sebastian.luetgert on Fri, 28 Jan 2000 20:04:39 +0100 |
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Syndicate: Yugoslavs of all countries - unite! |
Juergen Elsaesser, speech delivered on the congress of the "Lord Byron Foundation" and the Serbian Writers´ Union, 24/25th January, Belgrad Uprising of the Tribes Kosovo was only the beginning: The Third World War is prepared like the Second by the tribes under german command. My first thesis might perplex you: I think, and in this way I follow the reflections of former Israelian foreign minister Sharon, that in the war against Yugoslavia the main war criminal was not the government of the United States, but that it were ?the europeans, who have torn the US into a horrible adventure?. Indeed the US assumed the main burden of the air campaign und it was responsible for the mass of the devastations in Yugoslavia, but it were the Europeans, especially the Germans, who provoked the war. To offer an image: The ?krauts? were the incendiaries, the ?yankees? extinguished the fire with gasoline. In three points the responsability of Germany for provoking the war is evident: Firstly. While the west as a whole supported the quite moderate albanian leader Rugova after 1992, the albanians? so-called president, Germany backed from the beginning Rugova`s rival Bukoshi, the so-called prime minister of the Kosovo-Albanians, who was a declared advocate and financier of the armed struggle of the KLA and its precursors. Secondly. In Dayton Clinton and Milosevic signed a treaty neglecting the Kosovo question. That pragmatism was a condition for the cease-fire in Bosnia.This was sharply criticised by the German government, and subsequently the Germans tried again and again to make Kosovo the focus of the western stand towards Yugoslavia. Thirdly. While the State Department denounced the KLA for a long time and with good arguments as ?terrorits oganization?, the guerillas were complacently supported by Germany. When for example Richard Holbrooke after his visit in Kosovo in summer 1998 tried to stop the flood of money pouring out of western countries into the pockets of KLA leaders, the German officials did nothing against this fund raising of the KLA on German territory. The bulk of KLA-money came from Switzerland and Germany, until the very end. Even the international supply of weapons for the KLA ran over Germany and was backed by the German secret service, the BND, what lead to a ?serious rift? between BND and CIA, as the british weekly The European wrote in September 1998. Not before the end of 1998 did the US take over the pole position in the preparation of war. Because the Clinton-administration thought that this war could not be avoided any longer, it at least wanted to secure the victory for the US - and not to to leave it to the KLA and its German advocates. Of course this was a wrong calculation: The US-Air Force won the war, but today, the KLA rules over Kosovo, and the German mark is the only currency there. The US won the war - but it lost the peace, to the KLA and Germany. Historic parallels The avantgarde part Germany played in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the nineties finds a historic model: The German avantgarde role in destabilizing and destroying sovereign states like Yugoslavia, Chechoslovakai, Austria and others in the forefield and at the beginning of WWII. In preparing WW II Germany took tribal irredentism and separatism directly in his service. It?s battle-cry was the ?right of selfdetermination of people?.Against the so-called artificial states founded according to the the Versailles treaties the Nazis mobilized not only their so-called countrymen in foreign states - the Volksdeutschen in Sudety, Silesia and in the Saar Region -, but encouraged also other so-called ?oppressed people? to secession and expansion: Hungarians, Croatians, the Ukraine and Slovakia for example conquered their ?right of self-determination? at the side of Nazi-Germany, became part of the fascits axis and collaborated in executing the holocaust. SS-Fuehrer Heinrich Himmler spoke very frankly about this strategy: ?Regarding the alien peoples we must try to recognize and care for as many single nationalities as possible. That means that we have not only the greatest interest not to unify the population of the east, but in he contrary to subdivide them in as many parts and splinters as possible.? That WWII would not have been possible without the help of these nationalities and minorities, these fifth columns, shows exemplarily the smashing of chechoslovakia in 1938/39: The aggression policy of Hitler would not have succeeded, if not civil-war-like conditions would have ben unleashed in Chechoslovakia itself. For that purpose Hitler used in the first place the german mob in the frontier regions, the Sudetendeutsche. Their activities lead to the crisis in automn 1938, finally to the treaty of Munich and the annexion of these frontier regions. But also the not-german tribe of the Slovaks sought its hail with the Fuehrer: The declaration of independence of slovakia in March 1939 was the ?key? - so the Czech hitsorian Miroslav Karny - for the smashing of Rest-Czechoslovakia and for annexing it as ?Protectorate Boehmen and Maehren? to the Grossdeutsche Reich. In the twenties and thirties there was a cross-over of left and fascist policy in destabilizing the Versailles system in many countries. The self-determination of the Sudetendeutschen ?including the right of secession?, the main instrument for the destruction of Chechoslovakia, was demanded by the Czech communits party even before the sudetendeutsche Fascists demanded