With the release of the Horowitz report last week — as false as its final conclusion of no “political bias” of the FBI may be — there are more people now speaking clearly about the criminal intent of the coup plotters in launching impeachment efforts against President Trump. In her weekly webcast, Helga Zepp LaRouche reviewed comments to an LPAC audience of Bill Binney and Larry Johnson about how the report exposes that the FBI used a false dossier, written by a British spy, paid for by the Clinton campaign, and filled with hearsay and outright lies, to set-up Trump campaign officials Papadopoulos and Page to get a FISA Court warrant to launch a spy operation against the campaign.
As the exposure of corruption expands, making the likelihood that the whole impeachment process will backfire against its perpetrators, Nancy Pelosi destroyed any credibility she had as leader of the opposition, in comments she made about Bush going to war against Iraq, based on lies — which she knew about at the time — was NOT an impeachable offense, and about how the process of impeachment against Trump has been going on for two-and-a-half years, though she recently claimed she only just decided to proceed recently!
Helga also reviewed how the recent NATO conference confirmed that it is both “brain dead” and obsolete; how the disunity at COP25 is a good thing; and how EU officials von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde demonstrate, through their statements and actions, the absolute failure of the neo-liberal system. She urged viewers to “not sit on the fence of history”, but to join us, to assure the victory of the New Paradigm.
With their case for impeachment falling apart, the British-American coup plotters deploying against President Trump and the American electorate predictably turned to the New York Times to preview John Bolton’s “memoirs”, to try to pump some life into their efforts for a regime change in the U.S. In her weekly webcast, Helga Zepp LaRouche said this is a sign of desperation, as their case has been effectively refuted by Trump’s legal team, and a significant segment of the population is enraged at the unconstitutional assault on the institution of the Presidency, and the increasing difficulty they are having to cover the cost of basic necessities.
The biggest danger the imperial forces behind the coup face has been Trump’s commitment to establish better relations with Russia and China. Not surprisingly, Bolton, one of those virulently opposed to this shift in U.S. strategic policy, is now being embraced by the same Democrats who in the past denounced him as a dishonest war-hawk. This latest eruption on behalf of the war party occurs as the President has put forward his Middle East peace plan, which LaRouche described as a potential first step toward an expanded negotiation process—one which must include the Palestinians, as well as the Russians.
With social chaos world-wide, and the war danger still real, she called on viewers to become active in the battle to defeat the geopoliticians with a great power summit, which can assure security and economic cooperation. A major aspect of this activity must be to revive the role of classical culture as a means of uplifting people.
TRANSCRIPT
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Today is January 29th, 2020. And as most of you are well aware, we are in the midst of this crazy impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. There have been some significant developments in the last hours, the last couple of days, including the resurfacing of John Bolton, courtesy of the lying New York Times. Helga, what do you make of this situation, where it’s headed now?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think the emergence of Bolton, while naturally its designed to put the nail in the coffin for the impeachment of Trump, is also a sign of desperation. Because they could not prove the case, there is no criminal act which they could attribute to President Trump. But Bolton who obviously was guided to write this book — it’s supposed to come out and spill the beans about what Trump supposedly did in the phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine. Now, this is obviously an act of desperation on the side of the Democrats, because, if you remember, they used to attack Bolton as a liar, as a completely untrustworthy fellow, but now they are relying on him as the key witness.
Where this will go it’s too early to say. It’s Wednesday. Friday is the vote. If the Senate will allow more witnesses, in which case it would open up not only the potential to have Bolton testify, but the Trump team could bring into the Senate hearing all the other crucial people — Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, the so-called “whistleblower,” and many others. Adam Schiff, for example, they could bring out the entire British involvement in the coup attempt against Trump from the very beginning, the Christopher Steele dossier, the FISA Court, all of these things which were mentioned in the Horowitz report. So it could become a big mud fight. And if the Democrats succeed in getting Bolton as a witness, then maybe you have to have the whole truth out. That was the view of President Trump in the beginning. He said, let’s have a big discussion. Later he changed it and said it may be bad for the country to drag this out indefinitely. But if it comes down to that, then maybe the whole truth has to come out.
McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, said he doesn’t have the vote to block the witnesses. This is today, we have to see how this goes until Friday. But I think it is very clear that this is not functioning with the American people. We have picked up an increasing mood of the American population, that they really are enraged. And if you need one proof, yesterday, Trump appeared at a rally in south New Jersey, and there were 175,000 people registered to go to this rally. Naturally not so many could, but that shows you there is a tremendous ferment, and south New Jersey, that is where the so-called “deplorables” live, this is a poor working-class area and obviously this is where Trump is resonating very big in the population.
So, I think we are probably in the end stage of this coup attempt, despite the fact that the Democrats have stated their intention to keep dragging this on. Maxine Waters, for example, said they will continue this impeachment throughout the election campaign; but I think the Democrats are playing a very risky game, because the population is really sick and tired of this whole story.
I think it is becoming very clear this is a coup. There is another very interesting blog piece by Pat Lang, who says that in his former capacity as a person working for the CIA or the military in the dark field of covert operations, he recognizes that there was a continuous political campaign against Trump from day one, and if one operation doesn’t function, they pull up another one: This was Russiagate, then Ukrainegate, now the impeachment, and the Bolton thing being the latest such operation. So it is really a battle where the role of what some people mistakenly call the “deep state” — it really should be better called the Anglo-American British Empire intelligence apparatus — the role of these forces is becoming very, very open. And I think that that may change the character of politics not only in the United States, but internationally, for good.
SCHLANGER: You mentioned that the case was not proven by the Democratic managers. In fact, I think Trump’s attorneys did a very good job of countering it. One of the most significant was the testimony of Alan Dershowitz, who made the point this was not just against Trump; it’s against the Constitution, it’s against the American Presidential system. I think that was quite significant, don’t you?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, Dershowitz is not a Trump supporter, he is a Democrat, and he had been very critical of Trump in the past. But he argued very strongly on the question that what is at stake here is the American Constitution: That this is a blatant attempt by the Democrats to turn the U.S., as a republic based on the Constitution, into a British Parliamentary system, that this goes completely against the will of the framers of the Constitution. He takes apart these arguments by the Democrats very efficiently. For example, this ominous notion, which they all of a sudden treated as if this would be the final proof of Trump’s crime, that in the discussion with Ukraine that he pursued a quid pro quo. Now Dershowitz says, so what about it? Even if everything Bolton is saying would be true, this does not constitute a crime, because a quid pro quo is what every head of state uses in any negotiation with any other state, so it is nothing special; it is what normal negotiations among states are. And I think these kinds of arguments which demystify the ghosts which are being created artificially, like this ominous quid pro quo, that he takes it down and takes it apart as a constitutional lawyer, I think is very, very useful. Because there is a lot of confetti spread around and thrown around to have a voice arguing for constitutional matters is extremely useful.
SCHLANGER: I think one of the things that came out from Dershowitz and others is this argument that a policy disagreement is not the basis for impeachment. And Helga, from the beginning we have been emphasizing that you have to look beyond the so-called facts of the case, because the facts of the case don’t exist. But what does exist is this coup, and we see this again in terms of the re-emergence of Bolton who has been opposed to what President Trump was trying to do in working with Russia.
