The West must choose between Steve Bannon and Britta Freith
LAST Wednesday, St Brigid’s Day, I concluded we in the West will have to decide between the dark vision of Donald Trump’s chief advisor, Stephen Bannon, and the bright vision of my German friend, Britta Freith.
Voicing the views of many left liberals, Mary Robinson told RTE radio: “I fear the influence of people like Steve Bannon who is well known for his right-wing and racist views.”
That’s the standard leftliberal view of both Bannon and Trump, and it’s wrong.
Like Trump, Bannon is neither right-wing nor racist. He’s more dangerous than that because he’s more democratic.
Steve Bannon is a class-conscious populist who taught Trump to play alienated blue-collar America like a piano.
Bannon conceived Trump’s campaign from start to finish; from its core class politics to details like Trump dispensing with an autocue so as to come across as more authentic.
Battered blue-collar America, decent Middle America, millions of workers like my sister Breda, felt deserted by the Democrats and rallied to his promise to revive the Rustbelts of America.
Like Breda, I was torn between hope for blue-collar America and fear about Trump’s flawed character.
But Bannon’s arrival on the National Security Council, followed closely by the cruel ban on Muslim refugees, removed any remaining hope that Trump might break with Bannon.
That’s because Bannon is using Trump as a political tool to create not a domestic, but a global campaign.
Bannon has a bigger and bloodier vision. He believes in a coming Armageddon between the West and Islam.
Who can stop him? Mine is a political family, and the best answer comes in a text from my brother, Jimmy, who works in the UK.
“Trump is not the problem. The problem is the Republican Party, and the cowardice of politicians like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who have no moral compass.”
Jimmy is bothered by Brexit, but rightly sees it as the symptom of a far bigger problem — the rise of European nationalism fuelled by fear of Muslim immigration.
Here is where the hypocrisy starts. So I agree with Una Mullally when she asks: “How can we roar about people being detained at US pre-clearance when we detain asylum seekers indefinitely in direct provision?”
What a relief to then turn from talking about refugees to the direct actions of my German friend Britta Freith. who gives me a ground-eye view of what’s going on.
Britta strikes me as having achieved what the Stoics called apatheia, a calm steadiness in the pursuit of virtue.
Hence her laidback email to me last Friday about some recent extraordinary events a few hundred yards from her home in Hamburg.
“One day, I looked out my upper-storey window and saw that refugees had built a camp of tents close to my house. It took me five minutes to walk there and check the situation. Over the next week some 40 tents went up.”
Britta had retired from radio journalism 15 years ago to write books, but she felt an obligation first to record and then to act.
“Because there was no official information, I started to blog about it. For a short time I became the information hub in my village-like neighbourhood.”
Being Britta, and being German, she then began to organise with her neighbours to help the refugees, not least because she was afraid of right-wing protesters moving in.
Ironically the only criticism came from a leftwing newspaper with the Trot complaint that local people were only giving children’s beds because they wanted families and not single men to come.
Eventually Britta and her neighbours were providing clothes and food in a camp of a few thousand refugees.
“Those who helped don’t share the same politics. Not all are politically left. They helped because they are human.”
Some helpers could be petty. “There were those who were jealous because I was in the media”
Some who turned up, claiming to be compassionate were wolves dressed as sheep. “They were Nazis pretending they wanted to protect the refugees, saying they shouldn’t stay in tents, that’s it’s not human, and that if there are no houses for them, they shouldn’t stay at all.” Britta and her local neighbours soldiered on. Their next step was to teach the refugees to speak and write German. She believes that teaching the language of the host country is crucial to rapid integration. “It doesn’t help you in Western Europe if you are fluent in Arabic, Russian and Turkish. You are still looked at like an idiot.” Britta’s reaching out to refugees demands endless empathy. “So many have lost so much: their families, their friends, their home country, their beliefs.”
But she believes the refugees’ biggest loss is the hardest of all to handle and the most important to restore: a loss of trust in other human beings.
“Here in my neighbourhood they met people whom they started to trust again, people who talked to them, who were interested in their stories.”
As a writer, Britta realises how much refugees need to tell their stories.
“If somebody just listens to you when you are down it helps a lot. Even if the person cannot help in other ways.”
Britta also believes in bringing it all back home. “We have Afghan friends now. I just love the kids. My son Ray has chosen the name for baby Ayla. She is so sweet. And their second daughter aged eight has already gone two grades up because she is extraordinarily gifted.”
The children’s Afghan father was a comedian and an artist at home but he tells Britta he had to leave all that behind, along with his audience.
As he told her: “When an artist leaves his home country, the artist dies even if the human survives.”
Britta has no time for Western armchair warriors who argue that the male refugees should return to fight for democracy in their native countries.
“They haven’t chosen war but life. They want to see their mothers again.”
The homely importance of mothers lies behind her humorous injunction to “hug an Afghan” as the best way to melt frozen fears.
“Because I could be their mother in many cases — or their older sister when they are in their 30s.”
Britta does not believe, like Steve Bannon, that we are doomed to a cruel clash of civilisations. We are agents of the plot. We decide what happens. She has no magic solution, only good works.
“I am completely convinced that we should do everything we can to help them get a foot in the door and go on with their lives. They will reward us with help and joy and thankfulness.”
But if Britta has a big heart, she is no bleeding heart. She knows that her German readers respond to refugees at many levels.
She reminds us of the benefits the refugees bring. “Germany needs them. They are the fittest, because they came all the way.”
Britta looks forward without fear. “We need educational programmes and German courses. And then Germany will prosper in the future.”
So will we all.
‘Germany needs these refugees. They are the fittest. They came all the way. They succeeded...’