Are Germans giving in to self-defeating emotion by considering asylum for former NSA analyst Edward Snowden? For Spain’s ABC Newspaper, columnist Hermann Tertsch castigates Germans for being whipped up ‘by media which is as populist as it is irresponsible’ – with a ‘campaign of hysteria and compassionate demagogy’ that puts the entire continent at risk.
For Spain’s ABC, Hermann Tertsch begins the staunchest defense of NSA surveillance we’ve seen yet this way:
A traitorous American spy and a hefty dose of German idealism has been injected into the veins of a society stirred up by media which is as populist as it is irresponsible. With these ingredients, a campaign of hysteria and compassionate demagogy in Europe’s strongest and most developed country has been organized, which makes politicians, media and organizations forget their responsibilities and contractual duties, their political pacts and even their interests. This is mobilizing an anti-Americanism of a kind worse than anything we encountered in the eighties of the last century during the campaigns against the NATO rearmament. The anti-American tones being heard are right out of the past, but they do not proceed from the classic anti-Yankee left. They are marked by a resentment, a vigilante zeal, and a moral superiority that are an odd echo of a distant and worse past.
What’s happening in Germany today is the best proof that the United States is doing the right thing by spying on everything that moves. Because it demonstrates that America’s allies are not to be trusted. It is also alarming that this show is being put on by Germany, governed by Christian Democratic Angela Merkel. One is even denied the comfort of a neutral outburst of a French Socialist president. After a staunch six decade-long alliance between Germany and the United States, the German government must publicly denounce the notion that it might offer asylum to a person denounced by Washington for high treason. Merkel’s government must do so, because of a massive campaign asking to protect and house this fugitive, and accord him the highest honors as a champion of truth and decency – he now being enemy number one of Germany’s main ally!
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