RE: Die Schere #15: Notes

[Roberto Calvo Macias <rcalvom@ctv.es>]

-----Mensaje original-----
De:	Rebing 
Enviado el:	martes 9 de junio de 1998 12:29
Para:	ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk
Asunto:	Re:  Die Schere #15: Notes

John, 
thank you for your apt reply to that note on my notes. Since I am the one who 
triggered that ejaculation of a sexist lady librarian I would like to add some 
words which the incident triggered in my mind. I take the liberty to confuse the 
voices of the Oberstudienrat (which I was until I retired four months ago) and of 
the little boy in me who loves to giggle at quirky grown-ups who don't behave. My 
first reaction was bewilderment: "She can't mean EJ, means me!", but then I felt 
sadly misunderstood: I don't wear glasses and my age is 62, and as to HUSTLER 
magazine only in the meantimeI managed to wipe out my total ignorance with the 
help of the Internet (www.hustler.com).
I then recalled that gentleman who, immediately after 17 February, deemed fit to 
vomit his glee over EJ's death on this List. It is the seamy side of the 
almost boundless liberty of the Internet we face here. Every society has its 
lunatic fringe, and the Global Village has the widest. On the spur of the moment 
and with a few keystrokes any crackpot with a PC can force us to share the 
garbage in his or her head, and there is no danger any more that during the 
efforts to find a pen, stationery, a stamp and a snail mail box reason might 
return. Moreover, we have already the telling case of Mr Larry Froistad of 
Bowman, N.D., who lied to the police but confessed the murder he had commited to 
the members of his mailing list (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 17 May, 98). 
Ergo, first lesson to be learned from that: We have to brace ourselves against 
further incidents of this kind. But what can we actually do? Not much more than 
what you have already done: appeal to reason, state clearly that the majority of 
the List and its founder do not want such stuff. If you go further (as I am doing 
now) you risk attracting and involving people who have nothing else to contribute 
than their dire need to get the attention of someone. From case to case we will 
have to decide whether we react with reason, with humour, or with silence. 
It is the EJ List in particular that might learn another lesson here. With our 
postings and discussions we expose the figure of EJ and all he stands for to the 
Internet public. It is not only hormonal malfunctions but also current 
ideological disorders (in February we encountered, I guess, the leftist, now we 
seem to have the feminist variety among us) that makes people flock to EJ to 
grind their axes. We ought to be more aware of the fact that there is a 
many-faceted dislike of EJ around, particularly in Germany whose greatest 
historical disaster still makes many minds casting around for causes, culprits, 
responsibilities, scapegoats and skeletons in the closet. It would be one-sided 
to take that dislike merely as material on which to base an analysis of the 
intellectual diseases of our time. The other side is the brute fact that EJ, in 
the twenties and early thirties, helped to spread an intellectual climate which 
made the Nazi ideology and practices more acceptable to the minds of many 
intellectuals. Antisemitism, for instance., was surely rife in Germany at that 
time, but when EJ published ÜBER NATIONALISMUS UND JUDENFRAGE (Süddeutsche 
Monatshefte, September 1930) he added, as I see it, respectability to that 
attitude. Even if its content was not very different from the mainstream thinking 
of that time our post-Auschwitz sensibility makes that text painful reading 
today. Or DER ARBEITER (1932), a strident diagnosis of the times and prophecy of 
the tough times to come: stuff people were used to read in the Spengler era, but 
to our sharpened ears there is a totalitarian and --at least to me -- even 
fascist tone in its way of arguing, in its supercilious intolerance and its 
arrogant claim to explain the world, world history and the world of the future in 
one fell swoop. 
For these reasons I agree with you that EJ's writings and role in the twenties 
and thirties deserve a lot more attention. So I feel some pangs of conscience 
when I see myself absorbed by the job of understanding the difficulties and 
obscurities of a Spätwerk like DIE SCHERE. I admit that my main motive to embark 
on the enterprise to write notes to DIE SCHERE was Selbstverständigung, to come 
to terms with this book, which, at first reading, had both fascinated and puzzled 
me to an extraordinary degree. So now, after that ray of light coming from, of 
all places, Bavaria, I feel like launching a Parallelaktion synchronous to the 
SCHERE project, a close reading and ideological discussion of DER ARBEITER. 
Anyone on the List interested?
[Roberto Calvo Macias]  I am.
The first EJ book that I read was Der Arbeiter. And I had to recognise that I feel the same thoughts: a totalitarian smell. Only when I came to read his others books I understand the long view of this book. Looking at the distances- in time...- proposed by EJ in Eumeswill, Heliopolis,etc. I changed my way of view and also did the scenario where I applied the situations of Der Arbeiter. The appearance of Internet, Ultimate tecnology, Global Markets,etc. makes me to understand Der Arbeiter in another way. The question is: Did EJ write it with this intention- like Heliopolis, Eumeswill,etc-: a future view to advice? Or did he support the totalitarian system? If the latter is correct, should Marx be condemned by the millions of russian deaths? Could someone be condemned by describe a system, or propose an idea- even an utopic one? Where is Die Linie that separate the intelectuals resposabilities? If a dictator put on reality 1984 ideas, would GO be condemned to put that ideas on paper? Were Marx intentions good? were EJ intentions good? When future historians will acusse us to let die million people in Africa,South America- and all over the world- with our capitalism, what will we answer? That we didn´t know? That markets,  economy theories, capitalism were made with best intentions? What we can do: judge facts, actions, or ideas? Is comunism a good idea- in theory, problably yes? what about capitalism, in theory probably yes? what would we think about Hitler if we would stand as a circus agitator? Just that, a clown. But the problem is he ordered the masacres. To judge a person we should must look at his actions, res non verba. What did EJ do? But the question remains: what are idea´s force? Here, as Aldabarr said, we are all to blame.

Best wishes
roberto   
Günter Rebing


John King schrieb:
> On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, Morkel, Nele wrote:
>
> > Wahrscheinlich so ein bebrillter Pickelknabe, der heimlich unter der 
> > Bettdecke den HUSTLER liest.
>
> ha, ha, ha. Ich bin von der Witzigkeit dieses Beitrags buchstäblich 
> überwältigt. Oder ich wäre, wenn ich etwa 13 Jahre alt wäre. 
>
> (Jetzt kommt mein Auftritt als Oberlehrer).
>
> Solche pubertären Bemerkungen sind hier unerwünscht. Kritische Stimmen 
> zu Jünger im Gegenteil würden die Liste bereichern. Ich habe keine Lust 
> einen Flamewar dadurch zu verhindern, daß ich Majordomo mitteile, die 
> Liste soll ab sofort private sein - ich müßte nämlich alles per Hand 
> erledigen.  
>
> (Ende meines Auftrittes als Oberlehrer).
>
> Halten wir also etwas Niveau!
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
>
> John King
>



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