Author: Benjamin Goldstein

Merkel’s Party The Union Is Trash

As you glean from the title ‘The Union’ is Merkel’s party. What is more to say about it? It is formally registered as two parties, a Bavarian leg called CSU and one with the name CDU that runs for all offices outside of Bavaria. Booooorring! I hear you. Don’t they have a platform that I could talk about? No. So they are boring? Yes.

But not so fast. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the bigger part CDU, found Nazis. In his ancestry, you ask? Probably. But he’s more concerned with Hans-Georg Maaßen, the former head of the secret service Verfassungsschutz and the newly elected head of the conservative caucus ‘Value Union’ (Werteunion).

Merz is flabbergasted by ‘the language’ and ‘the rhetoric’ of Maaßen. The quote held against the latter is: “According to the red-green [left-wing/environmentalist] race theory whites are an inferior race.” Now, that is undeniably true. There are countless articles and books that suggest whites were inherently racist, irredeemable, oppressive and beyond reform. There is even an English word for the race theory, ‘whiteness,’ and because the racists don’t show any signs of shame they pretend it were an academic discipline and as such referred to as ‘critical race theory.’

So now we have this dilemma that the racists are proud because some of them are whites, too, and have found a silly pathway to cheap applause and that, at the same time, mentioning that racism is denounced as a sign of racism itself, but bad racism this time. I’m so jaded from the racism debate that I don’t care anymore about who’s more racist. This whole fire must be tamed. So ‘They are the real racists’ doesn’t fly with me, either. But, also, do we have to start the next round of tabooing everything with making suggestions that the other side were racist into a punishable offense? I’m so tired.
So Merz tries to kick Maaßen out of his party.

But why are people still voting for The Union anyways? Merz has recognised that people like me would rather vote for the ‘party of park bench pissers’ than for him. He’d have to reform so much that he doesn’t bother. But who is still voting for them? Are they masochists?

Germans have some issues, masochism being potentially one of them, but there are two relevant points of indoctrination that are more worthwhile to focus on.

1) Germans fear to ‘lose their vote’.
A vote is supposed to be cast. It is not supposed to be reused again or to be found somewhere after an election. You have a day on which you show your support to a party or candidate. Either that support manifests itself in a seat or it does in the encouragement of the candidate to try again something similar. The German election system doesn’t allow parties with less than 5% of the votes to enter parliament. So unless many people come together in huge numbers as outsiders under difficult conditions (civil rights aren’t much protected) a vote to a party that doesn’t sit in the parliament is unlikely to result in a representative. Hence people keep voting parties that they hate. I don’t think that the CDU is a loved party.

2) Germans try to vote strategically.
Another quirk is that Germans try to slow-down progressives by voting for slower progressives. To not vote for the slow progressives risks fast progression. This is the only place where ‘German angst’ makes any sense. People here vote exclusively against others because they fear the others. All the attention at the division in America makes many forget that Germany is a much, much more divided country. We are the country where people vote the CDU to not be ruled by the Greens. A country where the CDU tries to kick out somebody who shares a piece of common wisdom in an interview. A country where people are constantly shamed for being seen with people from another group. A country where people vote CDU because they are even afraid to identify as dissidents. Merz and a variety of media outlets speak of ‘provocations.’ And Germans don’t understand how such vague notions justifying exclusion and discrimination sound authoritarian to any outsider’s ears.

‘The Union’ has no merit. Sensible members who linger around do so because they see it as another institution to be reconquered. I wish them good luck. The voters can only support individual candidates in few cases where the elections/constituency allows some targeting. For the rest of us The Union is nothing but utter trash.

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Climate Terrorists

The village of Lützerath is deserted. It’s inhabitants have been resettled and financially compensated for their property. A nearby coal mine is set to be expanded. Did I say ‘deserted’? No, not deserted. A battalion of climate activists occupy the village to protest the project. And with ‘protest’ I mean sabotage. And with ‘battalion’ I mean battalion.

