Hans-Georg Maaßen's Defense of Liberal Democracy

The following commentary is based on a text that appeared originally in German in Junge Freiheit. An English translation of the interview with Hans-Georg Maaßen in Die Weltwoche has been posted separately today in TelosScope, here.

The interview with Hans-Georg Maaßen documents his reactions toward the charge of anti-Semitism against him by several German media outlets in the last few weeks since he announced his candidacy for the German Bundestag. The controversy has revealed more about the deterioration of the German media landscape than about Maaßen’s own views and character. Spurred on by a charge against him of racism and anti-Semitism by climate activist Luisa Neubauer on ARD’s political talk show Anna Will, media outlets scoured Maaßen’s writings with the hope of giving their accusations some substance. The dearth of the evidence against him led them in the end to an article that he published with Johannes Eisleben in English in TelosScope. But rather than engaging with the specific arguments of the article, the commentators have engaged in a kind of witch hunt.

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“State-sponsored cowardice”: Interview with Hans-Georg Maaßen

The following interview appeared originally in German in Die Weltwoche on June 18, 2021. Translated into English by Xuxu Song. A separate commentary by David Pan appears here.

Hans-Georg Maaßen, President of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2012 to 2018, is accused of spreading anti-Semitic ideas. The accusation comes from the milieu of the “Fridays for Future” movement. The timing, Maaßen suspects, is no coincidence and has nothing to do with the political climate. Rather, they want to prevent his election as a member of the Bundestag.

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Matthias Küntzel on the Iran Deal and Germany

On The Caravan Podcast at the Hoover Institution, Russell Berman talks with political scientist Matthias Küntzel about the potential return of the United States to the Iran Deal, Germany’s long-standing special relationship with Iran, anti-Americanism in Europe, and the anti-Semitism of the Iranian regime. Listen to the podcast here. Küntzel is the author of Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold (Telos Press, 2014), which examines why the history of the special relationship between Germany and Iran is critical to understanding the ongoing controversy over Iran’s nuclear program. Both Germany and Iran and Küntzel’s earlier book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11 are available in our online store for 25% off the list price. Küntzel’s articles for Telos are also available at our online archive.

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Goodbye “Welcome Culture”? Part I

The following think-piece by an active participant in the European public discussion on immigration policy, written well before the European parliamentary elections of May 29, 2019, is understood as a contribution to the European and international political debate and not (so much) as a “pure” scholarly article. It begins with a stark prognosis: the earthquake-like outcome of these elections will strengthen the far-right political parties all over Europe, dramatically weakening the European center and left, and breaking down the “welcome culture” initiated by German chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous statement of late summer 2015—”We can do this” (“Wir schaffen das”)—which signaled a temporary and short-lived “air superiority” for multiculturalism, cultural pluralism, and the welcoming of masses of refugees from the Middle East and North. One of the main reasons for the predictable decline of the Left on the European continent is, in my opinion, its inability to find credible solutions to the problems of immigration and integration.

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The Middle East Studies Association Imagines Its Future

The large room at the Marriott Wardman Park was filled to overflowing on Sunday afternoon for a special session billed as “Thinking Palestine Intersectionally.” The seats were occupied and scores of others stood along the walls, sat on the floor in front of the stage, and spilled out into the hallway. For many it was clearly the highlight of The Middle East Studies Association’s November 2017 annual meeting of faculty and graduate students, held in Washington, DC. Perhaps 500 people were present to hear Noura Erakat, Judith Butler, Samera Esmeir, and Angela Davis be hailed as symbolic conquerors of the Jewish state. “The peace process is over,” Erakat began, and then affirmed “the entwinement of our liberation,” offering her own take on intersectionality. The real reason the United States blocked the “Zionism is racism” framework, she declared was “to prevent itself from having to pay reparations for slavery,” a claim that would have surprised the very people who fought against the 1975 UN resolution. The days of progressive advocacy “except for Palestine are over,” she concluded. It is time “to bar supporters of Israel from feminist movements.” Even this last agenda item, a call to cast out the female devils in our midst, met with loud applause.

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The Sarah Halimi Affair and the Taboo on the “New” Anti-Semitism

The following essay was originally published in French at Le Figaro Vox on July 14, 2017, and is published here by permission. Translated by Russell A. Berman.

In the night of April 4, 2017, in Paris, Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish woman, was savagely killed. Her murderer, Kobili Traoré, a radicalized Muslim with a Malian background and a long police record, assaulted her for forty minutes, first in her living room and then on her balcony. He shouted “Allah Akbar,” while degrading his victim, called her a “fat whore” and a “shaitan” (a demon in Arabic). From their windows and later from the courtyard, several neighbors heard and then witnessed, in disgust, the massacre. In Noémie Halioua’s excellent article in Causeur, she reports the testimony of one of them: “First I was woken by the moans of a creature in suffering. It was torture. First, I thought it was an animal or a baby. But then, lifting the blinds and opening the window, I recognized that it was a woman moaning as she was being beaten. With each blow, I heard a moan; she did not even have the strength to cry out anymore.” Kobili Traoré strikes her so hard that his fist is swollen. When he sees the light of the police flashlights in the courtyard, he yells, “watch out, there is a woman here about to commit suicide,” as he seizes his victim, still alive, by her wrists and throws her over the banister of her balcony. Sarah Halimi lays in the courtyard, dead, covered in blood.

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