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| Gunther Grass "Katz & Maus" (Cat and Mouse) Lithograph, 2002 |
In pOmo rhetoric words don't represent concepts, or anything definite rooted in reality. Rather it is the double entendre - what is insinuated by speaker - must be threshed out by 'close reading', or 'deconstruction'. This is the way we should read pOmo Gunther Grass' poisoned poem, "What Must Be Said", written in liberated prose like any good nihilist should.
With all the controversy involving Grass, who confessed in passing in 2006, 60 years after WWII, that he had been a member of the Nazi Waffen SS during the war (POW record), it wouldn't hurt at this point to 'mention the war'. The Nazis of course were typical pOmos: truth being the subjective group experience of the German tribes, coupled with an anti rational way to knowledge - mostly exalted feelings and sublimated passions unattainable by those not of Teutonic blood - together with a victim narrative that pitted them against the rest of the world.
A sample of Grass' pOmo rhetoric can be found in Henryk Broder's column on Welt Online, "Nicht ganz dicht, aber ein Dichter":
With all the controversy involving Grass, who confessed in passing in 2006, 60 years after WWII, that he had been a member of the Nazi Waffen SS during the war (POW record), it wouldn't hurt at this point to 'mention the war'. The Nazis of course were typical pOmos: truth being the subjective group experience of the German tribes, coupled with an anti rational way to knowledge - mostly exalted feelings and sublimated passions unattainable by those not of Teutonic blood - together with a victim narrative that pitted them against the rest of the world.
A sample of Grass' pOmo rhetoric can be found in Henryk Broder's column on Welt Online, "Nicht ganz dicht, aber ein Dichter":
"The madness and crimes weren't limited to the Holocaust and didn't stop with the war. Of 8 million Germans captured by the Russians, perhaps 2 million survived. The others were liquidated."Grass is not the usual Jew hating coward who masks his antisemitism in anti Zionism - after the fact he ups the hypocritical ante yet one notch by covering it with a blanket of "fair criticism of the Netanyahu government". Actually his equivocations and insincere insinuations are far worse than that! He is in fact preemptively refusing Israel its right to defend itself: good Jews are dead Jews, apparently. Here are the false premises that Grass is introducing in the 'poem' (English text):
You don't need to be a certified mathematician to follow Grass' calculation: 6 million German soldiers liquidated by the Russians. In reality it's about 3 million German soldiers in Russian POW camps of which about 1.1 million succumbed. But that reality is immaterial. Grass is after just one figure: six million, the lucky German number. Six million dead Jews against an even number of dead German POWs, the balance being zero.
The Holocaust denying Iranian leprechaun who - on behalf of the islamofascist leadership - openly seeks the end of the Jewish state, is morally condemned by Grass as a ... loudmouth *that's right* a loudmouth! The only free, prosperous country in the Middle East is put on par with the women-oppressing, gays-hanging, dissidents-torturing theocracy of Iran!
Then there's his claim that criticism of Jews is punished across the board as hatred and that critique of Israel is therefore brave and, yes, rare. [sarc] Grass isn't a coward, he's a hero! [/sarc] There are entire swathes of the UN and indeed the media - whose sole purpose is the monitoring and critique of Israel, if only for its mere existence.
Of the nine nations that have nuclear weapons, not the totalitarian hell hole North Korea, or terrorist hub Pakistan is singled out as evil. According to Grass, it is Israel that is endangering a fragile world peace if it defends itself. But actually no one, neither the US nor Israel, has ever proposed solving the Iran conundrum by any other than conventional means *daisy cutters and bunker busters being the tools of choice*
The pacifist notion that weapons are evil: yeah, it's spoons that make you fat! *Let's Kill The Evil Spoons From Outer Space!* Weapons are neutral tools. It's the people who wield them, for offensive or defensive purposes, that makes their use good or evil. The nukes on Japan that ended WWII have prevented many more human lives being destroyed by the imperial war machine since the last resort would have been territorial invasion. Unlike her Arab neighbors, Israel has never attacked any country other than in self defense. Grass' trick: he makes Israel and Iran two sides of an equally valid coin. So fair in his criticism, isn't he, the pOmo Grass!
Grass is pointing the finger at his home land, Germany for selling Israel a submarine. *Oh, boy! More Evil Weaponry* While in fact, upto a year ago Germany was reported to be Iran's main trading partner, despite the sanctions that are supposed to prevent war with Iran.
The pOmo pOem is topped up by a solution that is contemptable in it's false naïvité: if both countries were monitored by the infamous, morally confused UN, all would be well. Iran already has inspectors in; so Israel is once again at fault!
The entire Grass poem on Stern
Answer by Dutch author and blogger Leon de Winter: "Der Günter schenkt den Juden ein Gedicht"
Updates
Dishonest pomo Gunter Grass lashes out at Israel! #dictators #GDR # Myanmar | JTA - Jewish & Israel News ow.ly/adM56
E.J. Bron: "Günter Grass and the letter of the Grand Mufti Husseini to Hitler": 
Answer by Dutch author and blogger Leon de Winter: "Der Günter schenkt den Juden ein Gedicht"
Updates
Dishonest pomo Gunter Grass lashes out at Israel! #dictators #GDR # Myanmar | JTA - Jewish & Israel News ow.ly/adM56
(...) Günter Grass hardly dares mentioning the object of his tirade -the Jewish state of Israel- by name. For tactical reasons he published his "poem" on the Jewish Pesach, just like the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel did, notices Marcel Reich-Ranicki in an interview with FAZ (...)