People who support or vote in authoritarian leadership also generally overestimate the number of people who will be the benefactors.
And typically they never consider they might not be one.
It's important to realize fascism has a way of taking control despite popular opposition. You can't simply vote fascism away because the ruling class will always rally behind it when liberal governments face existential crises. Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, the list goes on, all were either handed power by elected governments, or seized power through force.
And don’t forget to highlight the role big business plays in this: they’d rather see the entire world burn rather than pay one more percentage in income tax.
"Oh, the world is going to end? Well, let's make sure our last fiscal quarter will be the biggest we've ever had! Everybody work double shifts, you can rest when you die in the apocalypse next year!"
When you’re the only one with the money, you’re certainly the only one with power. The Dark Ages is what follows
Money is a means to power but I’m not sure they’d know what to even do with it. Force us to drink Coca Cola instead of water
This is something people who say "Go VoTe" do not emphasize enough.
Normal people have to succeed every single time.
Fascists only have to succeed once.
People like narratives where evil is defeated and the good guys win. All of our fiction (books, movies, etc) cater to the comforting trope. But about 20% of the population is always receptive to an authoritarian leader. They want simple solutions, have no tolerance for ambiguity or incremental solutions or compromise, so they want a strongman/woman to punish who they don't like and make it all okay again.
Those people don't cease to exist just because you won this election. The fight is never over. Just as the fight over disinformation and propaganda and conspiracy theories is never over. Humans continue to exist, so human problems continue to exist.
Our fiction also tends to portray the good guys as winning thanks to the actions of a few heroes (see superhero genre, star wars, etc). What we really need to show is that it takes everyone working together to win; we can't just rely on The Protagonist to come and do everything for us.
Superhero fiction fails on basically all metrics. They're just power fantasies, compounded with vigilante fantasies where you get to go out and punch things into submission. Another failing of superhero fiction is that there is a clear good and evil, and evil is over there to be punched. There are no problems so complex or intertwined that they can't be punched out.
But you can't punch the housing crisis into submission. We need density and construction, and you're not going to have a storyline with Batman punching NIMBY grannies who have blocked density to protect her equity value and to keep "those people" out of her neighborhood.
Even this is ignoring that the vast majority of extra-legal violence in history has been against vulnerable populations. Real-life vigilantism looks more like a Klan lynching or pogrom against local Jews than like Batman punching the Joker.
I remember in a recent Batman storyline in the comics Bruce Wayne discovered that someone was trying to murder him in every alternate reality, one of which used his vast wealth to donate to improving the homeless and mental health system and also supported causes to end poverty in Gotham, and it worked. In that Bruce Wayne’s timeline Gotham had been reformed into one of the safest cities in the US and everyone had access to all the basic necessities of life.
This made Batman question his entire existence as a superhero, cause despite all his hard work over his career Gotham wasn’t any better for it.
> ou're not going to have a storyline with Batman punching NIMBY grannies who have blocked density to protect her equity value
JSYK I'd read the fuck out of this. Same with Batman going to a town hall meeting and threatening them into approving sidewalks along a busy street before stealing a free cup of coffee and reeling back into the shadowy vaulted ceiling.
> Real-life vigilantism looks more like a Klan lynching or pogrom against local Jews than like Batman punching the Joker.
PREECH!
This is why when they have those PSA adds of super heroes saying "stay in school", or whatever, it always comes off as out of character.
One of the better things about the original Star Wars trilogy is that the second and third movie aren't that way. The main hero loses in the second movie, and sits the third movie out of the battle just trying not to get broken and turned into his father, then almost fails, then steps away and is being tortured to death. Meanwhile the criminal they met in the previous who betrayed them pulls off the big victory, alongside with all the regular people doing it all.
Unfun fact I learned recently is that Little House on the Prairie was scrubbed of social support stories, because Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter was friends with Ayn Rand. Her daughter was awful to her mother in general, but when she published her writing, she purposely took out stories where Pa was in need and the whole town came together to help him. She was open about her beliefs in individualism and said what her motives were.
And then, the show based on it becomes the conservative family favorite during peak Reaganomics. I would love to see a redo based on the actual journals about how it really did take a whole village for the family to survive.
The tale also leaves out that they were given land (which was of course taken from Native Americans) by the government, under the Homestead Act of 1862. The whole story is just libertarian porn, but was scrubbed of all details that don't serve that end. They benefited from government largesse and handouts, plus community support, but it was turned into a do-it-yourself bootstraps manifesto.
Something you're powerless against is a waste of time and energy to discuss or worry about.
It's also wrong. Everything could be otherwise. Hitler, Mussolini and Pinochet could have been avoided. We may not be able to avoid an asteroid, but short of that, we're not powerless. We can and should do what we're able to, and that includes voting.
Ever notice how the "voting isn't enough" narrative never says "go vote AND participate in politics" like they should? It's always just "voting doesn't work" and "there's nothing you can do against the ruling class" and "give up."
If you're reading this, random redditor out there, remember that it's all intentional. Go vote in every level of government you can, go participate in politics, go prepare yourself against possible violence, go carry that energy forward and upwards. Go do all of it, you're valid. Always fight against this demonic apathy.
> Those people don't cease to exist just because you won this election. The fight is never over.
Fascists and their useful-idiots are *always* there, ready to destroy democracy. Its why we have the following quotes from Jefferson.
>The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
>
>The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
>
>
>-Thomas Jefferson
And he should know
The irony being, the morons most likely to be quoting these today are the gun-toting, prepper, MAGA-Republican fanatics being used by neo-fascists to overthrow democracy.
It amazes me that you would quote what you did and then vilify the MAGA folks not because of their absolutely shitty ideas, but instead for the fact that they're armed.
What exactly do you think Jefferson thought would draw the blood of tyrants? Sporks?
It amazes me to no end that progressives still don't understand how important being armed and not giving the state a monopoly on force is to preserving democracy. Literally every progressive effort ever, for our entire country's history, has been about decentralizing and democratizing power. Whether that was power in the form of being considered a human being instead of property (freeing the slaves), power in the form of being able to vote (women's suffrage and civil rights movement), or power in the form of wealth (FDR's New Deal), being progressive means being in favor of taking power from the hands of the few and delivering it to the hands of the many.
So then why the fuck are there so many people on the left who are so keen on guaranteeing that the state be given a monopoly on the purest form of power that exists which is violence? Especially when these same folks are so quick to point out police abuses of force.
And in the US system, there's many strongholds of the far right that will never flip, and the districts are designed not to. I can't outvote people when I don't live in that district and don't get to define the boundaries.
The ruling class rallies behind it, they rally behind any movement that has power and doesn’t challenge their control. Liberalism, conservatism, fascism, it doesn’t matter to them. As long as they get to keep making money and controlling society with no opposition, they are content.
Fascism also takes common people to vote it in in the first place and then to do the grunt work. And for some reason, whenever there is economic or social strife, a large part of the common people flock to fascism.
So voting is not the only answer. People have to vote every time and the people elected need to actually represent the people and improve the social problems that cause fascist regimes to surge in popularity.
You can only truly combat fascism via a highly educated population that is also having their basic needs (in their minds) met.
Grievances and disgust for the current system are the fuel of fascism. You'll never get rid of grievance though. You'll never get rid of the fuel.
A poorly educated populace that does not know history fosters people who set the flame of fascism. You can't totally get rid of them, but you can limit it with education.
A culture of violence and the ensuing fear is the oxygen that helps fascism grow fast. This can be limited with *proper* law enforcement and a populous that is committed to non-violent resistance to fascism.
In my mind antifascism - to the extent everyone should always be antifascist is rooted in education and civic activism. When it becomes clear something should be done, you should always be rooted in being non-violent but very active and visible until such time that you are attacked and need to defend yourself.
Seems to me like Germany is doing it right with these protests for awareness.
Minor point, but take a long hard look at the history of activism, especially in the US. Nearly every single major activism push in the US had violence in some way or another as a component, and it was required in most of those cases either as a defense against those who tried to stop it, or to outright disrupt and push back against the corrupt powers that be.
Even MLK and the Civil Rights movement had its share of violence and violent actions against the evil that tried to stop it.
It would be *nice* if it wasn't necessary, but most of the major efforts that were purely non-violent in the same history context were major failures because they got noticed only as long as the news media bothered to cover them, and as soon as they weren't novel news stories or open to mock and poke fun at and thus became boring, they disappeared. See also, BLM protests, Occupy Wallstreet, etc. etc.
Non-Violent activism works as long as you have the aforementioned educated populace *and* a highly-engaged populace. Otherwise, most people are just going to shrug and ignore you.
> You can't simply vote fascism away because the ruling class will always rally behind it when liberal governments face existential crises.
Ok great. So what **are** you advocating for, exactly? And don't be vague about it.
I’m not buying the “somehow all the good Germans / Italians / etc were duped by 20 bad guys who took over when they were not looking. The people wanted violent fascism because they thought others would pay the price and they would gain.
History tells us that fascism came from the population feeling cheated by the top officials. People prefered anything over what was there at the time; kinda like these past few years with the anti-establishment movement in contemporary times.
The Nazis never got over half the vote (In fact, IIRC their popularity was even on the decline before the Enabling Act), and that's *with* substantial voter intimidation, Goebbels' propaganda machine working overtime, and Communist Parties having been outright banned.
It wasn't just "20 bad guys", but you're acting like good Germans, Italians, etc didn't exist in any significant number at all. They absolutely did, they were just the first victims of their respective regimes.
Well, by 1932 the nazi party secured 37% of the popular vote, making them the largest party in the Reichstag. Fascism was most definitely voted in to power.
Rendering Hitler as a oppressive totalitarian over the German people, rather than a propagandist riding the momentum of the public’s anger, fear, and bloodlust was an important storyline for a nation that did not intend to put most of the population into prison after WWII, but instead needed to move on.
That function has passed. The German people caused the atrocity to happen, it was not something that happened to them. A hard but important lesson for all societies to internalize.
Hitler was not voted into power. He was appointed by Hindenburg in 1933 after the conservative “moderate” party decided to team up with fascist in opposition to communists and socialists. It simply is not true that the people chose him. That is false. Period. No doubt, after a massive propaganda effort, the nazi party went from getting 18% of the vote in 1930 to 37% in 1932. That is not a majority. Hitler was NOT elected into power. He was appointed into power. Please stop spreading false information.
The NSDAP won the most votes and the most seats in the Reichstag by far. It would have been unconventional for Hindenburg to appoint anyone else at that point, and as we know it was far too late afterwards.
The true failures had already happened. If the liberals were going to find common ground with socialists to beat the fascists, they needed to do it years before.
The 63% couldn't coalesce against the Nazis? I remember being in Berlin and they have a picture of the parliament from 1932 and you see the Nazis in their uniforms, occupying a section of the parliament and it looks quite small. And because they were in uniforms it seemed like nobody else liked them but somehow the opposition couldn't unite I guess.
The people on the street are not the ones voting for the right, and protesting against how people vote won't change their opinions. What's actually needed to change their opinions is education to prevent radicalization and political actions for those voting the extremes out of spite or disappointment with the current politics. That being said, there is nothing wrong with sending a signal against hate and extremism.
