Hans-Georg Moeller : "Le syndrome de supériorité morale de l'Europe est une impasse dangereuse."

[00:00:02]Hello everyone. Welcome to uh our show with Phelix uh the black elephant and the modern world. Today we have a philosopher with us and go Müller. We're going to talk about uh social system, the way we interact with each other and politics. Of course, uh it's in English, but if you want to hear in French, you can switch the button and you will hear in the language of your choice. Uh, and I mean, of course, most of you speak French. So, uh, but we'll do the interview in English. Uh, Phelix, can you uh introduce uh our guest uh Hans Gorg Müller to to our audience?

[00:00:40]>> With pleasure. Thanks, Alexi. Great to be here as always. Uh, Hans Gale, I discovered his work. He's a philosopher at University of Macau. He's German but based in China. Uh, has been for a while. He's a philosopher, a professor in uh comparative philosophy and in Chinese philosophy. And he has been um doing very very good educational videos.

[00:01:10]In France, we have the term vulgariz uh which in English sounds awful, but it's actually a really good uh term to uh sort of dissect uh some issues, ideas, concepts that might sound really complicated, but that actually uh he's very good at this and thanks to him as a German as or not a German myself, but as an Austrian citizen and the son of a Herman. Um, I uh was really interested in that's how I bumped into his work uh in what he had to say about the German psyche uh essentially and and what's been going on. uh because as the son of a German I have to say that there is only one country uh whose position on what's going in what's going on in the land of Palestine that is more appalling than that of Israel and that is Germany.

[00:02:12]It's to me completely not just appalling it, not just it it there's something it defies uh you know my understanding of the world to see a country that you know carried out one of the most hideous crimes um of the 20th century and which now finds itself sort of whitewashing uh the more I don't want to rank crimes, but one of the most uh horrific crimes and certainly the most livereamed crimes in the history of the 21st century. It it's it's just so anyway, maybe we can start with that. The name of this strange condition that is affecting German people and German culture is German guilt pride or it's it's guilt pride.

[00:03:07]And maybe Hanskeog welcome. Uh let us uh let's start with that. What what is this very strange uh disease affecting my the compatriots of my father?

[00:03:24]>> First of all, thank you very much Felix and Alexi for giving me this opportunity uh to talk to you. And also again I'd like to apologize to the viewers that I unfortunately do not speak French. Um yes you're asking me about this notion of guild pride. Uh I want to emphasize right away that um the emphasis for me is on pride. Uh this is uh to uh really uh this is an important aspect. Now um the this notion for me has a historical background which I think I would like to explain. It was important to to explain.

[00:04:04]I grew up in Germany in the n I was a teenager in the 1970s and 80s and then um I experienced the reunification when I was in my 20s uh and then eventually left Germany uh at the turn of the millennium. So I I lived outside of Germany for the past quarter of a century. Um and then have been seeing uh Germany from the outside and during my lifetime I noticed like um on the one hand a continuity but on the other hand also very significant changes in let's say a German mentality or I as I would like to call it actually German civil religion.

[00:04:50]And for me, guilt pride expresses something that is the contemporary German civil religion. Now um for me historically this German civil religion which is centered on this guilt pride um was born uh out of the reunification of Germany and uh I like to explain that a little bit. So I grew up in West Germany and of course we were already very strongly educated uh about the Nazi times right before 1968 maybe that was a topic that was uh often just kind of you know ignored and people wanted not really to talk about it but after 68 uh you know the whole movement which was also very strong in France and had the march through the education system so all the kind young leftist people that had rebelled against the remaining um Nazis in in in the German establishment, right? And so there was a in the 1970s there was a very strong uh emphasis on somehow um how to say um recognizing the crime of the Holocaust and the crime of of fascism of of Naz so of of the Nazis.

[00:06:12]now but um at the same time kind of the official position there are three German words that that recognize the spirit of that time maybe the most important and most most the most important and most neutral is vidmahu making good again uh in literal translation so some form of reconciliation and again but it's important to uh to to understand the connotations of this word So vid mahung vida means again good is good and mahan is make. So the idea was to uh you know correct something that was bad. Uh but this of course implies um also um that you um that you get a fresh start right you recognize the mistakes of the past and you confess them and you realize that this was something bad. you don't want to do that ever again, right? And so you want to do something different. And that is like um um a second word uh that that was associated with this but was some sometimes viewed negatively but not necessarily. That was the idea of a schlushkish um of of a final line that has to be drawn uh under this horrible period. And again the the uh the shush also signals the idea that you get a fresh start right you draw the final line uh and then and then you start uh a new and the third word uh which was the most let's say official perhaps was gangan heights and this means like beveligon also means to to overcome to um um cope with uh uh and then go get beyond the fagangan height which is the past. So all these three words signal this idea uh yes we recognized the historical guilt uh but we want to at the same time to do our best to reach uh reconciliation and then move on. That was the official uh idea.

