Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too

by Claire Berlinski

  The scariest thing about these men is that plainly they have not learned a thing from history. They’re just pissed off that it’s oppressing them.

  A LITTLE GAME

  Let’s play a little game. Read the following and decide: Rammstein or Goebbels? The answers are in the footnotes.

  We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an arrogant manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons. . . . [T]his degree of arrogance gets on one’s nerves.42

  We therefore have no appreciation for the Americanism that can be found in certain of our circles. We fail to see why we as the leading musical nation in the world should borrow even a single note from the U.S.A.43

  One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naïveté or a superiority complex.44

  It is time to recommend peace and good sense. American public opinion is going the wrong way. It would benefit by returning to the old, tested practices of international courtesy and good manners. . . . We do not expect our appeal to have a great impact on American attitudes. Still, we think it our duty to speak plainly.45

  In the past, the Germans have come up with very good ideas, but then they’ve left Germany and gone, for example, to the States, and actually realized their ideas there—and it’s a shame, because it was lost. #

  Seeking fortunes in America led to Germany losing people, and the American continent received many people whose contributions are particularly clear.##

  In any event, the reader will see that it’s not difficult to distinguish between Rammstein and Goebbels. Goebbels was more articulate.

  THAT IS NOT A LOVE SONG

  Strict Assistant bustled in to take me to the wings of the auditorium, where stagehands were preparing the explosives. The evening’s schedule, taped to the wall, could have doubled as a battle plan: For the song “Du Hast”—“You Hate”—there would be “Gas/Lyco/Comets/Grid Rockets/Mortar Hits,” and for the encores, “Airbursts,” “Flames,” and the ominous-sounding “Concussion Boat.” The band, their stage manager told me, often had problems getting the legal approval they needed for their pyrotechnics in Germany. By comparison, American authorities were easygoing. “In America, they say, ‘Okay, you have a fifteenfoot line from the audience. So whatever you do on stage, you have to keep that distance from the audience. And if you do it behind that line, you’ll be fine.’ And that’s it.”

  I nodded enthusiastically. “Land of the free, man, I’m telling you.”

  His face fell. “Well. I have my personal opinion about that.”

  The warm-up act began precisely on time. The dreadlocked lead singer of Exilia, author of the loudest and ugliest sounds ever produced by human agency, shrieked down the microphone and banged her head spastically up and down for nearly an hour. Earlier, backstage, I had seen her walking down the hall with her dog. The miserable beast had dreadlocks, too.

  The audience seemed to want to like Exilia (renamed Ex-Lax by the press contingent); they pumped their fists in the air politely and made the heavy metal sign—a gesture that in southern Italy would mean, “You’ve been cuckolded”—but in the end couldn’t conceal their boredom. The woman on a dog leash, whom I had seen earlier outside, crouched by the speakers and picked lint from her leather corset.

  Exilia left the stage and the audience rumbled restlessly. Finally, the lights dimmed. A man beside me pulled out a pack of cigarettes, ripped off the filters, and stuffed them in his ears. Then “Reise, Reise” began. A jolt of electricity passed through the crowd. A huge curtain dropped, revealing a row of massive Potemkin amplifiers, flashing with the band’s insignia. The guitarists descended like gods from the ceiling by means of some kind of levered contraption. Suddenly, the auditory assault began: It was so fearsome that even the hardest-core fans appeared momentarily stunned. It was not, however, merely loud: It was thrilling. Rammstein is popular for a reason.

  Dressed in an imperial German military uniform, Lindemann materialized on stage. The audience was mesmerized by him, and understandably so—he gave off an air of such brute masculinity and barely contained violence that it would have surprised no one had he reached into the crowd, snatched up a fan, and bitten off his head. When he began to sing, the audience, enthralled, began pumping their fists in the air. Dog-Leash Woman began to writhe and snake on the ground.

