Stern: Anti-Americanism the Old-Fashioned Way

The cover of the new edition of the German weekly Stern would make Josef Goebbels proud:

"Method Wild West"

German Opel workers standing arranged in the form of the company logo destroyed by the hated symbol of U.S. world dominance (do we need to mention that these boots belong to... George W. Bush?) - now THAT'S a great propaganda trick. (Opel is a German automobile manufacturer owned by General Motors. The company recently announced thousands of job cutbacks in Germany and throughout Europe because of high production costs and low demand for their cars.)

No doubt, the Stern "journalists" listened carefully to the master:

Political propaganda in principle is active and revolutionary. It is aimed at the broad masses. It speaks the language of the people because it wants to be understood by the people. Its task is the highest creative art of putting sometimes complicated events and facts in a way simple enough to be understood by the man on the street. ...

Propaganda must be creative. It is by no means a matter for the bureaucracy or official administration, rather it is a matter of productive fantasy. The genuine propagandist must be a true artist. He must be a master of the popular soul, using it as an instrument to express the majesty of a genuine political will. ...

The effective propagandist must be a master of the art of speech, of writing, of journalism, of the poster and of the leaflet. He must have the gift to use the major methods of influencing public opinion such as the press, film and radio to serve his ideas and goals, above all in an age of advancing technology. ...

Today one can say without exaggeration that Germany is a model of propaganda for the entire world. We have made up for past failures and developed the art of mass influence to a degree that puts the efforts of other nations into the shadows. (Josef Goebbels, 1934)

You bet.

Stern 2004 - Goebbels 1934. German anti-American propaganda, still going strong...

Update by Ray D.: Isn't this sadly typical? Instead of blaming the bad German economy, outrageous taxes, overblown bureaucracy, the failing Socialist-Green government of Schroeder and Fischer and their failing Socialist economic policies for the Opel job losses, it is once again the fault of the evil American cowboy, the source of all the world's problems according to Stern.

This is just more evidence disproving the myth that the United States or the President squandered America's good relations with "allies" like Germany. The German media has been on a non-stop campaign to demonize and defame America and Americans for nearly three years now. If Senator Kerry thinks he will actually get Germany (or France) to send troops to Iraq he is badly mistaken.

And why a cowboy boot anyway? Stern editor-in-chief Andreas Petzold complains repeatedly about Detroit's alleged mismanagement of Opel. Cowboy boots are hardly the footwear of choice in Detroit or anywhere within a thousand miles of Detroit. Could this have anything to do with the fact that Bush comes from Texas and that Stern loves to defame and stereotype all Americans as ignorant cowboys?

I used to shy away from comparing today's German media to the Nazis, but this cover really deserves the comparison. David is absolutely right. It wouldn't surprise me if Stern began to run the line "Die Amerikaner sind unser Unglück!" on each cover from now on. It would certainly reflect their style of journalism: Making America and Bush scapegoats and objects of hate for everyone. And, as Stern and its editor-in-chief Andreas Petzold clearly know: Hate sells. 

Side note: Oh yeah, guess what: According to Stern Tony Blair is "under pressure" again. (laugh, is this the five-billionth time in the past couple years?) Yet, Gerhard Schroeder, whose government has been one unending economic disaster for Germany, is rarely "under pressure." Go figure.

+++VOTE HERE+++ on a poll being conducted by a stridently anti-American German website, SPIEGEL ONLINE. Simply click the link, be sure to scroll down, make your selection (Bush, Kerry, Nader, other, wouldn't vote) and click "Abstimmen."

(Hat tip Dave)

Comments

[Jennifer Peterson]

>>You want to see hatred, listen to the hatred >>that Rush Limbaugh spews every day or read the

No! Rush has a great radio program that Germans can listen to on AFN every day at 1800. He has a problem with extremist leftists, the way all intelligent people do. Rush doesn't waste time criticizing normal Democrats like Lieberman or Bayh.

> black panther supporter from the Sixties who >suddenly "saw the light" and now is as radical

I am sorry, but 9-11 caused a lot of us Democrats to "see the light". I was a Democrat until Daschle tried to delay the Iraq War Resolution until after the 2002 elections. That is when I realized that these people are really ideological: not even interested in being accountable.

>Furthermore, I find the right's attacks on >Kerry's war record despicable >and "unpatriotic".

