Why Obama’s Trip To Europe Irritates Anyone Who Knows History–UPDATED
July 23, 2008 / 5:52 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierYou have to read this article by James Lewis of the American Thinker, he says, more artfully, what I was trying to convey here. A little lesson:
Just like one of those embarrassing American tourists, Obama insenitively reminds Europeans of past massacres and the war propaganda and hysteria that marked the Prussian rise to dominance. The German crowds probably won’t chant “Hoch! Hoch!” at Obama, as they used to when der Kaiser’s Prussian troops went marching by on the way to the killing fields of World War I. But what will they chant? Or is chanting forbidden, along with banners?
As a German politician remarked,
“The Siegessaeule in Berlin was moved from the Reichstag (German parliament) to its current position by Adolf Hitler,” Rainer Bruederle, deputy chairman of the opposition Liberal Party, FDP, said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag. He said he questioned, “if Barack Obama has been well advised to use it as the site of a speech outlining his vision of a world of cooperation.”
Yes, well. Good taste is not exactly the mark of Obama’s rallies so far. The Germans are lucky that Obama isn’t opening with the Decemberist rock band playing the Soviet National Anthem, as they are wont to do, the same way his famous “75,000 person rally” opened in Portland, when he beat Hillary in the Oregon Primary. The real Decemberists were secret Russian revolutionaries, whose movement ultimately led to the mass murder of some 100 million unfortunate people during the reign of Marxist regimes in Europe. That ended with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s, at the urging of Ronald Reagan. But Obamanistas wouldn’t know about that.
No, they wouldn’t, but Germans know. And there are reasons they love Obama. His ideas feel very familiar and the familiar is comfortable:
In fact, Eurosocialism still contains all the seeds of classic European imperialism: The endless sense of Europe’s superiority over the rest of the world, the preachiness of how the rest of the world must live, the constant efforts to impose global carbon taxes, poverty taxes, and UN rules on subject nations (like the US) for the greater glory of Germany-France-Spain-Britain — all the classic European imperial powers look at the US with green imperialism envy.
Imperialism never stopped in Europe. It just stopped being violent for a while, because America beat European imperial powers in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. And don’t think they don’t know it. Why do you think Europeans loved to hate America over the overthrow of Saddam? Saddam’s Baathist Party was modeled after Europe’s fascist parties, after all.
As Roger Cohen just wrote in the New York Times, itself the very home and soapbox of Eurosocialism in America,
“Barack Obama has already won the U.S. election by a landslide. In Europe, that is. Polls show the French putting the first African-American in the White House with 86 percent backing. Obamania is about as intense in Germany and Britain, the two other European countries the Senator will visit this week.”
Welcome back to Europe, Senator Obama. They will recognize you there, although they might be just a little bit nervous about those screaming mass rallies on their home grounds. That hasn’t really happened a lot since you-know-who.
It will be interesting to see how the Berliners feel about this display of pomp and pride and oratory of big ideas, not to mention the big crowds and adoring adulation. This is what gives conservatives pause. This is what liberals don’t see because they are blinded by emotion.
UPDATE:
Ed Morrissey notes this:
Team Obama has outdone themselves on symbolism with this choice. They’ve managed to make their hosts uncomfortable for a second time with their choice of rallying point, and perhaps more so this time. If one wanted to talk peace, what worse location could one choose than Adolf Hitler’s favorite monument to militaristic domination? One has to wonder how France, Denmark, and Austria will feel about Obama rallying German masses under the Siegessäule. Deja vu?