[00:08:31]Now uh in East Germany of course which was communist as uh the viewers will know until 1989 the approach was very different uh because in East Germany Germany was a communist country and was that is true the leaders were basically all uh in one way or another had been active in the anti-fascist um resistance and were many of them were in jail or in exile and so forth. And of course the communist party uh at the Nazi times they were strongly persecuted and many of the communists were killed or put in concentration camps and so forth. So the attitude of course in East Germany was we are an anti-fascist country. We we are not responsible. We were the ones who were fighting against uh and we were the ones who liberated helped liberating Germany uh from from that. So that was a very different kind of again state ideology in relation to the past. Now then uh in uh after the breakdown of uh the Soviet Union and the the whole eastern wars are block you know then there was reunification and the reunification of course was asymmetrical. So it was not like the two parts of Germany coming together and meeting somewhere in the middle, but it was basically very much economically an appropriation of of the east by the west. And that that that covered all parts of of society, economy and politics. And it also of course then the new civil religion was much more strongly informed by the West German as I said vidmahong reconciliation ideology. But it's still and I I'd like to insist on this even though there was a strong continuation there's also a very decisive shift that took place then and um the shift was to what I call a guilt pride um and two components of this now what and this is now the officially both chancellors recent chancellors Angela M and and Olaf Scholes expressed a very publicly very um explicitly this idea which was actually which comes out there's another long German word for it uh aren culture the culture of remembrance uh and so this culture of remembrance was then officially let's say made the German reunified state religion civil religion uh manifested most visibly with a holocaust memorial in Berlin >> uh which is at the center of the of the capital, the new capital of the reunified Germany and was newly built after reunification is like huge huge extent at the center of the city and and and manifests very visibly uh this culture of remembrance which that was um what I was going to say both chancellors Merkel and um Schultz expressed as the Germans resour the one of the few French words I know or expressions. So literally the reason of state uh so the the the the the principle the base most foundational principle of the German nation uh and this means is specifically related to Israel not to all the other the Jews the state of the Jewish state of Israel not to any of the other victims not to the communists the Russians the homosexuals the other minorities that were been killed right like whatever Cintien Roma and so forth uh it was specifically uh like focused on on on the state of Israel as a Jewish state or the Jewish state and then the important point is the the phrase is iman uh that is the German phrase which means everlasting historical responsibility everlasting so that's different from before when all these three words that I mentioned signal Okay, we confess the crimes but you know and we want to do some something like this never ever again but we we get a fresh start. Um and that has been abolished. Instead, there's this very German universal ethical everlasting responsibility, complete fundamentalism that is um of infinite universal principle um uh quality, right?

[00:13:25]And uh for this guilt, so this is u uh the guilt part, right? the guilt that is now no longer just something historical that you overcome but something that is everlasting and uh that is categorical. This is all very Emanuel Kunt based in Emanuel Kunt's philosophy of the categorical imperative and uh just as somewhat like with Emanuel Kunt this kind of um assuming this everlasting responsibility is the premise for a new national pride and so this pride is very important to understand and the logic is uh somewhat paradoxical but simple because Germany as has now as is deta uh this categorical acceptance of the greatest guild ever. Somehow no nation has ever done that before. And therefore in a sense the Germans are everlasting on a universal categorical basis have somehow reached the highest most supreme state of morality and therefore they have this kind of moral superiority which is also on principle uh everlasting. And that is now the that is the foundational as I said civil religion of the reunified Germany. So it's no longer communist ideology. It's of course not uh Christian uh religion. It's not some form of let's say positive patriotic pride. But instead it is this kind of feeling of moral superiority, a new national pride built on this um categorical um moral um uh exercise.

[00:15:25]That is guilt pride. That is the German guilt pride.

[00:15:28]>> Yeah.

[00:15:30]It's it's uh striking that you said at the beginning like I the the focus should be on pride rather than on guilt.

[00:15:39]Um and and I I the first time I spoke of uh this concept German guilt pride, I was immediately attacked by someone from the far left saying the Germans are not uh they don't feel guilt. Uh they are, you know, they're basically like they they haven't changed at all. And and I think there there might be a misunderstanding in a possible misunderstanding of what is meant by German guilt pride because actually it's not guilt. It's the performance of guilt or that's at least what it has become.

[00:16:13]And of course, because this guilt is performative, um it allows for this quite ridiculous and and undeserved uh sense of pride. uh which is which points to something else that you've been working on a lot which is the fact that we have uh become a civilization that is focused on uh performative identities.

[00:16:44]Um maybe you can sort of we can already jump into we'll come back to guilt pride of course but we can already uh jump into the the the what you call these identity technologies please the term because of course that sounds um a bit of a nebulous concept um and then we can sort of go back and forth between the two.

[00:17:11]>> Yeah. Uh a few years ago I wrote uh together with Paul Ambrosio a book that is called you and your profile identity after authenticity.