  The band then introduced “Links.” “Links-Zwo-Drei-Vier!” “Links-Zwo-Drei-Vier!” The keyboardist stomped about in a German military helmet. Mr. Lindemann performed an exaggerated goose step. The crowd shouted Hi! in unison. The musicians, wearing flamethrowing gas masks, sprayed fire—seemingly from their eyeballs—over the stage. They burst explosives in the air and shot balls of flames over the audience, generating heat so intense that fans began to pass out. Medics strapped the fallen Germans to gurneys and carted them away. The crowd was vitalized, as if they could easily be persuaded to channel their furious energy toward a target, and when, later, the band sang their hit “Amerika,” it seemed quite clear what the target of preference would be. I looked uneasily for the routes to the exits, because that’s definitely not a love song.

  NOT EUROPEAN—GERMAN

  Whether their songs are about love or war, and whether they are on the Left or the Right, one thing is sure: Rammstein’s music is German. Not European, German. A sensibility has been passed, from generation to generation to generation. The Danes don’t make music like this, and neither do the Portuguese. Nor do the Irish, the Macedonians, or the Belgians. This music couldn’t have its mesmerizing power in any language but German. Rammstein refuses to sing in English. As keyboardist Lorenz correctly observes, “The German language is very suited to our musical style.” To confirm this point, imagine Rammstein’s lyrics sung in French. For particular hilarity, imagine them sung by Maurice Chevalier.

  It has often been remarked that people reveal their souls in the music they create, and that a nation’s music bears a relationship to its social, moral, and political life. Plato devotes considerable attention to this subject in the Republic. “Music,” he writes, “is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.” Later, he cautions that “the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.” His views are echoed by Aristotle, Rousseau, and Nietzsche, all of whom acknowledge the unique capacity of music to stir human emotions, for good or ill. Napoleon urged legislators to give music the greatest encouragement, for, he noted, it had of all the arts the most influence on the passions.

  Has Rammstein had any influence on the German body politic? It’s hard to say. Rammstein certainly returned the aesthetic of the Right to the German pop culture mainstream, and Rammstein’s vaulting commercial success has inspired scores of imitators. Last September, the strong showing of far-Right and neo-Nazi parties in Germany’s regional elections, particularly in the formerly Communist East, sent a chill through Europe. Did the cultural transformation associated with Rammstein’s “Neue deutsche Härte”—the new German hardness— help these parties return to the mainstream? Who knows? It probably didn’t hurt.

  Nowhere has the close relationship between music and the soul been more evident than in Germany. The barbarians of Germania, Gibbon noted, were fascinated by music.17 Nietzsche remarked that the German imagines even God singing songs. The German, Wagner observed, far from looking upon the practice of music as an empty entertainment, religiously approaches it “as the holiest precinct in his life. He accordingly becomes a fanatic, and this devout and fervent Schwärmerei, with which he conceives and executes his music, is the chief characteristic of German Music.”18

  Fanaticism: That, too, is a German quality. This i
s a traditional observation about Germans, one that has been made by Einstein, among others: No matter what the pursuit, Germans will take it to extremes. German music is unique because it is taken to extremes, and because it inspires the listener to go to extremes. In this regard, too, Rammstein is nothing new. The hero of A Clockwork Orange listened to Beethoven. It certainly wasn’t Puccini who got him in the mood for a bit of the old ultraviolence. The killers at Columbine loved Rammstein. According to Russian authorities, the murderers at Beslan were listening to Rammstein during the school siege. It is doubtful that they understood the lyrics, but they certainly understood the message. Why is it that they found themselves inspired by German, not Chechen, music? What is it about the German musical tradition that has this force?

  I am not sure. But at the extreme, it is clear, music becomes a form of exhortation, one that quickly leads to action. And this raises an interesting question: Was Plato right?

  DOESN’T EVERY FAMILY HAVE ONE LIKE THAT?

