Menace In Europe Part 10

I'm not sure if anything she said was true. It had the ring of truth-there are lots of women who live that kind of life and believe those kinds of things. While we were chatting, she suddenly reached for her phone. She exclaimed with delight that Till had just sent her a text message. "What does it say?" I asked.

She looked at the display. Her face saddened. "He told me to p.i.s.s off."

A NATION AT WAR WITH ITS FORBIDDEN IMPULSES.

Guitarist Landers, who was holding court in a small office backstage, was more forthcoming than Lindemann. I asked him whether it was true, as rumor had it, that the lead singer was so addled by cocaine addiction that he had been forbidden by the band's management to give interviews. "It's not true," he said peevishly. He wasn't yet in his costume or makeup, and he looked less frightening than he does in his videos-in fact, he looked fussy and middle-aged. His a.s.sistant had warned me that I had fifteen minutes to speak to him, and not one minute more. "We have our politics," Landers said, "and our politics are that Till doesn't do interviews and no exceptions. It's been a very good policy so far. And you have just wasted five minutes."

Well then, Paul, tell me about the song "Amerika." What's that all about?

"The song 'Amerika' is ambivalent, like everything we do. There's no good and bad, there are always two sides to every issue. But it's a fact that America has made itself disliked through its foreign policy over the past few years, and it's very easy living in Europe, being in Europe, to not like America. In general we're not political, as a band, but when America started bombing Iraq we had to say what we thought. For us in Europe, we still don't understand why that happened. The song is about how willingly the world adopts everything that is American, and takes on the American view of life, things, products-buying them and making them their own-and that's why we sing this song. No one is forcing people to consume American things, or to watch Hollywood films. So the song is about how the world willingly adopts American culture and how this occurs. A journalist once asked me if I'm afraid of America, and I said no, not directly of America-I'm more afraid of countries that bow to American power."

And how did he understand Rammstein's role in all of this? "The Germans," he said, "definitely have a problem. Before, it was Deutschland uber alles-Germany above everything. And now Germany is below everything. Rock bottom. Our problem is that we actually think Germany is pretty good. But almost n.o.body thinks that. Everybody's very embarra.s.sed to be German, and there's no German ident.i.ty. Our aim is to help Germany not to be overly patriotic like the Americans, but to be patriotic, and not be ashamed. Every country has its strengths and weaknesses. Some of them have more character, some of them have less character. In my opinion there's a certain type of character that Germans have . . . there's something that Germans have, that no other nationality has. It's hard to describe. It would be a shame if that disappeared." When I asked him what that was, precisely, he told me that Germans made good cars.

"I'm a German too, and like all Germans, we haven't a completely clear conscience. Other people don't do what we do, don't use the images we do, because they're too cowardly. A rock band has to provoke-it's their task, their duty. We love doing it, we love provoking people. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. We love getting attention. We love getting people upset, shocking people-but we think that's good. But it's just fun to do, that's the most important thing. It's the way things have turned out. It's just the way things have happened.

"At first, we thought it was our duty to provoke Germany, to get Germany going in a certain direction. That was at first. But then we realized, it doesn't work that way. It takes time. What we can do is set a certain example. We can show the way. Blaze a trail. But it will take a long time-it will take at least sixty years until things go in that direction. You can't change history, it just doesn't work that way. You see it in Iraq: When you go in, you get into trouble. It just takes time. History takes time. A hundred years."

Or perhaps a thousand.

He wanted to make sure I didn't think his att.i.tude toward America was unbalanced. "There are some good things about America," he stressed. "We're always happy about the naivete of Americans."

The strict a.s.sistant interrupted us. He hustled me off to meet Kruspe-Bernstein, who was waiting in another anteroom. He was already in his makeup, and wearing a costume with a high bat-wing collar. He looked a bit like an escapee from the set of Dracula. Kruspe-Bernstein now lives in New York. Unlike Landers, he was warm and friendly-charming, in fact. His English had improved markedly since the last time we met, and we no longer needed a translator.

