<nettime> Franco Berardi 'Bifo': I refuse to visit Germany [two messages]

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First Message: 9th July 2015
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To the organisers of International Literature Festival "Poetische
Quellen 2015" To the coordinators of 100 Jahre Gegenwart ErÃffnung.


I thank you for inviting me to take part in the 14th edition of the
Festival in the day August 30, and to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt
in the days September 30-October 4rth.


However I must inform you that, although I accepted to participate in
your prestigious manifestations, Iâm now obliged to renounce because
given the present circumstances, I refuse to visit a country whose
population is predominantly following the stance of the fanatical
persecutors of the Greek people and of the overall population of the
Eurozone.


I think that itâs high time for every democratic person of the
continent to acknowledge a truth that is painful and frightening:
seventy years after the defeat of the Nazis regime, sixty two years
after the signature of the London Conference where the unspeakable
debt of the German nation towards the human kind was forgiven, the
German nation is re-enacting the cultural, psychological and political
features that marked its behaviour during the Nazis era.


The moral guilt of the Greek State consists in the falsification of
account books, and this guilt cannot absolutely be compared with the
moral debt of the German State, consisting in the annihilation of six
million Jews, two million rom people, three hundred thousands German
Communists, twenty-eight million Soviet citizens, three hundred
Yugoslavians, not to mention uncountable others. Furthermore, while
Greek citizens cannot be considered responsible of a misdeed committed
by financial agencies and by the government of Nea Democratia and of
Pasok, German citizens were absolutely not innocent of the
unimaginable crimes of Hitler, as they were actively or passively
(always consciously) accomplices of those crimes.


The heirs of the Hitlerian regime think they have the right to demand
the punishment and impoverishment of Greek people (and of Italian
Spanish Portuguese, Irish and French people) for the sake of the
principle that rules cannot be transgressed. This claim is highly
hypocritical, as the German State has violated the rules concerning
the 3% of the budget in the years 2003 and 2004. Furthermore this
claim demonstrates an intolerable lack of humanity, flexibility and a
resounding demonstration of obtusity: rules have to change as the
needs of the human community are changing.


As a son of a communist partisan who was detained in a Nazis prison in
the year 1943, I would feel ashamed to visit a country whose
population demonstrates of being unable to accept the lesson of a
horrible past.


I know that those people who invite me to talk in the Festival
Poetische Quelle and in the Conference 100 Jahre Gegenwart ErÃffnung
are disgusted like me by the resurfacing sentiments of arrogance
cruelty and inhumanity of the majority of their Nation, but I cannot
overcome the horror that German people are currently provoking in me.

The only think I can do is inviting democratic and decent German
citizens to fight for a non superficial moral reformation, and also to
overthrow as soon as possible the criminal government of Angela
Merkel, Wolfgang Shauble and Sigmar Gabriel.


Franco Berardi Bifo




Second Message, mid July, 2015
------------------------------

dear Michael,


thanks for your message.

I understand your argument and I know very well that in Germany like
everywhere people are not responsible of the acts and decisions of
their government.

Furthermore I know that you, your colleagues, and the audience that is
expected to attend the Festival are shocked and indignant for the
violence of the German government and of the financial system who are
pushing Greek people (and not only them) into an abyss of humiliation,
misery and possibly civil war.


I beg you to believe that I'm talking to you as a friend, and I deeply
regret not to be able to be with you in the days of the Poetische
Quelle Festival, and - as you put your hope in words, as I you say, I
beg you to accept the following words as my contribution to the
Poetische Quelle Festival.


I do not identify the German people with the past Nazis regime, far
from it.

I don't even believe in the existence of the Volk.

I believe in singularities, in classes fighting for their social
interests, and in temporary aggregations of people who share the same
expectations and desires.


However I also know that the overwhelming majority of the persons that
I would meet in the streets of a German city are supporting the
austerity measures that have destroyed the life of millions of people
and are destroying solidarity in Europe as well.


I've been in Berlin many times in the last years, and I had the
opportunity of addressing to many friends who, like you, are willing
to live in peace and to create a network of solidarity and cultural
exchange among equals.


But in this moment, when my Greek friends are humiliated and
impoverished, when Europe is transformed into a colonial protectorate
of the Deutsch Bank, I would consider hypocritical to chatter politely
in a public space of the colonist State.


I'm writing these lines from Greece, a country that in the past has
been destroyed by the German war terror, and now is destroyed again by
the German financial terror.


I think that my intellectual duty today is to transmit the sense of
widespread disgust that German financial terror is raising in the
heart of millions of persons.


I am not deserting your Festival: this message is speaking for me.

So far we have not heard loud and clear the protest of German
intellectuals against the infamy of their anti-European leaders.


I wish that my words may help decent people in your country to stop
that infamy, before it is too late.


Franco Berardi Bifo


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