  According to the Laeken Declaration, issued in late 2001 by the European Council, the unification of Europe is near. “At long last,” the document reads, “Europe is on its way to becoming one big family.” Cheerful news. And this brotherhood is all very touching, considering that it replaces century upon century of unmitigated slaughter and butchery among the European peoples, a tradition of virtually uninterrupted warfare since the sack of Rome. Brotherhood, at last, after the Visigoth Raids, the Saxon Raids, the Vandal Raids, the Hun Raids, Theodoric’s War with Odoacer, the Frankish-Alemmanic War, the Burgundian-Frankish War, the Visogothic-Frankish War, the Gothic War, Aelthelfrit’s Wars, the Byzantine-Avarian War, Oswald’s War, the Anglian-Picktish War, the Siege of Constantinople, the First Frankish-Moorish War, the First Iconoclastic War, the Battle of Tours, Aelthelbald’s Wars, the Second Frankish-Moorish War, the Bulgarian-Byzantine War, Offa’s Wars, the Carolingian Wars, the Frankish-Avarian War, the Second Iconoclastic War, the Viking Raids, the Magyar Raids, the Bulgarian-Byzantine War, the Franco-German War, the Spanish Christian-Muslim War, Ardoin’s War, the Conquests of Vladimir, the Norman Conquest, William’s Invasion of Normandy, the Norman-Byzantine War, the Holy Roman Empire’s War with the Papacy, Almorovid’s Conquest of Spain, the Second Norman-Byzantine War, the Aragonese-Castilian War, the Anglo-French Wars, the First Portuguese-Castilian War, the Hungarian-Venetian War, the Wars of the Lombard League, the Aragonese-French War, the Anglo-Scottish War, the Danish-Estonian War, the Teutonic Knights’ Conquest of Prussia, the Norwegian invasion of Scotland, the Bohemian-Hungarian War, the Hapsburg-Bohemian War, the Aragonese-French War, the next Anglo-French War, the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the Teutonic Knights’ War against Poland, the Florentine Wars against Pisa, the Burgundian-Swiss War, the Hundred Years War, the Hungarian-Venetian War, the First and Second Danish Wars against the Hanseatic League, the next Portuguese-Castilian War, the Conquests of Tamerlane, the War of the Eight Saints, the Austro-Swiss War, the Albanian-Turkish War, the Austro-Turkish Wars, the Livonian War, the Eighty Years War, the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Hapsburg Brothers’ War, the Thirty Years War, the Franco-Spanish War, the Anglo-Spanish War, the Spanish-Portuguese War, the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions, the Wars of the Vendee, the Napoleonic Wars, the Peninsular Wars, the First and Second Turko-Montenegrin Wars, the Danish-Prussian Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the Serbo-Turkish War, the Serbo-Bulgarian War, the Greco-Turkish War, the Second Balkan War, the First World War, the Second World War, and the most recent Balkan Wars. These are only the first few wars that come to mind; I have probably forgotten rather a number. By way of contrast, the United States has fought one war against itself. To give Europe as fair a shake as possible, I have not included in this list such events as the Crusades or the Mongol Invasions, which were not, strictly speaking, domestics, as the cops call family disputes, nor have I listed the equally interminable catalogue of civil wars in European states and proto-states, national insurrections, revolutions, and wars of independence or separatism. Nor have I noted the bloody conflicts between the European peoples and their neighbors to the east and south, some of whom are now agitating to be adopted into Europe’s newly united, close-knit family. I stress that these were wars, not soccer matches.

  But for the sake of argument, let’s accept the assumption. E Pluribus Unum! Thank goodness Europe is a family now: That certainly was a spell of unpleasantness. One feels such the spoilsport in pointing out that certain members of this new European fraternity— the ones who have always been a little wrong in the head, if you get my drift—seem to retain rather a bizarre preoccupation with the smell of burning flesh, the coagulation of blood on the asphalt, and the sound of screaming mothers. How churlish one would have to be to point out that they are still gibbering dementedly about the horniness they feel when you scream in fear, red welts oozing from your skin. And surely, this preoccupation with the enlightenment of white flesh, with doomsday, with destruction, with mercilessly breaking you apart like little sticks—it would be unbrotherly to find that odd? He asks where all the dead are coming from, whether you want to perish in skin and hair; he says that love is war and he tells you to run; he warns that there is no escape and no one to save you; you might plead for mercy but none will be given; he kneels in your face and sticks fingers in the ashes; his father, he admits, was exactly like him. But what can you do. He’s family. Doesn’t every family have one like that?