The police was welcomed with a barrage of molotov cocktail, fire crackers, empty bottles and stones. And whilst the clashes were going on, the police headquarters announced that the removal of the occupiers is going well and that resistance to the police to the point where the officers have to carry the seated rebels physically out of the zone were a reasonable form of protest. The speaker added that he had no information yet about injured officers.

Great! If it should be true that no officer was injured, it is not because things ‘went very well,’ but because of pure luck. Things don’t go well when security forces are attacked. Things don’t go well, either, when the tax-payer has to pay such expenses because ever more freaks get away with ever more crime and are emboldened by the media and politicians every step on the way. Said cost is habitually added to the ledger of coal mining and serves as an additional argument for the freaks that coal were supposedly more expensive than the much subsidised and privileged “renewable” energies.

It is cynical how the speaker of the police depreciates the value of his colleague’s safety in that manner. We have become used to the idea that police officers should suck up everything that comes their way. Each new year violence against them is ramping up. The men and women who signed up to guarantee law and order do not receive a staggering risk premium. They expect to enjoy a normal job and a normal life like everybody else. They are not supposed to be maimed or killed and their children are not supposed to be traumatised by whatever happens to them. They are first and foremost fellow citizens. Their bodily integrity is not just cheap.

On New Year’s Eve riots shook Berlin. This time it wasn’t climate freaks, but stray goons mostly from migrant milieus. They, too, attacked security forces, but also ambulances and the fire brigade. The lacklustre response from the elites also reflected how little they value the attacked. In this case, unsurprisingly, any effort to learn anything about it and to work towards a solution was foiled by the overriding interest to not name the perpetrators. Media and politicians did their best to force the incidence into an irrelevant pattern so they don’t have to deal with the matching one. So instead of figuring out how the specific subgroup of Muslim men must be handled, we hear that ‘young men’ went rogue, that social workers are overworked and underpaid, and that fire crackers should be banned. The lives of firefighters, police officers and first-aid medics are apparently just too cheap to care.

In Lützerath the climate “protestors” have revealed themselves to be utter terrorists. They prepared their forceful removal with pales to cling on to. They deliberately planned not to cooperate with law enforcement. Lucky for them, popular news show Tagesschau had announced a “non-word” only a few days ago. It was, drum roll, ‘climate terrorist.’ What a “non-word” is, you ask? Well, that is a baddy-bad word which you should no longer use in polite company. That sounds straight-up Orwellian, you say? Yes. But don’t Germans have some antenna for such creepy, obviously totalitarian practices? No. The answer is: no, really not. Indeed, at that point the tradition of news anchors announcing “non-words” goes back many decades without people talking back. This short year Tagesschau had even announced a second “non-terminology”. If you just thought that the pronunciation of ‘climate terrorist’ as a no-no sounds very 1984, you have not heard that one. It’s ‘freedom’. I kid you not. Just follow this link to google translate. The AI cannot handle the word ‘non-terminology’ (or more verbatim: vapid expression of the year, German: Floskel des Jahres) and renders it as ‘phrase’, but you get the dismissive vibe anyways. And Tagesschau still remains to be seen as a respectable news show.

And the reason is, of course, that democracy had always been largely performative in this country. Voting is casting a paper into a box. Free speech is repeating what the news anchors suggest. Freedom is an eye-roller that one has to endure to have democracy. And democracy is whatever the elites do. Germany is progressive. A progressive is somebody who never wondered what something is for, but knows already that it can be removed.

Recently, Interior Minister Nancy Faser argued that the burden of proof should be with the defendant. That would make the conviction easier. Yes, sure. Thankfully she talked to some people later who had advised her not to upend the entire legal foundation of the Western world. The bummer is that she is a trained lawyer. I’d be shocked to hear such words out of anybody’s mouth, but I find it even more irritating that somebody can graduate in law and speak of the ease of convictions like that. But then again I’m not a progressive. I’m a person who occasionally wonders what something is for.