it. The same cross-over took place in Yugoslavia where the Comunists collaborated with the croatian Ustascha until 1935 in order to destroy the central state and to enable Croatians and others to build up there own state. In Austria the Socialist Party bate the drum for the unification with Germany for so many years, that finally it could hardly convince its adherents, why they shouldn?t support Hitler?s version of this unification. Its leader Karl Renner remained on the pro-german cours even after the invasion of the Nazi-Wehrmacht in 1938 and even called his compatriots to vote ?Yes? in the annexion-referendum in April 1938. Germany could annex Austria and Chechoslovakia because many socialists, communists and even the appeasers in western governments shared the biologistic understanding of nation and people which was in the center of Nazi-ideology: Therefore a people is an anthropological mythic entity, a kind of extended version of a tribe, which is based on vague cultural community, in the las resort based on blood. In this non-sense the majority of the citizens of Austria and even a big minority of the czech citizens werde defined as - and defined themselves as - Germans. It?s the same like today in Kosovo: The main of the yugoslavian citizens there are defined - and define themselves - as Albanians. The alliance of Yalta That the civilized world at last refused this biological tribal halluzination, was the fundamental philosophic condition for the forming of the Anti-Hitler-coalition. The Soviet-Union as well as the western democracies - after they both had hesitated much too long - began to fight nazism when they remembered that modern understanding of nation from which the french republic as well as he United Kingdom and the soviet as well as the american Union once had originated: Nation is not based on biology, but based on constitution. It is the totality of those, who wish to live in a common state after common ideals - irrespective of their origin, their language, their religion or culture: nation as a political construction based on the volonté général, a daily referendum (Renan). That was a strict denial of the pre-modern german halluzination, that there were nations or people (or even races) outside real-exitsing states. There are no nations or peoples before, above or under the populations of real-exitsing states. If the documents of the Big Four use the term ?self-determination of people?, they understood it in the sense of ?self-government? of the citizenship of real existing states. And even the Soviet-Union in those times used their propaganda-terms of ?people?s front? or ?people?s democracy? not in the german sense, but in a french sense, in the sense of ther french revolution and the Ius soli: as the right of the population of a real-existing state to decide over the fate of this state in its already existing borders. The experiences wih the unleashing of WWII lead to important political decisions of the Big Four, who ratified in the Potsdam Conference the Versailles system against the aspirations of the German-led tribes. All self-proclaimed nationalities and ethnic splinters who had served as fifth columns of the Germans und thus enabled them their aggression policy, were deprived of their territorial background. The Potsdam Conference sanctioned the transfer of some asiatic and tartarian minorities in the Soviet-Union by silence, and it supported explicitly that the so-called Volksdeutschen were driven out of Chechoslovakia and Poland. This was a peace-building measure. Also the Charta of the United Nations decided in late 1945 symbolizes this paradigm-change: The smashing of sovereign states by referring of the self-determination of allegedly oppressed minority-peoples was put to a stop. The UN-Charta tolerates the use of violence only in the case of self-defence of souvereign states and after a decision of the Security Council, but not to enforce the self-determination of people. According to the UN-Charta subjects of the international relations are states, not peoples. My conclusion: The victory of the Anti-Hitler-alliance was only possible, because a worldwide unity was formed of constitutional nationalists against blood-based nationalists, of nations against tribes. At the top of the allies stood men, who fought primarily for the power and strength of their nations-states and who committed in pursuing this aim more or less severe crimes: Stalin, the worst, had purged the party from all internationalits already in the thirties, Churchill and DeGaulle pursued a severe course in colonial issues for a long time. Why these machiavellistic politicians didn?t try to build up an alliance with Germany for the profit of all participants? What made them enemies of the Nazis? It was at first the multi-ethnic origin and the constitutional character of their own states. If they would have tolerated the German ethnic-biological theories, these states would have been blown up by the uprising of the tribes. Therefore the states of the Yalta-Alliance represented in spite of all differences and of all crimes they committed the principles of the one and undividible human race: Everybody can get the citizenship, and all citizens are equal under the law. Fascism in Pristina Today, those principles are cancelled in Kosovo: The so-called Kosovars are alltogether yugoslavian citizens but only those under them can survive who don?t feel and confess as such, but as ?Albanians?. How much the unleashed identity-delusion of a tribe differs from constitunional nations even in their racist attitudes shows perhaps best the example of the gypsies, because they are the