Transcript - America This Week, Mar 7, 2025: "The Return of Germans"

Walter and Matt battle fourteen-syllable words and discuss Germany's bold return to a center-stage role in world affairs. Plus, "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish," by J.D. Salinger

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America this Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, you are back home?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. I’m back in Montana with the depressing, apocalyptic painting behind me. That’s how you can tell. It’s been a long, strange trip. I’ve been in the Wynn Hotel. I was there for a couple of weeks, trapped by my illness and my unwillingness to move out of the hotel, and then I went to my little apartment in Vegas, and now I’m here.

And this is home base, so I feel settled. I feel like I can really dig in from here. Those other places are kind of-

Matt Taibbi: That’s good, because we’re going to go heavy today. But what we’re aiming for, this is a high-concept show today. We’re aiming more for funny than for insight, I think, today, although there should be-

Walter Kirn: It’s time.

Matt Taibbi: ... a little bit of insight. And let’s just put our cards on the table. This is a show making fun of Germany, and I don’t know. Do they need to be picked on? I don’t know. I think they-

Walter Kirn: I think throughout history, the problem has been that civilization has sometimes relented in its picking on Germany, and if you let them go for more than five, 10 years, they come up with a whole new all-embracing metaphysics and political philosophy, which they then arm themselves in order to spread, whether it’s the Holy Roman Empire or Prussia or Hitler or-

Matt Taibbi: Or Funnybot, and we’ll get to that.

Walter Kirn: Yes. And now, they seem to be rearranging and sort of revising their sense of self so that in the name of peace, they can now be warlike again.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. And it’s a very thin veneer of peace that they’re putting on top of the warlike, the martial barking that they’re good at.

Some amazing speeches this week. I guess we’ll get to as many of them as we can. But let’s just start off with the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock. All right. So she’s the foreign minister. She’s a Green, and I guess Green’s-

Walter Kirn: Yeah. To me, that’s dark. To me, that means something like Nazi, but for the good of the Earth, which if you ever knew any Nazis as I did way back when, people who had actually lived there during the time, I knew a few in London, and they told me that the hiking and the nature worship was one of the big, fun parts of being the Nazi. So they reverted to form in their-

Matt Taibbi: Alpinism.

Walter Kirn: Alpinism, the worship of trees, pagan groves, and so don’t think that Green means what it does in America, in California.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, because I used to be a Green, so when I see that, I’m confused. I think it means pacifism and some other things, but-

Walter Kirn: In Germany, it means dancing under a tree at midsummer with the meat of your enemies dripping from your jaws, okay? Haven’t you seen things like Wicker Man and Midsommar? I know they’re not set technically in Germany, but-

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Maybe that might not be true, but probably, so take our word for it. So let’s take a listen to Tiffany Baerbock, or I’m sorry, Annalena Baerbock.

Walter Kirn: Tiffany Baerbock.

Matt Taibbi: Tiffany Baerbock.

Walter Kirn: If they Americanized the series, she would be called Tiffany Baerbock.

Matt Taibbi: Tiffany Baerbock and the Vampire Slayer. Let’s hear what she has to say. And what’s so great about this is that it’s in the German, and so we get the vibe in addition to the meaning.

Annalena Baerbock: Many of you may have slept restlessly tonight in light of the unspeakable videos from the White House, honestly, I did too. Unfortunately, it was not a bad dream, but a harsh reality. Our horror is greater today than before, but so is our commitment to the people in Ukraine. for our own security and for peace in Europe. Last night has emphasized, a new era of lawlessness has begun. A lawless time in which we must defend the rules-based international order and the strength of law more than ever against the power of the stronger. Because otherwise no free country can sleep soundly, which has a stronger neighbor. All of this has been looming for some time now. And that is why we have been working on nine reinforced alliances for a long time with all those in the world who are willing to continue advocating for a rule-based international order.

and the strength of the law, rather than standing for the law of the stronger. We, as Europeans, must advance more strongly than ever before and stand resolutely for our interests and international law, without any ifs or buts. For us, it is therefore clear: we stand firmly on the side of sovereign and free Ukraine. Ukraine is part of free and democratic Europe. Who in this war against Ukraine is the more brutal aggressor and who is the braver defender, who here is the perpetrator and who the victim, that is completely beyond question. Three years ago, Putin's Russia attacked Ukraine illegally without reason. People murdered in a terrible way, women brutally raped, children abducted, parents separated from their children. And this terror continues to this day.

Just recently, in Butscha, not far from Kiev, a well-known Ukrainian journalist was killed in her home by a drone. The latest air war continues unabated every day and every night. Therefore, I say clearly and across the Atlantic what is right and what is wrong should never be of no concern to us. No one needs and no one desires peace more earnestly than the Ukrainians. The diplomatic efforts of the USA are, of course, important. But such peace must be fair and lasting, not just a temporary pause until the next attack by Russia. No one should therefore be mistaken about the enemy. The enemy is alone in the Kremlin, not in Kiev or Brussels. We can never accept a reversal of roles between perpetrator and victim. Because a perpetrator-victim reversal is the opposite of security.

It's the opposite of peace and therefore cannot be a good deal. A perpetrator-victim reversal would be the end of international law and therefore also the end of the security of most states. And ultimately, it would also be disastrous for the future of the United States. Because hardly any country could rely more on the credibility of the oldest democracy and the strongest military power, if a reversal of the roles of perpetrator and victim were to occur. We do not want any of that. We want to maintain the transatlantic partnership and shared strength. But yesterday made it once again abundantly clear, Just as transatlantic, we must not be naive. We must stand up for our own interests, our own values, and our own security for our people in Europe.

Above all, we have no more time to lose. We must act quickly now, both at a European and national level. We cannot wait until the formation of a new federal government, because the situation is serious. Germany must take the lead at this historic milestone. All democratic parties in Berlin should do this in close coordination between the current and future federal government during these transitional weeks. The world is watching us, especially in Europe, but no one in the world is waiting for us to complete negotiations here in Germany. We live in uncertain times, my esteemed ladies and gentlemen. But if in these moments, in these days once again, as we did three years ago, in Germany and in Europe, we set the right course, then Europe will show what it is at its core. A strong peace project, peace in freedom for its millions of citizens. A peace project that radiates out into the world. Glory to Ukraine, long live Europe. Thank you very much. Many thanks.

*text has been transcribed and translated from the original German

Walter Kirn: Peace and freedom! The Germans are good at those.

Matt Taibbi: A peace project-

Walter Kirn: Paradox.

Matt Taibbi: ... that radiates out into the world.

Walter Kirn: And kills people.

Matt Taibbi: It’s Ukrainian. Slava Ukraina is what she said.

Walter Kirn: Quick thoughts. Language may indeed be destiny. I mean that in a strict anthropological sense. The structure of your language and the way it’s spoken, and its cadences and the way it forms its verbs, and all that may actually be the most trenchant way of understanding a national group. The Germans certainly believed that. They were always analyzing language groups. That’s one of the ways they came up with the Aryan idea.

And listening to her speak, I can imagine it on loudspeakers during a Cabaret production. If you didn’t understand German, and you did a production of Cabaret, and you wanted to show the dawning fascism that that play is about, you could put that speech in a street scene and it would work. It has the same self-righteousness, the same ultimacy, the same rigidity, the same urgency, and also this rhetorical or semantic tactic they use constantly: peace and freedom, you know? They take two abstract nouns, you know? Arbeit macht frei. Work makes you free. Peace and freedom.