"You know," he said, "it's funny, I was reading yesterday about fifty reviews of the last shows, in Germany-and not one of them was any good. Not one. And it's so interesting, I just wonder, because we toured through all of Europe, for the last two months, I guess. And everyone really liked us, they thought we were really good, but coming back to Germany not one person, not one writer, not one journalist likes the show? I mean, come on. There's something weird there. I don't know. . . . I think Germany still has a big problem with us. I can't really figure it out. You know, it's almost like a man who would never admit he likes to go to a bordello or something-but he still goes. It's kind of the same with Rammstein, you know? It's a guilty pleasure. It's weird."

So how did he account for this?

"The biggest problem about Germany is that they have either too much respect for themselves or too less respect for themselves. They never have a balance between, you know? They're still carrying . . . They still suffer from the last war. I kind of represent like, myself, just to friends, you know, like being . . . living in New York City, and getting involved in discussion, like, don't be afraid, no, ja, kind of afraid to say that you are German, you know, and try to have a balance, you know, and try to use the German as kind of humor, you know? That's what we actually do, with Rammstein. But to go back to humor . . . everyone knows that humor's not the biggest strength Germany has. I asked why, what is it that brings humor out? And I came to the conclusion that you have to be confident about yourself to laugh about yourself. And that, coming back to Germany-I think Germans aren't confident about themselves. And Rammstein is something, we can use humor right now, in a way. In quiet confidence.

"I'm not scared of America. I'm not scared at all. I think the most important thing for everyone-whether a human being or a country- is balance. You have to reach balance. And I think America is stepping out of balance. Obviously, we know that it wasn't about Saddam Hussein. It was never about him."

I didn't have time to debate this point, given that the strict a.s.sistant was coming back momentarily. "It must be such a pleasure for you," I said, "after being viewed by the world as the most evil nation in history, for so long, to find that the United States has taken over that role."

He didn't notice my tone. "Oh, yeah," he agreed happily. "Especially the coming-from-the-East part. I mean, that makes it even more special." It's a tough thing, growing up behind that Irony Curtain.

Two things come through very clearly in my conversations with the band: the never-ending guilt of anyone born German, and the growing, peevish disgruntlement that guilt provokes. Rammstein perfectly captures the sentiments of a nation at war with its forbidden impulses, and indeed, when Kruspe-Bernstein surprised himself with his desire to wrestle his own image in the video for "Mein Teil," he happened upon an excellent metaphor for this.

Perhaps the song that best characterizes this att.i.tude is "Los," in which the band taunts its critics: For men who are basically quite stupid, they do come up with some clever puns. The suffix -los means "-less" in English but, when used as an adjective, means "off" or "loose." As a command, Los! means "go." When Lindemann sings "Sie sind gottlos," he pauses dramatically between gott and los. For a moment, it sounds as if he is singing, "You are G.o.d." The song conveys an eerie combination of self-pity and menace. You do hear it-just what you think you hear.

You'll never get rid of us, indeed.

This is an ancient theme in German history, this resentment, this sense that the German nation does not occupy its proper place, that the German people have been unjustly oppressed. Historically, it is nothing new to see these sentiments coupled with outrage that those goofy Americans should by contrast be so powerful. We see this resentment in the Wilhelminian Germany's obsession with its encirclement prior to the First World War. Hitler skillfully exploited the same resentment in his rise to power.

The scariest thing about these men is that plainly they have not learned a thing from history. They're just p.i.s.sed off that it's oppressing them.

A LITTLE GAME.

Let's play a little game. Read the following and decide: Rammstein or Goebbels? The answers are in the footnotes.

