BERLIN ¨C In recent weeks, bizarre political controversies have dominated the American and German media. The United States is still debating President Donald Trump¡¯s equivocating response to violence committed by white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia. And Germans have been responding to an essay published by Deputy Finance Minister Jens Spahn, in which he complains that English-speaking hipsters in Berlin are eroding German national identity.
These debates shed light on how history and national identity inform each country¡¯s politics. In Charlottesville, 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people. He and many other white supremacists were in Charlottesville to protest a decision by the city to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. When they were met by counter-demonstrators, some responded with violence.
Clearly, the politics of cultural identity has eclipsed that of socioeconomic class in the U.S. By defending contested monuments and asserting that ¡°both sides¡± were to blame in the Charlottesville tragedy, Trump is signaling his predominantly white support base that he will fight for their rights as a ¡°threatened majority.¡± His campaign promise to ¡°make America great again¡± was, after all, always code for opposition to an increasingly multiethnic America.
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