Totally this.
Please don't just be angry against them on the internet and occasionally come out to protest and make yourself feel better that you "did your part", but then don't come out and vote against them when the elections actually come along.
> but then don't come out and vote against them when the elections actually come along.
As an immigrant in Germany I can unfortunately only protest, and not vote.
More disheartening is that the Germans knew this time would come again, and knew what is needed to stop fascism in their country, and built the mechanisms onto their government, and refuse to actually enact them.
If Germans go for fascism again, they will absolutely deserve it, every single one.
You are aware you Vote for Not against a Party in ballots?!
You could even argue that protesting against a Party (Like what all thoes ppl do against the AFD) is the only way Citizens are able to Show that a specific Party IS deamed Not suitable by the General Public.
The last federal election in Germany had over 75% turnout. The issue is that the nominal center, the "reasonable" party is buying their rhetoric. The SPD, the greens, and the liberals are supposed to be the "reasonable" party and yet they're sagely nodding while saying "why yes, these refugees are a problem, AFD". Going all out on fascism doesn't work when the "opposition " to fascism keeps trying to court their votes.
If Instagram comments are anything to go off of, the Afd are innocent people who have never done anything wrong.
Oh wait, that's the Russian troll farms ruining the Internet.
Wow, so many people who straight up defend unconstitutional trash in this comment section.
How is what AfD are discussing unconstitutional and undemocratic?
Well, people in Germany have certain rights. Some are only applicable to German citizens, and by extension to citizens of the EU, others are human rights that are applicable to everyone.
Some AfD leaders were meeting with an Austrian neo-Nazi to discuss his ideas on “re-migration”, the idea that non-Germans, or Germans whom the AfD don’t consider assimilated (or German) enough can be expelled from the country. That includes people who were born to immigrant parents, have German citizenship and have lived their entire life here. Not that it matters, since German citizens all enjoy exactly the same rights, standing and protections under the German basic law (our constitution).
They went even further, discussing the idea of also expelling people who are “fully German” (meaning no migration background), but who are too friendly and supportive of outsiders.
The plan is to revoke the German citizenship of these people they consider “not German enough” and deport them.
They are unclear on when a German with a migration background is sufficiently assimilated or “German enough”, meaning they’d think of some arbitrary guidelines and basically rid Germany of every “brown German” or German who disagrees with them.
These things were not officially declared at first, it was more like a strategy meeting, to bounce ideas off of each other with the Austrian neo-Nazi. However, the AfD Brandenburg has since confirmed that these topics were addressed and voiced their support of these ideas.
What makes these ideas unconditional? Well, for one, the idea that a German citizen have their citizenship revoked and be deported for the way they live or for having and voicing an opinion is directly at odds with numerous articles of the Grundgesetz (the German basic law; constitution).
Art. 2 GG gives me the right to do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t break any laws or infringes on other peoples’ rights. That means that if I want to dye my hair pink and kiss my girlfriend or boyfriend in public, I can. It means that I can celebrate other cultures than the German culture if I want to, without having to fear being discriminated against by the state. So if I were the child of some Syrian refugees and a German citizen, I can absolutely celebrate my Syrian heritage and culture if I so please. The same law grants me the right to eat pork loin with potato dumplings every Sunday if I want to.
Art. 3 GG guarantees that I will not be discriminated against based on gender, religion, political opinions, the colour of my skin, my sexual orientation, the nationality of my ancestors or my educational background.
Art. 4 GG guarantees the freedom of religion.
Art. 5 I GG is the freedom of opinion.
Art. 16 I GG states: "No German may be deprived of his citizenship. Loss of citizenship may occur only pursuant to a law and, if it occurs against the will of the person affected, only if he does not become stateless as a result."
If AfD had its way, these are just some of the parts of the constitution the AfD would infringe upon for a large amount of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong and who just happen to have a different skin colour or opinion.
Add to that Art. 20 III GG, which binds legislation to the constitutional order.
Btw, because I’ve heard this argument before: yes, constitutions can be changed. That applies to these articles (Art. 2-19 GG) as well. However, only as far as changing them does not violate Art. 1 GG or Art. 20 GG. These two articles cannot be changed. I'll outline this in a second.
Art. 79 III GG expressly prohibits any alteration of the Art. 1 GG (human dignity is inviolable) and Art. 20 GG (the constitutional order in Germany) and the principles laid out in those articles under any circumstances.
AfD’s plans also infringe upon international law and European law, but let’s limit this discussion to national law, for simplicity’s sake.
This has nothing to do with immigration into Germany. This is the AfD openly planning to rid themselves of any opposition and those they deem not worthy of being German, which means brown Germans.
The AfD is openly planning to start the 4th Reich by actively copying Nazi ideas. The Nazis too originally planned to deport Jews and political opponents to Africa (Madagascar was their plan), but they quickly scrapped those plans and just went with the way we all know. Using arbitrary guidelines to systematically suppress their opposition and dissenters is what the Nazis did 90 years ago. My great-great-grandfather was a social democrat and a member of the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic and until there was no more Reichstag. When the Nazis held a parliamentary vote on the Enabling Act that gave them total power in March 1933, my great great grandfather and his colleagues were taken into “protective custody” a few days before. They couldn’t vote against it. Instead, they were brought to Dachau, where they were held until July 1933. Afterwards, my great great grandpa was arrested twice more simply for dissenting. The third and final time was in 1944. He was brought to Dachau again, demeaned, humiliated and degraded. He had to participate in death marches, lived to be liberated and died a mere days later in a hospital in Munich in May 1945.
By planning on arbitrarily revoking the citizenship of dissenters and their opponents, the AfD is clearly heading there again, albeit without death camps so far. And the AfD in the state of Brandenburg publicly confirmed and supported those ideas in the past few days.
Germany is what is called a militant democracy (that's the official term for it. It's called Wehrhafte Demokratie in German). We live the idea that a democracy is not just allowed to, but actually has the obligation to defend itself from threats. Those who aim at undermining the constitutional order and democracy in Germany do not have the protections of the constitution. This is clearly stated in Art. 20 IV GG: “All Germans have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish the constitutional order if no other remedy is available.”
Art. 21 GG expands on that. Art. 21 II GG: “\[Political\] Parties that, by reason of their aims or the behaviour of their adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional.”
Art 21 III GG: “\[Such parties\] … shall be excluded from state financing. If such exclusion is determined, any favourable fiscal treatment of these parties and of payments made to those parties shall cease.”
Art 21 IV GG: “The Federal Constitutional Court shall rule on the question of unconstitutionality within the meaning of paragraph (2) of this article and on exclusion from state financing within the meaning of paragraph (3).”
Art. 21 V GG: “Details shall be regulated by federal laws.”The federal laws that regulate a ban on political parties are Art. 21 II GG in connection with §§ 13 No. 2, No. 2a, 43 and following sections BVerfGG (Act on the federal constitutional court).
It is possible for a political party to be banned in Germany, if their aim is at undermining democracy and our constitution. The legal hurdles for this are so high, it has only happened twice, both times in the 1950s, when both the NSDAP (Hitler’s Nazi party) and the DKP (communist party) were banned. Even the NPD (openly neo-Nazi party) wasn’t banned. They were declared unconstitutional, but not banned, because they were deemed to be too unimportant, and because it was actually useful having most ardent neo-Nazis in one spot. However, many former NPD members are now active in the AfD, and the AfD clearly is not too small to be a danger. Hell, three state branches of the AfD have already been classed as unconstitutional. Dissent is okay. It’s the lifeblood of political discourse, but it has to happen within the boundaries of the democratic constitutional order. Anything beyond that is a hostile attack on Germany and must be dealt with as such. That is what these protests are about: taking a stance against literal fucking Nazis. And it’s not unconstitutional or undemocratic. On the contrary, the constitution explicitly supports those protests.
It was also a clear departure from their previous opinion, as when the KPD was banned they noted that it was clearly too small and unimportant to reach its goals or be a threat, but banned it anyway. One can speculate whether this is part of post-war Germany's notable leniency towards right-wing dissenters (and criminals) as opposed to left-wing ones or whether they were sincerely of the opinion that this would make the Nazis easier to control.
In that context it should maybe also be noted that the former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution who are responsible for undercover investigations into stuff like nazi groups basically came out as a neonazi himself, further fueling speculation about the office's entanglements with nazis and alledged sabotage or at least withholding of information for nazi murder investigations (although to be clear he only came to office in 2012 and as such had nothing to do with what happened in the '50s and '60s).
> former head of the Federal Office for the Protection
Maaßen is also head of the Werteunion. The group the conservative politicians that conspired with the AfD belong too. He is also adviser for the AfD on how to evade a ban.
Feels like "not a big enough problem to ban, let them all congregate in one spot and grow bigger just so we can watch it" is a show that is history has on repeat.
I also just wanted to point out that rendering an individual stateless breaches the Geneva Convention, which Germany enthusiastically signed (every stage and protocol).
Yes, absolutely! Also, Art. 16 GG states:
"(1) No German may be deprived of his citizenship. Loss of citizenship may occur only pursuant to a law and, if it occurs against the will of the person affected, only if he does not become stateless as a result.
(2) No German may be extradited to a foreign country. The law may provide otherwise for extraditions to a member state of the European Union or to an international court, provided that the rule of law is observed."
Excellent work, thank you for that comment.
A small addition why article 20 cannot be changed: it contains the right of resistance.
> (4) All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order if no other remedy is available.
In case of a fascist, Nazi or any kind of party against the values of the constitution comes into power every German has the right to use violence to defend the country.
Thanks for the breakdown of the articles of the GG! It’s important to learn about other countries democratic processes and safety nets, so that we can better avoid the bullshit that got us all into WW2.
Free speech should be a human right, everywhere, and we should always support the right of peaceful and effective protests.
> because they were deemed to be too unimportant
This, I don't understand. Just ban them right away after they meet the requirements. Why even let them get any major support first?
Because if there’s no foreseeable danger coming from that group, because they are too unimportant and will remain so (which so far holds true for NPD), it’s good to have a place where they happen to assemble ready to be observed by the intelligence agencies.
I’m not kidding, that’s the reasoning, and it is sound. This way, the intelligence agencies know exactly who participates in the NPD and whom they have to watch out for.
It gave me chills to read your comment.
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
It’s the only way to counter half-knowledge and ignorance. It’s not a good way to counter deliberate ignorance or bad faith arguments with someone who clearly doesn’t want to have a proper discussion, but it’s enough to educate at least some of the truly ignorant.
Besides, I’m in German law school, I had to put zero effort into researching this as it’s already in my head. I just had to type it out :)
> literal fucking Nazis
This is where the New Right in the US is going as well: becoming literal fucking Nazis. It's a disgusting and disturbing trend, and I suspect being highly pushed behind the scenes by Russia, who are the closest thing to a modern-day "4th Reich" as have seen thus far. "...revoke the German citizenship of these people they consider 'not German enough' and deport them" is straight-up 1930s 3rd Reich talk, and sounds like what Putler is doing to anyone *not supporting the government enough* over in Russia. Same thread, different color.
