GEFÄNGNIS AUFRUF (German Edition)

The Spy who Loved and Nursed Me

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An important area where law and historical memory intersect is the use of memory laws to express collective disapproval of crimes against humanity. These laws, although based on a compelling need to use the symbolic dimension of the law in order to condemn the lowest points of history, can have dangerous unintended consequences for freedom of speech.

This category includes legislation which commemorates a genocide, whether or not such a commemoration is accompanied by the denial of this genocide being criminalised.

In a number of EU Member States, similar legislation precedes this decision. Legislation of this kind expresses our collective malaise towards atrocities committed by mankind. Nevertheless, it inevitably leads to imposing an official version of the truth that is dictated by our collective consciousness either at the level of the nation state, or at the level of the emerging European collective consciousness. Thus, it can impoverish our public debate by limiting critical contributions by historians and intellectuals more broadly that are imperative for our collective self-understanding within national communities, the community of the EU and the community of humanity as a whole.

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I have already written elsewhere about how similar legislation can be used to consolidate memory in favour of one version of historical truth that fits a dominant narrative of national identity. The book, which recounts events that took place during the German occupation of the Greek island of Crete in the Second World War, stirred controversy in Crete for offering a new interpretation of events concerning the local resistance movement against the German occupation and for discussing little-known facts. The conception of national identity dominant in Greece has been associated with acts of heroism by the Cretans who see themselves as having initiated the resistance movement against Nazism in Greece.

Fortunately, the first instance criminal court in Crete held the law to be unconstitutional for violating the clauses that protect freedom of expression and academic freedom. The Court found that the law could be held constitutional only to the extent that it concerns speech that is threatening, defamatory or can provoke hatred. Durkheim discusses the emergence of collective consciousness of some type as constitutive of bonds of allegiance to a community.

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As such, it is an element that holds a society together. Durkheim can be read as offering a warning against the excesses of irrational elements within collective consciousness. Societies are running the risk of losing control of the irrational elements over the rational elements.

The use of memory politics to reaffirm national identity is an exemplary case of irrational elements winning over the rational ones, with potentially detrimental consequences for academic freedom, as the Richter case shows. National identity is an element of the imaginary institution of our societies. It is based on a constructive representation of facts and memories; formed and reformed throughout time.

Skandal-Investor Shkreli muss sieben Jahre in Haft

It implies a choice among many possible narratives. There is always some arbitrariness in the choice of elements that constitute a national identity, as it involves choosing and giving value to facts and events forming the preferred narrative that meets the needs of constructing a national identity. Using the law to solidify a version of national identity can lead to serious violations of human rights.

There is something highly problematic in using memory to form an official version of the truth that can be enforced through the law. Memory is a pre-theoretical recollection of historical events based upon and sustained by the irrational elements within our collective consciousness. As such, memory can be manipulated to serve the goals of a particular political agenda.

Faschismus im 21. Jahrhundert

More recent cases stirring controversy in Greece abound, where ideas and visions of national identity and the construction of memories that go together are used to sway public opinion. These flows may seem minuscule and, in a way, they are: The difference however is that the new migratory flows lead to greater multicultural exchanges involving people of different cultural origins whereas in the past the migratory flows were primarily internal to the North Atlantic and that these migratory flows take place in a context of demographic stagnation: This means that an annual contribution of 0.

This is obviously not a problem per se, but recent experience demonstrates that this may unfortunately generate successful bids for the political exploitation of issues of identity, particularly if adequate policies have not been set up to promote the creation of jobs, housing and the requisite infrastructures. The number of migrants entering the European Union net of outflows has been halved, falling from almost 1. In the United States, where the recovery from the recession in was easier than in Europe, the flow remained stable 1 million per annum between and , and 0.

There is a third fact that is worth bearing in mind alongside the first two. In other words, each time the countries in the Euro zone produce units of goods and services, they only consume and invest 95 in their own country.

The gap may seem narrow but, repeated year by year, it is in reality considerable. Never in economic history, or at least never since the existence of trade statistics that is, since the beginning of the 19 th century have we found evidence of such a huge trade surplus for an economy of this size. This highly abnormal situation, or in any case totally unprecedented, is driven to a large extent by Germany, but Germany is not alone: For those advocates of the market as being all-knowing and ever efficient, this situation is the rational consequence of aging; European countries anticipate the future scarcity of labour and production to come — possibly even their total disappearance — and are simply saving for their old age.

The truth is that we must above all see there the consequence of exacerbated competition with no political guidance and excessive wage stagnation which has led to compressing growth and boosting trade surpluses.

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