Daniel Barenboim turns 80

Reconciler and musical genius

Daniel Barenboim is not only a world-famous pianist and conductor. He has also worked tirelessly to foster understanding and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. By Lukas Philippi and Katharina Rogner 

One of the world's best-known conductors, Daniel Barenboim is driven by the idea that music can change people for the better. He is passionate about music, but for him, music alone is not enough.

Barenboim's central conviction is that music must become "an essential part of social interaction". His own musical commitment has always been inextricably linked to his socio-political involvement.

On 15 November, the Argentine-born and world-renowned musician turned 80.

Barenboim has been general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and chief conductor in perpetuity of the Staatskapelle Berlin since 1992. Until recently, the busy star was a regular guest in the world's famous concert halls. But at the beginning of October, he announced that he would not be able to perform for the time being due to a serious illness. In particular, he would withdraw from conducting, the Berlin State Opera announced.

On Twitter, Barenboim had previously reported a "serious neurological illness" and that he first had to "concentrate on his physical well-being". The birthday concert planned for 15 November in Berlin, at which he was to perform as pianist, was also cancelled for health reasons.

Music against hatred: the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a project close to Barenboim's heart.  He founded it in 1999 with his friend, the Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said (1935-2003). It is a peace project for young musicians from the Middle East – from Israel, the Palestinian Territories and other Arab countries. The maestro once stated that after two hours of rehearsal, he had "reduced the level of hatred to zero"

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: A contribution to peace

Barenboim is inspired by the idea that music can change people for the better. One of his most cherished projects is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He founded it in 1999 with his friend, the Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said (1935-2003).

It is a peace project for young musicians from the Middle East – from Israel, the Palestinian Autonomous Territories and other Arab countries. After two hours of rehearsal, he had "reduced the level of hatred to zero", the maestro once stated.

He is also committed to founding "music kindergartens" to introduce even the youngest children to sounds, rhythm and instruments. His credo is: "Not music education, but education through music".

The Barenboim-Said Academy for young musicians from the Middle East, which began its work in Berlin at the end of 2016, is also intended to serve education and peace. The students at the private music academy are also taught philosophy, history and literature.

Making music and learning together is intended to contribute to understanding, a willingness to compromise and reconciliation. Can the academy really contribute to a peaceful solution in the Middle East conflict? "Certainly not in the short term, but in the long term there is a good chance," Barenboim said at the opening.

He is also famous for addressing the audience prior to giving a performance. In 2017, for example, as Brexit was in full swing, he warned against isolationism and nationalism in Europe during a concert at The BBC Proms in London. A few weeks previously, an article he wrote had criticised the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories following the 1967 Six-Day War as "immoral".

International career

The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires in 1942 and grew up in Israel from 1952 onwards. When he was five years old, his mother began giving him piano lessons. Later he studied with his father, who remained his only piano teacher.

The gifted pianist gave his first public concert at the age of seven in his native city of Buenos Aires. As a small child, he is said to have played with another Argentinian piano prodigy, Martha Argerich, under the grand piano at home. They would later share a stage together.

Barenboim was ten years old when he made his international debut as a pianist in Vienna and Rome. At the age of eleven, he also took conducting lessons, studying harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He first appeared on stage as a conductor in London in 1967, and six years later he made his debut as an opera conductor in Edinburgh, Scotland, with Mozart's "Don Giovanni". Later he held positions as chief conductor in Paris and Chicago.

In addition to the classical concert and opera repertoire, Barenboim has increasingly devoted himself to contemporary music with the Berlin Staatskapelle, performing compositions by Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Rihm and Elliott Carter. But he has also repeatedly paid tribute to the tango of his native country.

Barenboim is married to the Russian pianist Yelena Bashkirova. His first wife, the British cellist Jacqueline du Pre, died in 1987, and his two sons are also musicians.

"Music is not a profession, it is an attitude to life," Barenboim wrote in an article in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit at the end of October. It is how he has spent his entire life.    (epd)

Daniel Barenboim's Dream

I watched a special today on BBC World on the great classical pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. It was an inspiration.

Daniel Barenboim: The Power of Music

Saturday 6th May at 1230 GMT & 1930 GMT and on Sunday 7th May at 0730 & 1730 GMT.