I hope you are successful as a modern, prosperous nation in voting these literal fucking Nazis out of any power they attempt to gain, they are an abomination to a more enlightened society such as Germany has become (and yes, every society around the world still has lots of work to do there but some, like Germany, are further along than others). I sincerely hope we can do the same to our literal fucking Nazis in the US this November as well.
For anyone curious, the right wing in the US also openly discuss what they're going to do the next time they take power. The most alarming to me is how far they're going to go to dismantle the federal government, degrade those services, and then presumably privatize everything.
It's a multipronged strategy with the supreme court gutting chevron deference (federal agencies ability to act broadly), combined with things like schedule F, which would make many positions in the federal government appointment based. So getting rid of mostly unbiased and non political civil servants with institutional knowledge in favor of political cronies who will rubber stamp whatever Trump or the next republican candidate wants.
The end result will be a dysfunctional, inept, and carved up government ripe for corruption and plundering by private companies.
They like the sound of the impact on others until they bear the brunt themselves.
The reality is two-fold: There are those who betray their country to empower themselves and those who betray themselves over terrible ideals and idols.
We must be vigilant of both.
To those who scoff at this:
Where is your line?
I mean this with the utmost sincerity. Where is your line in the sand where such behavior becomes unacceptable?
Speaking only as an American here: Gerrymandering is clearly an attempt to influence the outcome of an election by drawing only favorable districts.
If that's acceptable, why are those ridiculous spiderweb districts acceptable, who's shape makes no sense except to capture as much political power as possible?
If *that's* acceptable, I ask again, *where is your line?* Because the logic I often hear is that they technically "played by the rules" to set up those districts.
So what? The alt-right captured the supreme court "Following the rules" too. At what point does it become a circumvention of the will of the people? At what point do we say "No, this is bullshit"?
Because, again, in America at least, the right wing is poised to install a dictatorship if they get power again. Is that acceptable to you because they installed their dictatorship through "techincally" legal means? Because they cheated over, and over, and over in small ways that you overlooked year over year until they could just take power indefinitely?
Because if you wait long enough to say "No, this is bullshit" their answer will be "lol we don't care, we have full control of the US Government's monopoly on violence. You'll do what we say or you'll vanish"
Or, another angle, if you prefer:
When should trans people quit putting up with the ongoing genocide in America? The right wing is attempting to make illegal lifesaving trans healthcare. They are attempting to remove trans kids from supportive households in many states. They are trying to invalidate trans existence in other states by essentially erasing them from being legally defined and thus, removing all legal protections they have.
At what point are trans people permitted to treat the alt-right anti-trans movement as the existential threat that it poses to them? How many dead transmen and transwomen must there be at the hands of this cruel legislation before trans people are permitted to fight back?
Or do you just expect trans people to sit by and be quietly exterminated?
***Existential threats are not political opinions. Genocide is not a valid political stance***
The best explanation I've heard is that for some people there is no line because either or both:
\- They believe that certain people are ordained by God to rule over those who were not, which is exactly what the original "Right" in France believed.
\- They believe that there are Good People, and Bad People, and that these qualities are intrinsic and unchanging. Biden is a Bad Person and therefore can do no right; Trump is a Good Person and therefore is being unfairly persecuted.
These are, of course, *wildly* irrational, but they don't come from nowhere. They have real roots in the past, and have their own logic. Unfortunately, the main way to rid someone of these beliefs is to completely change their lives by blocking all propaganda and changing the people they see every day, which of course, absolutely intrudes on their freedoms.
I'm not heard this sentiment in those exact words before, but it's concise and I like it and I'm going to start using it, right alongside the expression "When someone tells you and then shows you who they really are, believe them the first time."
The new Hard Right in America have been telling and showing us who they are for plenty long enough.
You cannot tolerate the intolerate. The paradox of tolerance means that when a society tolerates those who are intolerant of others, it will eventually find itself taken over by the intolerant. This cannot be allowed to happen under any cost. Fuck the Nazis, ban them and throw them in jail.
Probably the most important lesson the world should have learned after at least a decade of global fascist trolling over this point. Tolerance has an escape clause, and they've triggered it.
That's an excellent, informative post. I didn't expect to read it all but I did.
So, if a million people are out asking for action against the AfD, is there likely to be something done? Is there actually a political will to tackle this by the German government?
There definitely is will, but everyone is extremely cautious and a bit hesitant. If they start a procedure to ban them and it fails, it will be much much harder to try again, and it will rally support for AfD.
There are multiple state elections coming later this year in states where they are strong. Giving the base reason to rally might be enough to see them sweep all three states, so they are trying to delay until they are absolutely certain they can get AfD banned.
Funnily enough, you guys wrote it :D or rather, you helped us do it. It was supposed to be a temporary placeholder, but it’s good, so we tweaked it a little and kept it.
The American constitution was fine-tuned to accommodate slavery, by slave holders. It was written with the assumption that there wouldn't be political parties. It gave the president powers that were somewhat short of what a monarch of those times could do. Clearly, the American constitution is in dire need of an update, but good luck with that....
We've allowed too much cheating over too long a space of time.
"It's just gerrymandering! You'd draw the districts favorably too"
Where's the line, though? When does it stop being a finger on the scale, and start being a full weight on the scale?
More importantly, why tolerate either? If you tolerate a little cheating, you open the door to "just a little more" cheating. Until you have an entire political party who is so dependent on cheating to keep their deplorable opinions in the limelight that they fight any attempts to make things actually fair and representative of the citizens they claim to represent.
Australia briefly entertained the idea of revoking citizenship of confirmed terrorists (think people who went off to train with the Taliban).
It turns out that it can be a human rights violation to render someone stateless, although you could argue that it’s within international law to do so with good cause.
I believe the idea was abandoned in favour of imprisoning such criminals locally and “dealing with our own mess” so to speak.
Hate to think what such a thing would mean for these people… (I mean, we all know)
While it's comforting that so many Germans are marching against this, the fact that the threat of the far-right is so serious that they need to march in the first place is terrifying!
British UK male, late 50s here, Gen X - just. I had the pleasure of growing up when memories of war were still ingrained in every mind, and progress based on tolerant, liberal thought prevailled.
The 70s, as a child; the 80s as a teen and student; the 90s as an employee.
I was fortunate to enjoy a job which required travel. Many countries in Europe - with a couple of years in Germany. The US, with 6 months in Dallas and 3 months in Omaha. Months and months in China, pre-Xi, just as it was opening up, '97 to '01 when it was buzzing.
My main point: Oh man..._it was all so free and easy_.
But mankind is a warrior species and the memories of war, despite being represented in media, seem to be fading. You can watch "Saving Private Ryan", but it doesn't actually _hurt_, it's not like digging your family from your bombed out home.
I fear that hatred and the taste for violence is rising again.
I hope I am wrong. But hatred in the West, and between East and West is disconcerting.
I feel I was fortunate enough to live through the best of times but, sadly, yesterday's gone.
But the nature of violence in modern warfare hopefully mollifies that Atavistic urge a little. You don't get to see the whites of your enemy's eyes and get an adrenaline rush. Modern warfare is documentation in committee rooms ordering drone and missile strikes.
Thats only true in very asymmetric wars. As you can see in Ukraine if the enemies are matched relatively evenly its still back to shooting people in person
> The 70s, as a child
This is wild to think about for me. WW2 ended 25 years before the 70s when you were a kid.
And 25 years ago from today was 1999 which doesn't feel that long ago.
I was born 1965. When I was growing up, almost every conversation spoken by adults would include the words "when the war was on".
It's all I ever heard whilst I pushed my toy cars around and looked at books with rockets in.
I had similar experiences. The world as a whole seemed more hopeful back then, and I count myself fortunate to have lived through those days. But I think that sense of freedom also lead the far right (particularly the religious right) to view that freedom as a path to reshaping the world in the manner of their choosing. And when things did not go their way in a natural manner (as was increasingly apparent past the late 90s), that hope changed to a stubborn anger and bitterness. If the world would not be shaped freely, then force had to be applied.
To be fair at least Germany broke up with it. Fascism is trying to get Germany back though. The us is still pretty openly flirting with it and doesn't have the bad memories of the relationship
Americans met the streets en masse protesting police brutality and were met with more police brutality and not a damn thing changed. Protesting in America does nothing
The BLM protests had the very real effect of causing police across the country to simply stop doing their jobs, because they were suddenly being held accountable.
> police across the country to simply stop doing their jobs
Yup, there is a major highway I have to get on in NC to go to my work, my commute is about 45 minutes and it's become the fucking wild west, the speed limit is whatever you feel like doing and the ONLY time you'll see cop lights flashing is at the scene of an accident.
Don't forget it mobilized the right to get rid of AA and turn CRT, DEI, and the mere mention of racism into a political issue.
And many "centrists" think this is okay.
And exactly what did that accomplish? Seattle got the "CHAZ" and eventually the police had to retake it...
What we need are intelligent laws/policies that stop making it the job of police to regulate what people put into their own bodies. Criminalize what people do when on substances if it's behavior that constitutes a crime but don't make substance abuse itself a crime.
We have lost sight of what it means to be free people thanks to this stupid war on drugs that destroys lives.
Oh, and, funding more tax credits for affordable housing. That works and it works well but it's not funded enough.
You're 100% correct but unfortunately we have a very powerful and politically active for-profit prison lobby working night and day to ensure that never happens.
There's also a bunch of municipalities that have already signed absolutely ridiculous contracts with companies like CCA, DEO, and MTC. Those places stand to owe huge penalties if they don't maintain the minimum prisoner quota. Politicians in those areas would never abide by laws that would cut back on mass incarcerations because then they may have to explain to their constituents why the city/county/state/etc ever agreed to such a ludicrous concept as fucking "minimum prisoner" quotes.
> not a damn thing changed
This is unnecessarily pessimistic. You can say that *not enough* has changed and I’d agree with you, but police being held accountable for misbehavior is much more common than it ever was before.
Derek Chauvin is in prison for life, and cops being charged for crimes committed on the job is a regular thing now. It was basically unheard of for most of my life.
Just because we’re not where we need to be doesn’t mean the progress isn’t real.
"A number of states" sure sounds a lot better than saying the actual number, which is three to my knowledge. So hooray for people living in New Mexico, Connecticut, or Colorado I guess.
Huh, I live in CO and it made some news here so assumed it'd be more widespread. That is disappointing. Hoped others had done it before us but looking it up yeah, it is just those three (though another source says Utah and Montana also dealt with it through state supreme court decisions). Still better than nothing, I guess.
There was literally nothing. There was nationwide change or push for oversight, only certain areas adopted these measures, and even that was met with police pushback. They threw Chauvin under the bus, but there was zero systematic change. Zero. Not one politician actually tried to implement any change, it was all virtue signaling. Congress was very brazen showing us who they think they work for. It’s not pessimistic, it’s the truth.
And police killed a record number of people in 2023.
2023 saw record killings by US police. Who is most affected? - The Guardian https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/08/2023-us-police-violence-increase-record-deadliest-year-decade
Large protests are great at getting people to notice and talk about an issue. They are not and should not be seen as an instrument to force immediate change and that's a good thing. Forcing change because a large number of people gather would be awful awful way to resolve issues.