We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an arrogant manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons. . . . [T]his degree of arrogance gets on one's nerves.42 We therefore have no appreciation for the Americanism that can be found in certain of our circles. We fail to see why we as the leading musical nation in the world should borrow even a single note from the U.S.A.43 One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naivete or a superiority complex.44 It is time to recommend peace and good sense. American public opinion is going the wrong way. It would benefit by returning to the old, tested practices of international courtesy and good manners. . . . We do not expect our appeal to have a great impact on American att.i.tudes. Still, we think it our duty to speak plainly.45 In the past, the Germans have come up with very good ideas, but then they've left Germany and gone, for example, to the States, and actually realized their ideas there-and it's a shame, because it was lost. # Seeking fortunes in America led to Germany losing people, and the American continent received many people whose contributions are particularly clear.## In any event, the reader will see that it's not difficult to distinguish between Rammstein and Goebbels. Goebbels was more articulate.

THAT IS NOT A LOVE SONG.

Strict a.s.sistant bustled in to take me to the wings of the auditorium, where stagehands were preparing the explosives. The evening's schedule, taped to the wall, could have doubled as a battle plan: For the song "Du Hast"-"You Hate"-there would be "Gas/Lyco/Comets/Grid Rockets/Mortar Hits," and for the encores, "Airbursts," "Flames," and the ominous-sounding "Concussion Boat." The band, their stage manager told me, often had problems getting the legal approval they needed for their pyrotechnics in Germany. By comparison, American authorities were easygoing. "In America, they say, 'Okay, you have a fifteenfoot line from the audience. So whatever you do on stage, you have to keep that distance from the audience. And if you do it behind that line, you'll be fine.' And that's it."

I nodded enthusiastically. "Land of the free, man, I'm telling you."

His face fell. "Well. I have my personal opinion about that."

The warm-up act began precisely on time. The dreadlocked lead singer of Exilia, author of the loudest and ugliest sounds ever produced by human agency, shrieked down the microphone and banged her head spastically up and down for nearly an hour. Earlier, backstage, I had seen her walking down the hall with her dog. The miserable beast had dreadlocks, too.

The audience seemed to want to like Exilia (renamed Ex-Lax by the press contingent); they pumped their fists in the air politely and made the heavy metal sign-a gesture that in southern Italy would mean, "You've been cuckolded"-but in the end couldn't conceal their boredom. The woman on a dog leash, whom I had seen earlier outside, crouched by the speakers and picked lint from her leather corset.

Exilia left the stage and the audience rumbled restlessly. Finally, the lights dimmed. A man beside me pulled out a pack of cigarettes, ripped off the filters, and stuffed them in his ears. Then "Reise, Reise" began. A jolt of electricity pa.s.sed through the crowd. A huge curtain dropped, revealing a row of ma.s.sive Potemkin amplifiers, flas.h.i.+ng with the band's insignia. The guitarists descended like G.o.ds from the ceiling by means of some kind of levered contraption. Suddenly, the auditory a.s.sault began: It was so fearsome that even the hardest-core fans appeared momentarily stunned. It was not, however, merely loud: It was thrilling. Rammstein is popular for a reason.

Dressed in an imperial German military uniform, Lindemann materialized on stage. The audience was mesmerized by him, and understandably so-he gave off an air of such brute masculinity and barely contained violence that it would have surprised no one had he reached into the crowd, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a fan, and bitten off his head. When he began to sing, the audience, enthralled, began pumping their fists in the air. Dog-Leash Woman began to writhe and snake on the ground.

The band then introduced "Links." "Links-Zwo-Drei-Vier!" "Links-Zwo-Drei-Vier!" The keyboardist stomped about in a German military helmet. Mr. Lindemann performed an exaggerated goose step. The crowd shouted Hi! in unison. The musicians, wearing flamethrowing gas masks, sprayed fire-seemingly from their eyeb.a.l.l.s-over the stage. They burst explosives in the air and shot b.a.l.l.s of flames over the audience, generating heat so intense that fans began to pa.s.s out. Medics strapped the fallen Germans to gurneys and carted them away. The crowd was vitalized, as if they could easily be persuaded to channel their furious energy toward a target, and when, later, the band sang their hit "Amerika," it seemed quite clear what the target of preference would be. I looked uneasily for the routes to the exits, because that's definitely not a love song.

