Re: Germany: vice ring scandal

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Johannes Schneider writes:

I doubt there is any conservative politician here to play the role of
Thatcher. They are all much too mediocre, epecially CDU-chair Angela Merkel.

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In the pantheon of British prime ministers, James Callaghan hardly leaps out
as a screaming success. Perhaps you forgot about him. Many have. But he was
the caretaker installed in 1976 after Harold Wilson's resignation, and was
gifted with an IMF conditionality package that effectively sealed his
political defeat in 1979 and put in place the essential foundations of the
Thatcherism that was to follow that. The transition to full-blooded
neoliberalism is unlikely to be immediate, at least on the surface. It's the
preparations below the surface you have to be wary of.

Maybe a compromise SPD politician can be found to oversee a "grand
coalition" with the CDU, or vice versa. What about Wolfgang Clement? Then
there is the position of the Greens, who could easily be bought off by some
cosmetic commitment to conservation whilst fully supporting neoliberal
reform. As long as someone is there to manage what will be a difficult
political transition. And there will be plenty of ambitious types available
for that. They are politicians, after all.

You continue:

Furthermore any kind of regime change would not bring any government
substantially more frendly towards the US. Actually Schroeder's 'anti-US'
rhetoric is the only aspect that scores him a few points in public opinion.

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You would be surprised how strong anti-Americanism was during Thatcher's
tenure. For instance, in 1986 when General Motors was rumoured to be
interested in buying portions of British Leyland the stink in the media was
such that the government was forced to find a British buyer for the
company -- a very reluctant British Aerospace. Then there was the business
of the Westland affair, in which europhile Michael Heseltine fought with the
transatlanticist Thatcher, leading to Heseltine's resignation, also in 1986.

The point here is that in the long term, Germany's interests are ultimately
inimical to those of the US. But, as with Britain in the 1970s, you have a
convergence of interests between important, decisive, sections of German
state and capital and the US, because the common enemy is organised labour.
Once German capital clears that out of the way, the deeper underlying
prerogatives of the German state will reassert themselves, albeit in far
weaker form because of the damage done to the infrastructure necessary to
support them. That is why Schröder's inability to grasp the fleeting
opportunity that was presented to him last year (the progressive nationalist
alliance) is so tragic for Germany's working class, and ultimately Europe's.

You continue:

I do not think the vice ring scandal is any problem for the Schroeder
government. First of all German public is more tolerant towards the sexual
behviours of its politicians than the US public (e.g. the Levinsky episode
was never understood here).

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That rather misses the point. By itself a vice ring scandal is unlikely to
topple a German government, but under the present circumstances it becomes
rather less easy to keep that assumption. Attacking the credibility of
office-holders is as important as attacking their policies, from the point
of view of those concerned to push their agenda.

You continue:

Secondly the material evidence for any kind of scandal at all is very weak:
It is not even clear whether the alleged list of phone calls even exists at
all or whether its is a fabrication by the Bild daily (the German equivalent
to the Sun).

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Yes, I'm aware of the journalistic standards of Bild. That the story should
have found its way to the Glasgow-based Herald is rather strange, however.
Perhaps a case of the well-practised art of "surfacing", where foreign news
agencies are tipped off and led to publish certain stories which are then
relayed back home as evidence that something must be going on. Whatever, if
the conditions are right, it doesn't matter if it is Bild or Die Tagesspiel
that leads with the story -- it's what people do with it that counts. And I
reckon, based on the Herald report, that any ambitious journalist worth
his/her salt will be chasing for leads on this salacious gossip. It's just
too good to miss, and you'll notice from the Herald story that the angle
being adopted by the German press is not one of prurience -- it seems to be
taken for granted that male German politicians use prostitutes. It's the
illegality of the prostitutes themselves and the involvement of politicians,
however indirectly, in the networks of human trafficking that they are
rhetorically committed to smashing. The hypocrisy inherent in such a
scenario is transparent and requires no British-style prurience for it to be
effective in bringing down politicians individually and, ultimately, the
government, which is hanging by a thread in terms of its parliamentary
majority.