  “I think it’s really nice when the countries are also proud of their traditions,” said Lorenz.

  THAT’S RIGHT, THE NAZI MANNER

  I certainly think it is possible that the members of Rammstein believe their own party line: they do not see themselves as Nazis; they hold themselves to be harmless musical herbivores. No member of the band, from what I can tell, is personally genocidal, an enemy of the Jews, or a particular partisan of the Aryan Nation. There is something all the more frightening about the fact that they do not consciously recognize what they’re doing: It suggests that this stuff comes out of them by sheer instinct.

  But that’s not even the point. Whether or not the members of Rammstein properly adhere to the core principles of the Nazi Weltanschauung is irrelevant. Recall Hugo Ringler’s essay about speaking to the heart: “In a thousand ways it was proved true that often it was not so much the contents of the speech as it was the manner in which it was delivered that influenced the listener and won him to us.” Rammstein certainly knows how to deliver their message in a manner that influences the listener to open his wallet. As Lorenz puts it, “We can deliver whatever we like, and they’ll play it. When no one knows you, they say it’s glorifying violence and not suitable for broadcasting, but when you hit the charts, it doesn’t count anymore. Then you can make what you want anyhow, and they’ll play it.” 19 In contemporary Germany, it so happens that the manner of delivery that best influences the listener is very much like the Nazi manner.

  That’s right. The Nazi manner. The manner of Old Europe, as Donald Rumsfeld might have it. We can speak frankly among ourselves now. They look like a duck, they quack like a duck. Just go down the checklist. The color: black. The material: leather. The seduction: beauty. The justification: honesty. The aim: ecstasy. The fantasy: death.20 Check, check, check. And they dominate German popular culture. It is the Germans who are fascinated by Rammstein, who are gobbling up this virtually undisguised Third Reich revivalism, devouring it as if they’ve been starved for years. But that’s not Germany, you say? It’s just a handful of jackbooted Teutonic nihilists who happen to be German? Then who bought all those albums? It wasn’t the Liverpudlians, that’s for sure. They just wanna hold your hand.

  That the German people, the bourgeois German establishment, after all that has happened, after all they have learned, could usher Rammstein’s every album to the height of the German charts, could feature them nightly on mainstream German television, award them their most enthusiastic accolades while simultaneously, earnestly, denying the patently obvious—that Rammstein is th
e living embodiment of the aesthetic of the Third Reich, the living embodiment of the Third Reich’s vocabulary, dramaturgy, propaganda, mythology, occultism, death-worship, bloodthirstiness, ferocity, nihilism, power lust, and outrageous sadism—only once again proves Hitler’s claim: People are unusually susceptible to the Big Lie.

  THE PERSISTENCE OF NATIONAL PERSONALITY

  Now, I am not arguing that Rammstein’s popularity evidences a fullthroated recrudescence of Nazism in Germany, nor that German democratic institutions are under immediate threat. I agree with Jeffrey Gedmin about that. I am arguing that culturally the Germans are unlike any other nation in history; this is equally true of the French, the British, the Spanish, and the Greeks. And I note that never in history have mature, fully formed nation-states of such cultural disparity united to form an effective and coherent single actor—not economically, not politically, not in foreign affairs—for more than a few decades. Indeed, the overwhelming tendency of states cobbled together from diverse ethnic groups is to disintegrate, swiftly and violently. The immigrants tend to get killed when this happens. In this regard, one can only read with deep unease such editorials in German newspapers as one written by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, a leading German historian, about “das Türkenproblem.”21

  Perhaps Rammstein is a group of refulgent Nazis in the truest and most sinister sense of the word, or perhaps they’re clowns, guilty of nothing more than outrageous blindness to their own appearance. Perhaps they’re somewhere in between. That’s not the point. The point is that Germany loves them. The point is the persistence of a German national personality so distinctive, so historically continuous, that it is risible to imagine these people as the brothers of the French or the sisters of the Belgians or the cousins of the British.