Gone with the War
Pete Seeger's song „Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind“ — adapted by Marlene Dietrich — illustrates how war turns the world into a lifeless place.
Oliver Ginsberg answers Ulrike Guérot’s choice with the older German adaptation of the Pete Seeger classic by Marlene Dietrich. Pete Seeger would probably turn in his grave over Joan Baez’s veneration of Zelensky. His voice was rough and less pleasing than hers — but he never succumbed to the temptation of commercialization and stayed true to his convictions until the very end: again and again he stressed that the world could not survive as long as private property remained the „god of all gods“. In doing so he set himself against the mode of economics that made the USA the dominant power on the planet and that could seal the doom of us all.
In fact the roots of the song lie in the cultural world of the Don Cossacks, who would probably let themselves be claimed by neither Ukraine nor Russia. That also best captures my own view of things. A decision for or against one side or the other would be utterly oblivious to history. Both countries were drawn into a conflict that — as we now know from the consultation paper of the think tank RAND Corporation from the year 2019 — was largely prepared and systematically escalated by US-American circles of power.
All those who today still believe in the possibility of peace in the world must oppose every kind of imperialist ambition. For freedom, peace and — cultural too — self-determination.
Today that may mean: parting ways with old role models and organizations that no longer stand for what they once set out to achieve: celebrities like Joan Baez or the Greens, who have become nothing more than a self-righteous shadow of themselves. I confess, almost embarrassed, that I counted among their founding members.
This shows itself not least in the utterly unrealistic continuation of the corona measures in our country. This US-globalism — by now driven forward under a European banner as well — is neither peaceful nor progressive. It bears totalitarian traits and, under the pretext of diversity, in truth promotes monopolies — economic ones as well as in the cultural sphere. That is why in this case I prefer the German adaptation of the song over the commercialized US culture of dominance: „Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind.“