Of Good and Bad Tyrants

The arrest warrant against Netanyahu exposes Germany’s hypocrisy regarding international law.
Why capitalist states do not care how a country behaves internally and externally, as long as their interests are not threatened, and with which other tyrants the Federal Republic of Germany has already cozyed up.

Reminder: The words marked in red are links to corresponding critique articles.
Additionally, we recommend the following articles on The Topic Palestine:
– “Resistance and Terror” – Which war is just? Which armed actions are terrorism, and which are acts of resistance?
– “Before October 7” – What happened before October 7 and why the attack certainly did not come out of nowhere.
– “Contradiction: Resistance Suppression” – This war cannot serve to eradicate Hamas because it makes Hamas more popular than ever.
– “The Role of Sexualized Violence” – Sexualized violence in Israeli prisons, and its purpose.

---

It is official: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the main judicial body of the United Nations, is seeking Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes of starvation as a means of warfare and intentional incitement to attack the civilian population” and “crimes against humanity through murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

With this, Netanyahu becomes the third sitting head of state in the history of the ICJ against whom such proceedings have been initiated.
The last was notably Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023, before him only Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in March 2009.

Both the arrest warrant against Putin and the one against al-Bashir were decisively supported by the Western world, specifically Germany.
For the German Foreign Minister, the arrest warrant against Putin has “clearly demonstrated that international criminal law works” — “Peace through law. That is the strength with which the international community counters the brutal Russian war of aggression.”

And now? Does international criminal law work?
Well, with Bibi Netanyahu (that’s what friends call him), “an entry ban for Netanyahu to the European Union (…) is a hypothetical question (…) we will now examine carefully how we will deal with it.“
The next leaders of the Union rely on the state raison d’être:
“<em)Attacking a democratic head of government defending his country attacked by terror and the right to exist of Israel to such an extent is an unimaginable derangement (and a) groundless stupidity”

The reaction of the representatives of state raison d’être to the arrest warrant against Netanyahu exposes the hypocrisy in attitudes towards international law.

Good Tyrants

Of course, Germany does not care who, how or where war crimes are committed, as long as these war crimes do not go against the interests the state pursues.
Every starving child in Gaza continues to serve the interests of Germany, maintaining relations with Israel as a representative of its interests in the Middle East.
The characterization of a state as a “rogue state” or ally by the rulers is solely based on its relationship to the interests of the capitalist interests at home.
The creation of popular consent for supporting or fighting a state is necessary to prevent the contradiction between what the state does and what the people want from escalating.

There are numerous historical examples:
The Chilean dictator and torturer Pinochet was seen as a hero by the West for fighting the democratically elected socialist Allende – even the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Joseph Strauß visited one of his many torture villages (Colonia Dignidad).
Cuba’s dictator and executioner Fulgencio Batista was still able to enjoy a Federal Cross of Merit a year before the Cuban Revolution — the same Federal Cross of Merit that a few years earlier had been awarded to Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, because he had also overthrown the socialists Mossadegh with American help (Operation Ajax).
Speaking of high orders of the Federal Republic: Hitler supporter and head of state of Brazil Vargas, Romania’s Ceaușescu, and the de-facto slave-holding terror ruler Hector B. Trujillo Molina of the Dominican Republic all enjoyed special degrees of the Grand Cross of the FRG – Germany loves “rogue states” as long as they play on our side.

In general, the idea that a country’s internal and external behavior influences the relationship Germany or other bourgeois states have with it is merely a tool to bring the population into agreement with the foreign policy of a state.

Bad Tyrants

Germany is not involved in the War in Ukraine because of the “unlawful invasion of Ukraine” by Putin, which would morally obligate Germany, as the rulers like to claim, but because Germany, together with its allies, defends its own interests in Ukraine.
The violation of international law was not an issue when Germany bombed Yugoslavia, breaching this very law — again under the pretext of atrocities committed by Serbian President Milošević, which were used as justification for the war.
Today, Kosovo is a stationary aircraft carrier of Western capitalist interests in the region, and the 6,000 civilian victims of NATO airstrikes have served their purpose.

Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, João Goulart of Brazil, Sukarno of Indonesia, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela (almost!), Mohammad Najibullah of Afghanistan — and so on, this list could go on for pages.
These leaders, and many more, were seen as tyrants by Germany and the Western alliance, regardless of their actual reputation within their countries, and were either overthrown or murdered through Western intervention or subversion.
What unites them all is that each sought to nationalize resources, turn away from American hegemony, or become financially independent from the West.

The first President of Indonesia, Achmed Sukarno, who governed his country between 1945 and 1967 with great popularity based on the principle of Nasakom (“Nationalism, Religion, Communism”), started acting against the interests of the Western bloc at least from 1955 by initiating the Anti-Imperialist Movement of the Non-Aligned States, which led to the US-backed coup against his government in 1967, with General Suharto.
During the coup and subsequent years, the US-funded military murdered between one and three million communists, unionists, intellectuals, and others associated with anti-imperialism.
The Indonesian genocide also targeted the Chinese minority, exploiting existing resentments against Chinese-Indonesians for anti-communist purposes.
The Federal Republic of Germany directly funded the media campaign that prepared the genocide atmosphere in Indonesia — “A key role is said to have been played by Indonesian Brigade General and intelligence officer Achmed Sukendro, whom the then German ambassador in Jakarta praised as “one of the most capable and energetic anti-communists”“

Suharto was thus a good tyrant, just as Netanyahu is a good tyrant.
International law is a nice thing to cite to strengthen war morality among the population.
The mobilization against Russia is justified because Russia violates international law.
Regarding the arrest warrant against Netanyahu, it is “difficult to imagine that we will carry out arrests on this basis” (government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit).
One must really consider this: Germany, the successor state of the Third Reich, stands alongside this genocide, whose brutality has no equal in 80 years.
Israel deliberately and intentionally kills hundreds of journalists so they cannot report on the horrors in Palestine and South Lebanon.
Israeli soldiers carry out sadistic rape games on Palestinian prisoners, proudly presenting this fact in Parliament.
More than two-thirds of the approximately 100,000 dead in Gaza are women and children; many are now dying of hunger.
And Germany simply does not care; the only repressive reactions the Federal Republic of Germany has are fears that its own people might become disillusioned with the German ruling apparatus upon seeing its support for the horror in Gaza.

The capital, the god of bourgeoisie, the level of production and inventories, stands above every genocide, rape, and war crime.
These things only concern the bourgeois state insofar as they can be instrumentalized in the interests of its own interests.