March 07, 2010
[See also: It's Happening There: Britain's Emerging Police State; James D. Watson: Broken By The PC Inquisition, Betrayed By The Righteous Right; Another Oz Outrage: Andrew Fraser Furor Continues; The Larry Summers Show Trial; and Heidi Does Long Beach: The SPLC vs. Academic Freedom]
A close friend of mine, Jost Bauch, who teaches general sociology and sociology of medicine as a part-time professor at the German University of Konstanz, has recently seen what he had of a career brought to a grinding halt.
Probably because of his non-leftist views, which stand out in the leftist and anti-nationalist German university system, Jost was never allowed to move beyond part-time work, despite his advanced degrees and multiple professional publications. Each week for years, this sexagenarian has driven several hours from his home near Frankfurt, where his wife works, to his place of employment in the southwest corner of the Federal Republic, all in return for an adjunct's salary. A few years ago, I tried to find a position for him in the US, but the job he was seeking at a local branch of Penn State became de-authorized after a financial crunch. And so Jost went on commuting and teaching for subsistence-level wages—until a crisis erupted that is likely to end his association with Konstanz altogether. [VDARE.com note: Outside of this piece on VDARE.com, there seem to be no stories about this in English. Multilingual readers can read Sie wollen meine bürgerliche Existenz zerstören, ("They Are Trying To Destroy My Middle-Class Existence"), Junge Freheit, February 18, 2010].
About a year ago, while lecturing on cultural tensions, Jost made isolated references in a lecture to Carl Schmitt, as an exponent of the friend/enemy theory of political association, and to Samuel Huntington, as a Harvard professor who had addressed "cultural clashes" in international relations.
Despite the stunning innocuousness of these references, "Wanted" posters, with Jost's face on them, were soon plastered on the walls of the University buildings. The posters accused him of "cultural racism" for bringing up authorities who were seen as hostile to the multicultural project of local student organizers. On January 28, the student assembly called for his dismissal. Action toward this end is now under consideration by the university administration.
To make matter even worse, student "antifascist" groups have swung into action, lining up in front of Jost's classes to prevent students from entering and threatening his physical safety.
The resemblance between these bullying fanatics and the Nazi youth who prevented university students from entering the classes of Jewish professors in the 1930s would seem too obvious to be missed. But of course the present generation of German thugs does not attract the attention of the U.S. Mainstream Media—because they call themselves "antifascist" and express contempt, not admiration, for German cultural achievements. The violent intolerance of dissenting views and the total demonization of the political enemy are still exactly the same in both cases.
And one would have to be a fool not to notice that there is a shared cultural mindset in these apparently opposed fanaticisms, Nazism and antifascism, which have beset the same afflicted nation in modern times.
Clearly Jost is professionally ruined even by the modest standards of his previous livelihood—under what Germans are told is "the freest German government in history". He cannot expect the Establishment media to ride to his defense. The Dean of his division has openly taken the side of the student agitators (who were supposedly only protecting the German people against its "fascist past".)
Nor can he expect political support. The German center-right, represented by the governing Christian Democratic-Christian Social Union, is like our Republicans/ neoconservatives—but more so. They treat anything to the right of themselves or to anything as radioactive and routinely expel from the party anyone whom the leftist press labels "fascist" or "anti-Semitic". And their government contributes millions of taxpayer Euros every year to the multicultural Left's "struggle against the Right", although the evidence of leftwing extremism and violence in Germany is exponentially greater than any signs of ultranationalist activism.
The Jost case is as a cautionary tale for this side of the Atlantic. Although Left-wing repression is far worse in Germany than elsewhere in Europe, and although most Western European countries have far more restrictive laws enforcing Political Correctness than we do in the U.S. (yet), the differences are matters of degree. In this country we not only have raging PC in our educational system, Armed Forces, and government bureaucracies, but we are also beginning to see the double standard at work that characterizes the enforcement of thought control in Europe.
For example, we are far more tolerant of minority racism, which our universities and in some cases government rewards, than of any manifestation, however symbolic, of Euro-American pride or solidarity.
Does anyone doubt what would happen if the fate that recently befell the American Renaissance conference in Washington were visited on the Nation of Islam, or President Obama's former "Christian" congregation in Chicago?
Hotels, to my knowledge, are not running to cancel accommodations for Reverend Wright and his followers the way they did to AR after repeated threats. One could only imagine the media and political uproar if some group featuring black or Hispanic pride were physically threatened the way Jared Taylor's hoteliers were.
All of this follows the German pattern. Groups on the right, or groups that are insufficiently "antifascist", invariably have their gatherings invaded by antifascist thugs—and the police stand by. They did it last month in Dresden, when a gathering commemorating the bombing of the city had their assembly broken up.
In the US likeminded thugs operate as "antiracists". And when they swing into action, all the timid observers and rank opportunists stand back.
This combination of left-wing violence and official complaisance is the phenomenon that my friend the late Sam Francis aptly termed "anarcho-tyranny".
Needless to say, the "conservative" Establishment has studiously ignored what happened to American Renaissance. It has different fish to fry—for example, bellyaching about slights inflicted by Democratic crowds on Republican speakers on American campuses and highlighting insults flung at Zionists by rude Arab students at the University of Michigan.
Why should National Review or the Wall Street Journal care anymore about the freedoms (constitutionally guaranteed in the U.S.) of right wingers than does the supposedly conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel?
Establishment "conservatives" will never suffer the threats of violence that befell Taylor and his associates. They know how to move left when necessary to stay in sync with the "Washington policy community". These are solid establishment types who spend money and energy reaching out to whomever one is supposed to reach out to. Thus, after years of unseemly denial, these sensitive conservatives came to understand the conservatism of Martin Luther King, whom they once mistook for a philandering, plagiarizing Marxist. In time, they will to celebrate the anti-racist heroism of Malcolm X and the war against anti-Semitism waged by Abe Foxman, who has been an honored guest speaker at Heritage.
If and when America comes to look like "antifascist" Germany, these "conservatives" will have contributed enormously.
Without them as the "harmless" opposition, U.S. academic and intellectual freedoms might have a chance.
Paul Gottfried (email him) is Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, PA. He is the author of After Liberalism, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt and The Strange Death of Marxism.