BBC arts correspondent Razia Iqbal reports on her travels with the world famous Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim. Barenboim who considers music "an international language" that can cross barriers, visits Jerusalem and Ramallah, where he talks about the role of music in society and politics.

He is not only great because of his status as a muscian but as a pro-Palestinian Jew who is not a Zionist. His personal efforts to create a harmonious community co-exsitance between Jews and Palestinians in Israel has created a musical orchestra that belies the hostility between these competing States.

Anyone who has heard his extraordinary West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble made up of Arab and Israeli musicians, cannot fail to be moved.

Here is peaceful collaboration in action; young people from communities which, though apparently hopelessly divided, have come together to make music and, in the process, understand more about each other and each other's cultures.

'No matter how great an individual you are, music teaches you that creativity only works in groups,' says Barenboim, 'and the expression of the group is very often larger than the sum of the parts.' Barenboim's harmonious message goes beyond classical music

Ah yes cooperation, collectivism, all that stuff the right wing likes to denounce. But that reality shows is the only way we function as social beings. And the only way we will ever overcome hatred, prejudice and war. The individual as social being, as the sum of all their social parts, reflected in us. In our freedom. And freedom for Barenboim is essential. It is the source of his dream.

Cooperation and collective endeavour to dare to believe in a differnt Palestine and Israel. One that reflected his and his close friend, Palestinian academic Edward Said, common understanding. That only through dialouge, in this case music reflecting ideas, can there be understanding and peace.

Also a highlight of Voices Forward, the recent film fest that aimed to promote Israeli and Palestinian dialogue -- conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late writer Edward Said create the Middle East's most unique peace initiative: An orchestra made up of young Arab, Palestinian and Jewish players. TORONTO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Globe and Mail, Canada - 5 May 2006

Barenboims Dream is not his alone but one he shared with Said and that is shared by those of us who oppose the current State of affairs in Israel and Palestine.

I Have a Dream

Only twenty-four hours. To change the world you must stick to this timetable. In my dream, I am Prime Minister of Israel. My baton conducts a magnificent new symphony- a Treaty celebrating the harmonious co-existence of Israel and Palestine. In this work I will accomplish what has been impossible until now - the equal rights of these two peoples in the Middle East. The theme of the overture has Jerusalem as the common capital city. This Holy Town should immediately become a shared home for Christians, Muslims and Jews. For me, Jerusalem is a city that still resonates with a history from beyond the ancient civilizations of Rome and Athens.

It is Thursday morning, eight am. A sunny sky, the air mild. It's a pleasant autumn day that has an air about it of history in the making. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza knocks at the door of my residence, diagonally across from the wall of prayers. Though he has been dead for 300 years I have selected him as my advisor. He has brought my favorite food, hummus. There is also fresh pressed orange juice and strong coffee.

Just as we finish strengthening ourselves the phone rings. It is my friend Edward Said. In real life he is Professor of Literature at Columbia University, but in my dream he has been selected by the Palestinians to sign the peace treaty. 'Hey', I say to him, 'where are you? We want to make peace today, and you're going to be late?' When he finally turns up, all three of us know that there will be no turning back. To start with we decide that the Peace-treaty will be enacted from the 15th of May: because on this day fifty-one years ago both our peoples were at war. For the Jews it was the War of Independence, for the Palestinians it was the 'Alnakbah' - ' the Catastrophe.' From tomorrow this anniversary of war will only be known as the 'Day of Peace'.

Three conditions must be met, or the Treaty will not be worth the paper it is written on. Firstly, both nations are obligated to work together. This cooperation will be so tight that not only our economic futures, but also our cultural and scientific futures, will be interwoven. This ensures that Palestine and Israel will be as close-knit as a family. It also implies solidarity. For example, what is to be done with the money European banks stole from the Jews during the Fascist era? My dream is, if there are no survivors to whom to give the money, then Israel should spend the millions of dollars on Palestine refugees.

Secondly, I am in favour of arming both nations. Israel must remain vigilant against the Arab world – but so should Palestine, (at least for her own peace of mind). It will be very difficult for the ultra-religious Jews to accept this. I'll take options in my treaty to separate Church and State – like in the rest of the Western world. I would do everything for the religious and for the study of religion. After all, Judaism is almost a science, and the Talmud is much more than just a text we declaim. But what will I do about the spectre of radical religious groups…?

