ANYTHING FRANCE CAN DO WE CAN BETTER :

Germans Attack Post-Holocaust Taboos (AP, August 03, 2002)

For a nation that swore off nationalism after World War II, Germany is having an unusual election campaign. Taboos that once muted any serious discussion of the topic are being cracked -- not by some far-right fringe, but by the two main candidates.

One is Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In May he publicly debated the meaning of patriotism with a popular author who has enraged Jews by saying that the Holocaust is used as ``a moral bludgeon'' on Germans.

Schroeder's conservative challenger, meanwhile, has engaged in a war of words with the Czech Republic on behalf of ethnic Germans who were expelled at the end of the war. [...]

As for anti-Semitism, Germans have long reassured themselves that it was firmly banished to the far-right fringe, which holds no seats in parliament.

But even that taboo has come under attack -- from a respected party that helped build Germany's postwar democracy and from Walser, whose latest novel was condemned by critics as pandering to anti-Jewish stereotypes.

The opposition Free Democratic Party, yearning to return to its old role as coalition partner in the next government, injected tones widely viewed as anti-Semitic into its populist campaign strategy. [...]

Meanwhile, Walser's new novel, ``Death of a Critic,'' has gone straight to the top of the best-seller list, accompanied by furious controversy over the unflattering portrayal of its main character -- a Jewish Holocaust survivor modeled on Germany's best-known literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

One of Germany's most respected newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, called the book a ``document of hate'' and refused to serialize it.

Remind me again why we want to be more like Europe? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 3, 2002 3:48 PM