NOT EUROPEAN-GERMAN.

Whether their songs are about love or war, and whether they are on the Left or the Right, one thing is sure: Rammstein's music is German. Not European, German. A sensibility has been pa.s.sed, from generation to generation to generation. The Danes don't make music like this, and neither do the Portuguese. Nor do the Irish, the Macedonians, or the Belgians. This music couldn't have its mesmerizing power in any language but German. Rammstein refuses to sing in English. As keyboardist Lorenz correctly observes, "The German language is very suited to our musical style." To confirm this point, imagine Rammstein's lyrics sung in French. For particular hilarity, imagine them sung by Maurice Chevalier.

It has often been remarked that people reveal their souls in the music they create, and that a nation's music bears a relations.h.i.+p to its social, moral, and political life. Plato devotes considerable attention to this subject in the Republic. "Music," he writes, "is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue." Later, he cautions that "the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political inst.i.tutions." His views are echoed by Aristotle, Rousseau, and Nietzsche, all of whom acknowledge the unique capacity of music to stir human emotions, for good or ill. Napoleon urged legislators to give music the greatest encouragement, for, he noted, it had of all the arts the most influence on the pa.s.sions.

Has Rammstein had any influence on the German body politic? It's hard to say. Rammstein certainly returned the aesthetic of the Right to the German pop culture mainstream, and Rammstein's vaulting commercial success has inspired scores of imitators. Last September, the strong showing of far-Right and neo-n.a.z.i parties in Germany's regional elections, particularly in the formerly Communist East, sent a chill through Europe. Did the cultural transformation a.s.sociated with Rammstein's "Neue deutsche Harte"-the new German hardness- help these parties return to the mainstream? Who knows? It probably didn't hurt.

Nowhere has the close relations.h.i.+p between music and the soul been more evident than in Germany. The barbarians of Germania, Gibbon noted, were fascinated by music.17 Nietzsche remarked that the German imagines even G.o.d singing songs. The German, Wagner observed, far from looking upon the practice of music as an empty entertainment, religiously approaches it "as the holiest precinct in his life. He accordingly becomes a fanatic, and this devout and fervent Schwarmerei, with which he conceives and executes his music, is the chief characteristic of German Music."18 Fanaticism: That, too, is a German quality. This is a traditional observation about Germans, one that has been made by Einstein, among others: No matter what the pursuit, Germans will take it to extremes. German music is unique because it is taken to extremes, and because it inspires the listener to go to extremes. In this regard, too, Rammstein is nothing new. The hero of A Clockwork Orange listened to Beethoven. It certainly wasn't Puccini who got him in the mood for a bit of the old ultraviolence. The killers at Columbine loved Rammstein. According to Russian authorities, the murderers at Beslan were listening to Rammstein during the school siege. It is doubtful that they understood the lyrics, but they certainly understood the message. Why is it that they found themselves inspired by German, not Chechen, music? What is it about the German musical tradition that has this force?

I am not sure. But at the extreme, it is clear, music becomes a form of exhortation, one that quickly leads to action. And this raises an interesting question: Was Plato right?

DOESN'T EVERY FAMILY HAVE ONE LIKE THAT?