How do you explain this to the American people? I think this is something that has not been fully explained fully enough by the President’s team, but I think we’ve done the job. How would you explain it?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, Trump — who obviously is not a simple person, he has many sides to him; he does use a language which antagonizes a lot of people — and therefore it is actually very important to note the fact that, despite the fact of all these things which one can argue “is this the style I like, is it not the style I like” — the point is the biggest mortal danger to the existence of the British Empire is the demonstrated willingness by Trump to seek a better relationship with Russia and China. And that has to be understood, because that is the most important. He has made clear that, given the opportunity, he is absolutely easy with Putin; this was demonstrated especially in the Helsinki summit, despite all influences around him to the contrary. He does want to have a positive relationship with China. He still calls Xi Jinping his “good friend.” He praises the great culture of China. And from the standpoint of the British Empire this is the end of them, because once they lose the ability to manipulate the great powers in a geopolitical manner, one against the other, then they will absolutely vanish. And given the potential which we have helped to create in terms of having a summit of these major powers, they are really in a panic.
So, I think it is important for the people who support Trump, especially in the United States, people should really think through, the world is in a terrible condition. We are sitting on a powder keg of a potential blowout; there are many problems we can address as we continue to talk. And there is no way how to solve these problems, unless you have a new level of politics which overcomes geopolitics, and that requires that at least the three Presidents of the United States, Russia and China work together and work out solutions for the world’s problems. If that does not occur there are incredible dangers.
So, the people who are anti-Russian but pro-Trump, or people who are pro-Trump and anti-China, they should really rethink their prejudices. Because a lot of what people think they know or what their dear opinion is, is the result of psychological warfare coming from the mainstream media and other operations. And the fact that Trump wants to have a positive relation with Russia for the sake of world peace, positive relations with China, is the most important factor of the strategic situation and it really explains almost every other aspect of the strategic situation.
SCHLANGER: We see this very clearly in the reaction of Adam Schiff, with trying to use Bolton as the key witness. Schiff, in his presentation as a Democratic manager, constantly stressed, we’re at war with Russia. And he lied about this, he made the whole case again, the Mueller case on Russia;, and it showed that this is a pro-war faction in the Democratic Party that’s opposing Trump.
In this context you mentioned the British Empire, the geopolitics: We’ve now seen at least the beginnings of the so-called “deal of the century,” of a peace plan for the Middle East. From what you’ve seen so far, what’s your analysis of this?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I mean we knew this was in the makings, it shows the handwritings of Jared Kushner. It is a first step and I think if you look at the international reactions, which I will mention in a second, it shows it has at least the potential to start a negotiation process. If you look at the proposal itself, naturally it was proposed between Trump and Netanyahu, who faces criminal trial back at home, so he was probably very happy to have that occasion. And it gives Israel practically everything they would possibly ask for: It reaffirms Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel; it says the settlements are okay in the West Bank; the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory, belongs to Israel, so it has all of these things. It gives security guarantees to Israel fully.
The interesting thing is, that it does talk for the first time about the U.S. promoting a Palestinian state. Now the Palestinian Authority was not involved in the discussion, so they even rejected this plan before it was published, because they said all the decisions made before, point in the direction that it does not represent any Palestinian interest. President Abbas called for an emergency summit of the Arab League, which will take place on the Feb. 1. Naturally, the proposed Palestinian state, from a territorial standpoint, is extremely meager. It basically cuts out a lot of the interesting parts. To make it viable, will be very difficult. The proposed money over a certain period of time of $50 billion is not a hell of a lot.
So I think the reactions to it — I would like to mention a couple of them — first of all, Netanyahu will immediately leave Washington and go to Moscow to discuss with Putin. Various Russian spokesmen, Lavrov, Peskov, Kosachev, the head of the International Relations Committee of the Federation Council, they all said they would study it, we will look at it intensively; and negotiations have to be based on the involvement of the so-called “quartet” — the quartet meaning the United Nations, the EU, Russia, and the U.S. In any case it’s an international approach and even the EU foreign representative, Josep Borell, said it has to be based on respect for all the UN resolutions concerning Israel-Palestine, and the representative of the UN General Secretary said, it has to be in respect of all UN resolutions, including the one that Israel has to go back to its pre-1967 borders. So that naturally is not what’s here proposed, but that is the reaction from international forces.
I think it’s useful to start a negotiation process provided that the Palestinians agree to that, which they have not so far. But I want to say very clearly, that it is good to give security guarantees for Israel. That is absolutely crucial. But I think there is not going to be a peace in the region, in Southwest Asia, if you don’t give security interests to all relevant parties, and that includes emphatically Iran. If people go back in history and look at which peace treaties functioned and which didn’t, you have the Peace of Westphalia which explicitly formulated the principle that for the sake of peace, you have to take into account the interest of every other, and that’s why the Peace of Westphalia was such a groundbreaking work and led to the whole development of international law; as compared, in total contrast to the Versailles Treaty, which going against all historical evidence, presumed Germany was the only guilty party for World War I, all the reparations had to be paid by Germany, and that laid the ground for the developments which then led to the Great Depression of 1929 and naturally the emergence of the Nazis, and it led to World War II. If you don’t have a peace which takes into account the interest of every party, it cannot function.
And most importantly, you have to look at the region as a whole. You have to look at Afghanistan—a mess; Iraq—pretty bad; Syria—totally destroyed from the senseless war; Yemen. You can even go into North Africa: Libya. Look at the result of what President Trump clearly wants to end, namely, these endless wars. Therefore, if you want to reconstruct this area and have a durable peace, what you need is an economic development for the entire Southwest Asian region, and that can only happen if all the great powers work together. I think the immediate perspective is given, because the Chinese have offered to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Syria, to extend the New Silk Road. Also the Arabs have many interests of cooperation along the Silk Road with China. That is the only way how you can have the hope to calm down this region. And rather than trying to continue geopolitical games, I think all the great powers—Russia, China, India, the United States, European countries—they should all join hands and reconstruct this area, and then you can have the hope for peace.
So, I think the extension of the New Silk Road from China via Iran, Iraq; into Turkey, Syria; into Egypt, all the way to Africa, developing Africa in the same way. Then, through Turkey, extend the New Silk Road to Europe, to the Balkans; to connect via the Central Asian corridors — If you have a total peace plan like that, I think it can be really the basis for peace.
And I would hope now, this is now a first step. It needs to have more steps. But I think it’s a negotiation basis, and people should take a positive attitude, and then, hopefully, it can lead to the result of a real peace in the region.
SCHLANGER: As we’re discussing these things, there’s been something that has just emerged as a strategic concern in the last days, really last weeks: the spread of the coronavirus out of China. President Trump, in a comment a couple days ago, praised the Chinese for the way they’re handing it. The anti-China lobby is going crazy against China. What’s your assessment of where we stand in dealing with this virus?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, one of the leading Chinese scientists, who is charge of managing this crisis, said that he thinks the peak of the epidemic may be in ten days from now. That would be a very good news. China has done a very big job, by putting about 60 million people into quarantine. In major cities, people are being told to stay home. They have a letter out for the elderly, that they should especially not leave their apartment, because they are more at risk than other people. I think it is an incredible job. There was just a meeting between President Xi Jinping and the leadership of the WHO, the World Health Organization. They praised China, by saying they did an absolute fantastic job, by also giving a standard of how to deal with such a crisis. From an objective standpoint, there is no question that China is handling this extremely well, building three hospitals of more than 1,000 beds in a week — I don’t know what other country could do that at this point.