Of course this runs counter to the State ideology of Israel, Zionism will hold no cant with discourse when it can run around screaming Anti-Semitism at it's critics. And heaven forbid you be a Jew who castigates the State for being less than free and democratic. Let alone culturally open.

DANIEL Barenboim is a Jewish conductor who attracts lightning, most recently when an Israeli minister called him "a real Jew-hater, a real anti-Semite". He has been accused of worse and it makes him angry. But right now he has another bee in his bonnet.

"I am very unhappy, and have been for a long time, about the place of music in society," he says. It makes him so exasperated that he has devoted a series of broadcast talks, commissioned by the BBC for its Reith Lectures (the equivalent of the Boyer Lectures), on the subject. He began pianissimo in London early last month and built his theme during the ensuing weeks in Chicago, Berlin, Ramallah and finally Jerusalem.

After breaking an Israeli cultural taboo by giving a performance in Jerusalem of Richard Wagner, whose music sometimes accompanied Jews to the Nazi gas chambers, he was accused of cultural rape.

"Someone had to explain to me the meaning of that expression," he says wryly. While acknowledging Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite, Barenboim contends that he was not responsible for Auschwitz.

Last summer, his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of young Israeli and Arab musicians set alight the Proms in London before playing in Ramallah, the Palestinian town under virtual occupation in the West Bank.

He feels less at ease in Israel, where he lived briefly as a child, than in Germany, where he runs the Berlin State Opera and is a champion of German music. He is also completing his few months as musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

So what is his beef about music's place in society? "My main grievance is that music is not any more part of the general culture," he replies. "When you go to kindergarten and school, you don't come into contact with classical music. No one seems to think it's as important to know your Beethoven as your Shakespeare or Goethe." Music to mend a broken world

Daniel Barenboim - The Paradox of the Peacemaker

By Norman Lebrecht / November 6, 2002

There is no bigger name or more complex paradox on the modern concert platform than the Argentine-born Israeli pianist-turned-conductor and peace campaigner, Daniel Barenboim.

Publicly, Barenboim is a paragon of liberal enlightenment. He has brought together an orchestra of young Israelis and Palestinians in Weimar, beneath the shadow of the Buchenwald death camp, and bravely given recitals in the insurrectionist West Bank towns of Ramallah and Bir Zeit. He has just brought out in America a book of conversations with the New York-based Palestinian academic Edward Said, whom he describes as 'my most intimate friend'.

In Jerusalem he declared that prime minister Ariel Sharon would be unwelcome at his concerts. The Israeli right clamoured for his arrest over curfew violations and hecklers in a restaurant called him 'traitor' (his wife, Elena, loyally pelted them with salad vegetables). But when the Madrid government awarded him Spanish citizenship last month, Barenboim insisted that he would continue to travel the world on his restrictive Israeli passport.

In Germany, where he heads the Berlin state opera, he is a symbol of anti-racism. In the US, as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he successfully premiered a memorial symphony for Aids victims and a celebration of Afro-American creativity.

Barenboim's own web page testifies to his enlightenment politics, influenced as they are by Spinoza another Jew who was hated by the Jewish establishment of his day.

What is interesting is that I have been reading Toni Negri's study of Spinoza in light of Marx. And Spinoza was one of the most important early philosophers to the young Hegelians, as Marx and Engels point out in the Holy Family. He remains one of the most over looked and under rated of philosophers by those in academia even today.

And it could well be because of an inherent anti-semitism that underscores the dismissal of his work on Freedom. He was after all an athiest, and a defender of athiesm while it was still a hanging offense in England. While a materialist philosopher, he also embraced a metaphysics that undercuts the empiricism of the later English and German philosophers.

That metaphysics, which Negri tackles, is one of Freedom. And it is just this appeal to Freedom that Barnenboim uses as the basis of his critique of Zionism and it's State in Istrael.

The Purpose Of The State Is Freedom

Daniel Barenboim on the relevance of Spinoza's Ethics to the conflict in the Middle East - and music

I read Spinoza's Ethics for the first time when I was 13 years old. Of course we studied the Bible at school - which for me is the ultimate philosophical work. However, reading Spinoza opened up a new dimension for me. I am still dedicated to it. Spinoza's simple principle 'man thinks' has become an existential mindset for me. My copy of Ethics has become dog-eared and torn. For years I took it with me on my travels and in hotel rooms or intervals in concerts I became absorbed by many of the principles.