According to the Laeken Declaration, issued in late 2001 by the European Council, the unification of Europe is near. "At long last," the doc.u.ment reads, "Europe is on its way to becoming one big family." Cheerful news. And this brotherhood is all very touching, considering that it replaces century upon century of unmitigated slaughter and butchery among the European peoples, a tradition of virtually uninterrupted warfare since the sack of Rome. Brotherhood, at last, after the Visigoth Raids, the Saxon Raids, the Vandal Raids, the Hun Raids, Theodoric's War with Odoacer, the Frankish-Alemmanic War, the Burgundian-Frankish War, the Visogothic-Frankish War, the Gothic War, Aelthelfrit's Wars, the Byzantine-Avarian War, Oswald's War, the Anglian-Picktish War, the Siege of Constantinople, the First Frankish-Moorish War, the First Iconoclastic War, the Battle of Tours, Aelthelbald's Wars, the Second Frankish-Moorish War, the Bulgarian-Byzantine War, Offa's Wars, the Carolingian Wars, the Frankish-Avarian War, the Second Iconoclastic War, the Viking Raids, the Magyar Raids, the Bulgarian-Byzantine War, the Franco-German War, the Spanish Christian-Muslim War, Ardoin's War, the Conquests of Vladimir, the Norman Conquest, William's Invasion of Normandy, the Norman-Byzantine War, the Holy Roman Empire's War with the Papacy, Almorovid's Conquest of Spain, the Second Norman-Byzantine War, the Aragonese-Castilian War, the Anglo-French Wars, the First Portuguese-Castilian War, the Hungarian-Venetian War, the Wars of the Lombard League, the Aragonese-French War, the Anglo-Scottish War, the Danish-Estonian War, the Teutonic Knights' Conquest of Prussia, the Norwegian invasion of Scotland, the Bohemian-Hungarian War, the Hapsburg-Bohemian War, the Aragonese-French War, the next Anglo-French War, the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the Teutonic Knights' War against Poland, the Florentine Wars against Pisa, the Burgundian-Swiss War, the Hundred Years War, the Hungarian-Venetian War, the First and Second Danish Wars against the Hanseatic League, the next Portuguese-Castilian War, the Conquests of Tamerlane, the War of the Eight Saints, the Austro-Swiss War, the Albanian-Turkish War, the Austro-Turkish Wars, the Livonian War, the Eighty Years War, the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Hapsburg Brothers' War, the Thirty Years War, the Franco-Spanish War, the Anglo-Spanish War, the Spanish-Portuguese War, the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions, the Wars of the Vendee, the Napoleonic Wars, the Peninsular Wars, the First and Second Turko-Montenegrin Wars, the Danish-Prussian Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the Serbo-Turkish War, the Serbo-Bulgarian War, the Greco-Turkish War, the Second Balkan War, the First World War, the Second World War, and the most recent Balkan Wars. These are only the first few wars that come to mind; I have probably forgotten rather a number. By way of contrast, the United States has fought one war against itself. To give Europe as fair a shake as possible, I have not included in this list such events as the Crusades or the Mongol Invasions, which were not, strictly speaking, domestics, as the cops call family disputes, nor have I listed the equally interminable catalogue of civil wars in European states and proto-states, national insurrections, revolutions, and wars of independence or separatism. Nor have I noted the b.l.o.o.d.y conflicts between the European peoples and their neighbors to the east and south, some of whom are now agitating to be adopted into Europe's newly united, close-knit family. I stress that these were wars, not soccer matches.

But for the sake of argument, let's accept the a.s.sumption. E Pluribus Unum! Thank goodness Europe is a family now: That certainly was a spell of unpleasantness. One feels such the spoilsport in pointing out that certain members of this new European fraternity- the ones who have always been a little wrong in the head, if you get my drift-seem to retain rather a bizarre preoccupation with the smell of burning flesh, the coagulation of blood on the asphalt, and the sound of screaming mothers. How churlish one would have to be to point out that they are still gibbering dementedly about the horniness they feel when you scream in fear, red welts oozing from your skin. And surely, this preoccupation with the enlightenment of white flesh, with doomsday, with destruction, with mercilessly breaking you apart like little sticks-it would be unbrotherly to find that odd? He asks where all the dead are coming from, whether you want to perish in skin and hair; he says that love is war and he tells you to run; he warns that there is no escape and no one to save you; you might plead for mercy but none will be given; he kneels in your face and sticks fingers in the ashes; his father, he admits, was exactly like him. But what can you do. He's family. Doesn't every family have one like that?

