He was wounded. He dressed like a wretch. A red tramp, one of the many that wanted to rob us to build a workers' party, not national but of the workers, of proletarians without nation, and also wanted to dress well, and eat well, have women, and the infinite power of state bureaucracy. He went, staggering, into an alley. He thought no one saw him. He was out of luck. I saw him. The center of Berlin was a slaughter of beasts. I don't know if one knows, in those moments, why one fights. I think he forgot it. I think remembering would be distracting. To be distracted would be to die. One alone and now reaches, Dieter, who knows he has to kill him who is not like oneself, the one on the other side, the enemy. We shout to each other things like "Bolsheviks! Nazis! Filthy reds!" But it doesn't matter. What matters is shouting. Shouting generates fury and power. Shouting blinds. Only hatred lives in shouting. Only hatred feeds the desire to kill.

The red went into an alley with mud, with blood, with rats. He fell and if he had any hope of respite it evaporated right away. I was there, facing him, upright, with the Luger, pointing at him. It was very easy, Dieter. If it wasn't easy it wouldn't be war. Your question: "Did you kill one?" is a trap. It's humanist rubbish, Dieter. You know what completes it? "One's enough". Or: "If you've killed one it doesn't matter how many you kill afterwards." Pure shit. Pure humanist, bourgeois, pacifist, social democratic, slag. One goes to war to kill. Perhaps you're somewhat right. Your question has some sense. There are enemies that are killed from afar; like moving targets, as objectives; others not. Others one kills them and sees them die. Kill them and watch and, and this is the decisive point for the weak, the victim is the one that watches you back. The personal killing, what one inflicts on a poor red that is at one's feet and looks at you with fear and pleads for pity, might be more difficult. For sure: it's not the same to murder someone who is looking at you, before your eyes, imploring, than a target that is moving a hundred or more meters away. It's better. Killing in this way, looking at the victim, it makes one a warrior. It confirms who you are. You feel authentic. That you are capable of reaching the ends of what you believe.

Then I said:

Rainer, you got that out of Being and Time.

Labels: The Shadow of Heidegger

¶ 7:49 AM