Spinoza's Ethics is the best training ground for the intellect, because Spinoza like no other philosopher teaches us the radical freedom of thought. Only an individual who reflects on all consequences in life is able to find a form of happiness. This awareness has become a kind of pre-Freudian self-analysis for me. Spinoza helps me to see myself objectively. This makes life bearable even in experiencing suffering; and with the teachings from the Ethics the world is perceived as manageable.

The great Voltaire once accused Spinoza of 'abusing metaphysics'. Is not the uncompromising nature of metaphysics more important today than ever? Has not liberated thinking become the most valued freedom at a time when political systems, social constraints, moral codes and political correctness often control our thinking?

Spinoza would not tolerate restrictions, imposed by any political or religious system or by any moral attitude. He struggled for the ideal of free thought. Hardly any other philosopher made so many enemies. He was labelled 'a troublemaking Jew', banned from the synagogue and from the academic establishment. Even his pupils would acknowledge him in private. And when Karl Ludwig asked the impoverished lonely philosopher to lecture at the University of Heidelberg, he turned him down. Spinoza could not guarantee that his thinking would not threaten 'widely accepted religious concepts'. The philosopher in him preferred the quiet retiring life to a bourgeois career.

Spinoza had no particular interest in music. Nonetheless, his logic was influenced by his approach to music. My father, who studied philosophy, was the first to introduce me to Spinoza. He advised me to look at scores philosophically and rationally. Spinoza's principle that reason and emotion cannot be separated, became for me a primary approach to music. I believe that one can approach a concept and a piece of music only if the logical structure can be established simultaneously with the emotional content.

I think back to the last discussion I had with the great conductor Otto Klemperer. We talked about Spinoza and he said "Spinoza's Ethics is the most important book ever written". Klemperer was, as we know, Jewish. At the age of 22 he converted to Christianity because he believed that only as a Christian could he conduct Bach's St Matthew Passion. Many years later, after the War, when Klemperer had already reached old age, he converted back to Judaism. And the reason he gave was Spinoza's Ethics. Perhaps the most important Jewish philosophy. Questions about Jewish ethics and morals and "What is being Jewish?" were long identified as being a minority. The traditional thinking and perceived identity of the Jewish people in its 2,000 year history was as a minority. Historically the Jews were integrated into social and cultural life but tragically persecuted under the Spanish Inquisition and the tyranny of Adolf Hitler. What is special about Spinoza's philosophy is that, despite persecution, abuse and alienation, his thinking was never based on the premise of Jews being a minority. That is precisely why his philosophy is so contemporary, now that the Jewish people have their own state, i.e. are no longer a minority. Spinoza's Ethics remains a potent formula for creating intellectual and moral unity among the Jews.

When in 1948 the Jews achieved statehood, the minority became a nation. This development was at the core of a profound change of identity. However, only 19 years later, the Jews in Israel had to meet a new challenge: the former minority suddenly found it had control over another minority, the Palestinians. This second transition has not yet been achieved. I would go so far as to say that it has not yet actually started. Even today, many Jews in Israel are still not real patriots, concerned with the good fortune of all inhabitants of Israel; they have taken on naïve nationalism. Spinoza once stated 'the purpose of the State is in true freedom'. I wonder how far Israel has progressed with the State on the one hand and with freedom on the other. Spinoza speaks of the equality of mankind - the idea of the ruler and the ruled are foreign to him. Israeli democracy has not yet solved the problem of a state where minorities are suppressed yet freedom for all is the key goal. We are still living in a two-class democracy.

I am convinced that the Jews in Israel must come to a conclusion about their position before the conflict in the Middle East can be resolved. Jewish humour demonstrates that this is not yet the case. The humour of a minority demands courage. A Jew who throws a piece of stale bread before the feet of a Gestapo officer in the Warsaw Ghetto and says "that's good enough for a non-Jew!" is displaying courage. A Jew who throws a piece of stale bread before the feet of a Palestinian and uses the same words, "that's good enough for a non-Jew" in Ramallah, demonstrates only primitive inhumanity.