[00:17:22]Uh and in this book we argue that the so-called age of authenticity that term was coined by a Canadian philosopher famous guy named Charles Taylor. uh that this age of authenticity was very much formative for the at least the the so-called west and Paul is American me and as you said I'm my background is German and we all grew up in this age of authenticity but again during our lifetime that we somehow experience the paradoxes of authenticity somehow breaking through and this uh culture and semantics of authenticity being thoroughly challenged and being replaced by what we call um profilicity.

[00:18:06]Uh and um in German there's a nice word.

[00:18:08]I don't know if you have something like this in French. We say in German, Felix, you might know the word.

[00:18:16]>> Um do you have something like this in French?

[00:18:20]>> No, it's to it's basically to curate your image if I'm not mistaken.

[00:18:27]>> Yes, that's what we mean by profality.

[00:18:29]Exactly. But in German it's a common word and zishelen to profile yourself does not mean to profile yourself. It basically means to um um to make a career and to be successful in getting a positive and successful profile in society whatever you can um in this sense you can zishelion as an academic.

[00:18:53]Once you have become a successful academic and have a a good job and have you know have become an established professor then you were succeeded in >> profilia in in getting a good profile and reaching a high profile status rather than a low profile status.

[00:19:09]>> I suspect that's one more word that the Germans have invented that with the world the rest of the world needs.

[00:19:16]>> Yeah, this actually a good word. This is actually a good word. Uh anyway, so we call this proalicity instead of authenticity. So I make this brief right the point like um in order to you know to have like a solid identity the culture that I grew up you have to somehow dis be authentic be an authentic person and we define this as the pursuit of originality right um and um so you have to be somehow French existentialism has also been very much pursuing uh originality so it's by no means just a German thing the the French have also been very much into the age of authenticity and I guess the whole French culture has been very much um um has been very strong authenticity.

[00:20:03]I'm sorry uh Hansag I think it's worth uh explaining the move the genealogy even of authenticity because moving from um sincerity to authentic authenticity and profilicity makes it clearer what changes with because in a way >> you can already see prophylicity coming with authenticity.

[00:20:27]>> That is that is correct. Okay. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Well, I mean to a French audience maybe I can explain this best with Jean Paul Satra and Simon de Bvar, right? And this is all about somehow becoming authentic, you know, either discovering yourself true self or as in the case of of Satra and de Bvar somehow creating your true self, you know, and you create it out of yourself. And you have to do this by not being conformist.

[00:20:57]And con that's how sincerity comes in because the age of authenticity was born as a revolt against what we call the age of sincerity where you built your identity on sincerely committing to the roles you were born into or assigned.

[00:21:14]This is refers to a traditional society pre-French revolution when you had the different ranks in society and you had the very strong for instance gender roles which then became very important for devar right that and the so the idea before uh let's say the French revolution was that you you build a strong sense of self you become an honorable person by sincerely committing both behaviorally but also very importantly mentally psychologically ally to these roles. These can be roles in the family like gender roles, being a good mother. They can be rank roles like being a good priest or being a good aristocrat, being aristocratic, right?

[00:21:55]Living up to um and and also again living up both in an honest way with to uh let's say the the characteristics of your role, fulfilling your role in a very deep way, right? And that's what we call sincerity. And then this identity technology shifts in after the French revolution let's say uh strongly then in the 18th 19th century and then very strongly in the 20th century where this traditional form of identification uh is regarded as conformity as something bad. You have to be like original unique and you you protest for instance against uh the the traditional female roles against the traditional religions. we have a strong secularization right and traditional religion is seen as again like conformist and you have to it also has to do with the rise of protestantism but I don't want to go too far uh to that right so we can see to summarize this that authenticity was born out of the role out of the out of the revolt against the sincerity so that is the basic framework now again our main idea is that uh prophilicity is then born somehow out of the contradictions of authenticity because if everyone is trying to be original then or originality is no longer original. It is something that is also culturally uh enforced on you and then also somehow everyone becomes the same.

[00:23:34]One of the prime examples for this paradox is for me the hippies. Uh I I have a video as one on this on my channel, right? The hippies, they try to be so original, so authentic. They want to go back to nature. They reject all kind of social conformity. They grow their hair long. The women throw away their bras and so forth, right? And they they they but of course then they all become very uniform and it's also immediately a profile and it's it's it's it's marketed and looking back it looks kind of somewhat even ridiculous, right?

[00:24:08]And um we have a strong authenticity emphasis also in French writers not just um um Satra also like I often like to refer to Gideoa for instance who is who is whose book book or his book the society of the spectacle right is basically now criticizing already a profile oriented society and says oh this new society of the spectacle it's destroying authenticity and debor wants to destroy destroy the spectacle in order to save the possibility of being authentic. Uh so that's uh we we already see in that period Dbor was kind of during the hippie period, right? This was like the 1960s. Um we see uh this this kind of contradiction and we see that the protest shifts from protesting against the past sincerity because it's gone. Protesting against already the emerging prophylicity, the emerging prophylicity profile building comes again to to put this in simple uh terms.