Well, this is why people like you are being denied employment and romance over the past few years. John Kerry is a traitor for what he did in VVAW. See the film "Stolen Honor" before you mouth off with your leftist "opinion". I am not despicable. Imagine what our military would think about a Kerry Presidency?

Although I would like to see a Bush landslide, I dream about Kerry winning but the Bush people contesting, with the national guard guarding ballots, etc. and then the Supreme Court doing their thing again and the national guard violently quelling riots a la Kent State. I would love to see that because it would make everyone in the USA take a stand. Divorces, firings...all sorts of polarization manifestations would happen then. People need to take a stand.

> that somehow we will be less safe under Kerry >hateful and despicable.

Take a Valium. Most of us feel that Kerry will get us nuked and not retaliate.

> I find the personal smear campaigns launched by the White House against anyone who dared to speak up against Bush on Iraq to be hateful and despicable.

Actually, I will personally smear any German on the S-Bahn or Metro who dares say that the liberation of Iraq was wrong.

>As Tom Friedman points out,

I know Tom as I lived in NYC five years ago. He is a wimp big time. His personality is the quintessential liberal. He is for the Iraq War but spins now for Kerry. That makes him dishonest.

>and their party above taking corrective action >in Iraq. Gee, this is fun.

Corrective action will be to allow the Shiites to slaughter the kind of Sunni who's been noted to have been even a little anti-democratic. This will probably happen after the election. I know the Shiites are just dying to destroy Fallujah and everyone in it. The Americans are going to try, one last time, to surgically remove terrorists from Fallujah. If they fail, the Shiites will kill everyone in Fallujah themselves.

The sad fact about this "insurgency" is that a US failure to stop it by humanitarian means, will result in the Shiite Iraqis stopping it by World War Two style means.

>Remember the assassination and the stories of cheering classrooms in Dallas?

Actually, I only learned about this after I switched from being a Democrat in 2002. The left wing media had covered up the story for 40 years. Now that I know JFK was hated, I can understand why. He cheated to win Illinois and his brother was convincing him to surrender Asia to the Comintern.

>Remember the assassination of Martin Luther King?

But, on the other hand, MLK had no business trying to turn blacks into commies. And he shouldn't have been sleeping with the wives of his supporters.

>Without the South, Bush would not have a chance >of winning the election.

Without the South, America and Germany would have been defeated by the Soviet Union...literally.

>when the focus is supposed to be on German Media.

The focus should be on the German and British media. It has got to change and start being more fair. Embracing democracy in the Middle East would be a great start.

[werner]

The Stern cover is inexcusable. If it were the other way round, it is hard to imagine a comparable American magazine to do something like that. And they didn´t when German-owned Chrysler had to lay off 26.000 workers in recent years.

However, I must add that I am in the automotive industry and I have observed the decline of this beloved brand in Germany. Some of the anger may come from the knowledge that Opel´s problems stem indeed largely from mistakes made by the American management. Opel´s market share in Germany fell from over 17 per cent in 1991 to just about 10 per cent now. This is due to massive quality and reliability problems and an indifferent product policy. Both stem from the policy of GM to milk their European brands and squeeze their suppliers for every penny in the 1990s. If a policy of "sell them cheap, make them cheaper" worked in Germany, Fiat would have a lock on the market. The values of used Opel cars crashed. A warning sign was that Opel had a high turnover among its local managers and engineers. All in all, you could see what was coming.

Only in the last 2 years has Opel regained ground with new and much improved models (some of which are deemed better than comparable VW or Renault product). That GM chooses exactly this moment to announce layoffs is bad timing. Sadly, I must say that GM has proved to have no feel for foreign markets. Again, this does not excuse the hysterical reaction among our press, not in the least. This reflexive anti-Americanism makes me afraid for Germany. It´s not sane.

[Ray D.]

Hey Werner,

Yeah, it is just one company. It is not reflective of all of America. Some German companies are well managed and some are mismanaged. Some American companies are well managed and some are mismanaged.

Opel's problems are not about nationality, they are about bad management. This time the bad management happened to be American. In the case of Karstadt it happened to be Germans who mismanaged things. Trying to associate a group of managers with an entire nation is absurd.

Exploiting these sorts of events to stoke up nationalist hatreds (to sell magazines) is truly disgusting. Stern's editor Petzold ought to be fired over this, but he won't be.

Thanks for the comment werner.