As you mentioned, there are also some really degenerated minds, who have absolutely no respect for human life. One is the unspeakable Danish newspaper Jyllands-Post with its cartoon, which showed the Chinese flag with the stars in the flag being replaced by the coronavirus. China protested very strongly, and basically said that this is a complete contempt for human decency, and should not be regarded as a cartoon. I think our colleagues from the Schiller Institute in Denmark also put out a similar statement, absolutely condemning the degenerate mindset coming from such “cartoons.”
Other than that, if this Chinese scientist is correct, then hopefully this could be resolved very soon. Naturally, doomsday-sayers, who say the economic impact could be a trigger for the world financial collapse. I don’t think that is more than a cover story, for the fact that this financial system is bankrupt as it is.
SCHLANGER: These very same central bankers and financiers, who have bankrupted the financial system, are circulating this new report from the Bank for International Settlements, talking about the “Green Swan.” They are now saying that the scapegoat for the crash will be man-made climate change. Obviously, this is another aspect of the cover-up, isn’t it?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yeah. The “Black Swan” is a synonym for the big financial crash, for the “everything bubble” to collapse, which we are very close to. So, to blame the climate crisis for such an event is ridiculous. The effort to impose green financing, and in that way destroy the basis for industrial economy is a danger to the financial system, if it needed another one, other than the one caused by the insane bailouts and quantitative easing policies.
So, I think this is an absolute lie. I think we are entering a period, where not only a crash is hanging on the horizon, but the effects of this financial policy are causing the entire society, in many countries, to disintegrate. I only want to mention two situations: One, I think now eight weeks of strikes in France; this is not reported at all, but I know about it from our French colleagues. These demonstrations and strikes are becoming more violent all the time. That is the result of the government policy, because the French police have the policy of throwing out sort of a net, isolate different groupings, and basically drive them into violent reactions.
This doesn’t only come from antifa and Black Bloc, but it comes from the Yellow Vests. For example, you have lawyers who are so absolutely furious about the attack on them, that they have thrown down their robes by the hundreds. Tax accountants who throwing their tax codes on the floor. This is really getting out of proportion. And the government of Macron is making absolutely no concession, but keeps absolutely with the line of BlackRock, which is really what this pension reform is driven by.
You have a similar situation now in Germany, where the German farmers, who are now basically fighting for their existence, they have now changed their tactic. They do flash-mobs at political meetings: All of a sudden, you have 250 tractors showing up; they block the warehouse deliveries from the large food chains. They say they are now being destroyed, between a rock and a hard place, because the food chains lower the prices for their products way below the parity price — you can forget, not even the producer’s price. And then you have the European Union legislations which make it impossible for these farmers to continue to farm.
So, we are looking at a real social explosion, not only in places like Chile and Lebanon and Algeria, but also, increasingly, in the European countries. I can only see this continuing, because if people like [European Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen implement their green legislation, thereby raising the prices for everything—electricity, transport, food—then this social ferment will just explode, because many people are already at the end of their means.
I think this is going to require our intervention, globally, to impose what we have proposed many times, the full package of LaRouche: the Four Laws, Glass-Steagall, national bank, New Bretton Woods, crash program for fusion and space cooperation to increase the productivity of society, and cooperate with the New Silk Road. That is the solution, but we need more people to help us in this mobilization. So, go to the links provided at the end of this webcast. Subscribe to our Alerts and other publications. Sign our petitions and mobilize together with us. I think that’s the only answer you can give.
SCHLANGER: There’s another aspect to this situation, which you’ve addressed many, many times: which is, the social explosion, the social ferment, and social disintegration are occurring at the same time as there’s a cultural collapse, which is engineered by the same British Empire, destroying the image of man. You’ve just written an article on this; you are quite prolific on this. What do people need to know about how we reverse this cultural collapse?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I launched a campaign which I called an “Open Letter to the Lovers of Classical music.” I deliberately do not address this letter only to people in Germany, but I really want to address it to everybody who thinks that Classical music is important for the mental health and creativity of people.
We will put the link of this Open Letter below, so please download it, read it, circulate it, comment on it, because I want to generate a debate. There was this unbelievable assault, where some so-called modern composer dared to change the finale of Fidelio in a performance in Darmstadt. What came out was absolutely horrible ugliness. So, please read my letter and circulate it.
But it points to something which I think is really of a general nature. If you look at what is happening in the United States, you have the drug epidemic, you have the school shootings; you have a lot of violence as a potential breaking out very quickly. In Germany, you now have churches being robbed. People are stealing the sacral instruments for the church service, pictures from the walls. You have attacks on first responders, on the police — I mean, this getting very, very ugly. I think what all of these symptoms—which I could tell you a long, long, long list of, but you probably all know it—all of these are symptoms of a decaying, collapsing society, like the end of the Roman Empire, or some other cultural collapses.
This very dangerous and this is why I take this attack on Classical music as extremely important to be countered. Because if you look at Europe, Europe is in terrible condition right now; political unity doesn’t exist. We just found that the German government already in 2018, at a conference in Berlin on Africa, deliberately countered the proposal which was adopted in 2018 in Abuja, Nigeria, by the governments of the Lake Chad region demanding implementation of the Transaqua project, which we have discussed many times on this show; and Germany gave only Greenie arguments, basically perpetuating the colonial world-outlook toward Africa, condoning the disgusting policy of the EU against the refugees from Africa and Southwest Asia, which is really a murderous policy. The Pope called these camps for refugees “concentration camps,” which I think is absolutely on the mark.
So, if you look at all of these things, the only positive thing which Europe still has — other than its potential to be an industrial powerhouse, if we change our ways; but that is not in the cards right now, if you look at the EU—so the only thing which we is our great Classical tradition: The Italian Renaissance, which indirectly President Trump referred to in his speech in Davos, by pointing to the Cupola of the Florence Duomo, by mentioning the beautiful Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, by referring to the European cathedrals. That ennobled view of man, including the German Classical period, the German, Italian, and other Classical music in general, these are the most precious heritages of Europe which we could contribute to the shaping of a New Paradigm in the world.
And if you have, right now, as a continuation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) operation, the ongoing destruction of Classical music, with disgusting Regietheater; you can’t go into a German theater any more, since quite a while, without people copulating on the stage, being naked, doing absolutely obscene things. András Schiff, the great pianist, wrote an article recently, where he said that in New York people are talking about this kind of theater as “Eurotrash.” What this unspeakable so-called composer did in this re-write of the finale of Fidelio is nothing but Eurotrash; and that is a mild expression for what was presented there.
We have to defend Classical Culture. We have to go back to the idea that we need beauty in art. I fully agree with Friedrich Schiller, who in a letter exchange with his friend Christian Körner, said that art which is not beautiful, is no art, it’s trash (those are my words, not those of Schiller).
So, I would really ask all of you who have any sense that we cannot allow the continuation of this destruction of great culture to go on, that you should join with us, and that we really create a Renaissance movement as a counter to that. This is completely in the spirit of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche. His spirit is alive, especially as all of his prognoses in respect to the financial system, the strategic situation, become more obvious; there is a growing recognition of the increasing intellectual role of the work of my late husband. I want to encourage to always include the demand for his exoneration, because people have to have unmediated access to his works, because it is that, what great minds have written, what great composers have composed, which gives us the inner strength to get out of this crisis of humanity. So, help us in really making this Renaissance movement.