"I think it's really nice when the countries are also proud of their traditions," said Lorenz.

THAT'S RIGHT, THE n.a.z.i MANNER.

I certainly think it is possible that the members of Rammstein believe their own party line: they do not see themselves as n.a.z.is; they hold themselves to be harmless musical herbivores. No member of the band, from what I can tell, is personally genocidal, an enemy of the Jews, or a particular partisan of the Aryan Nation. There is something all the more frightening about the fact that they do not consciously recognize what they're doing: It suggests that this stuff comes out of them by sheer instinct.

But that's not even the point. Whether or not the members of Rammstein properly adhere to the core principles of the n.a.z.i Weltanschauung is irrelevant. Recall Hugo Ringler's essay about speaking to the heart: "In a thousand ways it was proved true that often it was not so much the contents of the speech as it was the manner in which it was delivered that influenced the listener and won him to us." Rammstein certainly knows how to deliver their message in a manner that influences the listener to open his wallet. As Lorenz puts it, "We can deliver whatever we like, and they'll play it. When no one knows you, they say it's glorifying violence and not suitable for broadcasting, but when you hit the charts, it doesn't count anymore. Then you can make what you want anyhow, and they'll play it." 19 In contemporary Germany, it so happens that the manner of delivery that best influences the listener is very much like the n.a.z.i manner.

That's right. The n.a.z.i manner. The manner of Old Europe, as Donald Rumsfeld might have it. We can speak frankly among ourselves now. They look like a duck, they quack like a duck. Just go down the checklist. The color: black. The material: leather. The seduction: beauty. The justification: honesty. The aim: ecstasy. The fantasy: death.20 Check, check, check. And they dominate German popular culture. It is the Germans who are fascinated by Rammstein, who are gobbling up this virtually undisguised Third Reich revivalism, devouring it as if they've been starved for years. But that's not Germany, you say? It's just a handful of jackbooted Teutonic nihilists who happen to be German? Then who bought all those alb.u.ms? It wasn't the Liverpudlians, that's for sure. They just wanna hold your hand.

That the German people, the bourgeois German establishment, after all that has happened, after all they have learned, could usher Rammstein's every alb.u.m to the height of the German charts, could feature them nightly on mainstream German television, award them their most enthusiastic accolades while simultaneously, earnestly, denying the patently obvious-that Rammstein is the living embodiment of the aesthetic of the Third Reich, the living embodiment of the Third Reich's vocabulary, dramaturgy, propaganda, mythology, occultism, death-wors.h.i.+p, bloodthirstiness, ferocity, nihilism, power l.u.s.t, and outrageous sadism-only once again proves. .h.i.tler's claim: People are unusually susceptible to the Big Lie.

THE PERSISTENCE OF NATIONAL PERSONALITY.

Now, I am not arguing that Rammstein's popularity evidences a fullthroated recrudescence of n.a.z.ism in Germany, nor that German democratic inst.i.tutions are under immediate threat. I agree with Jeffrey Gedmin about that. I am arguing that culturally the Germans are unlike any other nation in history; this is equally true of the French, the British, the Spanish, and the Greeks. And I note that never in history have mature, fully formed nation-states of such cultural disparity united to form an effective and coherent single actor-not economically, not politically, not in foreign affairs-for more than a few decades. Indeed, the overwhelming tendency of states cobbled together from diverse ethnic groups is to disintegrate, swiftly and violently. The immigrants tend to get killed when this happens. In this regard, one can only read with deep unease such editorials in German newspapers as one written by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, a leading German historian, about "das Turkenproblem."21 Perhaps Rammstein is a group of refulgent n.a.z.is in the truest and most sinister sense of the word, or perhaps they're clowns, guilty of nothing more than outrageous blindness to their own appearance. Perhaps they're somewhere in between. That's not the point. The point is that Germany loves them. The point is the persistence of a German national personality so distinctive, so historically continuous, that it is risible to imagine these people as the brothers of the French or the sisters of the Belgians or the cousins of the British.

