Cancelling Habermas

A slightly revised essay, courtesy of the good people over at Propaganda in Focus

Easter is upon us—here’s a reworked long-form essay, entitled ‘Cancelling Habermas’, which I’ve revised for publication with Propaganda in Focus.

From the introduction:

On Feb. 15, 2023, left-liberal newspaper Die Zeit published an op-ed by Eva Illouz with the meaningful title ‘I long for a total victory’ (orig. Ich wünsche mir einen totalen Sieg). Three days later, on Feb. 18, the editors of Die Zeit modified the header to ‘Endgame without End’ (orig. Endspiel ohne Ende). The subheader, reading ‘Perhaps only a crushing defeat can help Russia emerge from its dictatorial history’, remained unaffected by these post-publishing editorial changes. Although the link is the same, the juxtaposition of both versions—original here, courtesy of the Internet Archive, and its current version—shows this clearly.

It must be noted, though, that 18 Feb. is not just any other day to bang the drums and shout such phrases from the rooftops. To the contrary, this year—almost as if ‘by chance’—Feb. 18 marked the 80th anniversary of Joseph Goebbels’ infamous Sportpalast Speech in which Hitler’s Propaganda Minister asked: ‘Do you want the total war?’

Fast-forward 80 years, German legacy media was buzzing in mid-February, mainly because none other than Jürgen Habermas had pointed out the necessity of negotiations in an essay published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 14 Feb. 2023. What follows is an exploration—as in ‘gazing into the abyss’, as Friedrich Nietzsche would have it (1)—of the darker corners of the German soul—to which Austrians, for historical reasons, also belong.

I find it difficult to write such articles. In my last essay on the subject matter, I decried the creeping normalisation of (Neo) Nazism in my home country, Austria. The point I am trying to get across, though, is not to point the finger at others and morally condemn them, but rather to document this madness, at least in part. Moreover, it is also important to speak out and object to the normalisation and trivialisation of the memory of the ‘Third Reich’ that seems to be metastasising at a seemingly quickening pace.

This is me trying to keep (some) receipts, especially as this is not the first time German legacy media has done such a thing: take, for example, a piece that appeared in Die Welt a year ago that claimed the existence of Neonazis among the Azov units would be a Russian ‘lie’—and, in the original version of the article, illustrated this with a photograph showing no less than four Nazi symbols. I first learned about it from an article by Thomas Röper, but the mechanism of action—significant retroactive edits—is identical. Moreover, and contrary to what is typically done, the editors over at Die Welt also changed the URL (see for yourself: original article, albeit with an edited picture, dated April 22, 2022 vs. the updated version with the modified header and URL, dated April 22, 2022). For my summary of this example, see here.

---

Please venture over to Propaganda in Focus to read the entire piece.