Merkel Before the End:
Democracy, Honecker-Style
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Sept. 3—Anyone who looks at the political situation in Europe and the U.S. as a whole, has to come to the shocking conclusion that the whole trans-Atlantic world has no political leadership, and is rather being led by people whose agenda is being dictated by the financial interests, down to the very last detail. Just savor this sentence from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, aired by Deutschlandfunk radio:
"Of course we live in a democracy and it is a parliamentary democracy, and therefore the right to set the budget is a core right of the Bundestag, so we shall find ways to shape parliamentary co-determination so that it nonetheless conforms to the markets."
It is astounding how Mrs. Merkel succeeds, in just one sentence, in transforming the Bundestag's core competency to set the budget, into the exact opposite—namely "conformity with the markets," which means submission to the dictatorship of the financial markets. It poses the question of whether she has chosen George Orwell's novel 1984 as her guideline for political correctness, or whether she simply has copied from Erich Honecker[1] the method by which one achieves voter conformity.
"Doublespeak" is a conflation of the two neologisms "doublethink" and "newspeak," which were defined in 1984 as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word 'doublethink' it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."
Orwell describes the fact that the "party" can not maintain its power without keeping its supporters in check through constant propaganda. But knowledge of this brutal deception, within the inner leadership of the party itself, could lead to the collapse of the state from within. Although 1984 is most famous for depicting the complete surveillance by the state over daily life, the actual significance of this surveillance lies in the fact that the whole population, including the ruling elite, can be controlled and manipulated through the daily perversion of thoughts and speech. The combination of doublethink and newspeak—i.e., doublespeak—has the goal of creating an association between terms and definitions which mean the total opposite, especially such fundamental terms as good and evil, right or wrong, truth or lies, justice or injustice. According to Chancellor Merkel, this even applies to the Bundestag's right to set the budget, and conformity to the market.
Panic Reigns
Among the top financial circles today, total panic rules. At the yearly gathering of central bankers and other top bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this Summer, a graveyard mood dominated, and everyone agreed: The global financial system is hopelessly bankrupt; a long line of big banks, deemed "too big to fail," are actually insolvent. Bank of America, for example, which just received an infusion of $5 billion from billionaire Warren Buffett, guaranteed by the U.S. government, according to the New York Times, really needs $200 billion. The new IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, sounded the alarm bell: The governments must recapitalize the banks directly; in other words, the taxpayers should, without the detour of rescue packages or eurobonds, directly bear the costs of the blown-out billions of the banks.
The situation in the United States and Europe has equally reached the end of the line. The combination of the catastrophic job figures in the U.S., and the suit by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) against an several big banks, among them Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and others, led to a renewed collapse of the markets on Sept. 2. The attorneys general of a number of states, including New York, Delaware, and California, have, along with the FHFA, broken the previously effective settlement, which said that none of the top bankers would end up in jail.
Under the pressure of the unparalleled social tension which is building up in America against the Obama Administration and Wall Street, these officials have now filed lawsuits against these bankers, due to their false declarations about the mortgages and structured packages they sold, instruments they had bought during the housing crisis. The costs which thus accrued for the largest mortgage dealers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, would then be passed on to the taxpayer, after a huge number of homeowners could no longer service their mortgages, and lost their homes as a result of the collapse of their value. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae alone lost over $30 billion. But this fraud is only the tip of the iceberg; the whole global financial system is just one big Madoff-style Ponzi scheme.
In the White House, additional panic reigns over the latest still-unpublished polls, which are so bad that the election strategists are concluding that it would be impossible to reverse them by the 2012 election campaign. The media are making fun of the fact that Obama needed two teleprompters for a three-minute speech on the occasion of the appointment of the new head of the Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger. The frustration of Obama supporters, whom he had promised a total break with the policy of the Bush Administration, who had seen him as a new Messiah, and have to realize that he is continuing all aspects of the Bush policy, and has even gone further in serving the interests of Wall Street, is perhaps the most important factor in American politics at present.
A Government Crisis
In Europe, the media, from France's Les Echoes to Germany's Bild-Zeitung, are speculating about the possible collapse of the Merkel government, perhaps even this month. The revolt of the coalition partners over the expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) or, previously, over the reform of the German army, the school reform, or the so-called Energy Change, which will drive Germany in short order into economic and social chaos—all policies adopted without public or parliamentary debate—has reached the point where Merkel could fail to get a majority in the vote on the EFSF.
In this event, the opposition parties could call a constructive vote of confidence, through which, for example, Social Democrat Peer Steinbrück could be named Merkel's successor, or new elections could be called. The financial oligarchy would be delighted, because the Social Democrats and the Greens have already declared that they've opted for what the bankers need—from the implementation of a European economic dictatorship, to Eurobonds, to the complete greening of industry, in the interest of the hedge funds.
The Merkel government is a catastrophe, which is not only ruining the Union parties[2] but all of Germany; yet a change to a Red-Green[3] coalition would be the point of no return. Voters should remember that it was the Red-Green government which, in 2004, tore down the last barriers regulating the financial sector, and thereby opened the floodgates to the financial "locusts." A Red-Green government, with agreement on European economic dictatorship and Eurobonds, would make the European Union 100% into a "transfer union,"[4] which would betray the German taxpayer and promote a hyperinflation such as we in Germany had in 1923—that is, it would mean the most brutal expropriation of the population by the devaluation of money.
A Solution to the Crisis
Humanity has never found itself in comparable danger before. Indeed, there is a way out, a solution to the crisis. This involves the introduction of a new global two-tier banking system, a Glass-Steagall system, and a New Deal for the world economy, in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, in the 1930s, led the U.S.A. out of the Great Depression with the political-economic methods of the American System of physical economy.
In America, the list of organizations that support this policy—which is today spearheaded by Lyndon LaRouche—is growing daily: a growing number of Congressional representatives, leading national trade unions, farm organizations, organizations of ethnic minorities, as well as regional bankers, mayors, city councils, etc. But whether this solution can be realized in time, and whether we in the European countries can do the same, is an open question.
It is no longer a question of whether people who have accumulated their supposed wealth through high-risk speculation under the still-extant system of globalization, can save "their money" in this crisis, like all the profiteers around today who are masquerading as goldbugs. In the period immediately ahead, it will get to the point of whether the physical welfare of the population can be defended, whether the right of mankind to shelter, sustenance, and health care can be defended.
It comes down to the question which the great German poet Friedrich Schiller posed in his Aesthetical Letters, after the failure of the French Revolution: Where should the solution come from, if governments are corrupt, and the masses are degenerate and debilitated?
The answer is simple. Only if there is a sufficiently large number of people who have the courage to commit themselves to the general welfare, and to campaign for the program which the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo) has proposed for a long time, for the reconstruction of the world economy through the construction of the World Land-Bridge, can we prevent civilization from crashing into the wall. And this demands the courage of one's convictions, which can only come from a sublime image of man.
It is one second before midnight. Join us!
This article was translated from German. The author is the chair of the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, a German political party.
[1] East Germany's communist leader until the collapse of that regime in October 1989.
[2] Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
[3] Social Democratic-Green Party.
[4] Transferring taxpayers' money to other EU member-nations, to bail out the banks that are holding those nations for ransom.
