If You Want To Blame It On Anyone These Days…

…blame it on Paris Hilton. Or blame it on anyone else, as long as you stop blaming it on me. The title was just a suggestion because I can’t stand her.

I’m talking about the holocaust, by the way. And while I have to admit this is mostly a piece about the Second World War, its aftermath in Germany and the impact it still has on my generation to this day, you should be glad to learn that this is not just your typical history lesson trying to give you an understanding of the horrors of Nazi-Germany. I don’t know if something like that sounds as “exciting” to you subhum… err… non-Germans as it does to me, since over here, that shit is shoved down our throats throughout our school-years, over and over again, until you basically start blaming Hitler for that instead of the piles of dead Jews. But since I’m clearly more important than my audience anyway it doesn’t really matter.

Fortunately, these are not the silly delusions from a desperate holocaust-denier either, even though such assertions are definitely worth reading. (The classic: gas chambers = microwave delousing facilities. That one never gets old.) I’m just not one to make shit up, let alone believe in it. You won’t even find any huffy indoctrinations enlightening you about the fact that, nowadays in Germany, there aren’t that many people parading around in uniforms praising Hitler, but that we’re basically a little America mock-up instead.

No, this here German is only going to report on his clear conscience concerning the whole Nazism-affair, over 60 years after the downfall of the surprisingly short-lived and thus disconcertingly mislabelled “1000-Year-Reich”.

Most of all, this subject really bores me by the way it’s usually handled. I never watched “Schindler’s List” and I don’t give a fuck about how great it might be. Deep Third Reich movies are the most boring flicks of any genre, no matter how many Academy Awards they happened to win. I know enough about that shit already. If you’re really interested in that part of history, from the viewpoint of oppressed Jews, read “The Klemperer Diaries” or something by Jurek Becker. Except for some documentaries, movies are for entertainment purposes, and I can think of better entertainment than seeing sickening, contrived concentration camp footage for the umpteenth time.

It really does bore me. Trust me, it’s not like “boring” usually is my main criteria for choosing stuff to write about, but from a German viewpoint my attitude towards our “dark past” is already considered highly offensive and that’s good enough for me. See, most people here tend to be hypersensitive about that shit, whereas I’m probably overly desensitized.

I mean, it’s ridiculous. People get fired for not cutting out some moron on some stupid reality show who told a couple of asinine jokes about Hitler or Jews. German authorities want that stuff to be off-limits. Untouchable. Like people watching that reality-garbage weren’t completely brain-dead to begin with anyway. Everywhere in the world people make offensive and cruel, racist jokes. Why pretend it is any different here? Everyone knows the jokes, they really are the same everywhere – trust me, and most realize they’re not funny. You can hear these kinds of conversations on schoolyards all over the place:

“Have you heard this one: Hitler to a little girl on top of a chimney in Auschwitz: ‘What are you waiting for?’ – ‘Mom and dad.’”

“Hey, don’t you dare joke about that stuff! My grandfather died in Auschwitz... He fell off a watchtower!”

Quite the knee-slappers, huh? Still, I’m not ashamed to admit I snorted at a couple of those when I first heard them. But as opposed to the idiot on TV, I’d make sure that the people I joke with about shit like that know my attitude regarding the matter at hand from the beginning. I’m no anti-Semite by any stretch of the imagination but I don’t feel the need to act all sanctimonious about it either. Most people I know are actually pretty touchy about that shit coming out of the wrong mouths, but that doesn’t keep me from expressing my poor taste and lack of tactfulness. You have to differentiate between uttering imprudent and latent racist bullshit in public, or among close friends who are all fully aware of your intentions and know to take it with a grain of salt. A little morbid humour never killed anyone.

I wouldn’t go so far as saying that joking about those taboos could be a way to come to terms with the past, but I’d rather have people pretend they believe that than have to witness the hypocrisy I’m confronted with all the time. It’s ridiculous how bent out of shape people get over that stuff. It’s obvious that racist jokes are only told to piss people off, so if you don’t like it, what do you do? Ignore them? Apparently not. Over here, you freak the fuck out, sue people and apologize to anyone else who will listen.

Does anybody remember a movie by a little unknown actor called Charles Chaplin? He had this funny little mustache and made a satire flick called “The Great Dictator”. It was funny, wasn’t it? Well, that’s debatable, but why in hell was he allowed to do it and everyone here thinks it’s still fucking awesome, yet someone here does something along those lines and the very same people scream bloody murder?!

