No war, nowhere

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No war, nowhere: The Germans and Terror is a book published in 2002 by Henryk M. Broder about the reactions in Germany to the attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 and the war in Afghanistan that followed . The book deals with the debate that took place after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Germany and whose supposed superficiality Broder complains about.

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According to Broder, a short time after the initial shock of the attacks by several journalists, commentators and ostensible experts, they began to speak out in an increasingly anti-American manner and blamed the Americans for what had happened themselves. The debate developed into an accusation against the United States , its politics and way of life, and ultimately against Western culture as a whole, which was hallucinated as the real trigger for the attacks, while the assassins and their sympathizers, despite compulsory conviction, showed a great deal of understanding for their "act of desperation" had been met. Broder documents what, in his opinion, are "sometimes grotesque expressions of the German zeitgeist " through commented quotes from talk shows, press articles and statements from the time after the attacks up to the fall of Kabul and the end of the Afghanistan campaign .

Reviews

According to Perlentaucher , Richard Herzinger was right at the time Broder: "He praises the sharpness - even if not necessarily the precision - with which the publicist presents and dissects the statements of German intellectuals after September 11th." Immediately - according to Herzberger - the old thinking routine of the "commenting class" is locked into place, for example with Peter Sloterdijk , Walter Jens and Günter Grass . Broder “exposes an intellectual mainstream” with the help of numerous quotations. Nevertheless, Broder applied an old figure of thought that he had developed in earlier polemics : “After the Second World War [...] the Germans did everything to turn perpetrators into victims and to maneuver themselves into the position of the victim as much as possible. "Broder argues too broadly, not sufficiently differentiated and hears the" chorus of hated voices always say the same thing ". Peter Felixberger criticized the book in the Süddeutsche Zeitung because it reads like a 'treasure trove of quotations' or a collection of materials for the ' essay ' that Broder 'should actually have written'. He complained about the "outrageous conclusions" that Broder draws from the statements he has collected, but never tries to "analyze the events" of his own.

On Deutschlandfunk , Rainer Burchardt criticized Broder's book with the following words: "The result is an easily readable and sometimes exciting, and now and then even original commentary on German sensitivities in the crisis," as the publisher also wrote. Unfortunately this is afflicted with “an annoying redundancy” “and this is mainly the fatal thing, actually garnished with the more or less clear judgment, everyone is talking nonsense, only I am right.” Broder is used to this, but this one the author could have said “enough with a two-page essay. Or, to quote his motto of this book after Karl Kraus : 'Sir, if you do not keep silent, I will quote you.' ”For Broder, those who criticize the military operations in Afghanistan are also“ unworldly and lying moralists ”who do not Have an idea of ​​the true conditions of this world, "the Broder world, mind you". Be it Drewermann , Schorlemmer , Grass, the fashion designer Joop , peace researcher , left-wing writers and researchers who “get all their fat off”, Broder knows “just better”. He subordinated "any differentiation between the assassinations in New York and Washington to exculpation , even justification."

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reviews on Perlentaucher.de , accessed on June 2, 2012.
  2. ^ Henryk M. Broder: No War, Nowhere: The Germans and Terror. , Deutschlandradio from March 25, 2002.