Without the support of IBM, the census required to determine the arian or jewish origin, would have been hardly sufficient to kill millions of innocent people. Providing unique identification, which is nowadays done by fingerprinting, DNA sampling or similar biometric means, helped the Nazis to identify their targets.

East Germany, however, wasn't as rampant as Nazi Germany to kill opposition. "Just" those who wanted to leave the country were killed by automatic killing machines or vigilant guards. East Germany didn't have the technology to trace anyone by their DNA, that's why their secret service collected sweat samples of each and every citizen to chase dogs on them when necessary.

My parents fled East Germany, when my dad rejected to pay the union fees. Flyers were distributed in the area they were living, claiming my dad was a traitor to the working class for asking what the unions did for him.

I'm happy that my parents didn't wait 30 years for the Berlin Wall to come down, but fled before this dreadful thing was build. Fighting the system in East Germany was virtually impossible. It didn't kill you (unless you encountered vigilant border patrols or killing machines), but it thoroughly destroyed your chances to participate in society.

My dad (may his soul have a pleasant life after death) didn't wait until historians analysed the mechanisms that created the unjust society that emerged in East Germany after the war, but interpreted the disparity between government propaganda and everyday experience in a rational way.

However, fleeing your home country is no longer an option. Even people from Iraq and Afghanistan are send home, no matter what dreadful fate is waiting for them. What has changed is the opportunity to access information and to organise resistance against ostensibly "democratic" governments.

Although I'm known to you as the "German anarchist", I think that democracy is something worth trying. I might know what makes me happy, but I'm simply not sufficiently arrogant to state I would know what "everyone" makes happy. Unfortunately, I haven't encountered too many politicians in socalled "democratic" societies that share this point of view.

Democracy needs participation, and most advances for the life of "common people", like universal suffrage (for non-property owners, women, native people) has been achieved by direct action. The greek model of democracy just allowed property owning males to vote, females are just allowed to vote since New Zealand introduced it about 120 years ago, less than half a century ago Aborigines were allowed to vote in Australia.

(West) Germany has a longer history of universal suffrage than the US or Australia, yet the legalized feudalism in the US is used as an impeccable example for "democracy". (Does anyone remember Rosa Parks?)

We, the people, have been withdrawn from power or influence for most of the time in history. Germany was happy to have exchanged monarchy for democracy after WW I, yet it just took 15 years, less than a generation, to convert democracy into fascism.

We, the people, have been subdued to unjust governments for most of history, yet my fellow students take democracy for granted, and ridicule those who engage in activism.

We, the people, are now asked to give away the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the rule of law and the right to strike. All of this for the phony "war on terror", which poses a lesser threat than to be killed by lightning.

Enjoy your unsubstantiated fear, or choose to think for yourself.

I took my pick. And I don't mind if you shout out loud: "Godwin's law!". History has repeated itself over and over again, and if you think "political correctness" prevents this, dream on. It is so comforting to forget that a nominal democracy (like in Germany after WW I) smoothly slid into fascism, and to assume that a nominal democracy is inherently safe from fascism.

(In Australia, Faheem Lodhi is imprisoned for a "thought crime" for 20 years. Lodhi was convicted on the basis of alleged future intentions. No actual plans for a terrorist act were uncovered.)

I don't want to convert you into any political camp, as I'm not adhering to anything that deserves this name. I'm more than happy to meet anyone who dares to think for themselves. Dissent is the essence of democracy, which prevents proselytizing. I'd just like to encourage you, if you have more than two brain cells, to assess for yourself whether "terrorism" is a big enough problem to give away the basis for any democratic system.