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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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So, summarily I get this:

1. Hoecke doesn't apologize for the Nazis enough (or maybe at all?)
2. Hoecke mentions 'thousand years of glorious history' of Germany
3. He said "Alles fuer Deutschland" which turns out has been used by SA
4. Is tolerating swastika-tattooed mobs
5. Some (who?) in some conference called for deporting German citizens if they had the wrong ethnicity

Did I forget anything important?

I don't have much of a stake in German politics, but it would be important for me to understand whether or not AfD are Nazis or Nazis-in-building. I have a very low tolerance for Nazis, but also American politics taught me that about 99% of times when somebody calls somebody else a Nazi it's a lie. There's still 1% where it's true, about the Nazis which do exist, and some of them even wear swastikas (many others wear other outfits and signage) - but one has to be careful there.

So far, from the list 3 is a little worrying - did he know and used it on purpose, or is it like saying Trump is a Nazi because "Make America Great again" was once used 80+ years ago by some Nazi sympathizers? Hard to make a conclusion here. Is there a pattern of using such slogans and symbols, or is it one time thing? By itself, the slogan does not sound that heinous, but of course if he was attracted to it as a way to say "sieg hail" without saying "sieg hail" it'd be a problem.

4 is worrying if he's really leaning on these mobs and welcoming them and integrating them into his infrastructure on the ground. But is not worrying is it's just some jerks that happen to agree with him on something - I'm sure plenty of jerks agree with me on some things, not all jerks are obligated to be wrong about everything all the time. How important are those mobs for him?

5 would be very bad if it were his party position but the vagueness of the claim is kind of suspicious. Who said that? What exactly did they say? How important this person is in defining AfD policy? Do other AfD policymakers confirm this? Did they endorse or promote such actions? "Somebody maybe said something on a conference" is a great start of a cancel campaign, but poor evidence if you want to figure out what's actually going on. Is there more to it?

1 and 2 don't particularly bother me. Politicians can performatively apologize for anything, and 100% of those apologies mean absolutely nothing - they can apologize for a thing today and do the same thing tomorrow. And Germany does have a long and glorious history - at least no less glorious than any other place, and no less bloody and disgusting at the same time too. Nothing wrong in remembering that, it's what conclusions you make out if it and how it moves you to act is important. The moniker "far right" imply that it moves AfD to act like a Nazis or at least as far towards the Nazis as political limitations will allow. But is this true? So far I haven't seen a proper substantiation of that.

P.S. Oh, and the last point. Plenty of people said Putin would start a war. In fact, Russia has been conducting several wars pretty much since it's establishment in early 1990s - they occupied parts of Georgia, part of Moldova, intervened in Central Asian states and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, there was pretty much no period where Russia was peaceful and isolationist, and Putin with his "tough guy" image never indicated he's going to be any different. And they actively meddled in Ukraine for all that time, too. Full-scale intervention was by no means an obvious outcome, but a lot of people raised it as a possibility - and get laughed at by a lot of other people. Many of the latter still among the decision makers in Europe and Germany, so not sure if their predictive capacities can be used to indicate anything.

I don't have much of a stake in German politics, but it would be important for me to understand whether or not AfD are Nazis or Nazis-in-building. I have a very low tolerance for Nazis, but also American politics taught me that about 99% of times when somebody calls somebody else a Nazi it's a lie. There's still 1% where it's true, about the Nazis which do exist, and some of them even wear swastikas (many others wear other outfits and signage) - but one has to be careful there.

This gets a little confusing when you're actually living in Germany. Actual current-day nazis are rare, but pretty much everyone there had a father or grandfather (or grandmother) who worked for them. Maybe not as card-carrying members of the party, but still swept up in the war effort somehow. It wasn't really a choice, the whole country did. So I can see how the endless performative guilt and apologies would get annoying, since it's basically calling out an entire generation of your family.

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