The German face of Fridays for Future Luisa Neubauer recently said that we don’t have the ‘choice between time and democracy.’ Her poor verbal skills save her from easy quoting, but she responded with that phrase to the argument that it takes some time to organise a majority in a democracy. And this is where I have to concede some sympathy with the overall radicalisation. Her generation is not used to debate, organisation of new political majorities for any purposes, or really any democratic procedures. The current Chancellor was Angela Merkel’s Finance Minister and Merkel headed the government for 16 years straight. Civil rights are not respected and freedom is an eye-roller among the snobs. So what pathway do climate activists have outside of violence? Leave alone that I don’t agree with their cause and that I think that they have to consider their fallibility real fast. What procedure is available to advance their extreme proposals? On what stage would they have to concede their mistakes? I’m not saying that I condone violence. What I’m saying is that if all pathways are cut, people do resort to violence. And the pathways are cut. The cost of participation is deliberately driven to prohibitive levels. You either have democracy or violence and I predict that we will see more and more violence.

The Criticism-Laced Obituary Reel for Benedict XVI

The obituary reel of the past days was laced with criticism of the late Roman Catholic pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Ratzinger. Other public figures also meet media criticism on the day of their death, but – let’s be real – the news casters have announced the death of dictators with less emphasise on the darker sides of the deceased.

This is a little bit hidden under the shroud of balance. Some lame praises about his intellect or charisma are the run up to the big “but” that introduces what the news room actually wants to talk about. And this is tactically necessary because the pope didn’t annoy the masses on a day-to-day basis. Politicians and journalists do. So they have to buckle down to his popularity like a creepy, resentful butler stooge in a horror movie.

I don’t want to repeat bromides like that the media only scorns what they see as an obstruction of left-wing interests. The left is not an organisation with a military command line for their thoughts and narratives. They are a swarm with a certain group think. And to understand where their resentment comes from – outside of their strategic interest of replacing Catholicism with their own fanaticism – one’s got to understand who they are criticizing and what fuels their emotions.

On the face value they say that they obsess over the pedophilia scandal and its supposed cover-up. After Jeffrey Epstein, the UK grooming gangs scandal, the lack of interest in child marriages and the “family-friendly drag shows”, it is safe to assume that this is not what enrages them. This is what angers normal people. And none of the scorn obituaries give any details as to what Joseph Ratzinger supposedly did to cover up any crime. What exactly did he do that stopped the police from doing their work? Is it the job of employers to punish employees in addition to the sentences of the legal system? If a convict continues to be a threat to children, isn’t it the job of the courts to issue a professional ban for vulnerable occupations? Do those journalists want the church to take a government function? It is fair to assume that they are not clamouring for an end of secularism in favour of a church intervention scheme. They just try to throw mud.

A second criticism they offer is that Joseph Ratzinger stood for a church that does not change, that were too conservative. Again this is something that sounds like we all would agree on, but don’t. Their criticism of the Catholic church has three pillars. The first is that they want all Christian churches to waffle even more about climate change, open borders and other talking points to advance the political left. The second is that women cannot become priests and the third circles around homosexuals and their suggested priesthood. A minor variation of the third which has got its little extension for straight people is the wailing about sins. This one should make up the better part of psychological research  at this point since it makes absolutely no sense to freak out over the mentioning of sinfulness if one ostensibly isn’t very religious anyways. Either you are comfortable with your lack of religion and you don’t care or you scream like a madmen whenever somebody mentions a potential sin because you are tense. Another combination that holds is that you are relaxed with your pick-and-choose religion and you are thus relaxed about your level of sinfulness as well (and no matter what people say, they all pick and choose). What does not hold water is the standard left-wing identity of not caring about religion while making a huge fuss over each proposal of what should be considered as sinful.