[00:25:14]It's like branding, self-branding, right? We first branded commercial goods, cars, whatever, right? A citron or pu, right? And then you have to market them and uh so in a similar way then people have to brand themselves.

[00:25:29]have to make in in divorce terminology a spectacle out them out of themselves.

[00:25:34]And of course with modern media and so forth, this this has become something that is not just the case for brands or not just the case for celebrities.

[00:25:43]Celebrities were like the first form of of profile building people like stars and movie stars and whatever, right? And entertainers and so forth. very much the commercial industry, entertaining industry has kind of shaped this this profile based personality but then with the spread of social media basically everyone is becomes like a small celebrity and this is how you build your identity. Uh so these are the three identity technologies and I think that has a lot to do also with guilt proud.

[00:26:21]Uh can I talk about that as well? Mhm.

[00:26:24]>> Or yeah, >> I not you know talking too much. Anyway, so again I would like to give one uh example from my own life experience to explain the relationship between the emergence of guiltright and the shift from authenticity to proofalicity.

[00:26:48]Um this was shortly before I left Germany in the 1990s. the famous German writer Martin Valza whose books we read at in school is probably translated into French was like one of the most famous German writers at that time and again like mandatory literature at school high school uh who was a former leftist was a leftist and um who um was given the highest German cultural prize. I think you have surely something similar in France like very high very prestigious literature prizes and he was given that that that prize which makes you somehow a national icon right and that was like in the 1990s already u after reunification and uh so when he was given this prize he gave a speech that's what you do when you give this pri given this prize and he is basically very strongly personally. He's a writer, right? Not so much theoretically, but from a from the very personally and uh reflecting and and and talking about rejecting the newly emerging culture of remembrance.

[00:28:13]Uh and so he said um he said me that's the him, right? I cannot bear the constant display of this guilt. The display of this guilt. And he actually used the word chanda which means something like not exactly guilt but um our our blame, right? Our our this about this kind of the sin we committed and that this is constantly displayed that that and this has become so overwhelming. Again I I refer to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as like the prime example of the display of that. Uh so he was uh he was from deeply within he was rejecting that display and of course he was a writer of the left but he was that was immediately interpreted I mean and it some it was um a kind of um um a sin against the new civil religion. Right. the most it was like he was committing the foundational sin challenging this display. But of course he did not this from a rightist perspective. His point was not okay we should we should somehow deny this guilt or we don't have a guilt. That was not his point. He just found that display somehow despicable, tasteless, unbearable because it was related to a new pride that was coming out of it. Now again uh but he was not he was not um that was not how he was then because it was a big scandal. It was a big cultural political scandal. It it led to something that in Chinese is called a social death. they have this nice phrase social death in Chinese now um to to his social death because he was regarded now as a pariah as a sinner who was against the new German civil religion and as a rightist because of course that is like the the the extreme right in Germany they tend to somehow deny the guilt right but that was not at all what he did now again I think the explanation for Valza's attitude has a lot and the reaction to It has a lot to do with the shift from authenticity to profilic because Valza was um born in the 1920s and um at the end of the Second World War and like he was still a teenager like 15 or 16 years old he was half forced half natural you know drawn into the military and had become a soldier at the age of 16 or so. He might even have even been a member of the party. I think they he even was a member of the of the Nazi party at the age of 16 or 17 or whatsoever. And um that was for him of course an authentic experience of guilt.

[00:31:13]So he had this authentic guilt feelings.

[00:31:19]And I guess if you have these authentic guilt feelings that explains why this display is very uncomfortable for you.

[00:31:28]>> Um and why he this pride that is attached to this display is unbearable in a way.

[00:31:37]But you have to understand this display that Valza was um rejecting was done by those who as Chancellor Cole you might remember Helmouth Cole the architect of the reunification what he called despot the grace of late birth that means the grace of being born after Nazi types. And this was the generation that had experienced the the the generation that that practices and invented this guilt pride was a generation that had the grace of late birth, which means they didn't have guilt, actual authentic guilt, right?

[00:32:29]And they because they did not have authentic guilt, they could recreate this guilt and the embracing of this guilt as a profile at as something okay. This is now something we can't get rid of it. I know this myself, right? You go at at least at that time you went like as a German somewhere and then people ask you where you're from and then you say I'm from Germany and then they go uhhuh from Germany. Right? So you would experience that this is like not so good brand of saying you know I'm German. Uh but then they could embrace this guilt and say we take everlasting and we this uh you know responsibility and we put it right there. We can't get rid of it anyways as like this historical thing. But they don't we don't really feel it authentically rightfully so because we had the you know the the the grace of of late birth.

