By Eva Kneifel
I live in Germany. I recently read a 2022 book here about America by Annika Brockschmidt, titled “Amerikas Gotteskrieger: Wie die Religiöse Rechte die Demokratie gefährdet,” or, in English, “America’s God Warriors: How the Religious Right Endangers Democracy.”
In Germany, this is a bestseller.
And I was amazed.
It’s funny that Brockschmidt is treated as an expert on the U.S. on the local talk show circuits here.
It’s kind of pretentious for such a person to pretend to be an expert on a country, given that she is only about 30 years old and wasn’t even in the United States at the time she wrote this book.
This has also led to a major controversy. To challenge this person’s expertise, you see, would lead to getting crushed with the word ‘sexism’ or whatever. But it’s astonishing that anyone would have the chutzpah to write about another country’s political system and want to establish herself as an expert for doing so, calling America’s religious right a problem and focusing on the recent abortion controversies in the U.S in particular.
But well, Germany knows America isn’t a democracy, so we have to feel superior, and Annika knows that, too.
After Roe vs. Wade was overturned and abortion was no longer a federal right in the U.S., there was a howling in Germany that hadn’t been heard for a long time about how bad it was.
Do they all want an abortion in the U.S.? To Annika, it was clear that the U.S was no longer a democracy, based on that ruling, even though it was a democratic decision by the Supreme Court.
She claims she can see democracy at play here. But if there’s a court ruling she doesn’t like, then America is no democracy.
It’s not for nothing that Politico’s Matthew Karnitschnig compares her to Karl May, another German who wrote novels featuring his ideas about cowboys and the American West and became Hitler’s favorite author.
But what can be said about the book from the perspective of a woke city student?
All fascists who criticize sex education lessons or are generally interested in their children’s school, or who do not see abortion as a new form of contraception, are bad guys in her book. Any kind of conservatism is bad anyway, just like economic liberalism is bad, and worst of all individuality is bad. All rights are group rights and those include special rights for minorities. All awakened leftists and Democrats are good, while Republicans are bad, even if there are historical mistakes in the book, who cares, it’s the feeling that is important.
Two examples: Her claim that Jimmy Carter supported abortion because he was in the Democrat party like Joe Biden and always did. That was factually wrong. Jimmy Carter pushed the law through for abortion but was personally opposed to abortion and hoped Democrats would repeal it and create better conditions for mothers. As for Joe Biden, he also was also of the opinion in 1986 that Roe vs. Wade was wrong, yet of course no longer tilts that way today, because today’s Democrats would give him hell. It’s no different from the claims about Barack Obama — that he was always in favor of gay marriage. The author forgot that Obama spoke out against it in 1994 and also during his 2012 election campaign in California, but maybe that would have been too explosive for his electoral prospects because Mormons and Afro-Americans had campaigned against it together. Had Obama lost their favor, the African American voters would have been gone. Obama only spoke out in favor of gay marriage in 2015, and only because Joe Biden had forced his hand.
It doesn’t occur to this know-it-all author that minorities can also be conservative. Does she know that Latinos, in particular, tend to be socially conservative? Maybe, she should talk to them about abortion.
It’s such nonsense, this view about America. Anyone who cannot say LGBTQ perfectly or who refuses to participate in gender madness is called a white supremacist.
So it’s not surprising that she even accuses a black priest of judging homosexuality according to the Bible. He, too is a white supremacist.
That something like that can still be said at the end, is outrageous.
After the publication of her book, Annika said that she wasn’t in America with her own money, of course, but with a grant from a foundation that is supported by German taxpayers. This is how abolishing capitalism is fun.
And for all the Germans reading that book and nodding in agreement at how backward Americans are, I hope they aren’t complaining about what to teach their kids or that we now have drag queen book readings for kids too.