None of these typical points of criticism ring with normal people. Former news anchor Peter Hahne who also served in the leading council of the German Lutheran Church summed it up as ‘The mess is too much news show.’ He was referring to the Lutheran counterpart, of course, but most normal people, independent of their faith, don’t want to hear zeitgeist hogwash when they go to their temple. Normal people don’t think that being a priest is a terribly attractive job that women must have access to in order to be complete. Normal people don’t care about gay marriage at all. What most people find inhumane about the Catholic church is the celibacy. But that point, the only relevant point, is completely absent from the typical diatribe.

And this brings me to the person who made me aware of the man Joseph Ratzinger at first, his former student colleague Uta Ranke-Heinemann URH. She was the daughter of former German president Gustav Heinemann who was also at other times a member of the leading council of the Lutheran Church. After her marriage to a Catholic and a near complete university degree in Lutheran theology she converted. Lucky for her she aced academically and chased through the exams of Catholic theology in no time. Eventually she found herself in the same doctorate seminar with Josef Ratzinger. They would regularly meet and translate ancient Greek texts into German together.

After she became the first female professor of Catholic theology she realised the cruelty of the celibacy and began a vendetta against the sex obsession of the ‘bachelors’ as she liked to mock them. Lucky for her she was good ammunition for the left who saw the church only as some nasty competition. The story a superficial observer would be told by the media is that Josef Ratzinger represented the backwards and Uta Ranke-Heinemann the modern side of the church.

In her last years Uta Ranke-Heinemann fell out of favour, too. It was a silent, creeping disaffection. Her last media appearances could be found on fringe communist newspapers. She did not want to introduce more left-wing agenda points into the church or obsess over sin, gay marriage, women priests and CO2. She had her own mind and that mind was concerned about lonely or morally compromised priests whose basic human instincts had been denied by the grotesque celibacy regime of their employer. The political left lost its patience with her like they lost their interest in all working rights concerns.

In 2006 Ratzinger shocked with a speech in which he dared to tacitly describe Islam as violent. Back in those days I was also foolish enough to point to the history of Catholicism to wash away concerns over Islam. Since then Jihad has gained considerable momentum and today it strikes normal people as absurd that there was an outrage circus around this observation. At this point we all go by the Russian saying, ‘We know that they are lying. They know that we know that they are lying. We know that they know that we know that they are lying, but it continues anyway.’

For Josef Ratzinger there was also too much ‘news show in the mess’, too much focus on the institution, and too little contemplation of the faith. He also called for change, but he distinguished between the changes of the painting of the house and a change of substance. In his words the church had become ‘too worldly.’ It is the spirit of the zeitgeist, the news room, that spoils the church. He asked for the church not only be seen as an institution, but as the individuals, the community of the believers, who should change and turn to their creator.

So in the end both Uta Ranke-Heinemann and Josef Ratzingers were rebels. And they both shared the same opponent. Ranke-Heinemann being (informally, but effectively) excommunicated comparably early in her life, wielded the sharper tongue. And she made it perfectly clear that her issue was mostly with the dull and intellectually blunt mediocrity in prestigious robes. People who confused their social status with their smarts argued that Mary remained a virgin when she gave birth to the descendant of King David through her husband Josef ‘because we say so.’

But did the student friends Uta Ranke-Heinemann and Josef Ratzinger win? Yes and no. The perpetual ‘there was also criticism’ remark following concessions to the late pope’s strengths reveal that the dull, spineless creeps know that it is at least not them who have won over everyone just yet. Those who had an affinity to Josef Ratzinger and what he actually represented are still around. By the end of her life Uta Ranke-Heinemann believed that she had failed and not changed anything at all. And, yes, celibacy is still in place, but her rampage started a reflection on the church and an exodus of government membership registrations (in Germany church membership gets registered with local government authorities). And most people do not leave their formal, institutional status to leave the church. In the sense of Josef Ratzing they are the church and always will be. They leave the worldly, the zeitgeistly and the corrupt. The winner takes it all. Rest in peace!

Brainstorming European Crises

Despite the necessity to face an impending food crisis the European Union and the Dutch government have shoved down an anti-agriculture directive which keeps stirring up mass protests and violent altercations in the Netherlands. The German parliament Bundestag has turned down the option to continue nuclear energy. The ECB keeps flooding the place with money, but given the inflation that is going to change. A disorganised brainstorm.

