Written at the end of October 1882.

[Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 45, 2 November 1882]

The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Prince Bismarck’s personal organ, is by virtue of its position elevated not only above all rules of decency, but also of logic and sound common sense. It has the privilege of slandering, calumniating, lying and writing statesmanlike and unstatesmanlike nonsense. With the exception of a few lackeys, with and without uniform, who are wont to venerate the expectorations and excrements of the Dalai Lama as emanations of the deity and, if need be, to gobble them up too, everyone knows that this paper is the refuge of all baseness and stupidity.

When it is a question of besmirching an opponent, of launching a really whopping lie, a really juicy slander into the world and of digging deep into the gutter – then it is the Norddeutsche Allgemeine that is chosen for this honourable office. And it performs it with manifest pleasure.

Of late this nice paper, since on account of its clumsiness and its too great notoriety it could not be employed in the Reichstag election campaign, has devoted itself with particular fondness to besmirching Social Democracy and spreading the maddest lies about it.

Certain occurrences in France are distorted in the most grotesque fashion and, using the most garish colours, hair-raising horror pictures are daubed together, intended to show shuddering mankind that the Social Democrats are robbers, murderers, incendiaries and heaven knows what else, and that the French Republic must necessarily perish because it is incapable of defending itself against such monsters – for which, naturally, only a monarchy with a majordomo (house steward) à la Bismarck is fit.

In the case of the Vienna “robbery-murder outrage”, it was the Norddeutsche which most impudently pinned the blame on Social Democracy and linked the most villainous denunciations to it.

When, a fortnight ago, an Austrian public prosecutor committed the cretinous insolence of tracing the Hungarian anti-Jewish riots to secret machinations on the part of Social Democracy, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was the only paper which cheered this stroke, at once stupid and base, and played second to that idiot of a public prosecutor, although it knows perfectly well – knows from its immediate vicinity and from its own personal experience – that the so-called “anti-Semitic movement” has its most determined opponents in the Social Democrats and that in Germany, especially in Berlin, despite the most zealous support on the part of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine’s patron |Bismarck|, it has foundered on the attitude of the Social Democrats.

The latest lying effort on the part of the Norddeutsche consists in a lengthy notice to the effect that the question of extending the Anti-Socialist Law has provoked a “violent quarrel” within German Social Democracy.

The “Liebknecht group” is said to hold the view that the continuance of the Anti-Socialist Law lies in the interest of the party, while this view is combated by others (groups?) as a policy of “phrase,” “and that the quarrel thus arising within the Social-Democratic party is being carried on with the crudest weapons, goes without saying.” The readers of the Sozialdemokrat know what to make of this fib. Just as little as there are, within the Social-Democratic party, “groups” in the sense meant by the Norddeutsche, is there any “quarrel” about any question, let alone about that of the extension or non-extension of the Anti-Socialist Law.

We are too good “Realpolitiker” to trouble ourselves about eggs that have not been laid, and we face this question with the feeling of the most absolute “indifference.” If the Anti-Socialist Law is abolished, we know that it is not abolished out of love for us, and we remain what we are; and if it is not abolished, we remain all the more what we are. That the Anti-Socialist Law has been inestimable for the schooling and consolidation of our party and has had on the whole an excellent educative effect, incidentally, all Social Democrats without exception agree.

The question whether the extension or non-extension of the Anti-Socialist Law is probable has indeed been dealt with in the party organ – and only there – but, as lies in the nature of the subject, quite academically. And where, we ask, is the “quarrel” which is supposed to have been “carried on with such crude weapons”? Not one word which would justify the assertion of the Norddeutsche. Bismarck’s personal organ evidently does not yet know the rule, so indispensable for liars by profession, that one must lie truthfully, i.e., that a lie requires an admixture of truth if it is to take wing.

Incidentally, the Norddeutsche had to let itself be told by the Liberale Correspondenz that with this notice of theirs they had committed a colossal stupidity. For there could be no better argument for the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law than that its continuance is desired by the Social Democrats. So far, it is true, the intellectual powers of Bismarck’s personal organ had not reached.