You continue:

The only public figure implicated in any kind of scandal is talk-show host
Michel Friedman: An Ukranian prostitute accused him of having used cocaine.
For details see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3005338.stm
But Friedman is a member of the CDU (albeit from its liberal wing), so no
way to weaken the SPD here.

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Again, blind partisanship does not apply here. A liberal CDU member might be
regarded as equal to the problematic SPD ones that conspirators wish to
sweep away. A seemingly bipartisan list of casualties would be useful cover
in what is a more fundamental effort geared towards altering the
political-economic trajectory of the German state. For such a strategy to
succeed key players in all the main parties will be affected, as they were
in Britain in the 1970s.

You continue:

What is more important with Friedman here are two facts: Friedman is the
deputy deputy head of the Jewish community and he was the political
arch-enemy of the late Vice-Chancellor Moellemann.

Moellemann died a few weeks ago during a parachute accident, police said he
committed suicide.

Up to last summer Moellemann was the deputy chair of the liberal FDP. During
his election campaign he heavily attacked Israel for its policy towards the
Palestinians. Moellemann especially  attacked Israeli PM Sharon and Michel
Friedman.
For Moellemann see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2970066.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2267130.stm

Though Moellemann's criticism of Israel were corrected, he obviously tried
to win votes from an anti-semite consituency. He was subsequently accused of
anti-semitism and forced to leave his party.

So much for the facts, now for the conspiracy theories:
Actually there are two versions:
- the anti-semite one:
Moellemann did not commit suicide, but was killed by a Zionist conspiracy,
because he was the only mainstream politician who dared to speak out against
Israel. This is why he had to die.
- the Zionist one:
The accusations against Friedman are a revenge by anti-semite circles for
the dead of Moellemann. Since cocaine usage is widespread in German society,
it is unfair to single out the most prominent Jew, this can be only
motivated by anti-semitism. The conspiracy is led by a circle of right-wing
Berlin attorneys who initially supported Moellemann in the FDP.

Obviously both is bull-shit, but even so there is no material in it that
could hurt the Schroeder government, because most of the persons involved
are from the opposition party CDU and FDP.

-----

This sort of thing ran in parallel with the Wilson plots of the 1970s. In
Britain they involved Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the very minor Liberal Party,
whose prior homosexual liaisons were threatening to be made public and
thereby force his resignation. Because Wilson depended on Liberal Party
support, the Liberals were themselves vulnerable to attack. Thus Wilson, who
intended to resign in 1976, had to find a way to make sure that Thorpe could
hang on long enough as Liberal leader so that Thorpe's inevitable
resignation would not be associated with Wilson's. If that happened, then
the smearmongers would have had a field day linking Thorpe's indiscretions
(and therefore susceptibility to blackmail) with Wilson's alleged
indiscretions. Given that the South African Bureau of State Security was
also involved in all this (conducting a campaign against the Young Liberal
leader, Peter Hain, among others) this only added to the heady brew of
paranoia and suspicion that predominated during this period.

Hindsight and the careful investigation and analysis of others makes these
things easier to recognise. Just now I could not even guess how the
Möllemann suicide and the vice ring scandal might be related. However the
Möllemann affair does contribute to the general atmosphere of decay, and is
therefore useful in discrediting further the current generation of
politicians, making it all the easier for a newer generation, no doubt
featuring a "strong man" (the German Thatcher) to take over and "put things
right".

Am I right in believing that there are five intelligence agencies in the
bundesrepublik? Given the rivalry that famously exists between MI6 and MI5
in Britain, it seems that there is even more potential for internecine wars
spilling over into the public domain in the form of smear campaigns, psyops,
disinformation, etc. And information of this kind (i.e. vice ring, cocaine
use) will most certainly be hard currency in any such inter-agency rivalry.

Just some thoughts, which might be rubbish, of course.

Michael Keaney