Dark Grey Pill

I haven’t uploaded anything in a while. So I do a little explaining here. A lot of terrible things are happening. Additionally, I try to work on improvements. After all my reach is small (and I suspect nefarious reasons). Eventually I will need some kind of breakthrough and have to find new ways to raise the quality.

The Trustworthiness of The Media in Russia And The West (Konstantin Kisin)

People hate the media. Media dishonesty has accelerated considerably in the West since around 2015. The well-deserved loss of trust has made some jump onto the irrational assumption that whatever sounds the most remote from their media’s explanation is the reality. This “logic” has absurd side effects such as the mainstream media still remaining the compass and that their inconsistency must be mirrored whenever they knot their narrative into a pretzel.

In need of finding a standpoint that looks – at first glance – like the most remote one from that of Western media, a variety of political influencers have blindly trusted Russian media. The irony is big, literally, since Russian propaganda is infamous for its absurd level of inconsistency.

Former Russian Deputy Minister of Energy Vladimir Milov Explains Putin’s Rise

Vladimir Milov served under Vladimir Putin as his Deputy Energy Minister. Since then they had a little fall out. US General H. R. McMaster interviewed him for his show ‘Battlegrounds’ (organized by the Hoover Institute). In the interview Mister Milov shares with us some insights into Putin’s rise, the inner workings of the administration in Russia and the attitude of the public. The full recording is long and you find it here.

This video summarises and adds illustrations to the audio. Unfortunately, the microphone and/or sound setting of the original document are not great and I do not know how to improve on that. If somebody can clean it up and make it available to me, I will re-upload it with the polished sound. But in any event it is easily comprehensible still. On some segments (notably at the beginning) the voice modulation sounds strange. This is because my cuts “corrected” grammar flaws or pre-empted an interruption of the interviewer that make listening to it rather more difficult. They do not misrepresent Vladimir Milov’s views (and everybody can check the original to prove me right).

Carl Bildt On The Unclear Motivations of Russia

Carl Bildt is a Swedish diplomat and conservative politician. In a conversation with Russian dissident Vladimir Milov he addresses the fact that the motivations stated by Russia make no sense. Ukraine’s constitution even forbade a NATO membership. This was only changed after Russia annexed Crimea, occupied government buildings in the East of the country through proxy “separatist” forces and armed years of attempts at an insurrection.

The full conversation

creative commons pic used and the inspiration for the Hydra image

Helen Dale On Ukraine And Her Own Experience With Dishonest Fascism Allegations

Helen Dale’s first novel ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper’ won critical acclaim and a variety of prestigious prizes like the Miles Franklin Award. Yet, what followed her heightened visibility in the public eye was not a privileged pathway to more success, but a decades-long cancel-culture witchhunt. In her book she described the pressures on and the weaknesses of Ukrainians during WWII. Stalin committed a genocide against them only a few years earlier. The Nazis, at the time, looked like an opportunity to break free from Russian control. It is this historical dilemma Vladimir Putin weaponizes against Ukraine today. In those dark years a disproportionate number of Holocaust enablers emerged from this brutalised country. Cultures change. Ukrainians have made huge strides in the past. One very visible, and thus often repeated, example is that they voted for a president who is the descendent of survivors of both major genocides the country had seen, the Holocaust and the Holodomor.

Konstantin Kisin on the War in Ukraine

I summed up, re-organised and illustrated some of the points Konstantin made in his conversation with Triggernometry partner Francis Foster. You find the full conversation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNnq8gMAE-8

Please, share my content! I try to upload fairly regularly. Sometimes, though, I invest time in improvements which is bad for the social media algorithms. This time I made a pause to set myself up to make these illustrations that I premiere today with this video.

I re-purposed a creative license image to speed up the process (I didn’t want to think up a street scenery):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Street_in_Cartagena,_Colombia.jpg

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