SCHLANGER: We also have the benefit that this year is the 250th anniversary celebrating the birth of Beethoven. Your husband gave us the marching orders: “Think Like Beethoven!” which is the way out of this
So, Helga, thank you for joining us today, and we’ll see you again next week.
On Monday, December 12, Helga Zepp-LaRouche was the special guest speaker at a Schiller Institute/EIR seminar in Copenhagen entitled, “Donald Trump and the New International Paradigm.” Eight diplomats from six countries attended, including two ambassadors. There were nations from Western Europe, Southwest Asia, Western and Eastern Asia, and Africa. In addition, there were around 30 Schiller Institute members and contacts, as well as a few representatives of various Danish and international institutions.
EDITOR’S Note: Helga Zepp-LaRouche visited Shanghai for the first time in the summer of 1971. In 1977 she married American economist Lyndon LaRouche, and the couple have since worked together on development plans for a just new world economic order. Zepp-LaRouche founded the Schiller Institute in 1984, a think tank devoted to the realization of these plans and a renaissance and a dialogue of classical cultures. In 1991 she was a coauthor of a study The Eurasian Land-Bridge/ The New Silk Road and in 2014 of the study The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, which has been translated into Chinese, Arabic, German and Korean. She is an expert in European humanist philosophy and poetry, Confucius, and history. After attending the recent Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, she visited Shanghai, where Shanghai Daily reporter Wan Lixin interviewed her.
Q: In what way do you think the Belt and Road initiative is significant for the world and China?
A: I think the Belt and Road initiative signifies a revolutionary move to a new epoch of civilization. The idea of having a win-win cooperation among nations is the first time that a concrete concept has been offered to overcome geopolitics. Since geopolitics was the cause of the two world wars, I think it is a completely new paradigm of thinking where an idea proposed by one country has the national interest basically in coherence with the interests of humanity as a whole. This has never happened. This has instilled tremendous hope among developing nations that they have the chance to overcome poverty and underdevelopment. And I think this is an initiative that will grow until all the continents are connected through infrastructure and development.
Q: What do you think are challenges confronting the world today?
A: I think the biggest challenge is that the trans-Atlantic financial system is in jeopardy, because the G7 countries did nothing after the financial crisis of 2008 to remedy the root causes of this crisis. The danger today is that we are going to have another financial crisis much worse than that of 2008. In this light I think the financial system associated with the Belt and Road Initiative, like the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) and similar institutions, which are focused on investment in the real economy, are an anchor. Hopefully the Western nations will rethink their orientation of high risk speculation and eventually go back to the banking system represented by AIIB. U.S. President Trump announced that he will go back to the American economic system of Alexander Hamilton, and that’s potentially the kind of reform that makes the United States fit to cooperate in this new financial system. The second challenge is naturally terrorism. This requires international cooperation, and there I think the Belt and Road could offer a lasting solution by extending the initiative to Southwest Asia, and build up the economy in that part of the world that had been destroyed by wars which were based on lies. Why did you have to solve the problem of terrorism militarily first? You have to have an economic perspective so that people in the regions have hope for the future. So I think ending terrorism would require the Belt and Road Initiative and the reconstruction of the Southwest Asia and Africa.
Q: There has been evolving perception about globalization. How do you think the Belt and Road Initiative is reshaping this perception?
A: The old globalization really went entirely in one direction. First of all it made the deregulation of the markets and high risk speculation easy. And this increased the gap between the rich and the poor in an intolerable way in many countries. This mode of globalization is being rejected, as you can see by the Brexit and the rise of many right-wing movements in Europe. So this model has clearly failed. I think the new Silk Road, the win-win cooperation as proposed by China, has developed in incredible speed in the less than four years since President Xi proposed it. This new model of globalization is based on the common good of all participating countries. This is the more attractive form of globalization and this is why so many countries have joined it.
Q: What do you think are some of the factors that need to be considered when it comes to implementing the Belt and Road initiative across different cultures?
A: The Schiller Institute has organized hundreds of seminars and conferences on the New Silk Road for 26 years. We have always made the point that for this New Silk Road to succeed in the tradition of the old Silk Road, which was also an exchange of ideas and cultures, not just products and technology, you have to combine economic cooperation with dialogue between cultures. This dialogue must be on the highest level, so each culture has to present examples of the best of their culture, like Confucianism, Italian renaissance, the German classical period, and present the best works of arts in music and poetry, paintings and other forms of art. Our experience is that when people get into contact for the first time with expression of such high culture from another culture, they are surprised by its beauty. And this beauty then opens the heart and souls of the people. And this is the best medicine against chauvinism, xenophobia, and prejudice, and it opens the way for the love of other cultures. This is in conformity with Confucian teaching that all activity must be combined with strengthening of love for the mankind, because without that cultural component, that New Silk Road will not flourish.
Q: What do you think such high profile events like the recent summit suggest about China’s role in world affairs?
A: I think it a great honor for me to participate in this Belt and Road Forum, and I was deeply impressed by the speech of President Xi Jinping. Among all participants I spoke with there is consensus that we are actively participating in the shaping of history. All this means that China is right now leading the world in terms of providing the perspective for the future. I think this has been recognized by many countries in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, and even some European countries start to recognize it is in their best interests to ally with that initiative. So I think it has made clear that China is the only country right now that offers a positive perspective to overcome the strategic bottleneck of our present times.
Q: In the past, the quest for prosperity invariably led to competition, strife, or wars. Is this avoidable?
A: Concerning the question of competition, strife and war, I think this must be replaced by joint development. Here I would like to quote from Pope Paul VI who said that “Development is the new name for peace.”
Q: How do you think the West responds to the Belt and Road Initiative?
A: The responses have been mixed, because you have those who want to stick to the old geopolitical thinking, to the status quo of their power, and to their understanding of their power position. I think this is an outdated way of thinking. Many think-tanks of the West are still publishing reports along these lines. But there is a wind of change. Many European countries have realized the potential of collaborating with the Belt and Road, which includes Greece, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland. So I think this tendency will increase. Those countries which are more reserved — like Germany — will have to change. But I think German industries, particularly those middle-sized industries, are absolutely in cooperation with China in the Belt and Road Initiative.
Q: Say something about your China experience.
A: I was first in Shanghai 46 years ago in 1971, after traveling on a cargo ship. Although it was not the best time to be in China, it had awakened my love for China. The city has changed completely. Except for some buildings on the Bund, I couldn’t find anything in my memory. I could not think of any other countries in the planet that have seen such gigantic changes. I think the Chinese people are much too modest. They should feel more confident about what they have accomplished. They have created the biggest miracle of the world, even bigger than the post-war German economic miracle. They should be very proud to be Chinese. The decision by Moody’s Investors Service to cut China’s sovereign ratings is insane. In German we have a saying: People should touch their own nose first before they made a stupid criticism.
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered the following keynote address to the XXIII National Congress of the Association of Economists of Peru, held in Pucallpa, Ucayali, in the Amazon region of Peru. The title of the Nov. 17-19 congress is “The Peru-Brazil Bioceanic Train: Impact on the Economy of the Amazon Region and the Country,” and Zepp-LaRouche’s presentation, delivered at the opening session on Nov. 17, was on “The New Silk Road Concept, Facing the Collapse of the World Financial System.” The Peruvian Economists’ congress was timed to coincide with the Nov. 19-20 APEC summit in Lima, Peru, with the expected participation of numerous heads of states, including China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
In a major address to an audience of between 100 and 200 people at the Phoenix Press Publishing Group at their headquarters in Nanjing, China, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the president of the Schiller Institute, gave a report-back from her attendance at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing.