In the Fifties, Spinoza's spirit was evident in Jerusalem - the city was the centre for Jewish intellectuals. Martin Buber and Max Brod taught there. I was living in Tel Aviv at the time. We were more practical - we built up the land, with hope and enthusiasm and created material value. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem provided the intellectual core of our lives. Now secular Jewry has left Jerusalem and the Orthodox Jews determine the spiritual climate; it is the reestablishment of the Spinoza philosophy in Jerusalem which is essential if progress is to be achieved in the conflict in the Middle East.

Spinoza suffered two experiences which are strongly evident today. Although a Jew, he was excluded from the Jewish community; he also became a victim of anti-semitism. A recent survey in Germany exposed the reality that a majority of Germans believe that the Jews were the greatest risk to world peace. Here a disturbing confusion has arisen: criticism of the State of Israel and anti-semitism. The one has become a reason for the other. There is every reason for criticism of the Israeli government -I have expressed it vehemently and often myself. To use this as a reason to fire anti-semitism is fatal.

Anti-semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-semitism is a disease. It is significant that Spinoza's ideas had an influence on what is regarded as typical German thinking today - on Feuerbach, Wagner and Nietzsche. How could Richard Wagner become an anti-semite while influenced by Spinoza? Anti-semitism definitely formed part of the profile of a German nationalist in the nineteenth century. Why did Wagner pursue this idea with such fervour? He could not draw these ideas from his spiritual father, the heir to Spinoza, Feuerbach. Wagner's anti-semitism, like any form of Jew-hating, had an irrational basis. He was too similar to his arch-enemies, the Jews Meyerbeer and Heinrich Heine. In the desire to belong to the chosen people, we have the dangerous separation of logic and private motives. Anti-semitism has no philosophical origins. It is a disease which we are not in any way adequately addressing.

A reading of Spinoza's Ethics makes this perfectly clear. It is as relevant today as ever. On the one hand it could be an opportunity for revelation to the reader - to logic and free thinking. On the other, it offers a philosophy for our laws of co-existence. With Spinoza's Ethics Israel could develop as a truly democratic state in which every part of the community defines its ethical values and the ultimate purpose of humanity.

Finally another Jew the marxist musicologist Sidney Finkelstein who promoted not only classical music but Afro-American music, Jazz, before it was popular, in his book How Music Expresses Ideas; says about the metaphysics of freedom

the ideas which music embodies are not the ideas which may be found in a scientific tract, but commentaries on a society showing what it means to live in it. They embrace developments in sensitivity, in the human's awareness of his own powers, and in the situation of internal freedom, as conditions change in the external world. In this way music joins the other arts in creating social consciousness, or the individual's awareness of the internal life he shares with society, and in revealing the internal history of society. The Experimental Years: A View from the Left

Finkelstein also wrote on the peasant origins of classical music. A source that Barenboim is trying to find in his search for Arab music of the Palestinian people for his youth orchestra to play.

It is not too difficult to understand why composers continue to this day to root themselves in the folk traditions of the nation. It is not only a way to enrich the musical imagination, it is also a way to identify with some of music's most progressive traditions. Obviously, as capitalism continues to destroy the social basis of folk music--the peasantry--it will be more and more difficult to find inspiration in the world that surrounds the composer. Singling out Bartok, the great communist musicologist Sidney Finkelstein addressed this theme in "Composer and Nation: The Folk Heritage in Music":

"Bartok represents the end of a period, and at the same time helps lay the ground for a new development. He is the greatest of those in his generation who saw the peasantry as Synonymous with the nation; a viewpoint no longer possible in the next generation. For the transformation of the countryside is a world-wide process. Whether under the conditions of capitalism or socialism, masses of peasants, farmers, farm workers and their children are entering city industrial life, and those that remain on the land are working under conditions of large-scale production that bring them close to the city working class. The cultural isolation of the countryside, which fostered the great oral tradition of folk music but the other side of which was poverty and illiteracy, is being broken down. Like the research of others in folk music, Bartok’s devoted and intensive effort to record and preserve the old forms of folk music came at a time when this music was losing its currency as a living oral tradition. And the preservation of this music gives it renewed life on a different level, for it becomes part of the conscious national heritage, lending its vitality to new forms of musical creation." Muzsikás and Bela Bartok

Finkelstein faced anti-semitism as well as anti-communist hysteria from the American right during his life time too.The Marxist Minstrels

An intolerance that is reflected today in the Zionist attacks on Barenboim. And by those who would create States that limit the freedom of the people.


