Regardless of political position or voting preference, many of us have probably asked ourselves at least once: how does “such a person” manage to convince so many people to follow them? How is it possible that so many fail to see what seems obvious to others? Who manipulates whom—and how?
The German Village, also known as The Journal of the Schiller Brothers, by Boualem Sansal, does not offer easy answers. Through a painful exploration of recent history, the novel examines the mechanisms by which political and religious fanaticism transform entire communities into spaces of fear, hatred, and violence.
The book is a marathon through time and space, through religion and politics, an attempt to discover the truth about the past, especially the present. The formula is always the same, regardless of the type of fanaticism – political or religious. The methods of manipulating the masses have not changed; they have only become more refined.
The shock is so profound that it leads one of the brothers to take on the guilt of his father and of an entire generation, just as a Karamazov accepts a sentence to hard imprisonment for a “child emaciated by the cruelties of war.”
From Rachel’s diary – about political manipulation:
“The country is locked like a safe, and the motive is the same: the poorer, more racist, and more angry people are, the easier they are to lead. Enlightened people do not commit massacres – it takes hatred, blindness, and a receptiveness to demagogy. In such regimes, the state is always built by madmen and murderers. They kill the good, expel the heroes, imprison the people, and, at the same time, proclaim themselves their saviors.”
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From Malrich’s diary – about religious manipulation:
„When the first heroes from Algeria came to the neighbourhood, they were funny in their kamikaze uniforms, they had taught us how beautiful and uplifting hatred is, towards abstract beings, concepts, the basic ingredient of fanaticism, of radicalization (…)”, then the labels are put on: Jew, politician, Christian, homosexual, communist, Soroist, the atheistic, unmarried, vulgar woman, drug addicts, intellectuals, all must be destroyed before they contaminate the purity of thought, religion, race, Christian/Islamic tradition (choose what you want form above – after all, there are enough for everyone).
And suddenly, the place you live in reveals itself to you in all its horror: a gangrenous space, infested” with…”, by now, each one chooses their favourite enemy from above to validate their personal opinions transformed into absolute truth.
Once both political and religious manipulation are mastered by the same actor, they reshape the society into a modern camp—its boundaries no longer physical, but psychological and emotional.
The steps are simple:
- Cultivating oblivion. For decades, with patience, you create a generation that does not read, that despises corporate television because it is promoting its interests. So no one ever will engage in any debates, and does not even have the patience to listen to them. A generation that does not know history, therefore cannot recognize the historical truth.
- The cult of lies. Once collective amnesia is established, you can introduce the cult of the savior hero – a liar, but providential.
- Impoverishment and isolation. You induce profound poverty – material, emotional, mental – and thus separate the community from the rest of society.
“We barricade ourselves, we constantly monitor each other: what we say, what we do, what we choose wrongly. Even if we are not exterminated, they will not let us live. Worse: they will turn us into our own guards, merciless towards each other.”
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Thus, we understand why:
“Victims always die twice, and executioners live longer than they do.”
But perhaps the most important thing that emerges from the Schiller brothers’ drama, triggered by the assassination of their father in an unknown village in Algeria, is precisely a lesson about goodness: a form of hope, of human connection that suggests that not all is lost, that the fractures between us can still be repaired.
“This is precisely what goodness means: to see your own end in the end of others.
Nothing is more discouraging, but also more beneficial.
If they die, we die too. This is everything.”
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Boualem Sansal, 76, is currently imprisoned in Algeria, sentenced to five years in prison. French efforts to free him have so far been unsuccessful.