The European Union is a marriage of convenience; the acceptance of ma.s.sive immigration a matter of economic necessity. A salad of nations and peoples is now tossed together because the arrangement is politically and economically imperative, however grimly distasteful they find one another, however unsuited their temperaments, however grossly they have betrayed one another in the past. Now, I am certainly not opposed to the unification of the European people, nor to their cheerful acceptance of a flood of immigrants from faraway lands of which they know nothing. It would be glorious if brotherhood among men were at last to prevail upon this tormented and schismatic continent.

I am simply listening to Rammstein and thinking: Don't bet on it.

CHAPTER 9.

TO h.e.l.l WITH EUROPE.

SEEN ON A PARIS SIDEWALK in late May 2005, shortly before the French vote non to the European const.i.tution: A shady-looking character runs up the street. Suddenly a waiter from one of the cafes comes running up behind him, yelling at him to stop, then charges into him, knocking him to the ground with a dreadful clatter. The waiter straddles him and begins slapping his face, calling him a filthy thief. A police motorcycle roars up. Off hops a cop who cannot be more than twenty-five. He interposes himself between the thief and the waiter, and then, with his finger in the air, begins a lecture. Never raising his voice, he tells the infuriated waiter that no matter what the thief might have stolen-some customer's wallet, it seems-he has no right to settle matters privately. He outlines the procedure for filing a civil or criminal complaint.

Then he says, slowly and quite distinctly, "In France, we have the law."

As these words rolled over the waiter-they were repeated several times-his face registered first embarra.s.sment, then unease, and then what was unmistakably a deep sense of shame. In France, we have the law. Not There are laws against that, buddy, as a New York cop would have said, but We have the law in France, almost as if, as the representative of the state, he was addressing the untamed and violent aspect of the human heart itself. And then, with the thief in custody, the policeman adjusted his sungla.s.ses, gunned his motorcycle, and was off.

Things to note: The we in his declaration-that is, we, the French, not we, the Europeans. The appeal to the law: This easily mocked people with their pa.s.sion for abstractions really does take some things seriously. The shame registered on the waiter's face as he realized that in some very concrete way, he had violated a social contract to which he himself had given his allegiance.

Contrary to the a.s.surances of its politicians, France's core national values were under threat by the prospect of a unified Europe. Anyone in doubt of this should try doing what I did as the vote on the const.i.tution took place: Move from Paris to Istanbul. From this vantage point, one sees immediately that the idea of integrating Turkey into the EU has always been ludicrous. It can be established at a glance: Turkey is not Europe, and it is certainly not France. I do not say this merely because the phones, electricity, Internet, refrigerator, stove, hot water, and front door lock failed on me, serially, upon my arrival. I say this because of course the working-cla.s.s Turks to whom I've spoken want to become part of the predicted flood of cheap, unskilled, Islamic labor that would completely destabilize the economies and delicately balanced social orders of the northern European welfare states-if Europe and its periphery were to be glued together and all its borders thrown open, that is.

Istanbul is an extraordinary place. It is utterly alive-an exuberant, thriving, tolerant Islamic city, living proof that it is not just politically correct cant to say that Islam and modernity are compatible. But as for having the law in Turkey, no, I don't think so. Why has my electricity been unreliable since I arrived? Because everyone in my neighborhood-the supposedly European neighborhood, I might add-is stealing it, causing blackouts.

It is fascinating to see that supposedly thoughtful politicians have seriously been considering the idea that France and Turkey might within our lifetimes be merged into one harmonious national ent.i.ty. It is an indicator of the level of magical thinking and delusion that has accompanied the EU dream. But deep down, the ordinary Frenchman doesn't believe that in Eastern Europe, or Turkey, they have the law. They do not much trust that the Germans and the British have their interests at heart. Given European history-and given what I see around me-I can't say I blame them.