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Opinion

Britain’s greatest living conductor has fled to Berlin – it’s a loss to us all

Simon Heffer
Sat, 4 May 2024 

Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2004 - United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Simon Rattle is perhaps Britain’s greatest living conductor. He achieved eminence at an age when many in his profession are struggling to feed themselves, becoming assistant conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at 19, and joining Glyndebourne the following year. 

He was still only 25 when, in 1980, he was appointed conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He became principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 2002, and then music director of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017. Now he is back in Germany, conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Rattle has not lacked critics. Some musicians have questioned his interpretations of the classics, and he caused upset on the eve of his departure for Berlin by attacking the British attitude to culture and to public funding of the arts. His appointment in Berlin was mildly controversial. It was made by a vote of the orchestral players, a substantial minority of whom wanted Daniel Barenboim in the role. 

Rattle’s achievements in Berlin, notably his championship of new music, were considerable, but it took several years for the orchestra to get used to him. The conductor himself described his relationship with the players as “turbulent”. However, he was doing something right: in 2008 the orchestra decided not to wait until 2012 to renew his 10-year contract, but did so at once. 

One reason for his growing popularity was that he ensured the orchestra was better paid, and that it was controlled by a foundation rather than by the Berlin Senate. He also set up an education department, renewing a commitment to young musicians that had been the hallmark of his time at Birmingham.

In his long career, he has shown a catholicity of taste; this was seldom more visible than in his recent tenure of the LSO. Part of his legacy there is captured on a new disc in the LSO Live series, which contains recordings of three works by Benjamin Britten.

To my mind, Rattle’s golden age as a recording artist coincided with his time at Birmingham – the repertoire included some fine recordings of British music, a canon the Germans in particular seem not to recognise exists. He recorded numerous works by Britten with the CBSO, not least the explosive Sinfonia da Requiem, a piece that defines the composer’s genius. An equally outstanding account of that work is on the LSO Live disc; it is worth buying for that alone.

However, it also includes the only performance of Britten’s Spring Symphony that I have heard that matches, and in some respects exceeds, the recording made by the composer himself more than 60 years ago. Rattle creates a clarity, intensity and, eventually, exuberance that are utterly mesmerising. The disc ends with a performance of The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra that richly demonstrates Rattle’s command of his players. Any admirer of Rattle, and indeed of Britten, should own this recording.

Why Elon Musk Remains Inseparable From (Some of) His Creations

Federico N. Fernández

 March 19, 2025
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Photograph Source: Fine Apples – CC0

The challenge of separating creators from their creations is not new. However, this age-old dilemma, stretching from Nazi-favored composers to today’s politically divisive billionaires, demands practical rather than merely philosophical solutions.

Elon Musk and his multiple business ventures now stand at the center of this debate. As the world’s richest man deepens his political entanglements through controversial statements and direct government involvement, consumers worldwide face mounting pressure to align their purchasing decisions with their political values. The growing “Tesla Takedown” movement explicitly rejects the notion that Musk’s products can be divorced from his politics.

The Wagner Precedent

The case of Richard Wagner offers a historical lens through which to examine this dilemma. Wagner, who died in 1883—long before Hitler’s rise—wrote viciously antisemitic essays and was later embraced by the Nazi regime as a cultural icon. His music remains unofficially banned in Israel to this day.

In 2001, Argentine-born Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim provoked outrage when he defied this unofficial ban by playing Wagner at Israel’s national arts festival. The incident highlighted the persistent association between Wagner’s compositions and his hateful ideology, despite the music itself containing no explicit antisemitic content.

Wagner’s case begs the question: Can artistic works transcend their creator’s repugnant beliefs? Wagner scholars continue to debate whether his antisemitism infiltrated his operas through coded caricatures. Yet Wagner’s music—the notes, harmonies, and dramatic structures—contains no inherent antisemitism.

Tesla and Musk’s Machinations

The Tesla controversy parallels Wagner’s case in important ways. The “Tesla Takedown” movement has gained momentum across both the United States and Europe, with protests at over 50 showrooms featuring slogans like “Elon Musk has got to go” and “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy.” Some demonstrations have evolved beyond mere protest into active vandalism, with charging stations torched in Boston and suspected arson at a dealership in France.