“The Belt and Road has injected optimism into many countries,” Zepp-LaRouche said, “and the momentum is unstoppable,” but bringing it fully to fruition “will not be easy.” Immediately after the summit, she continued, the attacks against the Belt and Road escalated, combined with attacks against President Trump, who had sent a high-level delegation to the BRI Summit. “The attacks were based on the absurd charges of collusion with Russia in the election,” she said.
“After the Cold War, the British and their American allies wanted to create a unipolar world,” she said. “And in doing so they have destroyed the Middle East and left it in a shambles.” And this precipitated the refugee crisis, the general reaction against “globalization,” and the rise of right-wing movements. “The Belt and Road,” she said, “will bring about the creation of the World Land-Bridge, which will connect all continents. And this is something we have been fighting for, for over 40 years,” she said.
She then described the fight of her and her husband, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., to build a new world economic order: LaRouche’s call for an International Development Bank, the fight for the African development plan, and the Ibero-American initiative in the same direction in collaboration with Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo, and the hundreds of seminars on five continents held by the Schiller Institute calling for a Belt and Road development.
“Transforming the Belt and Road to a World Land-Bridge will realize politically for the first time a real future for all the people living on this planet and will establish forms of governance for the world.” But to fully realize this, she said, “you must also study the ideas of my husband on the question of economics.”
Zepp-LaRouche then went through the all-important cultural aspects of the Belt and Road and the need for all of the different cultures involved to bring out their finest achievements, in order to use these to create a dialogue of cultures among the nations on the Belt and Road. She then went through the importance of Friedrich Schiller in German and Western culture and the importance of Confucius in Chinese culture, making a concrete comparison of the works of Schiller and Confucius and showing the close similarity in the ideas of these two great thinkers which were separated in time by almost 2000 years .
Zepp-LaRouche was followed by Bill Jones, the Washington Bureau Chief of EIR, who showed a power point presentation describing the struggle of the LaRouche organization from the time of Nixon’s abandonment of the Bretton Woods system. He described the 1970s attack of the Club of Rome and the publication of “Limits to Growth,” which was intended to transform the culture of progress into the culture of death with the international push for Zero Economic Growth and Zero Population Growth. He outlined the reaction of Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche organization to the Zero Growth movement, LaRouche’s call for the International Development Bank (IDB), and the subsequent call for the IDB and a New World Economic Order at the Colombo meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1976, and by Guyana’s Foreign Minister, Fred Wills, at the U.N. General Assembly.
Jones described the struggle waged by LaRouche to bring President Ronald Reagan, who had adopted LaRouche’s concept of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as a peace proposal with the Soviet Union, into a working relationship with the progressive leaders in the developing sector, such as Mexican President Lopez Portillo and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. These efforts then led to a reaction by the people around Vice President George H.W. Bush, who connived to have LaRouche and several of his associates incarcerated on trumped-up charge. The election of President William Clinton brought LaRouche out of prison and back into an advisory role, with President Clinton’s attempts, albeit unsuccessful, to move in the direction of a new financial architecture. The creation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) represent, therefore, the type of structures that LaRouche and his movement have been trying to bring about for over four decades, Jones explained.
This was followed by Professor Bao Shixiu, a professor of military science, who outlined the strategic importance of the Belt and Road for China, showing how it will allow the country to overcome the traditional difficulties it has had with other countries, including India and Japan. Professor Bao underlined the seminal role of the LaRouches in bringing this initiative to the forefront, and the ongoing struggle of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche to overcome the opposition to it from the London-New York financial elites. Professor Bao also laid out both the economic and strategic implications of the Belt and Road for China, which would help ensure a harmonious climate in the region and in the world, which would allow it and all other countries to continue to develop.
There was a great deal of interest exhibited by the audience, particularly in Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call for the dialogue of cultures and a heightened degree of interest in the work of Friedrich Schiller among the Phoenix staff, some of whom seemed to have had a rather extensive exposure to the works of German culture.
While 190 billionaires and their corporate and institutional flunkeys gathered at Davos, pushing a Green fascist agenda, U.S. President Trump intervened with a different axiomatic background. While his speech provoked hysteria, with some accusing him of “pointless optimism,” his praise of the citizens of Florence acting with imagination and boldness in building the great Dome—a feat often referred to by Lyndon LaRouche as exemplifying the spirit of human creativity and commitment to progress which resulted in the Renaissance—highlights again why the oligarchy is committed to ending his presidency.
Helga covered a number of topics, from the war danger, to the increasing likelihood of a financial collapse, coming back to the necessity for an emergency summit of three Presidents as a means to move into a New Paradigm, to overcome the dangers. She called on our viewers to join us to change the agenda, to bring mankind back to science and culture to counter war and destruction. Use the opportunity of this Beethoven year to discover the true beauty of human culture.
Even with the near total blackout, in the mainstream media, of the real nature of the coup ongoing against President Trump, the truth is getting out. Helga Zepp LaRouche highlighted the significance of Scott Ritter’s article in Consortium News this week, which showed how a relatively young man, the “anonymous” Whistle Blower, was placed by John Brennan and others into a position from which he could manipulate U.S. policy on Russia and Ukraine, while at the same time undermining Trump’s efforts to change U.S. policy, by coordinating with the coup plotters from the Obama intel team. Ritter’s article should be read along with the speech given by Attorney General Barr, in which he accused those pushing for impeachment of being part of a “seditious coup”, and the updated statements from Barbara Boyd, Bill Binney, and Larry Johnson, to get a grasp on why it is now possible to realize the Schiller Institute’s goal to crush the coup, and bring the U.S. into the New Paradigm.
During her webcast, she blasted the unprecedented escalation against China; presented the true story of what is happening in Xinjiang province, going back to Brzezinski’s playing of the “Islamic Card”, to counter the slanders against China; explained how the “repo crisis” is a symptom of the collapse of the economic/financial system, which can only be reversed by implementing the policies of Lyndon LaRouche; and mocked the declaration of a “Climate Emergency” by the EU, as part of a full offensive to temporarily save the banks, while destroying what’s left of the physical economy.
The objective conditions are there, she concluded, for a great moment of global transformation. What is necessary is for you, the viewers, to play your role as active and informed citizens, by joining with us to make sure that it happens.
It is crucial that the General Assembly of the United Nations now convening in New York, build on the progress that the G20 Summit has achieved under China’s leadership. The course has been set toward a new financial architecture, and the chance is greater than ever that all nations can participate in the building of the New Silk Road on the basis of win-win cooperation, and that the productivity of the world economy will rise on the basis of innovation, while poverty and the consequences of war are overcome. The main problem, however, is that the West continues to cling to the status quo of a uni-polar world and the neo-liberal financial system, although both of those objectives have long been unachievable. The rise of Asia signifies that one nation cannot set the rules, but that solutions must be found through dialogue and negotiation. The neo-liberal system is in the throes of an existential crisis.
The first twin of globalization—the policy of regime-change and alleged humanitarian interventions—has cost the lives of millions of people, brought untold suffering to millions more, destroyed entire regions, created the breeding grounds for the spread of terrorism, and set off huge waves of refugees. The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan alone, according to the study of Professor Neta Crawford of Brown University, have cost five trillion dollars—and for what result?