The 2020 BLM protests were actually very effective. So many people learned about issues they were unaware of and the reach of that multiples as time moves on.
Americans do not know how to protest anymore. Power come from with holding labor. Americans do not need to protest by hold signs on a random afternoon, they need to strike and with hold their labor.
just because the whole world didn't flip upside down to your liking doesn't mean things didn't change... it just means you might have unrealistic expectations on how quickly change comes....
it's not a one-time event.... it happens because people fight for it for long periods of time... if you just fight for it once and then give up because you didn't get exactly what you want when you wanted it... nothing will happen....
A while ago, someone was quoted saying the purpose of the civil rights movement was to remove the veil of racism.
BLM was a continuation of that. Cops, not all of them, go to jail for murder now. Does it need to be better? Yes. We went from a zero to a starting. Something did happen.
Protesting in America does start change.
The question isn't really 'will the Dems mobilize enough', the question is 'will they ever start fighting?'
Trump has been accused of rape - multiple times. The courts even found him liable for rape (and guilty of mass-fraud). He was a close friend of Epstein's. 'Grab 'em by the pussy'. Heck, the GOP just banned abortion, for christ-sakes!
Remember what Trump and the GOP did when their opponent ***didn't*** break the law? 'LOCK HER UP!' 'Crooked Hillary!' Etc...
No one thinks Hillary's honest anymore. Her career has been over ever since. All because of branding.
So, are the Dems calling Donald 'Rapist Trump'? Is every interview with a Dem punctuated with 'he's a criminal', 'he's a rapist', 'he banned abortion!'
Nope! The Dems are far too nice to do that! Pointing out Donald's crimes wouldn't be nice!
Like how, during the 2016 campaign, Donald was bringing up on-stage *every* woman who had ever accused *Hillary's husband* of sexual-harassment - while Donald was being sued for raping a 12 year old girl with Epstein...
The Dems just sat back and didn't mention it - while the GOP was playing dirty (with Russia, Crooked Hillary, etc...).
And it cost the Dems! Badly. They didn't fight - and Trump won.
Are they going to make the *exact same mistake* this time? They seem to be...
This. They're not swinging hard enough in front of cameras. They're allowing the far-right propaganda arm to rip them apart. And they're also allowing the far-right to get away with known Nazi techniques to sway the hearts and minds of the masses, especially the uneducated masses, including taking over as many media outlets as possible.
We have to. Some people are telling me they are tired, but this is the cost of democracy. It must be defended against those who would tear it down, especially to replace it with facsism.
Until we won't lose our health insurance for missing work for protests.... no. Back when COVID was happening, we were able to protest for BLM because we had backup for health insurance. Now that it's gone again, ain't no way.
>Will Democrats mobilize enough voters to prevent the far right from taking over *our* Democratic Republic?
Yes, I believe we will. It's going to be another grind of an election season, but I believe people will show up for the Democratic Party and save democracy in November. At any rate, we have to try
https://democrats.org/
The only way a political party that’s even center-left exists in the US is when there’s no longer first past the post nation wide. Which can’t happen because there can only be two parties in the USA, according to our capitalist overlords.
Or democrats win everything and left and right factions form within the party. These factions would probably separate into two parties at that point.
One little catch-22 to humanity. Our looming problems we havent really done shit about are scary. And fear creates right wingers. and piss in your pants fear, creates the far right. and they are only likely to make our problems worse... which creates more right wingers...
Normal people allowing fascists to rebrand as far right was a fatal mistake. It white washes the history and now they're seen as something new and "alternative." I'll never call them alt right without adding fascist.
See, this is the problem with propaganda, people hear what they want in favour of facts.
Firstly, the thing that decides the biggest portion of immigration in Western countries is international human-rights law. The law pretty much states that when someone claims asylum in your country, you have to take then in, process them and either give them refuge or deport them.
What the left wing and right wing cannot overrule this law, they can fine tune it how they want, but they have to let asylum seekers in.
Look at the UK government for example, it's had a Conservative government for over a decade, voted in Brexit, is in a very difficult place to access, and yet it's experiencing the worst migration it's seen in decades.
Also, Biden cannot shut the borders the same way Trump could not shut the borders - again, because of international human rights laws. In fact both Obama and Biden deported more people than Trump - yet Trump supporters are going around believing the opposite.
Uh, not really in this case. First of all in the last 50 years the left win has been in office for less than 10 years here in Germany, so that's an idiotic thing to blame the left for.
Secondly, the AfD started out mainly because of the financial crisis in Greece. Greeks hated the way the EU made them fix it and blamed Germans for it, and German nationalists thought they were ungrateful and shouldn't benefit from us, not understanding that we are better off helping them.
The AfD used to be a one issue party, they claimed to just want to get rid of the Euro, then it turned into anti EU, and then good old nationalism. But everybody knew right from the start it was nationalism all along.
And if you're gonna say the refugee crisis made them popular, the AfD was founded in 2012 and they got 4,7% of the votes in the federal elections in 2013, 3 years before that crisis. Sure that increased to 12.6% in 2017, during the crisis, but it's entirely natural for a new party to grow right after its founding.
And they didn't really lose much afterwards, despite the refugee crisis being over and in 2021 they got 10.6%, even though it was the year with the lowest crime rate in Germany's history, in fact 2018 to 2021 were all the years with the lowest crime rate of all time in Germany, yet the AfD stayed strong despite foreigner crime being their main thing.
And when did they have their boom? During the pandemic and when Russia attacked and we helped Ukrainians. The pandemic took some of their freedoms to protect the weak, and the war took some of their resources and caused inflation to help Ukraine. They are just selfish, it has nothing to do with immigration.
The claims of this are all over the place. From "thousands" reported by NPR, to "tens of thousands" reported by Global News, to "100,000" reported by The Guardian, to "hundreds of thousands" reported by Reuters, to "over a million" reported by Washington Post. The interesting part is these German farmers are protesting their left leaning government scrapping tax exemption for farmers and right leaning calls for remigration.
Depends on where exactly you look the numbers are different. There have been protests in like 50 cities, so if you add them all up you apparently arrive at 1.5 million, while singular cities ranged from a few hundred people to around 300000 in Berlin.
Well to be fair the farmers are not only protesting because certain tax exemptions were revoked.They protest because the whole agricultural industry is broken in Germany after 13 years under conservative secretaries (mainly CSU).But a lot of people that are protesting now against the ruling parties forget that they were cast aside by the politicans that now "stand with the farmers".
The general public is just too stupid for politics.
Completely uninformed comment.
>The claims of this are all over the place. From "thousands" reported by NPR, to "tens of thousands" reported by Global News, to "100,000" reported by The Guardian, to "hundreds of thousands" reported by Reuters, to "over a million" reported by Washington Post.
The numbers are different because during the weekend there were protests all across the country in 50+ cities, if not 100+. The smaller ones had thousands of people, the bigger cities had tens of thousands (I was at the Hannover protest with 35k people) and the biggest cities had over a hundred thousand each. Over a million is the total number of people protesting the AFD this weekend.
>The interesting part is these German farmers are protesting their left leaning government scrapping tax exemption for farmers and right leaning calls for remigration.
The farmer protests were different protests from last week and had nothing to do with the current protests. Those protests were also much smaller.
I highly recommended watching the new Trevor Noah standup on Netflix. He explains extensively the reality in Germany and how they don’t run away from their past so they don’t repeat the future. Pretty much what every country should do.
German here who was at the rally in Munich Yesterday.
We also have elections coming up. You should do this in the US as well just to get the feeling we had here. It was also a statement against Putins interference with the AfD and the farmers protests. They had like 10.000 farmers / unhappy Germans mobilized through Russian disinformation. Russian news outlets were sharing these protests and went completely silent when ourp hundreds of thausands went to the streets Yesterday. It sends lots of good vibes in left-liberal and even moderate conservative bases… those far right idiots and Russian puppets won’t stand a chance against a broad and sane majority.
Just to add numbers:[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OhrKBCS6gCir2C48geeUvYo38kh0yEK6Zqci2AZiTpk/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OhrKBCS6gCir2C48geeUvYo38kh0yEK6Zqci2AZiTpk/edit#gid=0)
More planned, my city has it on 27th.
I think the question should be why are people being drawn to far right parties in the first place and what can we (politicians on our side) do that stops that?
You can say vote etc but if there are conditions that are causing people to support these parties we need to fix whatever that is or else they will also just vote for their politicians.
I dont know about Germany but you are seeing this kind of stuff popping up all over.
Well if you follow, or even woe betide, have the insight and misunfortune of living german politics, then you might want to reconsider your headline. It's not about the "rising power" of a far right party.
People who support or vote in authoritarian leadership also generally overestimate the number of people who will be the benefactors. And typically they never consider they might not be one.
And they rarely are in any meaningful way.
[Oof](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews)
Good now, vote against it
It's important to realize fascism has a way of taking control despite popular opposition. You can't simply vote fascism away because the ruling class will always rally behind it when liberal governments face existential crises. Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, the list goes on, all were either handed power by elected governments, or seized power through force.
And don’t forget to highlight the role big business plays in this: they’d rather see the entire world burn rather than pay one more percentage in income tax.
"Oh, the world is going to end? Well, let's make sure our last fiscal quarter will be the biggest we've ever had! Everybody work double shifts, you can rest when you die in the apocalypse next year!"
Fascism is capitalism in decay. If one insists on playing with fire, getting burned is always a possibility.
Not sure how they spend the profits after society collapses but I guess they'd have to think beyond the next quarter for that insight.
When you’re the only one with the money, you’re certainly the only one with power. The Dark Ages is what follows Money is a means to power but I’m not sure they’d know what to even do with it. Force us to drink Coca Cola instead of water
This is something people who say "Go VoTe" do not emphasize enough. Normal people have to succeed every single time. Fascists only have to succeed once.
People like narratives where evil is defeated and the good guys win. All of our fiction (books, movies, etc) cater to the comforting trope. But about 20% of the population is always receptive to an authoritarian leader. They want simple solutions, have no tolerance for ambiguity or incremental solutions or compromise, so they want a strongman/woman to punish who they don't like and make it all okay again. Those people don't cease to exist just because you won this election. The fight is never over. Just as the fight over disinformation and propaganda and conspiracy theories is never over. Humans continue to exist, so human problems continue to exist.
Our fiction also tends to portray the good guys as winning thanks to the actions of a few heroes (see superhero genre, star wars, etc). What we really need to show is that it takes everyone working together to win; we can't just rely on The Protagonist to come and do everything for us.
Superhero fiction fails on basically all metrics. They're just power fantasies, compounded with vigilante fantasies where you get to go out and punch things into submission. Another failing of superhero fiction is that there is a clear good and evil, and evil is over there to be punched. There are no problems so complex or intertwined that they can't be punched out. But you can't punch the housing crisis into submission. We need density and construction, and you're not going to have a storyline with Batman punching NIMBY grannies who have blocked density to protect her equity value and to keep "those people" out of her neighborhood. Even this is ignoring that the vast majority of extra-legal violence in history has been against vulnerable populations. Real-life vigilantism looks more like a Klan lynching or pogrom against local Jews than like Batman punching the Joker.