The pro-Europe talking heads on French television were busy, in the weeks following the referendum, poking fun at French fears of the so-called proverbial Polish plumber. How they could argue that he was only proverbial is beyond me. If you want to test the theory, try living in an apartment in Paris that needs repainting. Get estimates. The Polish workmen will-literally-ask for ten times less than the French workmen. They will not ask for social security or health insurance either.

If I were a French housepainter or plumber, I, too, would have voted non.

Sooner or later, of course, France will have to come to terms with reality: Its extensive social welfare system, its thirty-five-hour work-week, and its highly regulated economy cannot be sustained indefinitely. But many of the concerns that drove French voters to reject the European const.i.tution make perfect sense. French politicians may have delivered enthusiastic encomiums to European unity for the past half-century, but it seems that the French people do indeed cherish their sovereignty-particularly their protected national labor markets, as many have observed, but also their distinct cultural ident.i.ty, their legal and educational traditions, and their social stability.

In all the millions of words written in opinion pieces in France, uttered by television pundits, and spoken by politicians following the referendum, no one said the most plain and obvious ones: To h.e.l.l with Europe. That's right, to h.e.l.l with Europe-to h.e.l.l with integration; to h.e.l.l with the superstate; to h.e.l.l with playing a role like that of the United States on the international stage; to h.e.l.l with liking the Germans; to h.e.l.l with putting up with the English; to h.e.l.l with the Poles; to h.e.l.l with the Turks; to h.e.l.l with them all. No one has said, "It's a nutty idea. It will never work. It would put us in contact with people we've hated for thousands of years." Intellectuals and public figures in France, from left to right, explained their votes by first expressing boundless devotion to the ideal of Europe itself: The vote against the const.i.tution, they said, reflected only a tactical readjustment in the great vision. The fantasy of Europe has adopted so prominent a role in the consciousness of French intellectuals that no one will speak plainly of it. No one is prepared to express what the majority of French voters really feel.

But ask a French taxi driver. You'll hear it. To h.e.l.l with Europe.

According to those dismayed by the outcome of the referendum, the no vote represented a mix of incoherent sentiments, chiefly a frustration with structural unemployment, a rejection of market reforms, and a widespread loathing of the Chirac government. All real, these issues. But unemployment in France is a structural problem of very long standing. It would be a problem whether or not the French voted for the const.i.tution. Chirac? Everyone has always disliked him. The one thing the vote did surely express, with perfect clarity, was the unwillingness of the French to cede any more of their national ident.i.ty to the fantasy of a unified Europe.

It is an old fantasy, of course. The great peace of Innocent III was the expression of just such a fantasy: the notion that the Catholic Church was finally in a position to introduce the City of G.o.d into the fractious European political arena. That attempt lasted no more than a generation. Why should this one last longer? No effort to unify Europe has ever succeeded. Most have ended in blood.

What no one in the French elite is prepared to say, but what the French electorate has said clearly, is that the European Union is historically nuts. It does not reflect the will of a single nation-state, or the will of an empire, based on the ability of a central political ent.i.ty to dominate its periphery, or some form of established European national ident.i.ty with deep historic roots. Even the Austro-Hungarian Empire had in Austrian power-diminished though it was after 1866-a stable and powerful center. All of European history-all of world history- argues against a federation with no force to back it up and no way to impose its will on member states. The French voters recognized this, as did the Dutch, who voted nee several days later.

The EU is, in effect, an empty empire. The only national ident.i.ties up for grabs are the old national ident.i.ties of the chief nation-states of Europe. And no matter how much the EU bureaucrats try to promote a French ident.i.ty into a European ident.i.ty, what do you know? The people just aren't buying it.

THE THIN VENEER OF GAITY.