The second twin of globalization—the system of maximum profit for the TBTF banks, which are supposedly “too big to be allowed to fail”—has led to an unbearable gap between rich and poor. And if certain banks have to pay the full sum of their fines for criminal methods, they must declare bankruptcy because their capital base is insufficient. Hence, a new meltdown threatens, with even more catastrophic consequences than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, now that central bank instruments are exhausted and no longer effective.
In that context, two reports released in Great Britain offer an extraordinary opportunity to re-assess and correct the current policy. After the Chilcot Report, which laid the blame on Tony Blair for the illegal Iraq war which was built on lies, a commission of the British Parliament has levelled no less scathing charges against former Prime Minister David Cameron for the war in Libya, which was carried out on “erroneous assumptions” and led to“political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.”
On the role of the United States, the report states that“The United States was instrumental in extending the terms of Resolution 1973 beyond the imposition of a no-fly zone to include the authorisation of ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians. In practice, this led to the imposition of a ‘no-drive zone’ and the assumed authority to attack the entire Libyan Government command and communications network.”
That same overall review of the current policy should, of course, include the implications of the 28 pages of the official Joint Congressional Inquiry Report, which deals with the circumstances of the attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as the JASTA bill, which necessitate a completely new investigation.
In light of the horrendous suffering this failed policy has caused: the millions of dead and injured; the traumatized children and soldiers (including in the nations waging war); the destruction of cities, villages, infrastructure and irreplaceable cultural wealth; it is not only appropriate, but a moral obligation for the countries that took part in these wars in the different “coalitions of the willing,” to examine the political process in their parliaments and to fully participate in the reconstruction of the regions that have been devastated. This will not bring the dead back to life, but the admission of guilt and a genuine change of policy towards development would give the people living there today hope for a future.
The status quo cannot be maintained. As a result of both twins of globalization, there has been an enormous loss of trust among the population in the trans-Atlantic world. Right-wing populist and right-extremist parties are massively gaining strength; the conditions of the 1930s threaten to reappear in a new form; the European Union is crumbling; and the refugee crisis will not be solved by securing the external EU borders, but only relocated and removed from the news. The U.S. economy is collapsing, while the society is more than ever torn and overtaken by violence. Either this process will lead to an escalation of the confrontation with Russia and China, and to the extermination of mankind in a great war, or the leading politicians in the West will have the moral integrity to correct the errors of the past.
The Solution
To come back to the positive proposition in the beginning of this appeal, the course has been set toward a way out of this crisis of civilization since the G20 summit. Not only has China presented a new level of cooperation based not on geopolitics, but rather on a policy in the mutual interest of all, it has also pledged to industrialize Africa and other low-income countries, an approach that could both solve the refugee crisis and eliminate the terrorist environment. Clearly, the extension of the New Silk Road to the Middle East and Africa both requires and will bring about growth rates of 7 to 10%.
And just as promptly, the Club of Rome stepped in with a new report under the cynical title in the German translation of “One Percent Is Enough,” which would lead in consequence to population reduction, a fascist policy for which the Club of Rome is infamous. The UN recently stressed that Africa needs a growth rate of at least 7-8%. When one of the authors of the Club of Rome report, the Norwegian Jorgen Randers, comes out with the absurd statement, “My daughter is the most dangerous animal in the world,” because she consumes 30 times more energy than a girl in a developing country, it serves to show on what image of man the Club of Rome bases its argument, i.e. on a bestial one.
But man, in contrast to all other creatures, is able to use his creative potential to continually discover new insights into the laws of the universe; this is called scientific progress. The unlimited process of perfecting the human mind has a correspondence in the laws of the physical universe, which develops to ever higher energy-flux densities. We are not in a closed system on the Earth—as the Club of Rome and similar organizations claim—rather, our planet is an integral part of the Solar System, the galaxy and the universe, about which space research is discovering more and more. This research yields many advantages for Earth itself, and it is therefore fantastic that China announced at the G20 summit, that it would share with developing countries the most advanced research results for their space and lunar exploration projects.
Mankind has arrived at a crossroads. If we continue to walk the well-trodden paths with a policy of “more of the same,” the world threatens to come apart. If, on the contrary, we can agree on the common aims of mankind—an economic and financial order that serves the well-being of all mankind, and which makes possible a decent life for every person on this Earth; the securing of raw materials and energy through higher technologies such as thermonuclear fusion; the exploration of space to safeguard our planet and a renaissance of classical cultures—then we will be able to usher in a new, better era in the history of our species.
The General Assembly of the United Nations is the fitting place, where the new paradigm of our one mankind, based on that which comes before all the differences among nations, must be established and celebrated.
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute
The first thing one can say about the performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Darmstadt Theater, in a production of Paul-Georg Dittrich with a musical adaptation of the finale by Annette Schlünz, is: It’s god-awful! It couldn’t be worse. God-awful from a musical, artistic, philosophical and human standpoint. Of the long series of stupid, crude, repetitive Regietheater [fn1] performances, that have been staged for over half a century(!)—limited at first to theater, but then also inflicted on the opera—this performance was the absolute low point.
In the summer of 1966, when Hans Neuenfels—then a 25-year-old dramatist at the Trier Theater—had a leaflet distributed to promote the “First Happening in Rheinland-Palatinate,” in which he even asked, “Why don’t you rape little girls?” he was expressing the convictions of the 1968 movement, as we have known it since at least Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Since then—for 53 years now!—various nudes, rock bands, schizophrenics, or actors in Nazi costumes have been copulating on stage, and have succeeded in distorting beyond recognition the plays and compositions of Classical poets and composers. This is definitely not originality.
A scene from the Darmstadt performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
The Fidelio staging in Darmstadt presents a multimedia mixture of aesthetic vulgarity, Brechtian alienation effects, and the intrusion during the first part’s musical scenes of a screen filling the entire stage, on which photos and film clips are projected. They are supposed to illustrate the historical background of eight productions from 1805 until today. The overall impression is chaotic, and you begin to feel sorry for the singers who have to sing against this storm of clips, and for the heroine Leonore, who has to run around the stage the whole time like a headless chicken.
But the real monstrosity comes in the second part, when the Finale, the opera’s magnificent hymn to freedom, is literally chopped up in martial manner by the insertion of compositions in the New Music style of Annette Schlünz. In the program notes, Schlünz describes her insertions:
Annette Schlünz
Little by little, a “chorus of hails” emerged, which becomes silent in part, or in which only individual voices or words remain. Sometimes I radicalize Beethoven’s instrumentation to reinforce his ideas or I repeat individual bars and then suddenly stop. I very much wanted to weave in external sounds and to color the music in some places. The trumpet fanfare, which is heard from the balcony of the State Theater before the performance begins, is something I take up and expand. It’s the signal that summons to a departure: Some instruments and musicians that drop out of the sound of the orchestra become, so to speak, rebellious, and bring in something new. The F major ensemble piece—a fantastic piece with a sacredness and coherence that I would never dare to approach—I leave untouched like a gem. The subsequent interlude with my music, in which different sounds, including the voices of eight vocalists, are sent throughout the room, completely breaks up Beethoven’s world of sound.