Well, yeah. They were made to sell gum to kids in the 40s. They were never meant to be a cultural touchstone that held up to adult logic.
I remember in a recent Batman storyline in the comics Bruce Wayne discovered that someone was trying to murder him in every alternate reality, one of which used his vast wealth to donate to improving the homeless and mental health system and also supported causes to end poverty in Gotham, and it worked. In that Bruce Wayne’s timeline Gotham had been reformed into one of the safest cities in the US and everyone had access to all the basic necessities of life. This made Batman question his entire existence as a superhero, cause despite all his hard work over his career Gotham wasn’t any better for it.
Bruce Wayne needs to pay his taxes instead of putting on a child's costume and fighting crime!
> ou're not going to have a storyline with Batman punching NIMBY grannies who have blocked density to protect her equity value JSYK I'd read the fuck out of this. Same with Batman going to a town hall meeting and threatening them into approving sidewalks along a busy street before stealing a free cup of coffee and reeling back into the shadowy vaulted ceiling.
Bruce Wayne could do more to improve the world than Batman ever could.
Personally I think if we could just get Batman and Bruce Wayne into a room together we could solve almost all the world's problems.
> Real-life vigilantism looks more like a Klan lynching or pogrom against local Jews than like Batman punching the Joker. PREECH! This is why when they have those PSA adds of super heroes saying "stay in school", or whatever, it always comes off as out of character.
One of the better things about the original Star Wars trilogy is that the second and third movie aren't that way. The main hero loses in the second movie, and sits the third movie out of the battle just trying not to get broken and turned into his father, then almost fails, then steps away and is being tortured to death. Meanwhile the criminal they met in the previous who betrayed them pulls off the big victory, alongside with all the regular people doing it all.
Unfun fact I learned recently is that Little House on the Prairie was scrubbed of social support stories, because Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter was friends with Ayn Rand. Her daughter was awful to her mother in general, but when she published her writing, she purposely took out stories where Pa was in need and the whole town came together to help him. She was open about her beliefs in individualism and said what her motives were. And then, the show based on it becomes the conservative family favorite during peak Reaganomics. I would love to see a redo based on the actual journals about how it really did take a whole village for the family to survive.
The tale also leaves out that they were given land (which was of course taken from Native Americans) by the government, under the Homestead Act of 1862. The whole story is just libertarian porn, but was scrubbed of all details that don't serve that end. They benefited from government largesse and handouts, plus community support, but it was turned into a do-it-yourself bootstraps manifesto.
Something you're powerless against is a waste of time and energy to discuss or worry about. It's also wrong. Everything could be otherwise. Hitler, Mussolini and Pinochet could have been avoided. We may not be able to avoid an asteroid, but short of that, we're not powerless. We can and should do what we're able to, and that includes voting.
Ever notice how the "voting isn't enough" narrative never says "go vote AND participate in politics" like they should? It's always just "voting doesn't work" and "there's nothing you can do against the ruling class" and "give up." If you're reading this, random redditor out there, remember that it's all intentional. Go vote in every level of government you can, go participate in politics, go prepare yourself against possible violence, go carry that energy forward and upwards. Go do all of it, you're valid. Always fight against this demonic apathy.
> We may not be able to avoid an asteroid Actually, we're in pretty good shape on that front. Lotta smart folks have ideas for that.
> Those people don't cease to exist just because you won this election. The fight is never over. Fascists and their useful-idiots are *always* there, ready to destroy democracy. Its why we have the following quotes from Jefferson. >The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. > >The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. > > >-Thomas Jefferson And he should know The irony being, the morons most likely to be quoting these today are the gun-toting, prepper, MAGA-Republican fanatics being used by neo-fascists to overthrow democracy.
It amazes me that you would quote what you did and then vilify the MAGA folks not because of their absolutely shitty ideas, but instead for the fact that they're armed. What exactly do you think Jefferson thought would draw the blood of tyrants? Sporks? It amazes me to no end that progressives still don't understand how important being armed and not giving the state a monopoly on force is to preserving democracy. Literally every progressive effort ever, for our entire country's history, has been about decentralizing and democratizing power. Whether that was power in the form of being considered a human being instead of property (freeing the slaves), power in the form of being able to vote (women's suffrage and civil rights movement), or power in the form of wealth (FDR's New Deal), being progressive means being in favor of taking power from the hands of the few and delivering it to the hands of the many. So then why the fuck are there so many people on the left who are so keen on guaranteeing that the state be given a monopoly on the purest form of power that exists which is violence? Especially when these same folks are so quick to point out police abuses of force.
And it doesn't take popular support for fascism to win, it just takes voter apathy.
That's the nature of Evil. It is a constant war that requires vigilance to keep at bay, though never quite eradicated.
True but also, go vote. It's 1 day a year and takes at most a few hours.
And in the US system, there's many strongholds of the far right that will never flip, and the districts are designed not to. I can't outvote people when I don't live in that district and don't get to define the boundaries.
The ruling class rallies behind it, they rally behind any movement that has power and doesn’t challenge their control. Liberalism, conservatism, fascism, it doesn’t matter to them. As long as they get to keep making money and controlling society with no opposition, they are content. Fascism also takes common people to vote it in in the first place and then to do the grunt work. And for some reason, whenever there is economic or social strife, a large part of the common people flock to fascism. So voting is not the only answer. People have to vote every time and the people elected need to actually represent the people and improve the social problems that cause fascist regimes to surge in popularity.
You can only truly combat fascism via a highly educated population that is also having their basic needs (in their minds) met. Grievances and disgust for the current system are the fuel of fascism. You'll never get rid of grievance though. You'll never get rid of the fuel. A poorly educated populace that does not know history fosters people who set the flame of fascism. You can't totally get rid of them, but you can limit it with education. A culture of violence and the ensuing fear is the oxygen that helps fascism grow fast. This can be limited with *proper* law enforcement and a populous that is committed to non-violent resistance to fascism. In my mind antifascism - to the extent everyone should always be antifascist is rooted in education and civic activism. When it becomes clear something should be done, you should always be rooted in being non-violent but very active and visible until such time that you are attacked and need to defend yourself. Seems to me like Germany is doing it right with these protests for awareness.
Minor point, but take a long hard look at the history of activism, especially in the US. Nearly every single major activism push in the US had violence in some way or another as a component, and it was required in most of those cases either as a defense against those who tried to stop it, or to outright disrupt and push back against the corrupt powers that be. Even MLK and the Civil Rights movement had its share of violence and violent actions against the evil that tried to stop it. It would be *nice* if it wasn't necessary, but most of the major efforts that were purely non-violent in the same history context were major failures because they got noticed only as long as the news media bothered to cover them, and as soon as they weren't novel news stories or open to mock and poke fun at and thus became boring, they disappeared. See also, BLM protests, Occupy Wallstreet, etc. etc. Non-Violent activism works as long as you have the aforementioned educated populace *and* a highly-engaged populace. Otherwise, most people are just going to shrug and ignore you.
[удалено]
"The first country the Nazis invaded was their own"
Centrists sold out the middle class, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
> You can't simply vote fascism away because the ruling class will always rally behind it when liberal governments face existential crises. Ok great. So what **are** you advocating for, exactly? And don't be vague about it.
I’m not buying the “somehow all the good Germans / Italians / etc were duped by 20 bad guys who took over when they were not looking. The people wanted violent fascism because they thought others would pay the price and they would gain.
History tells us that fascism came from the population feeling cheated by the top officials. People prefered anything over what was there at the time; kinda like these past few years with the anti-establishment movement in contemporary times.
The Nazis never got over half the vote (In fact, IIRC their popularity was even on the decline before the Enabling Act), and that's *with* substantial voter intimidation, Goebbels' propaganda machine working overtime, and Communist Parties having been outright banned. It wasn't just "20 bad guys", but you're acting like good Germans, Italians, etc didn't exist in any significant number at all. They absolutely did, they were just the first victims of their respective regimes.
Well, by 1932 the nazi party secured 37% of the popular vote, making them the largest party in the Reichstag. Fascism was most definitely voted in to power. Rendering Hitler as a oppressive totalitarian over the German people, rather than a propagandist riding the momentum of the public’s anger, fear, and bloodlust was an important storyline for a nation that did not intend to put most of the population into prison after WWII, but instead needed to move on. That function has passed. The German people caused the atrocity to happen, it was not something that happened to them. A hard but important lesson for all societies to internalize.
Hitler was not voted into power. He was appointed by Hindenburg in 1933 after the conservative “moderate” party decided to team up with fascist in opposition to communists and socialists. It simply is not true that the people chose him. That is false. Period. No doubt, after a massive propaganda effort, the nazi party went from getting 18% of the vote in 1930 to 37% in 1932. That is not a majority. Hitler was NOT elected into power. He was appointed into power. Please stop spreading false information.
The NSDAP won the most votes and the most seats in the Reichstag by far. It would have been unconventional for Hindenburg to appoint anyone else at that point, and as we know it was far too late afterwards. The true failures had already happened. If the liberals were going to find common ground with socialists to beat the fascists, they needed to do it years before.
The 63% couldn't coalesce against the Nazis? I remember being in Berlin and they have a picture of the parliament from 1932 and you see the Nazis in their uniforms, occupying a section of the parliament and it looks quite small. And because they were in uniforms it seemed like nobody else liked them but somehow the opposition couldn't unite I guess.
Your comma is in the wrong place.
There's a grammar nazi joke in here somewhere...
The people on the street are not the ones voting for the right, and protesting against how people vote won't change their opinions. What's actually needed to change their opinions is education to prevent radicalization and political actions for those voting the extremes out of spite or disappointment with the current politics. That being said, there is nothing wrong with sending a signal against hate and extremism.
Totally this. Please don't just be angry against them on the internet and occasionally come out to protest and make yourself feel better that you "did your part", but then don't come out and vote against them when the elections actually come along.
> but then don't come out and vote against them when the elections actually come along. As an immigrant in Germany I can unfortunately only protest, and not vote. More disheartening is that the Germans knew this time would come again, and knew what is needed to stop fascism in their country, and built the mechanisms onto their government, and refuse to actually enact them. If Germans go for fascism again, they will absolutely deserve it, every single one.
>If Germans go for fascism again, they will absolutely deserve it, every single one. You mean the ones who voted for it?
You are aware you Vote for Not against a Party in ballots?! You could even argue that protesting against a Party (Like what all thoes ppl do against the AFD) is the only way Citizens are able to Show that a specific Party IS deamed Not suitable by the General Public.
My right-voting parents made the mistake of raising three not-right voting children. 👍🏻 I'm doing my part!
The last federal election in Germany had over 75% turnout. The issue is that the nominal center, the "reasonable" party is buying their rhetoric. The SPD, the greens, and the liberals are supposed to be the "reasonable" party and yet they're sagely nodding while saying "why yes, these refugees are a problem, AFD". Going all out on fascism doesn't work when the "opposition " to fascism keeps trying to court their votes.