[00:33:27]uh and um then it just becomes a profile that you create. That's right. You create this profile like you brand yourself in that way that you commit this super moral act, the superior moral act of embracing this guilt that you don't authentically have forever. And so there is a very very tight relation for me with the shift from authenticity to profilicity and the birth of German remembrance culture and the birth of German guiltright out of the authentically or the authentic um attempt to achieve rest you know vah and to achieve this this restitution. So that's the pinned >> and to what extent this uh mentality and this vision of the world is uh actually embedded in the European project I mean the EU commission uh because clearly uh we see exactly the same things happening with the EU commission this is an excellent question uh and because it's u that's exactly what I think this has been after cars the most important important German export article right is a even a better branding success than the Mercedes >> and um that is uh that's exactly what happened the uh and there are two things come together because for of course the Germans along with the French uh were the ma main engine of European uh reunification and for Germany it was perfect because Germany needed to it needed to do this paradoxical thing on the one hand to um you know create a new identity that was basically antinational right and the paradoxical nationalist antinational identity and it wants to control Europe and so the EU is perfect right so you can uh you can um you can they have these two contradictory uh birds with one stone kill two birds with one stone. You can have a new form of paradoxically antinational national pride and you can claim cultural, political, economic superiority over Europe again which you know had otherwise otherwise has not been had been possible. And exactly the the Germans succeeded in basically projecting their guilt pride uh to all of uh uh to the to the EU. The EU is uh lacked an ideology and uh it took the the German uh the German moralistic supremacy ideology of the German guilt pride and and made it its own brand, its own profile.

[00:36:28]>> This and Abas as well uh with the the rule of law and the fact that never again. I mean uh I think that the philosophy of Abamas is is is the the main branding of the EU as well.

[00:36:41]>> Absolutely. Habamas is the German again you're you're spot on. You could be more spot on. Habamas is the is the state philosopher the not like in the middle ages you had Thomas Aquinus being the main theologist for the Catholic church and Habamas is the Thomas Aquinus for EU uh and German uh guilt pride and and and uh ideology. I mean you you have this situation now. I mean to for people to understand in France how insane this has like the results of this embrace have have become. Now in Germany, you have these videos coming out of Germany where police officers are telling people who are descendants of Holocaust victims or descendants of Holocaust survivors that if they say in front of them the sentence from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, they will get arrested. Yes. This is you see on Tik Tok >> they do get arrested.

[00:37:52]>> Yeah.

[00:37:53]>> Yes. It's absurd.

[00:37:54]>> Yeah. It's completely absurd because um the German >> uh res of course also applies to Jewish people. So Jewish people are forced to uh to to comply with it.

[00:38:11]So you have you have this uh situation uh whereby you know so basically the the Nazi Uber mench has been replaced by a moral uber mench.

[00:38:24]>> Yes.

[00:38:24]>> And the result the result of this of the policies of this moral ubench and this this spirit of of superiority.

[00:38:34]>> Yes. um like imaginary superiority, moral superiority that is completely the result of a performance of guilt where there is no actual sense of what guilt in entails. So it's it's like you know the the same way we were talking about this recently as as the way you feel sad when you come out of a sad movie theater like a a movie theater where you saw a sad movie that is not the same thing as having you know felt the actual sadness of losing someone or something else like that.

[00:39:09]>> Now maybe you can tell us about sort of this very strange move moment. So you referred to which was invoked by uh several chancellors as the way to explain among others unconditional support of Israel by Germany regardless of what >> not only unconditional but everlasting >> everlasting unconditional >> yes because it's I didn't talk too much about im >> it's universal yeah yeah >> yes it's a categorical imperative and Um and we actually uh it was just uh reaffirmed uh just the other day uh when Germany was not elected into the United Nations Security Council and um the German press and the German politics they were very much spinning the whole thing interestingly because they were blaming Russia and Putin. They said, "Yeah, we we you know, we stand for Ukraine." And it's again, they said like it's our moral superiority why we didn't get elected.

[00:40:15]We because uh and that's why you know Putin managed to uh somehow seduce whatever these countries who can't really think for themselves and and you know brainwashed them and that's why we didn't get elected because every reasonable person would have elected us right. Uh so it must have been some evil minations in the in the background. So that was the main story. But because it was so obvious, there was also still it was admitted. Yeah. Some nations also didn't vote for us because they didn't really like what we did with Gaza, right? As you said at the beginning, very rightly, Phillix. But then very publicly again the German foreign minister I just listened to this uh on the internet today explicitly said again yeah no I mean we if some countries didn't vote for us because our unconditional everlasting support of Israel of course we cannot um uh apologize for that we cannot be apologetic for that this is our again reason of state and um So be it. We will not give an inch uh regarding that. That's was then also the official pronouncement.