From the standpoint of the maltreated spectator, the noise that Schlünz inserted, during which the singers and instrumentalists trumpeted their deafening rubbish from the middle of the audience and from all sides, has nothing to do with music: It clearly crosses the line to bodily harm.
Just how emotionally damaged Schlünz is, becomes clear in the next sentences:
When listening, I often imagined that I was sitting at the controls of a mixer console and turned up the speed. And then I would just assume that Beethoven, when he composed, almost intended to go too far and fast. It’s really exulting! It reminds me of children who go crazy with excitement because they don’t know how to keep their emotions under control.
If there is anything crazy here, it is the pitiful state shown by Schlünz, in her emotional impotence to understand the sublime nature of the victory of the love between Leonore and Florestan. Moreover, she obviously cannot stand such greatness; her idea of wanting to speed up the music by adjusting a mixer console, represents the same uncontrollable freak-out that led the murderers of Ibykus [fn2] to betray themselves after the choir of the Erinyes had called forth the higher power of poetry in the theater of Corinth. Small, base minds cannot stand great ideas nor sublime feelings.
The magnificent Finale of Fidelio, in which Beethoven celebrates the defeat of tyranny through the courage of conjugal love is an expression of the noblest humanity, where love, courage and the desire for freedom are expressed in music. In Leonore’s preceding aria, she sings: “I shall not waver, I am strengthened by my duty of marital love.” Beethoven chose as subject for the opera the idealization, in Schiller’s sense, of a historical event, namely the liberation of the hero of the American Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette, the French Republican, by his wife Adrienne. This reflects Beethoven’s own republican sentiments, which included at that time of feudal structures and Napoleonic campaigns, both personal courage and the desire for freedom.
Portrayal of Leonora in the Darmstadt performance of Fidelio.
Such deeply human feelings, however, are no longer accessible to the disturbed emotionality of the representatives of the Frankfurt School and the liberal Zeitgeist. Stage director Paul-Georg Dittrich states most tellingly in his interview in the program notes, that the Finale seems to him “like a celebration where you don’t even know what is actually being celebrated.” While Dittrich and Schlünz may not know it, that in no way gives them the right to destroy ordinary people’s access to it by deconstructing Beethoven’s composition.
But precisely that was the intention from the very beginning of the diverse currents that formed the tradition in which Dittrich, Schlünz and the entire production in Darmstadt stand, in an amalgam of Theodor Adorno, the Eisler-Brecht School, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).
In a noteworthy touch of truthful reporting, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported on November 12, 2017, in an article titled, “The CIA and Culture: How to Steal the Big Words,” about the exhibition organized on the 50th anniversary of a scandal that erupted in 1967, when it was reported that the entire gigantic operation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom was a CIA-funded operation as part of the Cold War effort. The FAZ added an admission about the whole thing that was tantamount to sensational for that daily:
The worrying point is that the secret service did not simply promote sinister reaction [i.e. the right wing], but it helped achieve the breakthrough of that same left-wing liberalism that still forms the mainstream standard of Western intellectuals.
The Fidelio production in Darmstadt is, so to speak, the terminal moraine of this process. It began with the change in U.S. post-war politics. After Roosevelt’s untimely death, under whose leadership the United States was allied with the Soviet Union in the fight against fascism in the Second World War, the intellectually much smaller Harry Truman quickly came under Churchill’s influence. The latter, in his notorious Fulton, Missouri speech on March 5, 1946, ushered in the Cold War. Thus the forerunners of those elements in the U.S. security apparatus, which Eisenhower later warned were the military-industrial complex and which are often called the “deep state” for short today, gained the upper hand. The Cold War thus proclaimed—demanded—that the deep emotions linking Americans and Russians together through the war experience, culminating in the meeting of the armies on the Elbe River in Torgau, be replaced by an anti-Russian sentiment. A new image of the enemy had to be built up and the population’s entire axiomatics of thought had to be changed accordingly. For the United States, this meant changing the basic beliefs that had contributed to the support for Roosevelt’s policies. For Europe, and especially Germany, the roots of European humanist culture, which constituted its cultural identity despite twelve years of a reign of terror, had to be destroyed and replaced by a construct—the deconstruction of Classical culture.
The Evil of the Congress for Cultural Freedom
The instrument that was created for this purpose was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), a gigantic psychological warfare operation launched by secret service circles around Allen Dulles under the direction of Frank Wisner, then head of the Office for Political Coordination of the State Department. The CCF was later moved to the covert operations department. The operation officially lasted from 1950 to 1967, when the New York Times published on April 27 the news that the CCF was a CIA operation. That revelation became the biggest cultural scandal of the 20th century. The CCF operated in 35 countries and published 20 magazines, and the CIA controlled virtually every art exhibition and cultural event. At that time, there was virtually no writer, musician, painter, critic, or journalist in Europe who was not in some way connected to this project—some knowingly, some with no inkling.
The first Congress for Cultural Freedom convention, Berlin, 1950.
The orientation of these cultural projects was essentially the same as that of the Frankfurt School, which was exiled to the United States during the National Socialist period and whose individual representatives were in the pay of the American secret services, such as Herbert Marcuse. In any case, the views of the Frankfurt School fit perfectly into the CCF’s program. Theodor Adorno, for example, defended the absurd and ignorant view that Friedrich Schiller’s idealism led directly to National Socialism, because he took a radical point of view. Therefore, Adorno claimed, beauty must be eradicated from art. In his essay “Cultural Criticism and Society,” written in 1949, his misanthropic view culminated in the much-quoted phrase: “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
Here again, there was nothing new about the Fidelio performance in Darmstadt. In the program notes, George Steiner expresses the exactly the same opinion:
Is it possible that classical humanism itself contains a radical failure in its tendency towards abstraction and aesthetic judgment? Can it be that mass murder and that indifference to the atrocities that abetted Nazism are not enemies or negations of civilization, but rather their hideous but natural accomplice?
What is expressed here in very clear terms is the psychological warfare carried out by the CIA-steered CCF, which was intended to eradicate the roots of the humanist identity of the German population, in favor of an Anglo-American cultural value scale.
To restate the point concisely: There can be no greater contrast than that between the sublime image of man presented in humanism and Classical art, and the barbaric image of man of the National Socialists. The Classical image of man sees man as being good in principle, as the only creature endowed with reason, who is able, through aesthetic education, to develop the potential within himself to a harmonious whole, to a beautiful character, as Wilhelm von Humboldt expressed it. Classical works of art in poetry, the visual arts, and music celebrate this beautiful humanity, and inspire in turn the creative powers of the readers, viewers, and listeners.
In contrast, the National Socialists’ image of man, with its blood-and-soil ideology, is based on a racist, chauvinistic, and Social Darwinist conception of the superiority of the “Aryan” race. To claim that because both the classics and National Socialism occurred in Germany, there is an inner connection between these diametrically opposed ideas, is just as absurd as to assert that the United States Constitution directly gave rise to the interventionist wars of the Bush and Obama Administrations, or that Joan of Arc’s convictions were the basis for French colonial policy. That claim actually came from the CIA’s devil’s kitchen, which included such recipes as “necessary lies” and “staunch denial” since at least the time of the CCF. In the recent period, the world has again been treated to an ample taste of them in the ongoing coup against President Trump by British intelligence in cooperation with the “deep state.”