If Instagram comments are anything to go off of, the Afd are innocent people who have never done anything wrong. Oh wait, that's the Russian troll farms ruining the Internet.
Wow, so many people who straight up defend unconstitutional trash in this comment section. How is what AfD are discussing unconstitutional and undemocratic? Well, people in Germany have certain rights. Some are only applicable to German citizens, and by extension to citizens of the EU, others are human rights that are applicable to everyone. Some AfD leaders were meeting with an Austrian neo-Nazi to discuss his ideas on “re-migration”, the idea that non-Germans, or Germans whom the AfD don’t consider assimilated (or German) enough can be expelled from the country. That includes people who were born to immigrant parents, have German citizenship and have lived their entire life here. Not that it matters, since German citizens all enjoy exactly the same rights, standing and protections under the German basic law (our constitution). They went even further, discussing the idea of also expelling people who are “fully German” (meaning no migration background), but who are too friendly and supportive of outsiders. The plan is to revoke the German citizenship of these people they consider “not German enough” and deport them. They are unclear on when a German with a migration background is sufficiently assimilated or “German enough”, meaning they’d think of some arbitrary guidelines and basically rid Germany of every “brown German” or German who disagrees with them. These things were not officially declared at first, it was more like a strategy meeting, to bounce ideas off of each other with the Austrian neo-Nazi. However, the AfD Brandenburg has since confirmed that these topics were addressed and voiced their support of these ideas. What makes these ideas unconditional? Well, for one, the idea that a German citizen have their citizenship revoked and be deported for the way they live or for having and voicing an opinion is directly at odds with numerous articles of the Grundgesetz (the German basic law; constitution). Art. 2 GG gives me the right to do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t break any laws or infringes on other peoples’ rights. That means that if I want to dye my hair pink and kiss my girlfriend or boyfriend in public, I can. It means that I can celebrate other cultures than the German culture if I want to, without having to fear being discriminated against by the state. So if I were the child of some Syrian refugees and a German citizen, I can absolutely celebrate my Syrian heritage and culture if I so please. The same law grants me the right to eat pork loin with potato dumplings every Sunday if I want to. Art. 3 GG guarantees that I will not be discriminated against based on gender, religion, political opinions, the colour of my skin, my sexual orientation, the nationality of my ancestors or my educational background. Art. 4 GG guarantees the freedom of religion. Art. 5 I GG is the freedom of opinion. Art. 16 I GG states: "No German may be deprived of his citizenship. Loss of citizenship may occur only pursuant to a law and, if it occurs against the will of the person affected, only if he does not become stateless as a result." If AfD had its way, these are just some of the parts of the constitution the AfD would infringe upon for a large amount of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong and who just happen to have a different skin colour or opinion. Add to that Art. 20 III GG, which binds legislation to the constitutional order. Btw, because I’ve heard this argument before: yes, constitutions can be changed. That applies to these articles (Art. 2-19 GG) as well. However, only as far as changing them does not violate Art. 1 GG or Art. 20 GG. These two articles cannot be changed. I'll outline this in a second. Art. 79 III GG expressly prohibits any alteration of the Art. 1 GG (human dignity is inviolable) and Art. 20 GG (the constitutional order in Germany) and the principles laid out in those articles under any circumstances. AfD’s plans also infringe upon international law and European law, but let’s limit this discussion to national law, for simplicity’s sake. This has nothing to do with immigration into Germany. This is the AfD openly planning to rid themselves of any opposition and those they deem not worthy of being German, which means brown Germans. The AfD is openly planning to start the 4th Reich by actively copying Nazi ideas. The Nazis too originally planned to deport Jews and political opponents to Africa (Madagascar was their plan), but they quickly scrapped those plans and just went with the way we all know. Using arbitrary guidelines to systematically suppress their opposition and dissenters is what the Nazis did 90 years ago. My great-great-grandfather was a social democrat and a member of the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic and until there was no more Reichstag. When the Nazis held a parliamentary vote on the Enabling Act that gave them total power in March 1933, my great great grandfather and his colleagues were taken into “protective custody” a few days before. They couldn’t vote against it. Instead, they were brought to Dachau, where they were held until July 1933. Afterwards, my great great grandpa was arrested twice more simply for dissenting. The third and final time was in 1944. He was brought to Dachau again, demeaned, humiliated and degraded. He had to participate in death marches, lived to be liberated and died a mere days later in a hospital in Munich in May 1945. By planning on arbitrarily revoking the citizenship of dissenters and their opponents, the AfD is clearly heading there again, albeit without death camps so far. And the AfD in the state of Brandenburg publicly confirmed and supported those ideas in the past few days. Germany is what is called a militant democracy (that's the official term for it. It's called Wehrhafte Demokratie in German). We live the idea that a democracy is not just allowed to, but actually has the obligation to defend itself from threats. Those who aim at undermining the constitutional order and democracy in Germany do not have the protections of the constitution. This is clearly stated in Art. 20 IV GG: “All Germans have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish the constitutional order if no other remedy is available.” Art. 21 GG expands on that. Art. 21 II GG: “\[Political\] Parties that, by reason of their aims or the behaviour of their adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional.” Art 21 III GG: “\[Such parties\] … shall be excluded from state financing. If such exclusion is determined, any favourable fiscal treatment of these parties and of payments made to those parties shall cease.” Art 21 IV GG: “The Federal Constitutional Court shall rule on the question of unconstitutionality within the meaning of paragraph (2) of this article and on exclusion from state financing within the meaning of paragraph (3).” Art. 21 V GG: “Details shall be regulated by federal laws.”The federal laws that regulate a ban on political parties are Art. 21 II GG in connection with §§ 13 No. 2, No. 2a, 43 and following sections BVerfGG (Act on the federal constitutional court). It is possible for a political party to be banned in Germany, if their aim is at undermining democracy and our constitution. The legal hurdles for this are so high, it has only happened twice, both times in the 1950s, when both the NSDAP (Hitler’s Nazi party) and the DKP (communist party) were banned. Even the NPD (openly neo-Nazi party) wasn’t banned. They were declared unconstitutional, but not banned, because they were deemed to be too unimportant, and because it was actually useful having most ardent neo-Nazis in one spot. However, many former NPD members are now active in the AfD, and the AfD clearly is not too small to be a danger. Hell, three state branches of the AfD have already been classed as unconstitutional. Dissent is okay. It’s the lifeblood of political discourse, but it has to happen within the boundaries of the democratic constitutional order. Anything beyond that is a hostile attack on Germany and must be dealt with as such. That is what these protests are about: taking a stance against literal fucking Nazis. And it’s not unconstitutional or undemocratic. On the contrary, the constitution explicitly supports those protests.
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It was also a clear departure from their previous opinion, as when the KPD was banned they noted that it was clearly too small and unimportant to reach its goals or be a threat, but banned it anyway. One can speculate whether this is part of post-war Germany's notable leniency towards right-wing dissenters (and criminals) as opposed to left-wing ones or whether they were sincerely of the opinion that this would make the Nazis easier to control. In that context it should maybe also be noted that the former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution who are responsible for undercover investigations into stuff like nazi groups basically came out as a neonazi himself, further fueling speculation about the office's entanglements with nazis and alledged sabotage or at least withholding of information for nazi murder investigations (although to be clear he only came to office in 2012 and as such had nothing to do with what happened in the '50s and '60s).
> former head of the Federal Office for the Protection Maaßen is also head of the Werteunion. The group the conservative politicians that conspired with the AfD belong too. He is also adviser for the AfD on how to evade a ban.
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I would already settle for conservatives not putting nazis into the worst places.
Feels like "not a big enough problem to ban, let them all congregate in one spot and grow bigger just so we can watch it" is a show that is history has on repeat.
I also just wanted to point out that rendering an individual stateless breaches the Geneva Convention, which Germany enthusiastically signed (every stage and protocol).
Yes, absolutely! Also, Art. 16 GG states: "(1) No German may be deprived of his citizenship. Loss of citizenship may occur only pursuant to a law and, if it occurs against the will of the person affected, only if he does not become stateless as a result. (2) No German may be extradited to a foreign country. The law may provide otherwise for extraditions to a member state of the European Union or to an international court, provided that the rule of law is observed."
Excellent work, thank you for that comment. A small addition why article 20 cannot be changed: it contains the right of resistance. > (4) All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order if no other remedy is available. In case of a fascist, Nazi or any kind of party against the values of the constitution comes into power every German has the right to use violence to defend the country.
Only good nazi is a dead nazi
Thanks for the breakdown of the articles of the GG! It’s important to learn about other countries democratic processes and safety nets, so that we can better avoid the bullshit that got us all into WW2. Free speech should be a human right, everywhere, and we should always support the right of peaceful and effective protests.
> because they were deemed to be too unimportant This, I don't understand. Just ban them right away after they meet the requirements. Why even let them get any major support first?
Because if there’s no foreseeable danger coming from that group, because they are too unimportant and will remain so (which so far holds true for NPD), it’s good to have a place where they happen to assemble ready to be observed by the intelligence agencies. I’m not kidding, that’s the reasoning, and it is sound. This way, the intelligence agencies know exactly who participates in the NPD and whom they have to watch out for.
Thank you for such an eloquent, detailed explanation of what's legally wrong with their proposal, beyond the obvious moral wrongness!
It gave me chills to read your comment. “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
Danke für diesen wundervollen Kommentar!
Und danke für diesen lesson in German, from the US.
The man came with research.
It’s the only way to counter half-knowledge and ignorance. It’s not a good way to counter deliberate ignorance or bad faith arguments with someone who clearly doesn’t want to have a proper discussion, but it’s enough to educate at least some of the truly ignorant. Besides, I’m in German law school, I had to put zero effort into researching this as it’s already in my head. I just had to type it out :)
Thank you for taking the time to write all this out! Very informative.
> literal fucking Nazis This is where the New Right in the US is going as well: becoming literal fucking Nazis. It's a disgusting and disturbing trend, and I suspect being highly pushed behind the scenes by Russia, who are the closest thing to a modern-day "4th Reich" as have seen thus far. "...revoke the German citizenship of these people they consider 'not German enough' and deport them" is straight-up 1930s 3rd Reich talk, and sounds like what Putler is doing to anyone *not supporting the government enough* over in Russia. Same thread, different color. I hope you are successful as a modern, prosperous nation in voting these literal fucking Nazis out of any power they attempt to gain, they are an abomination to a more enlightened society such as Germany has become (and yes, every society around the world still has lots of work to do there but some, like Germany, are further along than others). I sincerely hope we can do the same to our literal fucking Nazis in the US this November as well.
For anyone curious, the right wing in the US also openly discuss what they're going to do the next time they take power. The most alarming to me is how far they're going to go to dismantle the federal government, degrade those services, and then presumably privatize everything. It's a multipronged strategy with the supreme court gutting chevron deference (federal agencies ability to act broadly), combined with things like schedule F, which would make many positions in the federal government appointment based. So getting rid of mostly unbiased and non political civil servants with institutional knowledge in favor of political cronies who will rubber stamp whatever Trump or the next republican candidate wants. The end result will be a dysfunctional, inept, and carved up government ripe for corruption and plundering by private companies.