[00:41:37]>> Maybe you can >> in the face of the world and because again it affirms >> the as you said sorry for repeating that but it is very important. It's as it is uh our supreme moral our our moral you know we are better morally than the others and I intentionally also say supremacy which goes back to the point Alexi was making >> because it the the the thinking behind is we should rule over you the and we should rule over the EU and we cannot let uh we cannot accept a multipolar world the world has to be run according to the categorical principles that we know and we cannot uh accept the legitimacy of basically this election. I mean we can accept it as a procedural legitimacy but it has no moral legitimacy and uh we we as the Germans we our our way of thinking is should rule over the Europe and basically all over the world.

[00:42:43]It's a it's a very interesting case of uh blind spots that come from like a this theory of universalist principles which cannot somehow see that by definition if they are the only ones holding them they are not [ __ ] universal. it it it creates this just very bizarre way of thinking and of seeing the world. I think you you you uh one of the really striking examples of this is how Germany turned on the people that it performed the welcoming of in the 2010s. So, as uh people will recall, uh Angela Merkel at some point decided that she would make a big thing of being the European nation that would welcome the most significant amount of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria uh in the 2010s.

[00:43:53]And again, it was it was given as a sort of from a place of moral superiority. We are the least racist, most welcoming of migrant people in the world. And maybe you can uh tell the story of how this this sort of backfired in the most absurd way since then.

[00:44:18]>> Yes. Um well first of all um again I would like to see this uh German migration policy which again was somehow enforced upon Europe because of the German supremacy status um that this was um like Einong exactly as you said it was basically a branding a profiling exercise and this profiling exercise is always like has two sides one you you pro you you project it to the whole world. you know, you advertise yourself as this newly born uh um uh Germany that that is now it's you know has this moral supremacy but of course also for the Germans themselves right that the Germans themselves can feel good about themselves and so that is a very important in my view function of politics in the 21st century politics in the age of prophilicity that really the function of the politics icians is not really because that's not what the politicians got elected for in Germany to you know ensure that the people that they have good livelihood or so which they don't it's always decreasing but with the politicians provide like like it's again like branding they brand the nation in such a way that the people of the nation can identify with it again in the absence of religion in the absence of the traditional nationalist patriotic thing. So the the Trump in America is not that different from this, right? that um and and and so in that sense ML was a great politician of the prophilic 21st century that she is basically the CEO of Germany and of Europe who is creating this brand and that is the prime function of of the politics is the creation of the national brand so that Germans can feel good about themselves and that Germans feel when they travel because that's what they do all the time right you you travel anywhere in the world it's full of German tourists and that Germans then can jok in a little bit that then the Germans can actually feel proud about themselves right uh and um that is a major function of and in this sense this 2015 migration project uh was like somehow a godsend for America right that was an opportunity she could not uh not uh you know she couldn't let go it was had so much profile potential And of course then the media and everything in Germany they jumped on it like crazy right so that was um cultur 2.0 culture of remembrance 2.0 zero. It was also called culture and it's very much intentionally done in in as a sequence right as a sequence. But now the c it's this was called wcommen culture the culture of welcoming that is kind of the cherry on the cake of the um culture of remembrance and so now we have this common head with this common culture the the the culture the welcoming culture.

[00:47:30]So again I think that that shows that prophalicity has also plays a very important role in contemporary politics.

[00:47:40]Now, Felix, you were asking me about the absurdity that was not seen. And again, why did people not see it? Because they were so much enthralled and in love with their new profile, with a new brand.

[00:47:53]They that was like the Germans like they were completely enthusiastic about it.

[00:47:58]Majority, not all of them, right? But they had of course absurdly completely overlooked in this enthusiasm in this civil religious enthusiasm about their own spiritual uh perfection now more or less spiritual perfection. they had overlooked that the migrants that were coming to Germany uh were not really great fans of Israel that they would not really embrace the German res, right? Because most of them were actually Muslims and most of them uh were in one way or another um you know loyal to the Palestinians.

[00:48:39]uh and they felt very much on the you know on the Palestinian side and and allied to the Palestinian cause. So for them of course it's it's very uh uh absurd to uh you know pledge your allegiance forever to the Jewish nature of the state of Israel.

[00:48:59]uh and um that uh but the Germans had somehow again over overlooked that fact because they were so much enthusiastic about reaching this new height of moral superiority.

[00:49:16]>> It's mad. It's it's all about this uh the superiority still. I mean uh the old thing is about being the the main character syndrome as as the they call it. uh you you can't leave the the stage even if uh uh we know that uh the former empire of Europe are done uh the future is not in Europe we got demographic issue we got economic issues everything but yet uh we see those people can't assume the fact that uh uh history has moved on the world has moved on and we can't be at the center of the stage anymore >> yes and I I completely agree This reminds me of uh something very similar that I keep uh that comes to mind every time I I I I discuss or think about German guilt pride is the story uh the national um narrative of Sweden uh which um which is is is to some extent similar and I think goes to explain to a large extent why this German guilt pride syndrome has been embraced. raised not only by the Germans, it's it's it's become a European project. They've done, as you said, they it's been exported with a lot of success. Uh when I arrived in Germany uh 12 years ago or 10 years ago, sorry, when I arrived in Sweden, I I I moved there and I had all these cliches about Sweden, you know, uh about Spotify and Saab and Volvo and IKEA. Um and um it anyway and and for me it was sort of the most um sophisticated version the the inventors of social democracy, you know, sort of the the left that that was both fair but also realistic and serious and very American compatible.