The question of how it was possible to go from the ideal of the German classics to the abyss of Nazi rule, is one of the most important questions there is. To answer it, one has to consider the entire history of ideas from the Romantics’ attack on the classics, and the dissolution of the classic form it began to spawn, to the beginning of cultural pessimism, which set in with the Conservative Revolution in response to the ideas of 1789 and the political restoration under the Congress of Vienna, down to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the youth movement prior to World War I, and finally to World War I and its consequences.
Inducing Cultural Pessimism
Inducing cultural pessimism was also the goal of various music projects of the CCF. In 1952, it held a month-long music festival in Paris titled: “Masterpieces of the 20th Century,” during which over 100 symphonies, concerts, operas, and ballets of more than seventy 20th-century composers were performed. The Boston Symphony, which was to play a leading role in other CCF projects, opened the festival with a more-than-strange performance of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring). Other pieces were performed from the atonalists Arnold Schoenberg (one of Adorno’s teachers) and Alban Berg, as well as Paul Hindemith, Claude Debussy, and Benjamin Britten, to name but a few. Further conferences for the propagation of atonal and twelve-tone music followed in Prato and Rome, which were exclusively devoted to avant-garde music. At all of these well-funded events, it was taken for granted that everyone would pretend to enjoy ugly music.
Theodor Adorno
The Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, which were also supported by the American military government and the CCF, performed Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Béla Bartók. Lecturers such as Adorno, Olivier Messiaen, and John Cage gave lectures on their music theory. In an official assessment of these courses, Ralph Burns, head of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) Cultural Affairs Branch’s “Review of Activities,” wrote:
It was generally conceded that much of this music was worthless and had better been left unplayed. The over-emphasis on twelve-tone music was regretted. One critic described the concerts as the “triumph of Dilettantism.”
The issue here is not about stopping anyone from composing or listening to atonal or twelve-tone music, or other forms of avant-garde music. To each his own taste. The point is, that the idea of the equality of all tones of the tempered chromatic scale massively reduces the much higher degrees of freedom flowing from the polyphonic harmonic and countrapuntal composition, as it was developed from Bach to Hadyn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. It eliminates the ambiguity of the notes and the relationships between the keys, and the possibility of enharmonic confusion: Motivführung is a form of composition that, out of a single musical idea, develops further themes, movements, and ultimately the entire composition. This technique of composition, as elaborated and rigorously demonstrated in various master classes by Norbert Brainin, the first violinist of the Amadeus Quartet, was developed into greater complexity and perfection from Haydn’s “Russian” quartets Op. 33, to Mozart’s “Haydn” quartets, and then to Beethoven’s late quartets.
Given the heights that Classical composition had achieved with Beethoven, so-called modern music, if it throws these principles out the window—and there are undoubtedly good modern compositions—represents a decline comparable to reducing an anti-entropically developing universe of two trillion galaxies known so far, to a flat earth.
Classical Music Ennobles
Virtually all truly creative people, from Confucius to Albert Einstein, recognized and used the effects of good or Classical music to foster their own creative abilities and the aesthetic ennoblement of the population. Confucius rightly observed that the state of a country can be seen in the quality of its music. Immersion in the works of great Classical composers opens the deepest access to the creative faculties of the human soul and spirit. Where else, other than in Classical music, can one strengthen and deepen the passion needed to look beyond one’s own concerns and to address the great objects of humanity? Or where can one educate the sensibility needed to fulfill Schiller’s demand, as stated in his speech on universal history:
A noble longing must glow within us to add from our own resources our contribution to the rich legacy of truth, morality and freedom, which we have received from former ages, and must deliver richly increased to the ages to come; and to fasten to this imperishable chain, which winds through all the generations of men, our own fleeting existence.
It is precisely this emotionality of love, as expressed in the Finale of Fidelio, love for one’s spouse, love for humanity, and the idea of freedom in necessity, the idea of fulfilling one’s duty with passion, and thereby becoming free, that Schiller defines as the qualities of his ideal of the beautiful soul and of genius. It is the quintessence of the entire aesthetic method of the classics and of Friedrich Schiller in particular: “It is through beauty that one achieves freedom.”
This notion of freedom is what all the proponents of Regietheater, disharmonious music, and postmodern deconstruction attack, because it goes against their liberal concept of “freedoms,” rather than freedom.
Therefore, they dip unrestrainedly into the mothballed box of Brechtian alienation effects: interruptions, film clips, banners, cameras pointed to the audience, etc., so as to “shock” the viewers out of their habits of hearing and thinking. What came out of that in Darmstadt was a mixture of “Clockwork Orange” (recall the violence-ridden atrocity from Stanley Kubrick, accompanied by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony), and the intellectual depth of pop star Helene Fischer. When Helene Fischer, in a red latex outfit and with orgiastic movements, belts out her song “Tell Me, Do You Feel That?” to an enthralled audience, it’s about as subtle as when the question, “Does it move you?” lights up the stage in large neon letters during the entire Finale of Fidelio. Obviously, the director Dittrich thinks the intellectually challenged audience needs to be awakened with a two-by-four. On top of that came the previously mentioned bombardment of deafening noise from the instrumentalists and chorus members scattered throughout the opera house.
The audience expressed its thanks for the din with a tormented mini-applause. If the goal of the staging was to summon the audience to political action in the present or to open contemporary music to a “broader audience” (Dittrich), one has to say in both cases: Mission failed. The well-known (to German speakers) “Hurz” skit by Hape Kerkeling describes quite aptly the reaction of most viewers, who have apparently grown accustomed for much too long to the outrageous demands of Regietheater and to the CCF’s cultural war, which is still ongoing.
Finally, a quote is in order from Alma Deutscher, who really can compose: “If the world is so ugly, why should we make it even uglier with ugly music?”
Before the example of Annette Schlünz is followed and other compositions of classical music are “raped,” in the spirit of Hans Neuenfels, this review should serve to launch a debate in the year of Beethoven on how to defend the classics against such assaults.
Celebrate This Year of Beethoven!
This Year of Beethoven, which will feature performances of many of the master’s compositions not only in Germany, but around the world, offers a wonderful opportunity for us to recall our better cultural tradition in Germany, to resist the moral decline of the past decades, and to find within ourselves, by consciously listening to Beethoven’s music, the inner strength to have our own creativity come alive.
The world is now in the midst of an epochal change, in which the era dominated by the Atlantic countries is clearly coming to an end, and the focus of development is shifting to Asia, where there are many nations and peoples who are very proud of their civilizations, and nourish their classical culture. Some of these civilizations are more than 5,000 years old. If Europe has anything to contribute to shaping in a humanistic spirit the new paradigm emerging in the world, then it is our lofty culture of the Renaissance and the Classics.
Many scientists, artists, and people appreciative of Germany all over the world have been wondering for some time now what is wrong with the Germans, that they have distanced themselves so much from being a people of poets and thinkers. If we let the Year of Beethoven be so ruined, then Germany will likely be written off for good as a cultured nation.
More discussion of this subject is needed and welcome.
hz.zepp@schiller-institut.de
[fn1] Regietheater, or “Directors Theater,” is a mode of performance of Classical drama and opera, whereby the director arbitrarily imposes modern (and usually degenerate) costumes and staging upon the production, thereby ripping the work out of its true historical context and ironies, and degrading the audience, the performers, and the composer himself.
[fn2]See Friedrich Schiller’s poem, “Die Kraniche des Ibykus” (“The Cranes of Ibycus”). Full text available here.