Does a Tesla automobile embody Musk’s political activities and statements? Physically and functionally, a Tesla is simply an assemblage of metal, rubber, plastic, and software designed to transport passengers efficiently using electricity rather than fossil fuels. The car itself holds no political opinions. A Tesla car’s engineering is value-neutral.

When Separation Becomes Impossible

While Wagner’s music and Tesla’s vehicles can plausibly be distinguished from their creators, Starlink—Musk’s satellite internet service—presents a more complicated case. The service itself is technologically impressive. However, Musk’s direct operational control means customers remain vulnerable to his mercurial decision-making.

Consider Ukraine: Initially hailed as one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Musk deployed Starlink terminals when Russian malware crippled satellite communications across the country at the invasion’s outset. Three years later though, Musk has weaponized his social platform against President Zelensky, sharing false claims and calling for his replacement. More ominously, Musk has warned that “Ukraine’s entire front line would collapse” without Stalink’s satellite terminals—a reminder of his power to withdraw critical infrastructure during wartime potentially.

The Starlink case demonstrates that separation becomes functionally impossible when a product remains under the creator’s active control. An owner can drive their Tesla regardless of Musk’s latest post on X, but a Starlink user remains dependent on Musk’s continued goodwill.

The Control Continuum

The Starlink example reveals a crucial distinction in our age: the shift from products to services fundamentally alters the creator-creation relationship. This transformation may be the most significant factor in determining whether separation is possible.

Products like Tesla automobiles or Wagner’s recorded compositions exist independently once released into the world. A Tesla owner retains full functionality regardless of Musk’s latest controversial statement or political alliance. The vehicle, once purchased, operates autonomously from its creator’s ongoing decisions or moods. Similarly, a Wagner recording plays the same notes whether one approves of the composer’s antisemitism or not.

Services like Starlink, however, establish a perpetual dependency relationship. This product-service distinction carries profound implications as our economy increasingly shifts toward subscription-based services. Traditional product ownership allowed for a functional separation between creator and creation. Modern digital services, however, maintain persistent tethers to their creators, making separation impossible by design.

The Wagner-Musk comparison ultimately highlights how technology has fundamentally altered the terms of our ethical dilemma. When Musk controls Starlink’s satellites with the press of a button, or when social media platforms can instantly deplatform millions, creator and creation become inseparable by definition.

Perhaps the key distinction is not merely between “good” or “bad” creators but between consumption that preserves our autonomy and consumption that surrenders it. In a world of tech tycoons with unprecedented power, we must remember that market problems require market solutions. The hyper-dependence on Musk’s Starlink—with all its ethical entanglements—can only be resolved through robust competition in satellite-provided internet. We need vibrant market alternatives that prevent any single visionary—however brilliant—from accumulating too much control over critical infrastructure. The ultimate answer to the Musk dilemma is not boycotts or ethical agonizing but competing satellite networks that ensure no individual, nation, or military remains dependent on one man’s goodwill.

Purdue.eduwww.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/marxism/modules/marxfetishism.html

Introduction to Karl Marx, Module on Fetishism - Purdue University

Marx borrows this concept to make sense of what he terms "commodity fetishism." As Marx explains, the commodity remains simple as long as it is tied to its use- ...

Csun.eduwww.csun.edu/~snk1966/Lukacs - Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.pdf

Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat - CSUN

Georg Lukacs. History & Class Consciousness. Written: 1923;. Source: History & Class Consciousness;. Publisher: Merlin Press, 1967;. Transcribed: Andy Blunden ...

Stung by People Power Protests, Elon Musk

Targets My Group and a Close Friend

Patrick Mazza

March 18, 2025
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Photo: Indivisible.

A week ago Saturday Co-President Elon Musk took to his X platform to call out several groups staging protests against his Tesla dealerships for Musk’s Trump Administration role in slashing vital federal government functions. The Tesla Takedown movement has mounted hundreds of peaceful actions around the world. Among the groups he named were the Troublemakers, falsely claiming it is funded by ActBlue. The group has been staging protests at dealerships throughout the Seattle area, a major Tesla market, and had a key role in putting up the decentralized movement’s website, where people around the world can post upcoming actions.