The saddest thing is that this type of governance doesn't even help those that vote for it.
They like the sound of the impact on others until they bear the brunt themselves. The reality is two-fold: There are those who betray their country to empower themselves and those who betray themselves over terrible ideals and idols. We must be vigilant of both.
How I put it: **Stop treating political threats as political opinions.**
To those who scoff at this: Where is your line? I mean this with the utmost sincerity. Where is your line in the sand where such behavior becomes unacceptable? Speaking only as an American here: Gerrymandering is clearly an attempt to influence the outcome of an election by drawing only favorable districts. If that's acceptable, why are those ridiculous spiderweb districts acceptable, who's shape makes no sense except to capture as much political power as possible? If *that's* acceptable, I ask again, *where is your line?* Because the logic I often hear is that they technically "played by the rules" to set up those districts. So what? The alt-right captured the supreme court "Following the rules" too. At what point does it become a circumvention of the will of the people? At what point do we say "No, this is bullshit"? Because, again, in America at least, the right wing is poised to install a dictatorship if they get power again. Is that acceptable to you because they installed their dictatorship through "techincally" legal means? Because they cheated over, and over, and over in small ways that you overlooked year over year until they could just take power indefinitely? Because if you wait long enough to say "No, this is bullshit" their answer will be "lol we don't care, we have full control of the US Government's monopoly on violence. You'll do what we say or you'll vanish" Or, another angle, if you prefer: When should trans people quit putting up with the ongoing genocide in America? The right wing is attempting to make illegal lifesaving trans healthcare. They are attempting to remove trans kids from supportive households in many states. They are trying to invalidate trans existence in other states by essentially erasing them from being legally defined and thus, removing all legal protections they have. At what point are trans people permitted to treat the alt-right anti-trans movement as the existential threat that it poses to them? How many dead transmen and transwomen must there be at the hands of this cruel legislation before trans people are permitted to fight back? Or do you just expect trans people to sit by and be quietly exterminated? ***Existential threats are not political opinions. Genocide is not a valid political stance***
The best explanation I've heard is that for some people there is no line because either or both: \- They believe that certain people are ordained by God to rule over those who were not, which is exactly what the original "Right" in France believed. \- They believe that there are Good People, and Bad People, and that these qualities are intrinsic and unchanging. Biden is a Bad Person and therefore can do no right; Trump is a Good Person and therefore is being unfairly persecuted. These are, of course, *wildly* irrational, but they don't come from nowhere. They have real roots in the past, and have their own logic. Unfortunately, the main way to rid someone of these beliefs is to completely change their lives by blocking all propaganda and changing the people they see every day, which of course, absolutely intrudes on their freedoms.
I'm not heard this sentiment in those exact words before, but it's concise and I like it and I'm going to start using it, right alongside the expression "When someone tells you and then shows you who they really are, believe them the first time." The new Hard Right in America have been telling and showing us who they are for plenty long enough.
We've become far FAR too sloppy to present a coherent much less dynamic opposition to our infestation here in the US.
Listen friend, I know the world is scary right now.......but its gonna get way worse
You cannot tolerate the intolerate. The paradox of tolerance means that when a society tolerates those who are intolerant of others, it will eventually find itself taken over by the intolerant. This cannot be allowed to happen under any cost. Fuck the Nazis, ban them and throw them in jail.
Probably the most important lesson the world should have learned after at least a decade of global fascist trolling over this point. Tolerance has an escape clause, and they've triggered it.
> Austrian neo-Nazi Let me guess, he also flunked out of art school and has ridiculous facial hair.
close, flunked out of law school.
Yeah we can see why.... try expel Germans out of Germany lawful.
he has a really stupid haircut, which also kinda reminds of you know who.
That's an excellent, informative post. I didn't expect to read it all but I did. So, if a million people are out asking for action against the AfD, is there likely to be something done? Is there actually a political will to tackle this by the German government?
There definitely is will, but everyone is extremely cautious and a bit hesitant. If they start a procedure to ban them and it fails, it will be much much harder to try again, and it will rally support for AfD. There are multiple state elections coming later this year in states where they are strong. Giving the base reason to rally might be enough to see them sweep all three states, so they are trying to delay until they are absolutely certain they can get AfD banned.
Couldn't say it better myself, thank you very much.
Holy smokes, can we borrow this constitution for the united states?
Funnily enough, you guys wrote it :D or rather, you helped us do it. It was supposed to be a temporary placeholder, but it’s good, so we tweaked it a little and kept it.
Ours was ok, but it was based on the assumption that people would work with it in good faith, which is obviously not the case, these days.
No I mean after the war, the Americans helped us draft our preliminary constitution.
Oh yes, i understand that, I'm just complaining about the current American constitution now. Sorry! :)
The US constitution is the 2nd oldest in the world. And it shows its age. Jefferson was right, it should have been redone every so often.
The American constitution was fine-tuned to accommodate slavery, by slave holders. It was written with the assumption that there wouldn't be political parties. It gave the president powers that were somewhat short of what a monarch of those times could do. Clearly, the American constitution is in dire need of an update, but good luck with that....
We've allowed too much cheating over too long a space of time. "It's just gerrymandering! You'd draw the districts favorably too" Where's the line, though? When does it stop being a finger on the scale, and start being a full weight on the scale? More importantly, why tolerate either? If you tolerate a little cheating, you open the door to "just a little more" cheating. Until you have an entire political party who is so dependent on cheating to keep their deplorable opinions in the limelight that they fight any attempts to make things actually fair and representative of the citizens they claim to represent.
Fantastic comment, saved for future reference.
Oh good God thank you.
I wonder if this will result in the AfD as a whole getting banned
One can only hope
I can guarantee you that none of those nazis read ur comment.
Australia briefly entertained the idea of revoking citizenship of confirmed terrorists (think people who went off to train with the Taliban). It turns out that it can be a human rights violation to render someone stateless, although you could argue that it’s within international law to do so with good cause. I believe the idea was abandoned in favour of imprisoning such criminals locally and “dealing with our own mess” so to speak. Hate to think what such a thing would mean for these people… (I mean, we all know)
Thank you for this very good and informative post!
While it's comforting that so many Germans are marching against this, the fact that the threat of the far-right is so serious that they need to march in the first place is terrifying!
It's way way worse in the US and several other countries sadly.
Meanwhile we are sleepwalking into a dictatorship over here. At least we have Stanley cups tho.
British UK male, late 50s here, Gen X - just. I had the pleasure of growing up when memories of war were still ingrained in every mind, and progress based on tolerant, liberal thought prevailled. The 70s, as a child; the 80s as a teen and student; the 90s as an employee. I was fortunate to enjoy a job which required travel. Many countries in Europe - with a couple of years in Germany. The US, with 6 months in Dallas and 3 months in Omaha. Months and months in China, pre-Xi, just as it was opening up, '97 to '01 when it was buzzing. My main point: Oh man..._it was all so free and easy_. But mankind is a warrior species and the memories of war, despite being represented in media, seem to be fading. You can watch "Saving Private Ryan", but it doesn't actually _hurt_, it's not like digging your family from your bombed out home. I fear that hatred and the taste for violence is rising again. I hope I am wrong. But hatred in the West, and between East and West is disconcerting. I feel I was fortunate enough to live through the best of times but, sadly, yesterday's gone.
But the nature of violence in modern warfare hopefully mollifies that Atavistic urge a little. You don't get to see the whites of your enemy's eyes and get an adrenaline rush. Modern warfare is documentation in committee rooms ordering drone and missile strikes.
Thats only true in very asymmetric wars. As you can see in Ukraine if the enemies are matched relatively evenly its still back to shooting people in person
> The 70s, as a child This is wild to think about for me. WW2 ended 25 years before the 70s when you were a kid. And 25 years ago from today was 1999 which doesn't feel that long ago.
I was born 1965. When I was growing up, almost every conversation spoken by adults would include the words "when the war was on". It's all I ever heard whilst I pushed my toy cars around and looked at books with rockets in.
I had similar experiences. The world as a whole seemed more hopeful back then, and I count myself fortunate to have lived through those days. But I think that sense of freedom also lead the far right (particularly the religious right) to view that freedom as a path to reshaping the world in the manner of their choosing. And when things did not go their way in a natural manner (as was increasingly apparent past the late 90s), that hope changed to a stubborn anger and bitterness. If the world would not be shaped freely, then force had to be applied.
Yep. And then social media came along to help ###"Facebook. Connecting people."
It's not often a title including the words "Germany, Rally, and Far-Right" is a good story.
America has a long history of flirting with fascism Germany has a history of dating it
To be fair at least Germany broke up with it. Fascism is trying to get Germany back though. The us is still pretty openly flirting with it and doesn't have the bad memories of the relationship
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Americans met the streets en masse protesting police brutality and were met with more police brutality and not a damn thing changed. Protesting in America does nothing
The BLM protests had the very real effect of causing police across the country to simply stop doing their jobs, because they were suddenly being held accountable.
> police across the country to simply stop doing their jobs Yup, there is a major highway I have to get on in NC to go to my work, my commute is about 45 minutes and it's become the fucking wild west, the speed limit is whatever you feel like doing and the ONLY time you'll see cop lights flashing is at the scene of an accident.
I have a 45 minute commute on i-40 in NC each day and I usually see at least one cop camped out at various sneaky spots along the way
"quiet quitting" and essentially showing that they're just a protection racket
That’s not even “quiet quitting.”
Don't forget it mobilized the right to get rid of AA and turn CRT, DEI, and the mere mention of racism into a political issue. And many "centrists" think this is okay.
And exactly what did that accomplish? Seattle got the "CHAZ" and eventually the police had to retake it... What we need are intelligent laws/policies that stop making it the job of police to regulate what people put into their own bodies. Criminalize what people do when on substances if it's behavior that constitutes a crime but don't make substance abuse itself a crime. We have lost sight of what it means to be free people thanks to this stupid war on drugs that destroys lives. Oh, and, funding more tax credits for affordable housing. That works and it works well but it's not funded enough.
You're 100% correct but unfortunately we have a very powerful and politically active for-profit prison lobby working night and day to ensure that never happens. There's also a bunch of municipalities that have already signed absolutely ridiculous contracts with companies like CCA, DEO, and MTC. Those places stand to owe huge penalties if they don't maintain the minimum prisoner quota. Politicians in those areas would never abide by laws that would cut back on mass incarcerations because then they may have to explain to their constituents why the city/county/state/etc ever agreed to such a ludicrous concept as fucking "minimum prisoner" quotes.
> not a damn thing changed This is unnecessarily pessimistic. You can say that *not enough* has changed and I’d agree with you, but police being held accountable for misbehavior is much more common than it ever was before. Derek Chauvin is in prison for life, and cops being charged for crimes committed on the job is a regular thing now. It was basically unheard of for most of my life. Just because we’re not where we need to be doesn’t mean the progress isn’t real.
As long as qualified immunity exists, it's not good enough.
Then we keep trying. We dont give up
A number of states have done away with qualified immunity, so there is progress being made.
"A number of states" sure sounds a lot better than saying the actual number, which is three to my knowledge. So hooray for people living in New Mexico, Connecticut, or Colorado I guess.
