Arena politics vs Projection politics

Submitted by David Scholem (Australia), Mar 14, 2015 at 08:46

re "Americans battle the Arab-Israeli Conflict:

My thesis at Sydney University in 1971 was "German East African Questions in the Reichstag 1912-1914". In the era of imperialism, the various parties used the most successful German colony in Africa as a de facto metaphor stand-in for various domestic issues that were third rail and therefore unmentionable in the quasi-democratic forum of the Reichstag.

My main conclusion related to the various parties' official line as reflected in the newspapers that were affiliated with each party. It was that the only party--and its newspaper-- that had any semblance of truthiness was the party of commerce, which, unlike the pure ideological parties, had actual activity in 'the far away land of which we know little.'

Not much has changed, which is ironic considering the utterly different means of communication a century later. Turns out Bismarck was right: "Der Mensch is was er isst."

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