*Pulls up soapbox* A little bit of background might be in order:
- AfD is the strongest party in all of the former GDR states, including SA where yesterdays’ elections were held. They stand for unbridled, neoliberal capitalism, garnished with lots of anti-immigration rhetoric. Their boss worked for Goldman-Sachs and that’s saying it all, really.
- SA - one state out of 16 - has 2.1 million inhabitants, out of Germany’s 83.5 million. They do have an outsized influence on the 2nd chamber of parliament, though. As of now, it looks like they will form a coalition government and rule SA.
- In the whole of Germany, AfD currently polls at 27-28%; runner-up is the conservative CDU which is currently leading the federal government, at 20-21%. AfD polls especially high in places where the previous, notorious right-wing party, NPD, did; and before them, the NSDAP. They poll especially high among blue-collar workers, first-time (young) voters and previous non-voters.
- In the EU parliament, AfD has 15 of ESN’s 27 seats. Judging from the seating in the parliament, and from who wants to form a coalition with the AfD, it becomes clear that they are significantly farther right-wing than the likes of Orbán, Le Pen, Fico, Meloni, Salvini or any of the EU-wide known names, really.
- I recommend this free 2024 study to assess the immense danger democracy in Germany is facing. Trans people, women, feminists, Jews, immigrants, social Darwinism - far-right wing voters poll approximately 1.5-3x as high in “hate” values than right-wing voters.
- The long and short is: Don’t come to Germany, especially not Eastern Germany, and especially not if you don’t have lily-white skin. This is my honest, sober advice for you.
SA
Misread it initially as Sturmabteilung, not Saxony-Anhalt. In any case, it’s now a hostile state.
The correct abbreviation would be ST, not SA, but considering the AfD is now close to an absolute majority the latter fits better.
It’s like Germans have acquired collective amnesia with regards to what happened during 1939.
A life and a half, or a few generations, is all you need for people to start questioning “was it really that bad???”, and then there’ll be snake oil salesman selling snake oil to those who don’t listen to history. And let’s not pretend most of these right-wingers are actually idealistic, they’re all greed pigs after money and power.
Isn’t it crazy that people know what the word “scapegoat” means but are unable to see it?
Like. How can so many people be so incapable of following basic logic to see that immigrants are not what’s caused their quality of life to decline.
East Germany is a complex subject. A lot of money has gone into projects to help it catch up after the reunification since Russia completely gutted it, but not much of that money made it anywhere. The population feels left behind and unheard. They’re being treated as lesser through little fault of their own. Pretty easy breeding ground for scape goating.
Plus it’s the exact same playbook as the US when it comes to “iMmIgRaNtS!!!”. Logic and reason has long left and there’s really no way to reel in conspiracy nuts once they’ve gone off the rails. Germany is only a few years behind the US.
How would you even prevent this? The ideas spread by messenger and social media and infect people without critical thinking skills - which is most. Chat control is obviously the wrong approach, but what is the right one? How do you convince clanma who doesn’t trust anything anymore that the WhatsApp stats are made up and government statistics are actually trustworthy and backed by data?
People want to have a good life, no matter their critical thinking levels. If your government tries to fuck you and practically only works for lobbyists they will happily jump on any bandwagon praising to be the holy god.
The only place to fight it is off the internet.
But it is much harder. You have to go out and socialize, in person.
Plus most people don’t want to talk politics. At least in the U.S, it is considered a somewhat rude or inappropriate conversation topic in casual conversations.
Like religion.
Some people still do it and sometimes it just comes up. But generally it’s seen as pushy. Or trying to start an argument.
But talking politics to friends and family is usually considered fine. Depends on the family members. So I do keep up these conversations with friends and some family members, when I can. Remind them that you can only trust what you hear from real people.
The internet would have you believe the majority of Americans are maga. When it’s actually only 30%.
Sucks. I did my study abroad mostly in Saxon-Anhalt. Beautiful place. But I’m also not entirely surprised by this embrace of AfD there. Even though it was a little over 10 years ago that I was there, I certainly saw a lot more alt right influence compared to other parts of Germany.
So the Nazis will return to Germany?
They never left (West) Germany.
AfD is bigger in east Germany.
Fuck, people are dumb all over the globe.