[00:51:21]and and and I it took me a while to understand that there was I I kept bumping into Swedes who who were extremely superior in their in their behavior regarding other countries. I I always had these conversations where suddenly people looked at me and said, "Oh, but you're you're not Swedish. You can't really understand what we're talking about."

[00:51:47]And slowly but surely I realized that there was a completely underplayed aspect of Swedish history that I I wasn't aware of which was that until 1945 the Swedish narrative the the Swedish identity is we are the whitest in the most sort of SS you know supre white supremacist uh elements and then that somehow was was sort of brushed under the carpet immediately after 1945 and it gave way to we are the whitest i.e. We are the least racist. We are the the moral what it sort of ethnic whiteness was replaced similarly as in Germany by moral uh whiteness.

[00:52:37]Is this something that is I mean you spoke about cont is this sort of our uh are we sort of gonna just keep on in France we have the republic which was also sort of a kind of universalist vision of the world that ended you know that was full of really racist elements islamophobic elements is is that sort of the the condition that Europeans can expect for themselves for the 20th 21st century.

[00:53:10]>> Uh yes. Uh I mean I don't think it's accidental that Sweden is also a Protestant country. As I said earlier, this has its roots in Protestantism.

[00:53:22]Alexi uh mentioned very very fittingly pointed to Habamas. Habamas again goes back to Kant. He's basically 20th century Kantia. And this is all rooted in Protestantism. And Protestantism is again is is tightly related to um the emergence of authenticity, right? It's against the Catholic rolebased uh church hierarchies and so forth. You had the same in France, right? The uh the the French Revolution and so forth. It was also anti-atholic and there was also Protestant elements in it. Uh right. And um so um the Protestantism is is um is uh on the one hand emphasizing the the individuality somehow of faith but then on the other hand it is emphasizing and it was also very strong in so it it basically uh eliminates um the traditional um religious uh faith based uh devotion and replaces it with this kind of uh very strong reason based like in also the French revolution right whatever Robert spear it's about you know you have this great uh celebration now of reason uh and so it's all based supposed to be based on reason and um so the former of course Catholicism is also universalist, right? It is also, you know, there's one god for everyone. Uh but um the now reason is this universal reason. So it takes away the faith thing and it it strongly emphasizes the one important philosopher like Hegel and then especially Freyav wrote this book the essence of Christianity uh which is also very much written in this Protestant spirit. They were all Protestant. And the key is the essence of of Christianity is morality and is creativity and is authenticity.

[00:55:37]And we preserve the essence and it's reason, right? Reason is universal. And we um we get and we get rid of all the religious part and we just preserve the um the the rational and the moralistic part. uh and that is uh that is kind of this this this trajectory uh that then leads to complete secularism. Uh not long ago the uh philosopher um famous pop philosophers Lavo Xijek wrote this book uh Christian atheism that's very much in the line of this tradition that somehow the culmination of Christianity is its selfdreligization.

[00:56:21]It it it it takes away all the religious stuff, all the spiritual stuff and then it's what is filtered out is this moral universalism and at the same time this feeling of elevated uh supremacy. So I think this uh this Protestant trajectory which also has strong French elements to it um but also very strong German elements to it and also has very strong Scandinavian elements to it to go back to your point because of course Sweden also represents this let's say secularan paradise >> absolutely by the way Dearta was was famously died in uh the old city of Stockholm. So there there's >> Right. That is true. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He had to he couldn't cope with the temperature in the early morning. Yes.

[00:57:22]True. And what about the um uh now the um the fact that the Pax Americana, the US has taken over uh after World War II.

[00:57:33]uh uh what is the role of the United States in this uh pushing into the guilt uh and the pride thing and because Germany has been a uh especially western Germany has been a tool for the US domination of Europe. Uh so to what extent the the US played with this >> there's an element there again you find it in the kind of the United States is also very strongly Protestant but it's more like this old uh religion-based evangelical Protestantism. So it's different but anyways this kind of um sort of individualism and secularism which is also important for the United States um that's uh that comes from European Protestantism.

[00:58:20]Um but it's much more ambivalent uh in the United States. In many ways, the United States are, I would say, a much older society.

[00:58:29]Uh that they still have like they're basically they have this uh their constitution right from the 18th century that was even before the French Revolution and they are kind of stuck in that period. And so um they were not as completely secularized as the as as Europe. they they they still have their Protestantism is still much more old-fashioned Protestantism.

