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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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To me, this AP article takes the cake.

Headline: A far-right German party’s win has some fearing for the future. Others worry of a return to the past.

Synopsis: A lesbian couple in Berlin is worried about the rise of the AfD.

They’re concerned that a gay couple and their child might not be safe in the future if parties like Alternative for Germany, or AfD, gain more power in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states.

Germany’s domestic intelligence has deemed both the Saxon and Thuringian branches of the AfD to be “proven right-wing extremist” groups. The leader in Thuringia has even been convicted of using Nazi slogans. Even more ominous, this election was held on the 85th anniversary of the invasion of Poland, which makes the AfD’s win somehow even more damning. One young father is trying to figure out how to explain it to his three- and six-year-old kids:

“We don’t talk much about politics so far. He’s more into ‘Paw Patrol,’” Meister said. “It’s hard to explain. How is it that people are so proud to vote for a party that is so bad for everyone?”

Now we get to the good stuff:

Older Germans who lived through the Nazi reign of terror are frightened. Many believed their country had developed an immunity to nationalism and assertions of racial superiority after confronting the horrors of its past through education and laws to outlaw persecution.

But Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, cautioned against labeling AfD’s successes as an aberration.

“Nobody should now speak of ‘protest’ or look for other excuses,” Knobloch said in a statement. “The numerous voters made their decision consciously, many wanted to make the extremists on the fringes responsible.”

Knobloch was 6 years old when she saw the synagogues of Munich burning and watched helplessly as two Nazi officers marched away a beloved friend of her father on Nov. 9, 1938, or Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” — when Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.

Gudrun Pfeifer and Ursula Klute, two retirees from the northwestern city of Osnabrueck who are visiting Berlin this week, said Sunday’s vote also brought back grim memories from their early childhood days during and after World War II.

“I know what this can all lead to,” Pfeifer, 83, said Monday as her voice broke, recalling how her family was separated during the last months of the war and beyond. She was stranded in Berlin for more than a year.

“The city was in ruins, we were all starving. I was very ill — my sister thought I was going to die,” Pfeifer added.

Unfortunately, young people are ever so slightly more likely to vote for the AfD than the population overall, which obviously spells disaster for the future. The article closes with this ominous warning:

Klute, 78, also said she was distressed by AfD’s successes among the younger population.

“People always forget the lessons from history,” she said.

The only thing this article is missing (other than, you know, any discussion of the AfD’s actual policy proposals) is a paragraph noting that Saxony and Thuringia were among the earliest states to support the Nazi party electorally back in 1928. Perhaps the authors were simply unaware, or perhaps they ran out of room with their other guilt-by-association quotations.

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