Xenophobia is at an all-time high.
And that’s one of the greatest proofs that people across different cultures are more alike than different.
That’s kinda sweet in a disappointing way.
Always have been and always will be. Humans are not as smart as people like to think they are. Humans have a shitton of PR teams to sell you that people are smarter than they actually are.
… the AfD, whose Saxony-Anhalt branch is categorised as “right-wing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.
More useless labels I see. Doesn’t seem to mean anything if they are still allowed to be a legit political party who can take power.
I’ve come to realize most of our justice system is toothless. ICJ? Useless. EU? Lol. Verfassungsschutz? Nope. The police will enforce copyright law for movies because of corporate interests, but anything larger than isolated cases is too big to address. Law and order are mass hallucinations in the western world, easily exploited by anyone ruthless enough to try. And it feels like we’ve reached a point of saturation where the ruthless are no longer satisfied with what they were previously able to achieve within the confines of this hallucination, so they’re just tearing it down.
What can we do about it? The overlap with anarchism is large: use cash, don’t buy from Amazon (or similar), use Linux, don’t pay for subscriptions. Don’t use AI. They want your money; don’t give it to them. Sadly, 90% of the population have no impulse control, or I’m asking them to abstain from the only pleasure they have left in their lives - everything else has already been torn down.
I’m gonna go be depressed by myself for a while.
Fun fact: this useless label is there so the afd can be forbidden, since “right-wing extremist” also means anti-constitution, but our goverment is too busy filling the pockets of their lobby friends.
It’s almost like capitalism is incompatible with democracy.
Exactly, it’s supposed to mean something… In theory…
It this a case where the economically repressed are being used to breed an ugly us vs them situation, to pit them against immigrants using their own national xenophobia, tribalism and false nostalgia? The way to fight this is to feed the wealth back to the people. Tax (or eat) the rich, and education. Also listen to their valid concerns. Just making their ‘right wing’ group illegal will only further resentment. I doubt the people are really right wing in the economic sense at all. The bigotry can be much more easily addressed one people feel safe and secure.
Germany: Hey America, hold my beer.
The German state apparatus was too busy harassing legitimate pro-palestian protest to do anything about the actual threat to its constitutional order.
Oh, good burn.
Damn, I forgot all my German, is English okay or I have to take lessons before the invasion?
Its the AfD so you’re prolly better off picking up Russian.
Maybe “leftists” should stop praising German militarization?
Lol. Beatings will continue until morale improves. Germany and most of Europe is in a total bloodlust for Russia atm. Most AfD voters probably think “Hey I thought we were supposed to be the extremists? How can they outjerk us on the militarism??”
It’s kind of a bummer that the hold world didn’t handle the Nazi problem in the way that the French did after WWII. In France, they were mass-deleted, including collaborators.
Oh gosh, the French are fascist as fuck and violence never solved the problem of fascism. That is a fairy tale that the US made up after providing material support to the European Axis powers in order to save face.
Violence (alone) doesn’t solve the problem of fascism. But it absolutely does in part.
The thing one must really come to grips when dealing with fascism is acknowledging what it really is. It’s societal cancer. It infects a society if it can, and it grows and multiplies, and if it’s only treated with violence it may be beat back a bit but it will still keep growing until it either strangles the host society to death or it’s properly dealt with. And even then, it’s only ever in remission.
The other half of it is understanding the paradox of tolerance and knowing that if you want a society of ideas and beliefs and ethnicities etc. You cannot ever be tolerant of tenants of fascism. And to ensure that, a society needs three strong pillars:
- a robust education system that is free and accessible by all citizenry.
- the basic set of rights most would agree enshroud common dignity of people. This should include healthcare and labor laws. Protection for labor and not just capital.
- finally the defense of truth. Not opinions but objective truth. Those that like to sow the seeds of fascism will usually use lies to do so. So by making the freedom of speech apply to hate speech is usually a way to always give fascism a foothold.
Now none of this as you see says oh and we need violence. Violence tends to be what happens when fascism has already taken hold of the host. Because one way or another throughout history of fascism has it ended itself through burning itself out.
But if we continue a good practice of social hygiene each and every one of us every single day… then it’s far less likely that people will turn to fascism as a societal solution to political issues.
This is my Ted talk.
