A case study of the ties binding Europe’s most iconographic racisms. On Bundesbank executive Thilo Sarrazin, for France 24.

If Germany has a city of equal significance to Detroit, it’s Stuttgart. The birthplace of the country’s auto industry, it also hosts one of Germany’s biggest migrant communities, with one estimate rising as high as 39 percent of the overall population. The local Turkish community is particularly visible.

Also home to Jennifer’s firm, we’ve set up shop in a tiny studio apartment near her office until our new place is finished being refurbished.  In the western part of Stuttgart, we’ve been surprised by incredible Sri Lankan and southern European food, as it surpasses most of what we’ve eaten in Berlin.

More than just cargo. Turkish freight forwarder, Neukölln, early June.

Always tell them to get off at Marx. Our new apartment is a block away.

What’s the difference between a caricature and the real thing? This is the question I always ask myself whenever I hear complaints about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indulging his anti-Jewish reflexes. This is not to deny the fact that the Iranian president’s statements are prejudiced and wrong. They should be condemned. My question is whether they have any ideological purchase.

Considering the nature of his statements, it’s easy to understand why German leftists would use his figure to combat Judeophobia. Prone to problematizing the Shoah, Ahmadinejad’s declarations parallel those of Holocaust revisionists. Similarly, his criticisms of Israel have an all-too familiar aura of scapegoating about them. Criticizing him this way illuminates both concerns.

The problem is that Ahmadinejad is Iranian. How useful can he really be, as a foil, to discourage discrimination against Jews, in Germany, instead of Iran? Doesn’t the contribution of German forces to NATO’s war effort in Afghanistan problematize such expressions of anti-racism? What about Israeli rightists, for whom the Nazi comparison serves different political requirements?

The responsibility for this situation is shared. Ahmadinejad has no difficulty reconciling the language of European anti-Semitism with anti-imperialism. It’s easy to misconstrue. Germans who emphasize his racism, without considering its significance, unnecessarily complicate their struggle against Judeophobia, by suggesting European and Iranian anti-Semitism are the same.

Photo: Lamp post sticker, west Stuttgart, July 30th.

“In the old days, they’d paint a Magen David on your door.” So remarked my father, when I told him of the symbol scrawled at the entrance to our building.

Black bloc to the rescue. Circle A detournement, twenty-four hours later.

The final solution, so to speak. In my view, a different shade of white would do.

I pass this apartment building whenever I take Pixel and Raster out for a walk. Recently constructed, it is flanked by beautiful old buildings that were most likely built in the early twentieth century. The graffiti is relatively new.

Shooting this photo yesterday, for once I became complicit, (albeit, by accident) with my subject matter, when the dogs decided to urinate on the building. Unfortunately, they relieved themselves outside the scope of the frame.

Near Frankfurter Allee, July 27th.

At least they weren’t thinking of recycling. Boxhagenerplatz, Berlin, 9/7.

Nationalism can only be criticized in English. Warschauer Straße, early July.

Memory is a powerful thing. Friedrichshain squat, Berlin, 18/7.

Northern Bavaria is not known for its anti-occupation politics. Highway rest stop, Frankenwald area, 18/6.

Berlin is full of flags. Cafe Szimpla, Friedrichshain, 17/6.

“Never again,” was a phrase that lost its meaning for me as a child. Forever linked to then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin (it was his signature phrase) in reference to the Shoah, it eventually lost its meaning for me during the siege of Beirut, in 1982.

This is not to compare the events, because they couldn’t have been more different. Nonetheless, I was old enough to discern the discrepancies between the significance of this slogan, and the events that unfolded five years later, under Begin’s own watch.

Obviously, the late Israeli leader was troubled, not just by the past, but how it intersected with his present. As though to compare, it took 28 years for me to feel moved by the statement again. As far away as 1982 seems, the distance couldn’t feel shorter.