[00:58:59]uh and at the same time they have this very strong jinguism which is this word like an extreme nationalism right so um and you know then they became a superpower like in the 20th century so um America uh also of course they didn't really feel guilty about their genocides right uh that's it didn't really catch on uh to the extent wokeism wokeism is like somehow my my explanation of wokeism is that wokeism is this kind of German guilt pride connecting itself with the America American civil rights movement.

[00:59:42]So, and so my my interpretation unlike others like Jordan Peterson also who say wokeism is like a Marxist intervention coming from French uh postmodernism, I would say actually it's more like a German thing uh coming from the German guild pride and then somehow combining it with the American civil rights uh tradition.

[01:00:05]>> Well, but again there was a backlash.

[01:00:07]Sorry for just finishing one sentence.

[01:00:09]There was a backlash against wokeism and and Trump was elected in a backlash against wokeism which hasn't really taken place in Europe.

[01:00:18]>> No.

[01:00:18]>> Yeah, it has. I mean, wokeism has both the again sort of talking about blind spots.

[01:00:26]Uh first of all there's something very performative uh in wokeism and and that is really um many of my friends in the majority world outside Europe outside the US find that just extremely distasteful that people from within the empire uh within you know the the heart the matrix of white supremacy would be giving people of the entire planet lessons on racism, for instance, is is is very hard to swallow.

[01:01:03]>> But again, like vocism is is partly dead, especially in the United States.

[01:01:10]And it it but the gil pride is exactly as Alexi said like has now become like the the the number one civil religion of Europe, not of America, not of the United States, but of the EU.

[01:01:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, that's sort of after World War II. That's in a way the only thing that Europe had was some kind of again imaginary moral superiority that it was now going to build. I mean the whole you the whole EU project is uh you know built on this notion that that it is the most sophisticated political project in the world. I mean that's really >> but it kind of didn't really have a strong moralistic civil religious aspect to it. it was still basically just a political thing and now with uh you know and now it is needed and and the and the elites in Europe have internalized it.

[01:02:06]The academic elites they're all trained in this the media elites they're all trained in it and it has become like the the what the Catholicism was in the middle ages. uh and um it's the somehow the the the the secular state religion of the EU and in order to make a career be it in academia or in media or you know in in in uh politics of course um you um uh you have to be part of the of that you have to to subscribe to that religion. You have to buy into this. In my terminology, you have to be invested in this profile. That is key. You have to have personal investment in this profile. Just as in the middle ages, you had to be sincerely uh uh uh sincerely committed to your roles. Now, you have to in order to make a career in Europe, of course, I'm exaggerating, but basically that is the case. uh you have to be uh you have to be invested personally invested in this profile.

[01:03:17]>> It's true.

[01:03:17]>> Yeah, >> it's uh it reminds me of something that um I I think it's not of you, but it's a really interesting way of looking at propaganda and and what you just said about sort of being invested in Asia.

[01:03:33]You have to say the right things. You have to be careful of what you say oftent times in in many Asian societies about what you're thinking. You have to be careful about what you're thinking.

[01:03:43]But you can think whatever you want.

[01:03:45]>> Yes.

[01:03:46]>> In Europe, you really have to be very careful of what you think, >> which is sort of the ultimate level of Orwellian dystopia.

[01:03:57]>> It's againism.

[01:03:59]Uh uh right. And um uh yeah and it's that's also I forgot to mention this education is of course super important right uh and also the legal sphere. So that's also in order it's it's it's at the heart of the uh of German education and I guess also of European education.

[01:04:19]That's why they spend u like an extraordinary amount of I guess money and so forth in in uh as previously right the schools they were like religious schools and now you you have to train uh young people from early on uh to build this this personal investment in in this civil religion.

[01:04:42]Thank you so much, Hans. Thanks, Alexi.

[01:04:46]>> Yeah, thank you, Felix, for for the meeting and and uh it was very interesting. I mean, um because we we don't go often to too deep into the the philosophical roots uh of what's happening into the the political marketing and the surface. Uh but it goes far beyond uh uh just the NATO or the fact that one empire want to rule the world. Uh there is much more to this. It was very very interesting.

[01:05:14]>> Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on Hansel. Next time we should we have someone who's going to be coming on soon named another philosopher named Mohammed Amir Mizan who's a professor uh at Brown University now and he came up with the concept of secular rosine uh to describe what others uh have been calling the anthroposine and um I I think we could have a really interesting conversation about that based on this one. So, thanks again.

[01:05:46]>> I I I I know about this and I think it's very compatible with the stuff I was talking about.

[01:05:53]>> Fantastic. Well, we look forward to it.

[01:05:56]Thanks so much.

[01:05:58]>> Thank you very much. Thank you.

[01:05:59]>> Thank you.

[01:06:00]>> See you guys.