In the great spirit of guilt the Germans made up some kind of Political Correctness Policy that’s unrivalled in the whole world. Can you believe we even changed our national anthem and that nobody’s allowed to sing the first verse anymore? Do you want to know what horrid things were sung about in the lyrics? Whoa, dude, they had the nerve to lift Germany “above all” in the national anthem! “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles!” Out-fucking-rageous, I know. No other nation would ever praise itself in its very own anthem. In Germany's case it wasn’t even meant in a “we rule the world” kind of way, but instead referred to the unification of all the little independent states to one country back in the day (WAY before any notions of a Third Reich).

It’s not like I care that much about the anthem, it’s probably the worst thing Josef Haydn ever wrote anyway, but such an obvious overcompensation is just gay. Who cares what they sing about? It’s not like people in each of the hundreds of other German-speaking countries in the world who are able to understand the lyrics would give a fuck. Most likely because those countries don’t exist in the first place, and the few of them there are got in on it themselves back in the day.

The other sad thing about it is that yet another verse also disappeared from the anthem, one that totally kicks ass. Granted, I don’t know all-too many national anthems but I doubt many can top singing about their particular country’s wine, women and songs. The dreary Germans basically glorified sex, drugs and rock n’ roll from the get-go. Maybe with such a verse our dumb-ass football teams wouldn’t just lip synch the anthem every time. 

The one verse you’re still allowed to sing claims unity, right and freedom for the German Fatherland. Too bad our actions in these modern days show that we obviously consider ourselves unworthy of that. You‘re not even allowed to be proud of your country anymore. That’s something more and more young people don’t agree with, and you could say a process of rethinking has begun over the last couple of years. You can only make so many generations pay the dues for the sins of their fathers.

Whatever. I can’t say I’m overly thrilled about growing patriotism anyway. Mainly because it is often perpetuated by people who feature latent fascist tendencies, playing innocent while using that harmless “love for my country” bullshit to prepare for the next step that won’t be quite so harmless anymore. (Did you just notice how I can be critical about that shit without feeling responsible? Why not everyone else, too? Don’t you think I’m the ultimate role model? I don’t get it. I should be more famous than I am.)

Do I think that there’s something wrong with waving the German flag around and babble about being proud of one’s heritage? Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it in terms of coming off as disrespectful because of our particular past. However, I do think that there’s something terribly wrong with waving flags in terms of wasting time and thought on meaningless crap like national consciousness, pride and just generally being a dumbass. But I think I already discussed that in another article enough. The point here is that many Germans are afraid to act like people from pretty much every other country. Our inherited “shame”, fed to us by ourselves in a vicious circle, inhibits any sense of pride. Take France, Italy or last but not least the US, for example. “Yay, homeland!” - Nope, not allowed here.

I’d actually appreciate the way that shit is handled over here, if my fellow Germans only realized it’s all a pointless pseudo guilt-trip. In reality, though, they’re as stupid as the next person and still hold onto that inane feeling of guilt, even though the generation that is partly to hold responsible for what happened back then is pretty much dead as hell by now. I say “partly” because I think it’s stupid to condemn a whole generation for that whole thing. I don’t blame anyone for not risking his life for resistance or not predicting the political future of the country.

Furthermore, not everyone was involved. Of course you can’t expect everyone to be as brilliant as my grandparents who did the only reasonable thing and bailed as soon as possible. “Africa, here we come! Fuck Hitler and fuck living in that shitty bomb crater of a country.” But no matter what someone’s family members did, or failed to do back then, it just shouldn’t be our generation’s problem to this day.

I want to point out here that this is in no way a complaint about the reparations that Germany has to pay to the direct Nazi victims from the Second World War. That those are justified goes without saying. This is not about playing innocent, after all. It happened, it was horrible and certainly nobody with half a brain is proud of that. But it happened over 60 years ago for fuck’s sake. My beef is with all the ubiquitous, unjustified feelings guilt and with the complete pussyfication that still run rampant among the German public. I am not guilty. And my generation is not guilty of anything either. Well, guilty of nothing but liking shitty music and generally being boring, complacent pieces of shit, of course.

This is not supposed to be an excuse either. There can’t be one, it’s inexcusable. It was a big tragic human failure. Got it? Human, not German. It’s not a flaw in the German DNA, per se. It's in all our DNA. Don’t fool yourself into believing that your ancestors were any better, or worse, than anybody else’s - or that your generation was any better or worse than past ones. If we learned anything from the past, then it’s that we don’t learn from the past much. Face it, most people are stupid and most people are sheep on top of that; it could have happened anywhere. And still could. Get off your high horse, everyone.

Especially you, Germany. Stop singling yourself out. The last time you did it didn’t work out very well either. Sucks to hear your own tired arguments, doesn’t it?

Get all sappy on my Guest Page.