The “best” part about the “Hitler hypnotized us” narrative promoted by the krauts in their bloviating, soporific lectures is how it presents a completely counterfactual history devoid of the violent opposition to and clashes with fascists that characterized the Weimar Republic, all in order to pretend grandpappy didn’t deserve to be blown to a million pieces because everyone supported the Nazis and nobody knew right from wrong and morality wasn’t invented until 1945. Once upon a time I thought maybe there was some element of sincerity in German repentance culture, but no - it’s all self-serving, self-absorbed, self-flattering, self-interested, self- this and that; self-centered hagiographic self-praise that treats their unspeakable crimes as elite status cards to trot out.
These fucking krauts just can’t shut the fuck up about how they have some specialized knowledge of fascism because they’re krauts. Were you there? Were you around during the Nazi era? No? Then I fail to see how you know anything more or have any more expertise on the matter than Joe Pissmonger from Montana. Maybe if you picked up a fucking book sometime instead of insisting that being a kraut gives you special privilege to speak with no prior investigation.
But apparently Teutonic blood gives you divine insight into how fascism works. Looks like they haven’t moved past their Nazi genetic woo after all.
“I’m a German and I’m here to teach you how to avoid fascism by supporting the status quo” how about you deal with your own rapidly Nazifying shithole American province before lecturing others.
Be grateful the very idea of “Germany” wasn’t razed to the ground and scattered to the wind after your dear leader escorted himself off the premises.
I find it fascinating that the Marshall-plan here is blatantly sold as the US wanting to expand their market. That's what I was told as a selling point for the Marshall-plan, that one of the reasons for WW2 was because the germans were very angry after being poor because of the reparations of WW1. But the US being smart recognized that it was better to placate the germans with treats and have a greater market than to rip out all the machinery and leave us poor. Like what the soviets did, because they obviously weren't as smart or whatever. Like genuinely that's what I was told.
Even as a teen I recognized that that line is bullshit at best. What kind of flex is "The US were smart to give us treats and keep us as vasalls or else we might have done another holocaust"????? How can you tell on yourself like this, how stupid are our "educators"???????
When you tell capitalists that facism is the most brutal and chauvinist elements of the bourgeoisie trying to uphold capitalism in crisis by open violence, their only suggestion for effective antifascim is
Being told that fascism is capitalism's defense mechanism would just make them go "Then I guess you better work harder to make line go up my little paypiggy"
That's actually what they do. Or they blame the unemployed for being too boorish and uneducated and voting nazi (even though the main target demographic for both historical and contemporary fascists in Germany are petit bourgeoise and class collaborationist workers scared of losing wealth and status).
I recently had a discussion with someone who kept insisting that the reason immigrants are discriminated against is because the petit bougie wants to discriminate against poor people and they use migrant status as an indicator and therefore the discrimination migrants face is the same as the one people with a "poor socio-economic background" face. They kept accusing me of idpol when I told them that I know this to be false from experience, because I tried to help some immigrants find a flat, that this isn't true. I kept telling them I have turkish family members and they face open profiling by the police. I couldn't get through to them that anti-racism is not idpol. It was maddening, they kept insisting that someone named "kevin" and someone named "ali" were equally likely to face equal amounts of discrimination.
That's the state of our anti-fa, you have to fight them to support anti-racism, because they want to "win back" the AfD vote in east germany. Like they literally told me that the only way to mobilize the majority is to get to their problems first and that I should wait until after so it wouldn't alienate the white germans, that I should be more mindful of the "precariat" and kept accusing me of being like the grey wolves with my "idpol" even when I told them that was a really hurtful comparison for personal reasons. I should have went with my gut instinct and told them to fuck off before it went that far. Very discouraging interactions on feddit.de as well.
Is it ok for me to DM you? I have some questions pertaining to orgs in Germany and, if that's ok seperately, about gendered language, which I'm not sure would fall under OPSEC.
Yeah, i feel that. I mean, i lack the experience from a PoC standpoint because i'm painfully alman, but i notice mysogyny and transphobia in leftist circles a lot, although that's not universally the case. When i talk to younger comrades, they are pretty damn good on the intersectionality thing from my personal experience, but older white cis dudes are often slow on the uptake when it comes to these things.
Feel free to DM me, but i likely won't be much help when it comes to organizing due to opsec reasons, all the orgs i have contact with are local and i don't want to disclose where i live. Still glad to help out with general info.
Will do so when I can think a bit more clearly, but this community literally just opened up on feddit.de and its so emblematic of what we just talked about: https://feddit.de/c/antifayoutube .
All the mistakes of Weimar era SPD antifascism. The first time as tragedy, the second time as LARP.
I mean you can see where the economic downturn is leading right now. That's not wrong wrong
I know right? "Bullshit" was the most charitable interpretation I could come up with. Really wish it was.
I was raised to understand that the "excessive" punishment of Germany post WW1 was the reason we ended up with Hitler, the third reich, the holocaust and WW2. The proud German people were humiliated and degraded by the hardships imposed. And who can blame them? Didn't the German people suffer in the soggy trenches of WW1 like all other stupid pre-democratic people who had no choice but to accept to conscription? They weren't the ones who signed the foolish treaties which led to WW1.
So they looked for an explanation and inevitably someone started talking up this whole "scapegoat" idea which is like human nature or something and for whatever reason it just happened to be jewish people. It happened to be adolph hitler, but it could have been someone else. The manner of concluding WW1 set the trajectory. With the wisdom of hindsight we see it is inevitable.
So this is why Germany, nazis and the others couldn't be punished very badly after WW2, except for just a few figureheads. Who knows what would have been caused by such indignity? An even worse holocaust.
That's the story anyway.
I find it quite effective. It justifies all kinds of post WW2 actions which might seem contradictory, like operation paperclip and Germany still being a G8 country with oodles of power. It also sets up a world view where large scale horror can never really be addressed in any way because it would only serve to create an even worse horror down the road. So pre-justifies any and all crimes as long as they are committed on a national level.
Yeah, it is pretty standard lib reasoning. But it's striking to me that this is what's taught in Germany. It would be one thing for some other country to point at us and say "I wouldn't trust them to know genocide is inherently bad, if we had withheld treats they would have just done it again", which would be understandable especially if it's a country we oppressed. It's nonmaterialist lib reasoning that mystifies the holocaust and opens up all sorts of other fascist backdoors, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what e.g. the french are taught. But when its a german saying it, it gets a whole other dimension of "look man if we don't get our treats then I cannot guarantee for what we might do next" which is just baffling in the best case, but really is frightening. You should listen to people when they threaten abuse and take necessary steps.