A Gym Full of Dummies

Eighty years ago, World War Two ended. To some, the heroes who brought freedom and democracy to Western Europe are the real villains.

The assumption is very simple. If you have a gym full of admirers, you can tell them anything and they will think it’s just grand.

Demagogues travel light. They enter the stage with the ease of an experienced orator, used to lulling a salivating public into submission.

Eugen Drewermann, celebrated theologian to some, but defrocked by the Church, goes around giving hate speeches against the Americans who liberated his homeland when he was a still a child.

The hate in his rhetoric does not match his professed theology. Professor Drewermann is fond of quoting the Sermon on the Mount, but then tramples on the very message of Jesus by spewing nothing but venom against the villains of the 20^th century: the U.S. and NATO.

To be sure, U.S. imperialism is real, and it’s not pretty. The list of Americans trespassing on foreign soil is long and the atrocities committed in the name of shoring up state prerogatives are enough to turn your stomach.

But Drewermann can go on for more than an hour about the failures of U.S. foreign policy but not bat an eyelid about Russian imperial ambitions. In fact, he simply does not mention them, assuming that his audience is ignorant enough to buy his lopsided message.

His speech is disappointing. He quietly assumes that his audience is unaware of context or ignorant about political and military history. He mourns the loss of life on the Russian side, but fails to mention Ukrainian suffering, the enormous toll on civilian life, the torture basements, or the rape of countless women in Russian occupied Ukrainian territory.

Informed listeners are left to wonder: Is Drewermann now a follower of Patriarch Kyrill? Has he, the once renowned German theologian, in deference to Moscow subordinated the Gospel of Matthew to the dictates of Russkyi Mir?

To the great surprise of informed listeners, Drewermann proclaims Russia to be a peace loving country. He mentions Tolstoy, but neglects to point out that the great Russian writer was adamantly opposed to Russian imperialism.

In a hail of rhetorical arrows Drewermann submits his audience to an endless list of U.S. military hardware, as if that were to prove anything. As for Russian equipment, he is silent, not even the AK-47 makes his list.

But to what end? What does that all have to do with promoting peace? The truth is, we must conclude: Nothing. It is rather meant to excite and impress his audience. On that score, however, Drewermann fails completely. His cynical use of trivia does not suggest competence but manipulation.

In Europe, World War Two ended eighty years ago. Yesterday, May 8^th, church services were held in many countries of Western Europe to commemorate those who perished. Today, May 9^th, there will be a military parade in Moscow. So much for Drewermann and his “peace loving” Russia.

In the end, I leave the gym feeling disappointed. For decades I had been wanting to hear Drewermann, but all I got was an angry old man.