Blood and Soil/ Blut und Boden ½*

Late last summer I did private language lessons with a student. He’s a legitimate genius. To add insult to injury, he’s kind additionally cursed with good looks, commanding stature, and an inhuman magnetism. This combination will continue to allow him to climb the ranks of his career at an astronomical speed.

When things started getting ugly on the campaign trail, I explained words and idioms that he heard at the water cooler. Dumpster Fire. Basket of Deplorables. MRA. Birther.

And here? Nothing! For the African Americans, you turn on the news and hear white people calling them that n word and it is okay. There is still the holiday for Chris Columbus? How is this possible? Growing up you hear that America is for equality and opportunity. Then I come, and I see it is

He looks down at his notes

              A big dumpster fire. Yes?

I nod.

              He cannot win to be president, can he? You think he can? No.

---------                                             (this was almost exactly a year ago.)

              But… I don’t understand this place.

He did a few loud breaths and shook his head. He told me that it was illegal in Germany to so much as mockingly do the nazi-salute. He explained the variety of laws against any public expression of (my words, not his) physical or visual rhetoric of nazism.

I tell him that I had no idea! I tell him that I wish we had laws like that here—in any way. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to live in a country that takes its past wrongs that seriously.

I can’t even do it here in this room to show you, Darcy. It feels so wrong. From when we are in kinder we get in bad trouble if we do. I simply don’t understand how there are all these people here in America that can and there is no shame, let alone it is legal. What the fuck?

He explained "Blud und Boden"—it was the first time I heard the phrase.

This was one of Nazi ideas. Kind of like a slogan to shout. Or idiom maybe? Blut und Boden. Blood and Soil. Soil is country, and Boden is the idea of the country, the.... homeland? 

Motherland?

              Yes. We call it that, Muterland. Or Vaterland. Like Star Wars.

We laugh.

             The Blood is like family history, and also what you have to do to keep it. It, this "blut und                    boden"—

In English!

Okay, it was blood and soil, okay?, that was the idea behind the guy, I don’t even want to say his name, invading Europe and trying to take the world. It goes to before him. They even had these terrible, terrible paintings with the name

Blood and Soil?

              Yes, “Blahd and Soyelle,” (winks). They were so bad, but they were the high kunst.

English! (I was required to always prompt in English).

Yes, yes, ahhrrrt. The art. But we know this history in Germany and that is why we have laws against it. Not the art in specifically, but you cannot do anything Nazi. It’s the worst, no one would do it because it is so wrong. It is so hard to explain because it is so simple. You know?

I know. I know….

Today the U.N. condems POTUS (but not really by name) for refusing to call it what it is. “Failure at the highest political level.”

I think about the day that guy taught me that phrase. Don’t tell me soil isn’t political.  It’s part of the semiotics central to foundational nazi ideation systems. Words matter. ITMFA. 

*This blog has no kundst, it usually does, but not today. More on that in 2/2.