Currently reading

Unter Linken by Jan Fleischhauer, which is a book about the Spiegel author’s late conversion to conservativism. It’s labelled as a humorous insight into the do-gooding world of Germany’s leftie middle class and why the author eventually switched sides. It’s politics-lite for the blogging generation as far as I can tell, anecdotal and polemical, including a couple of breathless pages on left-wing thought (Rousseau and Marx are mentioned, the rest dismissed as derivative) and clearly pandering to an audience. The title and the subject clearly evoke Nick Cohen’s What’s Left – Fleischhauer in fact explicitly references it in the opening pages – from a couple of years back, but, controversial as that book was, Unter Linken is far more limited in ambition, shallow where Cohen was questioning and argumentative.  But I am only a quarter in, so it might change for the better.

I’ve borrowed the book from my good friend B. who we visited last week in Switzerland and who I, accidentally on purpose, through years of discussing the rigidity of the German social market economy, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq war and the limits of multiculturalism, managed to convert from a dogmatic social democrat to a fire-breathing paleo-conservative, although he swears he is intent on voting the liberals in the next election. Like Frankenstein before me, I’ve come to realise I’ve created a monster out of my control. B. happily notes how we’ve both travelled from opposite sides of the political spectrum only to reoccupy each other’s places. And I must say it is comfy and cuddly here on the left. This is what happens when good friends debate in good faith: your open to argument and willing to revise your positions. But it also means that we don’t stop arguing and most discussions start with But you used to say… It’s a loop eerily reminiscent of Nietzsche’s eternal return.

Tags: Germany, Politics