The moral blindness of Gunter Grass

[shira]

Last edited Sat Apr 7, 2012, 11:07 AM - Edit history (1)

And upon reading those first translated quotes from Grass' polemic, "What Must Be Said," this column begins writing itself. Because even before the analytical mind starts to respond to the baseless allegation that Israel is threatening to annihilate the entire Iranian people, the screen is turning red and the tips of my fingers are demanding the satisfaction of smashing into the keyboard over and over again to say just what I think about the poet. Because for once there is no need for logical reasoned debate and balancing right against left. Because on any other day there is time to calmly address the question of whether Israel needs a nuclear capability and whether it should continue to refuse signing the Non-Proliferation-Treaty. But not on the day that Grass erupted in verse. Because there is something so obviously wrong about him saying this, something so morally blind that all arguments are superfluous.

Logic and reason are useless when a highly intelligent man, a Nobel laureate no less, does not understand that his membership in an organization that planned and carried out the wholesale genocide of millions of Jews disqualifies him from criticizing the descendants of those Jews for developing a weapon of last resort that is the insurance policy against someone finishing the job his organization began. What could be more self-evident?

How could he have imagined that there would not be a price to pay, unless his bloated self-importance hid the reality from him? Having served in the organization that tried, with a fair amount of success, to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth he should keep his views to himself when it comes to the Jews' doomsday weapon. And if the 84-year-old writer has become so lost in self-adulation that he can't realize something that simple, the editors of the respectable newspaper should have found the way to gently point it out to him. He is not just another boy born on the Baltic coast in the 1920s. He did something along the way that tainted him. Forever.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/jerusalem-babylon/the-moral-blindness-of-gunter-grass-1.422922

[mactime]

1. Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)

Is a book that I would consider a must read.
I also read this poem with shock, maybe his membership in the Waffen-SS was not as forced as he makes it out to be.

[bemildred]

2. Aldous Huxley:

"Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty." -- Brave New World.