An unexpected follow-up to my last “post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/07/shutting-down-alternatives/ ; Brad DeLong “reacts bitterly”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/05/guenter_grass_m.html to Guenter Grass’s op-ed in the _New York Times_, which is itself apparently the transcription of a radio talk given in Germany. Grass is harshly critical both of the all-devouring market and of the current state of German democracy. Brad finds that it can’t be an accident that Grass never mentions the words “Jew,” and concludes by describing Grass as “crypto-Nazi scum.”
To put it mildly, Brad’s critique of Grass is misconceived (he’s already gotten a lot of remarks to this effect, a couple of which are themselves a bit over the top, in his comments section). “Crypto-Nazi scum” are extraordinarily harsh words to use to describe anyone other than the David Irvings of this world, and they don’t fit here. Grass’s talk was about Germany’s post-war record. He doesn’t use any of the code-words that Holocaust revisionists or sneaking regarders use. Grass states directly that Germany can never get away from its historical burden. He also makes it clear that Germany’s acknowledgment of its dreadful past is one of the few things worth being proud of in the post-war period (Brad notes this, but by some logic that I can’t quite follow, sees this as further evidence of Grass’s crypto-Nazism). Grass’s leftwing nationalism-that-has-harsh-words-to-say-about-Germany-as-a-nation is complicated, but I don’t know of anyone who believes that Grass is even slightly sympathetic to Nazism, given Grass’s own eloquent excoriations of the Nazi era. Even in this article, one of Grass’s indictments against Germany is its swiftness in rehabilitating former members of the NSDAP, and giving them high government positions.
A fair amount of Brad’s animus seems to be aimed at Grass’s description of capitalism as a new totalitarianism _in potentia_. But this is an entirely respectable view with long historical antecedents among democrats as well as authoritarians. Was Karl Polanyi, for example, a crypto-Fascist? Nor is Grass’s disquiet with the current state of a parliamentary government beset by lobbyists and special interests evidence of Nazi leanings. Again, it’s an entirely respectable political position – and one shared by a wide variety of people on both the left and the right of the democratic spectrum. Grass is quite evidently an old-style social democrat, with a hankering for a more radical version of the Soziale Marktwirtschaft that’s responsive to social needs as well as the profit motive. It’s a position with which one can very reasonably disagree, but it certainly doesn’t make him a Nazi.
Update: In a revision to his post, Brad seems to be withdrawing his criticism of Grass’s claim that Germany has had a better record of dealing with its past than some other countries. However, he still seems to believe that Grass is “crypto-Nazi scum.” As best as I can make out, this is because Grass doesn’t explicitly mention the particular Nazi animus against the Jews in his talk. Given that Grass’s talk was very clearly about the post-WWII German state rather than the Nazi era, and that he spoke clearly and unambiguously about Germany’s continuing historical burden, I can’t see that this helps Brad at all. It seems to me that Brad has made, and is continuing to make an extremely strong claim (and a claim that implies that Grass should be shunned by right thinking people) on the basis of extremely weak evidence. I’ve enormous respect for Brad – but I simply don’t see how he can stand over the claim that Grass is “crypto-Nazi scum” given Grass’s track record, and the evidence that he (Brad) has provided to date.
Update 2: It appears that Brad has indeed modified his position on this, and has struck out his reference to Grass as “crypto-Nazi scum,” but the strikeout doesn’t appear in Firefox due to a formatting problem. Thus, his restatement is considerably more generous than I first thought, and most of the above update is thus entirely redundant.