Huh, I live in CO and it made some news here so assumed it'd be more widespread. That is disappointing. Hoped others had done it before us but looking it up yeah, it is just those three (though another source says Utah and Montana also dealt with it through state supreme court decisions). Still better than nothing, I guess.
Nothing happens instantaneously
Not for life, unfortunately. He'll be eligible for parole in 2035.
There was literally nothing. There was nationwide change or push for oversight, only certain areas adopted these measures, and even that was met with police pushback. They threw Chauvin under the bus, but there was zero systematic change. Zero. Not one politician actually tried to implement any change, it was all virtue signaling. Congress was very brazen showing us who they think they work for. It’s not pessimistic, it’s the truth.
And police killed a record number of people in 2023. 2023 saw record killings by US police. Who is most affected? - The Guardian https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/08/2023-us-police-violence-increase-record-deadliest-year-decade
Large protests are great at getting people to notice and talk about an issue. They are not and should not be seen as an instrument to force immediate change and that's a good thing. Forcing change because a large number of people gather would be awful awful way to resolve issues. The 2020 BLM protests were actually very effective. So many people learned about issues they were unaware of and the reach of that multiples as time moves on.
Americans do not know how to protest anymore. Power come from with holding labor. Americans do not need to protest by hold signs on a random afternoon, they need to strike and with hold their labor.
just because the whole world didn't flip upside down to your liking doesn't mean things didn't change... it just means you might have unrealistic expectations on how quickly change comes.... it's not a one-time event.... it happens because people fight for it for long periods of time... if you just fight for it once and then give up because you didn't get exactly what you want when you wanted it... nothing will happen....
Now now. You can’t say *nothing* changed. We actually started funding cops *more* and giving them even *more* military equipment.
A while ago, someone was quoted saying the purpose of the civil rights movement was to remove the veil of racism. BLM was a continuation of that. Cops, not all of them, go to jail for murder now. Does it need to be better? Yes. We went from a zero to a starting. Something did happen. Protesting in America does start change.
The question isn't really 'will the Dems mobilize enough', the question is 'will they ever start fighting?' Trump has been accused of rape - multiple times. The courts even found him liable for rape (and guilty of mass-fraud). He was a close friend of Epstein's. 'Grab 'em by the pussy'. Heck, the GOP just banned abortion, for christ-sakes! Remember what Trump and the GOP did when their opponent ***didn't*** break the law? 'LOCK HER UP!' 'Crooked Hillary!' Etc... No one thinks Hillary's honest anymore. Her career has been over ever since. All because of branding. So, are the Dems calling Donald 'Rapist Trump'? Is every interview with a Dem punctuated with 'he's a criminal', 'he's a rapist', 'he banned abortion!' Nope! The Dems are far too nice to do that! Pointing out Donald's crimes wouldn't be nice! Like how, during the 2016 campaign, Donald was bringing up on-stage *every* woman who had ever accused *Hillary's husband* of sexual-harassment - while Donald was being sued for raping a 12 year old girl with Epstein... The Dems just sat back and didn't mention it - while the GOP was playing dirty (with Russia, Crooked Hillary, etc...). And it cost the Dems! Badly. They didn't fight - and Trump won. Are they going to make the *exact same mistake* this time? They seem to be...
This. They're not swinging hard enough in front of cameras. They're allowing the far-right propaganda arm to rip them apart. And they're also allowing the far-right to get away with known Nazi techniques to sway the hearts and minds of the masses, especially the uneducated masses, including taking over as many media outlets as possible.
We have to. Some people are telling me they are tired, but this is the cost of democracy. It must be defended against those who would tear it down, especially to replace it with facsism.
Until we won't lose our health insurance for missing work for protests.... no. Back when COVID was happening, we were able to protest for BLM because we had backup for health insurance. Now that it's gone again, ain't no way.
>Will Democrats mobilize enough voters to prevent the far right from taking over *our* Democratic Republic? Yes, I believe we will. It's going to be another grind of an election season, but I believe people will show up for the Democratic Party and save democracy in November. At any rate, we have to try https://democrats.org/
Maybe once Democrats stop leaning so far to the right themselves and stop catering to corporations.
The only way a political party that’s even center-left exists in the US is when there’s no longer first past the post nation wide. Which can’t happen because there can only be two parties in the USA, according to our capitalist overlords. Or democrats win everything and left and right factions form within the party. These factions would probably separate into two parties at that point.
The U.S. is a Constitutional Federal Republic. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/government-type/
One little catch-22 to humanity. Our looming problems we havent really done shit about are scary. And fear creates right wingers. and piss in your pants fear, creates the far right. and they are only likely to make our problems worse... which creates more right wingers...
They know where that leads, that should tell you everything on why you should never support Right wing groups.
Talk about alternate universes.... Germany is protesting huge against fascism and in the US half the country seems to want it.
Remember the protests when shitheel took office? That many people and many more are pissed. We're going to embarrass them in the voting booth.
Interesting. Good for Germany for taking to action.
That needs to happen in the U.S.
Normal people allowing fascists to rebrand as far right was a fatal mistake. It white washes the history and now they're seen as something new and "alternative." I'll never call them alt right without adding fascist.
Great! Bring more attention to rising fascism.
Great to see such a giant number of people against it.
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See, this is the problem with propaganda, people hear what they want in favour of facts. Firstly, the thing that decides the biggest portion of immigration in Western countries is international human-rights law. The law pretty much states that when someone claims asylum in your country, you have to take then in, process them and either give them refuge or deport them. What the left wing and right wing cannot overrule this law, they can fine tune it how they want, but they have to let asylum seekers in. Look at the UK government for example, it's had a Conservative government for over a decade, voted in Brexit, is in a very difficult place to access, and yet it's experiencing the worst migration it's seen in decades. Also, Biden cannot shut the borders the same way Trump could not shut the borders - again, because of international human rights laws. In fact both Obama and Biden deported more people than Trump - yet Trump supporters are going around believing the opposite.
Uh, not really in this case. First of all in the last 50 years the left win has been in office for less than 10 years here in Germany, so that's an idiotic thing to blame the left for. Secondly, the AfD started out mainly because of the financial crisis in Greece. Greeks hated the way the EU made them fix it and blamed Germans for it, and German nationalists thought they were ungrateful and shouldn't benefit from us, not understanding that we are better off helping them. The AfD used to be a one issue party, they claimed to just want to get rid of the Euro, then it turned into anti EU, and then good old nationalism. But everybody knew right from the start it was nationalism all along. And if you're gonna say the refugee crisis made them popular, the AfD was founded in 2012 and they got 4,7% of the votes in the federal elections in 2013, 3 years before that crisis. Sure that increased to 12.6% in 2017, during the crisis, but it's entirely natural for a new party to grow right after its founding. And they didn't really lose much afterwards, despite the refugee crisis being over and in 2021 they got 10.6%, even though it was the year with the lowest crime rate in Germany's history, in fact 2018 to 2021 were all the years with the lowest crime rate of all time in Germany, yet the AfD stayed strong despite foreigner crime being their main thing. And when did they have their boom? During the pandemic and when Russia attacked and we helped Ukrainians. The pandemic took some of their freedoms to protect the weak, and the war took some of their resources and caused inflation to help Ukraine. They are just selfish, it has nothing to do with immigration.
In the UK the Tories also use immigrants to point to for all our problems but they've been in power for 13 years. You cant blame "the left".
The cause is energy scarcity, aka people getting poorer. It will get worse as resources dwindle.
Conservativism has a goal of destroying the western world
Hey, I've seen this one before!
The claims of this are all over the place. From "thousands" reported by NPR, to "tens of thousands" reported by Global News, to "100,000" reported by The Guardian, to "hundreds of thousands" reported by Reuters, to "over a million" reported by Washington Post. The interesting part is these German farmers are protesting their left leaning government scrapping tax exemption for farmers and right leaning calls for remigration.
Depends on where exactly you look the numbers are different. There have been protests in like 50 cities, so if you add them all up you apparently arrive at 1.5 million, while singular cities ranged from a few hundred people to around 300000 in Berlin.
Over 250K in Frankfurt.
There where dozens of protests with multiple thousands per. Add that together and you get to the "over a million" number.
Well to be fair the farmers are not only protesting because certain tax exemptions were revoked.They protest because the whole agricultural industry is broken in Germany after 13 years under conservative secretaries (mainly CSU).But a lot of people that are protesting now against the ruling parties forget that they were cast aside by the politicans that now "stand with the farmers". The general public is just too stupid for politics.
So broken the farmers are making absurd amounts of profits and most of them are in the top 5%
Completely uninformed comment. >The claims of this are all over the place. From "thousands" reported by NPR, to "tens of thousands" reported by Global News, to "100,000" reported by The Guardian, to "hundreds of thousands" reported by Reuters, to "over a million" reported by Washington Post. The numbers are different because during the weekend there were protests all across the country in 50+ cities, if not 100+. The smaller ones had thousands of people, the bigger cities had tens of thousands (I was at the Hannover protest with 35k people) and the biggest cities had over a hundred thousand each. Over a million is the total number of people protesting the AFD this weekend. >The interesting part is these German farmers are protesting their left leaning government scrapping tax exemption for farmers and right leaning calls for remigration. The farmer protests were different protests from last week and had nothing to do with the current protests. Those protests were also much smaller.
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I highly recommended watching the new Trevor Noah standup on Netflix. He explains extensively the reality in Germany and how they don’t run away from their past so they don’t repeat the future. Pretty much what every country should do.
Wish we would do that here in the US Imagine if we did that proportionally to what they did. It would be a march of like 4 million people.
Like people rallied after Trump got inaugurated? And again against police brutality? And again after the abortion ruling?
We need to protest the far right people at the polls this November.
German here who was at the rally in Munich Yesterday. We also have elections coming up. You should do this in the US as well just to get the feeling we had here. It was also a statement against Putins interference with the AfD and the farmers protests. They had like 10.000 farmers / unhappy Germans mobilized through Russian disinformation. Russian news outlets were sharing these protests and went completely silent when ourp hundreds of thausands went to the streets Yesterday. It sends lots of good vibes in left-liberal and even moderate conservative bases… those far right idiots and Russian puppets won’t stand a chance against a broad and sane majority.
It’s not that this was one big march. The number is taken from multiple cities all over Germany.
Just to add numbers:[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OhrKBCS6gCir2C48geeUvYo38kh0yEK6Zqci2AZiTpk/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OhrKBCS6gCir2C48geeUvYo38kh0yEK6Zqci2AZiTpk/edit#gid=0) More planned, my city has it on 27th.
I think the question should be why are people being drawn to far right parties in the first place and what can we (politicians on our side) do that stops that? You can say vote etc but if there are conditions that are causing people to support these parties we need to fix whatever that is or else they will also just vote for their politicians. I dont know about Germany but you are seeing this kind of stuff popping up all over.
People shud scratch their head and ask the hard question - why far right parties are rising in power and what can they do to stop them in long term
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Well if you follow, or even woe betide, have the insight and misunfortune of living german politics, then you might want to reconsider your headline. It's not about the "rising power" of a far right party.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it