Tyskt krigs-DNA eller "bara ad Hitlerum"?

Foto: Astrid Nydahl

Får jag fresta ert tålamod idag också? Då skulle jag vilja citera ett rejält stycke ur en betydligt längre essä av Theodore Dalrymple. Den publicerades i våras och kan läsas i sin helhet här.

Ni vet att jag har ett särskilt gott öga till Dalrymple. Hans böcker är en fröjd att läsa. Det är något alldeles speciellt som föds ur hans kombinerat brittisk-franska liv. Han har varit fängelseläkare, av sådant lär man sig mycket. Men framför allt är han en skarp analytiker av det märkvärdiga som sker med Europa idag.

Här, på New Street i Birmingham, satt jag våren 2012 och läste två av Dalrymples böcker. Rekommenderas! TN

I essän jag vill visa er diskuterar han ”Hitler-argumentet” mot bakgrund av Angela Merkels beslut att öppna dörren för en miljon individer ur de långa folkvandringsleden.

When the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, decided to take in 1 million migrants and refugees (the precise numbers have yet to be established and probably never will be), it is difficult to believe that thoughts of Hitler and Nazism were far from her mind. Hitler believed that the German national interest was the touchstone of morality; anything that served it, in his opinion, was justified. So catastrophic was this monstrous ethic that for a long time, it seemed virtually impossible for anyone other than a neo-Nazi to speak of the German national interest. When Germany won the soccer World Cup in 2014, the nation exploded in joy and celebration. 

Newspapers suggested that Germany had finally overcome its postwar feelings of guilt, so that it was possible for Germans to express an unapologetic pride in their country. This, however, seems false: everyone understands that, in this context, sport is unimportant, a distraction. A rally to celebrate the German trade surplus as a vindication of the German people compared with its neighbors would be another thing entirely—and it is inconceivable that it would take place. One can imagine no policy more distant from Hitler’s than Merkel’s acceptance of the million migrants. Her gesture says: we Germans are as far from Hitler as it is possible to be. We need not think whether the policy is wise or just; it is sufficient that it should distinguish us from what we were before.

It is not only in Germany, however, that the national interest may not be mentioned for fear of appealing to Nazi-like sentiments; indeed, any such appeal routinely winds up labeled as “far right,” a metonym for Hitler or Nazism. The identification is a means of cutting off whole areas of inquiry, nowhere more so than in the question of immigration.

One of the justifications for the European Union that I have often heard is that it brings peace to the continent. This, usually unbeknown to its proponents, is an argument ad Hitlerum, for the likeliest source of war on the continent is Germany: Portugal would never attack Denmark, for example, or Sweden Malta. No: what is being said here is that the Germans, being Germans, are inherently militaristic and racist nationalists, and the logical consequence or final analysis of these traits is Nazism; and that unless Germany is bound tightly into a supranational organism, it will return to violent conquest. I personally do not believe this. 

Nå, fundera gärna på det avslutande resonemanget här och applicera det också på andra länder: är en övernationell struktur, till exempel en union av Sovjetunionens eller Europeiska Unionens slag, en förutsättning för att krigiska, aggressiva och nationalistiska politiska böjelser och traditioner ska kunna hållas korta? Dalrymple tror inte det. Själv har jag kommit en bit på vägen i revisionen i det tänkande och de illusioner som fick mig att en gång i tiden rösta ja till ett svenskt EU-medlemskap. Vad väntar oss?