I am a member of the Troublemakers, a Seattle-based group dedicated to nonviolent direct action, and was a part of our first action, one focused on forest preservation. “So Elon’s making us famous,” I thought, grimly amused but aware that being targeted in such a way could lead to consequences.

That happened quickly. The next day Musk took it to a new level, targeting Valerie Costa, a close friend and colleague with whom I have worked for years, first at 350 Seattle, and now at Troublemakers. “Costa is committing crimes,” he charged. Musk has a record of playing fast and loose with the facts, and this was another of his many lies. There have been incidents of vandalism against Tesla cars and dealerships. But Troublemakers is a strictly nonviolent group and does not endorse such actions.

The other day, Val told her story in The Guardian in a story entitled, “Elon Musk targeted me over Tesla protests. That proves our movement is working.” I’ll let Val take it from here:

“As a longtime local activist and organizer in Seattle, I’m accustomed to some conflict with powerful forces. The intention of the Tesla Takedown movement is to make a strong public stand against the tech oligarchy behind the Trump administration’s cruel and illegal actions, and to encourage Americans to sell their Teslas and dump the company’s stock. Protests like these – peaceful, locally organized, and spreading across the world – are at the heart of free speech in a democracy and a cornerstone of US political traditions. So it’s telling that the response from so-called ‘free speech absolutist’ Musk has been to single out individuals – and spread lies about us and our movement. The harassment that has followed his post has been frightening.

“It’s also proof that the Tesla Takedown campaign is working.”

Indeed, Tesla stock and sales are tanking. As of today the stock is a little under $240, half of what it was in the euphoria immediately after the election. J.P Morgan projects it to go down by half again, to $120. Meanwhile, Morgan auto analyst Ryan Brinkman last Wednesday cut his first quarter global sales estimate to 355,000, down from 440,000, and a deep plummet from 495,000 in 2024’s fourth quarter.

Clearly connecting those declines to Musk’s work with Trump and connections with Europe’s far right, Brinkman said, “We struggle to thing of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.”

Continuing to tell her story, Val wrote, “I am not the leader of Tesla Takedown. In fact, no one is.

“Here is the truth: Tesla Takedown is a completely decentralized movement with hundreds of protests taking place around the globe, drawing many thousands of people out of their homes and onto the public sidewalks to stand up for programs that support poor people, older people, veterans, the sick. Out of care and concern for others – a foreign concept to those currently in power – people are offering what they can to help. I’ve offered to schlep supplies, and helped someone find a bullhorn. The environmentally focused Seattle organization I’m a part of, Troublemakers, hosts a map where other people and groups can post the locations of forthcoming demonstrations. Troublemakers has about $3,500 in its bank accounts. All of this is a bare-bones, low-budget, people-powered movement – which is exactly why Musk is afraid of it, and casting about to find a villain.”

Val then hit the crux of the issue.

“If we can’t show our opposition to what the government is doing, we are living in a dictatorship. If we are criminalized for calling out the rich and powerful for their illegal actions, that is a dictatorship. I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.

“Make no mistake, it’s scary to be personally called out by the richest man in the world on the platform he owns. It’s scary to be targeted by a seemingly endless number of his devoted trolls and bots. To be doxxed, to have one’s life pored over and exposed, to be smeared, attacked and falsely accused. It’s scarier still when the FBI director gets tagged into the threads and asked to investigate. But I’m not backing down – and even if I did, it wouldn’t make a dent in this movement. Hundreds if not thousands of people have participated in the ways that I have.

“The truth is, the people are powerful. I’ve always believed that. And now we know that Elon Musk does too.”

Val also told her story on Democracy Now.

Val Costa has acknowledged how terrifying it is to be targeted by the world’s richest man (though he may be knocked off that perch soon). But, no surprise to me, she has continued to stand and speak out with courage. Val has been on many direct action frontlines, and is deeply committed to environmental and social justice in all its forms. Knowing Val, Musk’s attack has only made he more pissed off than she was before. Bravo Val!

We who work in movements have known the second Trump Administration would bring an elevated level of uncertainty and risk. But that isn’t stopping us. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” With so much at stake now, there are obviously many things more important than fear. Relatedly, Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Valerie Costa is setting an example of triumph for all of us. One which we will need in coming years as we fight for what is dear to us against oligarchic monstrosities like Elon Musk.

This first appeared in The Raven.