In summary:
The tour was planned down to every detail, well researched, and our stops were enriched by engaging explanations and materials from Alexis' tablet.
Yet, by trying to appeal to consumers of all political colours and revealing his own, Alexis forced some outlandish false equivalences between the totalitarian, one-party, police regime in the DDR and the West today and back then.
THE PROS:
By showing us pictures and pointing to
Historical artifacts and memorials around us, Alexis made it easy to visualize history in our surroundings and to link Berlin today to his history in relation to the Wall.
The chronological order of events was also well layed out and Alexis documented everything very well, providing us with historical details and data.
Finally, Alexis is fun and outgoing, and makes sure to engage with everyone and to 'quiz' participants in a light and fun way. You won't get bored with him.
THE CONS:
By providing us with detailed information and data, Alexis also told us the story of the Cold War and the clash between Communism and Capitalism. He told us about the political repressions and persecutions in east Germany, the many that lost their lives and freedoms in the DDR, as well as the role of women and tolerance of gay people there. After laying out these facts I think he should have left us be the judges of history. Instead, many attempts were made to get his political views and reading across, which got in the way of the participants' ability to form our own opinions and reason about the information provided.
Alexis also tried to depict 'both sides' as bad by making some poor or untasteful comparisons.
He compared the killing of a socialist political activist by a neo-nazi in (West) Germany and Julian Assange's jailing to the systemic political persecutions by the Stasi (that is, the government) in the DDR.
He claimed, justifying the mistification and propaganda of the SED and USSR, that the Wall was called 'anti-fascist protection wall' because of the involvement of former SS and Nazi officers in Nato and the US.
He claimed that Google only shows the number of those killed whilst crossing from the East to the West as evidence of bias (while we know, as he explained, that the Wall was build to keep east berliners from fleeing en masse, as they were doing up to '61).
He also told us of the strugglers of East Berliners faces with re-integration and competition from richer and better educated west berliners after the fall of the wall. Yet, he used unfortunate words such as 'colonozation' to describe a (possibly missmanaged) process of economic reunification.
Unfortunately, his political leanings finally took over as he delivered an ideological speech at the end of the tour that to me felt very out of place.
Respuesta de Alexis
Sem, first of all thank you for the review and for your nice words towards me. As for the criticism of the content of the tour, it cannot be denied that you have worked on the subject and that you have taken it very seriously. Counted are 10 points in the cons section. I have to admit that you have an amazing memory to write this review, one of the most extensive I have ever received. I congratulate you for that.
The reviews I receive are generally good and I am very grateful; those that contain some critical element are an opportunity that helps me improve the tour and also to expand knowledge. I usually return to my readings and the arguments that support the facts that I explain on my tour and also help me work with new materials and this is always enriching. So there goes my reply.
To begin with, Sem, I find it quite shocking that you use the word "consumer" to refer to the attendees of a tour; as well as other words from the field of economy and law such as "judging history", "bad management" etc. Your background in Economics, if I remember correctly, can justify the use of these concepts, but my background in Philosophy considers them inadequate. Precisely at the beginning I explain that there is a fundamental difference between narrating and justifying. The tour does not try at any time to interpret any of the facts that it tells: all of them are data extracted during the research process either from books, personal interviews, museums and audiovisual material, most of them available in the pdf that I send you with the bibliographic references.
I disagree with your comments about me revealing some political color, forcing equivalences or wanting to intervene in the reasoning of any person about what their conclusions should be about facts that, I insist, I limit myself to transmitting objectively according to the sources mentioned.
If there is something I have been very careful with, it is to get away from the good-bad cliché. Reducing the debate to this binomial is from my point of view, with the information and all the declassified documents existing today, it is unjustifiable. Human rights were violated by the intelligence services of both tour protagonists: in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, but also in Guatemala, Chile and Argentina, not to mention the massacres on the African continent financed by both superpowers. All my examples are accompanied by counterexamples; I can understand your surprise, I was also surprised. In the bibliography of the tour you can expand data if you still have doubts, Sem.
Regarding the explanation, which is not justification, of the concept of "anti-fascist wall", it was not me who gave it the name, Sem; 55% of the post-war administration of justice in West Germany, to give another example, were former Nazis; in addition, I introduce the issue after narrating the conditions of those persecuted by the Stasi which, by the way, was not the government but what today we would call the Ministry of the Interior.
You can check the data about Google and the evidence of bias yourself. I'm not going to extend on this point, I'm sorry you didn't do it before writing the review, it would have saved both of us a few lines.
Finally, I never compare historical events with our present, the context is fundamental at this point, but I think that here we would both agree that today Assange is in custody for freedom of the press, that is, censorship. I think it's an interesting parallel in the conclusion, which you describe as ideological when I refer to the third way, again more in accordance with the German feeling of the early nineties. I strongly recommend that you expand your knowledge on this subject and watch the series of 4 chapters "Rohweder" (there you will find the word "colonization" - I think soft -, but also "liquidation", "invasion", "looting", etc.). It helped me to understand that it was not only a bad management of the economy but that, the political management of the entire process is surrounded by police corruption, murders, disappearance of archives, cover-ups and resignations and, in addition, - and I think this is shareable as a moral imperative between a philosopher and economist - the first and essential thing that must be protected, above an income statement, is the dignity of every human being. And there is nothing wrong with reporting it when it is not so. Thank you for reading us.