weakest in any society: Under serbian rule the gypsies were - like in many other contries - discriminated and sometimes mistreated, but they were always tolerated. Fear for their life was not necessary until the 11th of June 1999 when the ?Albanians? could enforce their right of self-determination with the help of Nato. Nearly all of the gypsies - about 150.000 - have fled, hundreds were murdered. Varyfying Daniel Goldhagen one could say: The hatred against gypsies of the Yugoslavs was discriminatory, the one of the ?Albanians? is eliminatory. The difference in the aggressivity of the nationalism of constitunional nations on the one and of blood-based nations, peoples and tribes on the other side may have it roots in the following: A constitutional nation is an artificial construction, but it is at least a construction; it has its reality in the state and its enemy can only be those who are enemies of this state. But the blood-based nation or tribe is less than a construction, it is a mere fancy without material reality, and danger is threatening from anybody at any time. Tribes and peoples based on blood - for lack of objective criteria to define their ascribed identity as nation - define themselves much more merciless than constitutional nations. The Yugoslavs guaranteed all inhabitants of Kosovo the full scale of civic rights - including the ?Albanians? except of only those who fought against the centralstate. They followed more or less the principle: Who is not against us is for us. The ?Albanians? cannot make sure of their identity but by inversing this principle: Who is not for us, is against us. Today in Kosovo, all individual human rights are cancelled by th KLA while only the ?right of self-determination? of the Albanians is guaranteed. With other words: The values of the Atlantic Revolution were substituted by the values of the ethnic, tribal revolution which the Nazis advocated more consequently than any other. Why then the western countries have supported this? Why then they have supported the transformation of Kosovo in a fascist tribe territory? I suppose because the modern nations who managed to defeat the tribes yet in WWII have come into a deep crisis themselves in the last decades. In Belgium, Italy, Spain, even in the UK and France the centrifugal forces are getting stronger, allegedly oppressed people like the Scots and the Corsicans emerge with mythic ambitions. If the cohension of a society is in danger because the state is no more able to guarantee the welfare of all its citizens and all its regions, wealthier regions intend to separate themselves from poorer ones in a foolish attempt to belong to the winners of globalization. At the same time it is more attractive for the global trusts to maintain their worldwide suppliers not in unsecure and perhaps refrectory greater states but in special economic zones, spheres of co-prosperity, complaisant micro-republics and Ruritania-like entities. That means: The unchained capitalism devours its own children, the nation-states, which it generated during its rise in the 19th century. Those which want to survive have to subdue to the hegemons of he world market, the United States and the German-led European Union. That Germany has some advantages in this rivalry shows the warm greeting ?Heil Hitler? with which German soldiers and journalists are welcomed by the natives in Kosovo today. The Albanians remember the brotherhood in arms under the flag of SS-Europe and pin their hopes on that for the future. After all the Germans are again their idols since 1989: With their battle-cry ?We are one people? they have enforced german unification and then brought half a continent under heir command - why shouldn´t Albanians, tribes of Caucasus and Hutus try the same? But still there is hope, because still there are remainders of the Anti-Hitler-coalition within the constitutional nations: The grandchildren of Stalin, Churchill and DeGaulle, that means the russian Communists, the french Gaullists and the british Tories, together with parts of the US-republicans, opposed quite vigorously the Nato-Aggression against Yugoslavia. Henry Kissinger´s arguments during the Rambouillet summit were based on the reason of the modern constitutional state, Jus soli: ?Yugoslavia, a souvereign state, is forced to deliver the control and souvereignity over a province with a lot of national sanctuaries to foreign military. Analogously one could urge the US to let foreign troops march into Alamo, in order to give the city back to Mexico, because the ethnic balance has changed.? (re-translated from german) Kissingers? position did not succeed until now - like in the thirties, as Chamberlain?s appeasement and Molotov?s pact drove the antifascists of all countries into desperation. But at a certain point Churchill and DeGaulle put an end to this undignified spectacle - and for precisely such a turning point, for precisely such a paradigm-change we wait today. I would be glad if we could debate the question during this conference as to how we could promote such a paradigm-change for the defense of western values against barbarism. In any case: With the bombing of Belgrade and other yugoslavian cities and villages the west did not only destroy a peaceful country and kill countless of innocents, but also ruined the bases of its own civilization This process must not be continued if mankind is to survive. Therefore I would like to alter Karl Marx? famous old slogan: Not ?Proletarians of all countries -unite!? but ?Yugoslavs of all countries - unite!? http://www.juergen-elsaesser.de/byron.htm ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress