[lit-ideas] Stasi on our Minds

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20210
The above is a review Timothy Garton Ash review, primarily of a film by Florian 
Henckel von Donnersmarck. Ash has issues with East Germany. He visited there in 
the late 70s, wrote a book critical of what he saw there and as a result was 
declared persona non grata. After the fall of the wall he went back and read 
the files (325 pages) the Stasi had on him. The Donnersmarck film (The Lives of 
Others) uses a device something like Ash experienced. The Stasi captain is 
ordered to spy on a playwright and ends up being changed by what he hears, 
especially the music. Donnersmarck said he was influenced "by a passage in 
which Maxim Gorky records Lenin saying that he can’t listen to Beethoven’s 
Appasionata because it makes him want to say sweet, silly things and pat the 
heads of little people, whereas in fact those little heads must be beaten, 
beaten mercilessly, to make the revolution." 
I enjoyed the review and appreciate Ash generally, but in his last paragraph he 
writes, "The Germany in which this film was produced, in the early years of the 
twenty-first century, is one of the most free and civilized countries on earth. 
In this Germany, human rights and civil liberties are today more jealously and 
effectively protected than (it pains me to say) in traditional homelands of 
liberty such as Britain and the United States."
Ash doesn’t elaborate on what he means. Is he referring to the American and 
British restrictions of the "human rights and civil liberties" of avowed 
enemies of these nations, i.e., terrorists? I can’t think what else he could 
mean. Perhaps someone who is as much a Deutschenfreund as Ash could explain 
that.
But if Ash means what I assume him to mean; then he is weighing (or has already 
weighed) in on the side of Olivier Roy, Gilles Kepel, Francis Fukuyama, et al, 
who assume that the Islamist Threat is overrated. Perhaps it is impossible not 
to take one side of the other in this regard. I have tried to sit on the fence, 
but that precarious perch seems unbelievable to most who hear it. I have read 
the Roy etc. arguments and believe them to be plausible, but inasmuch as the 
Islamist enemy has vowed our destruction I don’t believe this matter can remain 
academic. The Islamists have declared war on us and are engaged in attacks of 
one kind and another; so it is prudent to protect ourselves against their 
efforts – including (with apologies to Ash) protection against 
Fifth-Columnist-types in our nations. 
When the spy slips in to do his evil deed, it is best to discover and stop him 
– not protect his human rights and civil liberties – it seems to me.
Lawrence Helm

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