Don’t get me wrong: I cried as much as anyone when I watched the BBC 9 o’clock newscast from November 9, 1989.

In fact, it was precisely the raw human solidarity behind those unforgettable scenes that exposed the farcical, hypocritical and self-serving nature of the official commemorations marking the fall of the wall tonight.

Merkel, Sarkozy, Kohl, Obama: Not a single one of the leaders waxing lyrical about the fall of the wall is actually against walls per se. They are only against Communist walls, walls built by ‘bad guys’; but are perfectly fine with erecting ever new walls to keep out the poor and the brown, walls that keep the weak away in their place and the strong safe (indeed, not one of these leader has urged the tearing down of the one true heir to the Berlin Wall: the West Bank Barrier, which, unlike the Berlin Wall that only violated basic morality, also violates international law).

Consider this statement from the French president, who has recently uploaded a (fake) pic of him chiselling away the Berlin Wall on his facebook page:

‘The fall of the Berlin Wall serves for us all today as a call to fight oppression and to tear down all the walls that still separate the world, that divide cities, regions and nations’.

Yet this is the same man who less than a month ago staked out one of the most anti-immigrant position of any EU leader, and ‘called for clear steps to strengthen the European frontier security agency Frontex and a deal to be concluded with Libya to tighten its borders’.

And Merkel? This champion wall-slayer belongs to (albeit the less dogmatic wing of) an anti-immigrant party, the CDU, and has stated that immigration can only take place into Germany if it is well regulated and based on strict assimilation practices, angering human rights and Turkish groups. But when the East German government called for a ‘well-regulated’ migration policy, we all knew what that meant!

And what of the great Helmut Kohl, the architect of the fall of the wall itself?

He was all for giving all East German refugees West German passports to encourage a mass exodus from the GDR, but as for anyone else (ie. non-German, not running from Communism, non white, non Christian) wishing to come to Germany, his slogan was simple: ‘Germany is not an immigration country’.

Amazingly, in 1996, less than 6 years since reunification, he blamed  immigration (from poor and ethically different countries) for the unemployment caused by his disastrous economic policies, saying:

‘I don’t want to suggest that immigration is the major reason for unemployment, but it should be taken into account when one makes comparison with other European countries’.

And Obama? Last night, he said: ‘Like so many Americans, I will never forget the images of people tearing down the wall. There could be no clearer rebuke of tyranny, there could be no stronger affirmation of freedom’.

Fine words at a time when his own country is busy walling itself off from its impoverished southern neighbours, who, like the East Germans that everyone loves, just hunger for a better life.  In fact, last year alone, America held nearly 380000 immigrants in detention centres, according to a fine article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Also last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE…removed 369,211 immigrants from the country, a 27 percent increase from 2007.The agency is on pace to reach a new high this year. By Aug. 31, it had already deported 256,957 people’.

As the article says, ‘behind those numbers are complex stories of immigrants who came to the United States in search of economic opportunities and headed home in a cloud of uncertainty, often while family members remained here. Many will try to return, both legally and illegally’.

Families forcefully broken up, border fences erected and reinforced with barbed wire, people detained, shackled and deported. How is this any different from the Berlin Wall that Obama and his EU partners have so eloquently condemned?

As unfashionable as he has become since 1989, how right Marx was when he said that history appears the first time as tragedy, and the second as farce.