Message to Spotlight Magazine: No Moore Partisan Politics!

(By Ray D.)

You wouldn’t expect “Spotlight” magazine, an educational publication for Germans learning the English language, to delve too deeply into partisan politics. Its mission after all, is to teach reading skills, grammar and vocabulary. It seems that Spotlight’s editors, however, just couldn’t resist the temptation of cashing in on Michael Moore-mania in Germany. The magazine is running a large three page article (originally from the Guardian) and interview on Moore labeling Americans as "right wing” and the US media as “conservative.” The article, which appears in this month’s edition (February 2004,) lavishly praises Moore as down-to-earth and the biggest author since J.K. Rowling.

One of the article’s paragraphs begins with the line “Berlin in 1936 is a fairly good analogy for where Moore thinks America is at the moment…(and) he does believe America’s democracy is in danger, as Germany’s was in the years following the burning down of the Reichstag.”

Question: Was Germany a democracy in the years following the burning down of the Reichstag? A truly historically inept statement by the article’s author Gary Younge, one that shows the widely pervasive willingness of the German media and leftist filmmakers and authors like Michael Moore and Oliver Stone to play fast and loose with the historic facts when it comes to bringing down anyone who threatens their worldview. Favorite targets include conservatives and Republicans, especially popular Republican Presidents.

Comparing the US today with Hitler’s Germany also allows many Germans to both consciously and subconsciously wipe-off the guilt and historic burden they still carry around with them from their Nazi past and drop it on Americans. That is certainly one reason why Michael Moore and his books are so emotionally satisfying to so many Germans. Don’t forget, Moore has sold more books in Germany than in the USA! He was on the German best-seller lists for months.

Another truly amusing part of the article was the line about the US media being “conservative.” It’s sad but true; many Germans are convinced that the US media is nothing more than a propaganda instrument of the Bush administration. This by itself bears testimony to how incredibly misinformed a large segment of Germans have become on the USA. And the irony of it all is that most Germans consider themselves well-informed about the USA by their media, which in fact, is the greatest source of distortion and bias of all (as those of you who regularly read this web-site know.)

Anyway, Spotlight would be well-advised to go back to the noble mission of teaching people to speak a foreign language and stay out of partisan politics. By printing a truly biased article on Moore the magazine has done itself and its readers a true disservice and deepened the divide of disinformation separating Germans from Americans.

If you would like to reach Spotlight’s editors with your comments, they can be contacted by email at:

m.davis@spotlight-verlag.de

Their address is:

Spotlight
Fraunhoferstr. 22
82152 Planegg
GERMANY
Fax number: (49) 89-85681-210

Comments

[Niklaus Lauber]

I know this is a long post, but I feel strongly about this issue and unlike many in the US who are angered at the prospect of the widespread comparison of the US to Nazi Germany or Bush to Hitler I rather have become extremely depressed as a result of these comparisons. Can these reckless comparisons be explained simply as a result of German guilt? Perhaps Germans have forgotten their history. How can Bush, however flawed one might think he is, ever be compaired to a man that would utter these words, not in 1936 but 1922:

"Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews. "

How is it that anyone could compare the US, however flawed one may think its policies in the Balkins, Afganistan or Iraq, to Nazi Germany. Let us recount just one day in Nazi Germany as recounted by survivors.

"At Babi Yar the Jews of Kiev were informed by placards posted around the city by Ukrainian militia for Jews to assemble at 8:00 a.m. on September 29, 1941, at a cemetery near a railroad siding for "resettlement." They were told to bring with them food, warm clothing, documents, money, and valuables. (Dawidowicz, What, 103-4). The scene was described by one officer at his trial in 1967. He stated "It was like a mass migration . . . the Jews sang religious songs on the way." At the railroad siding their food and belongings were taken from them and:

Then the Germans began shoving the Jews into new, narrower lines. They moved very slowly. After a long walk, they came to a passageway formed by German soldiers with truncheons and police dogs. The Jews were whipped through. The dogs went at those who fell but the pressure of the surging lines behind was irresistible, and the weak and injured were trod underfoot. "

"Bruised and bloodied, numbed by the incomprehensibility of their fate, the Jews emerged onto a grassy clearing. They had arrived at Babi Yar; ahead of them lay the ravine. The ground was strewn with clothing. Ukrainian militiamen, supervised by Germans, ordered the Jews to undress. Those who balked, who resisted, were assaulted, their clothes ripped off. Naked bleeding people were everywhere. Screams and hysterical laughter filled the air."

"After this brutal processing, the victims were lined up at edge of the ravine and gunned down by teams of machine gunners. By the time they were finished on Spetember 30, 1941, 33,700 people had been killed."

Please, someone give Michael Moore a history book.

[Pamela]

Niklaus, get thee over to David's thread on american/German culture. You will feel better. I think.

[TM Lutas]

In fairness to Moore, he's playing US politics in the old tradition, the tradition of boxing matches in the halls of Congress, political caricatures of Presidents on top of piles of skulls (I saw such a caricature of Andrew Jackson and many worse besides), and scurrilous accusations that have no foundation in reality. He is a throwback to the classic yellow press style and should be treated as such.

It's a pity that so many germans do not seem to do so. The attitude will not serve them well.

[Panther]

TM Lutas,

"In fairness to Moore, he's playing US politics in the old tradition"

While i respect your fairness. Moore playing it up just like he is an elected U.S. Official talking to his constituency except "he's only a film director in a foreign nation", is a major slap in the face to his german admirer's, and a cheap backstab at the U.S. in general and us americans in particular. Many of them might realize when it's too late that he milked ($$$)them for what it's worth. Or as i understand it " All a swindler has to do is show up, and the fools will flock to him and pay too hear him speak about a subject he has not a clue about. And they may eventually realize they were swindled by some cheap demagogue."
Hence... if many germans just quit showing up to his pandering diatribes, they would soon realize how much he likes them by not darkening their doorsteps again.
But then again what do i know, he won an oscar for a documentary "Bowling for Columbine" that he himself admitted was full lies! Funny that...