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While Americans have long clashed over our country’s cruel and bigoted past, Germans have undertaken one of the most thoroughgoing efforts of any nation on the planet to reckon with their history. Germany, perhaps more than any other country, has attempted to pull out by the roots its homegrown variant of the reactionary spirit — the tendency of opponents of social change to choose hierarchy over democracy, trying to constrain or even topple democracy to protect hierarchies of wealth and status.
The Nazis were born out of disgust with post-World War I Weimar democracy, led by men furious about both the new government’s weakness and acceptance of the Jewish minority into German society. After Nazism brought Germany to ruin, preventing a reactionary resurgence became one of the central goals of the country’s subsequent leaders.
So it’s all the more extraordinary that in the past few years, Germany’s far right has been on the rise.
In 2015, at the peak of the global refugee crisis, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced an open-door policy for those fleeing violence in Syria and elsewhere. In response, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, a Euroskeptic faction without a single seat in Parliament, morphed into a virulently xenophobic force calling for Germany to slam Merkel’s open door shut.
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But its rise illustrates something vitally important: That Germany, of all countries, could fail to prevent a surge in reactionary antidemocratic politics suggests there’s something eternal and enduring about the reactionary spirit. And there is something about our current time period that makes it especially likely to flourish — not just in Germany, but around the world.
We can’t keep tolerating intolerance. That’s our problem. We are afraid of being called intolerant so we allow a fascist to spread their ideas about not being tolerant.
I’m sorry but no, it doesn’t work like that. The only way to face fascism is through intolerance. You can’t dialogue with a fascist, you either kick them out of politics the good way or the violent way. There is no dialogue possible with someone that thinks democracy shouldn’t exist. It’s black or white, it’s either you accept democracy or you’re my enemy. There is no option to let them be “a bit fascist” so there is non opinion here. Or rather, there’s a correct opinion and a wrong one, and fascism is the wrong one. This is just fact.
And if a fascist doesn’t want to understand they are wrong, then the only thing that remains is intolerance.
In other words, tolerance isn’t a paradox, it’s a social contract. If you’re not willing to abide by it by tolerating others, then you’re not protected by it and we have no obligation to tolerate you!
I see that problem also in a kind of “contact guilt” in certain topics.
That is, if there’s any polarized issue, there’s always the liberal/left/progressive position with extremely clear boundaries to what is acceptable to even discuss. And then there’s the vast conservative-fascist spectrum. If any problem arises within that issue, even mentioning it is immediately labeled as outside of the acceptable part, simply out of fear that this could be used as a wedge against the liberal position.
That in turn alienates people, they see an actual problem and the liberal side either ignores the problem or says it’s fascist. And the actual problem never gets solved or even tackled, simply because nobody wants to touch it.
This leads to a situation where for a whole bunch of people the fascists seem downright reasonable and then the radicalization pipeline kicks in and suddenly they think Hitler might not be such a bad guy after all.
So essentially, the left feeds the right gullible people out of fear they might legitimize some of their points.
Just an example from Germany: when the first wave of Syrian refugees came to Germany in 2015, they were greeted with literally open arms. Great thing. But if you let about a million people into the country, you also need about 500k new apartments for them, the bureaucracy has to be capable of processing everything, language courses have to be expanded drastically, job trainings have to be organized, etc etc. A whole bunch of problems.
Now, what happened? Nothing. There was great fanfare, the local governments did their best, but nothing substantive happened. Nobody talked about it, because that might fuel the existing resentments. Nobody tackled the problems. And within a few months, we had tens of thousands of young men, who had nothing to do, were not allowed to work, were completely alone and had no money or social safety net. Well, of course a bunch of them turned criminal, which then fueled the resentment even more, because suddenly the fascists actually had what they hoped for: criminal foreigners. Even if the actual problem was tiny, it was the spark that ignited the fascist resurgence.
I really enjoyed reading your reply, thank you for sharing!
Except that a more center/center-right government was in charge in 2015 and they just didn’t do anything. You can’t blame this on the left for forgetting about building more apartments, because the left wasn’t in charge and couldn’t do anything.
“what they hoped for” lol I wish you could hear yourself.
Right wing fears are always self-fulfilling prophecies. They enact the policies themselves
The extreme right-wing people also think that intolerance is generally bad but their own intolerance is somehow different and necessary.
They mostly seem to think something like “I’m not intolerant, I’m just stating uncomfortable facts that the liberals/socialists/etc are afraid to acknowledge!” I think @[email protected] is right in that certain topics being off-limits for acceptable discussion in liberal circles just serves to drive them towards the right. This, combined with right-wing dominance of media in the US and poor communications operations from the Democrats just serves to legitimize and invigorate the far-right here.
Just look at something like the discussion on crime and quality of life. Democratic leaders will point to statistics and uncritically say, “Crime is down, I don’t know what you’re talking about, things are fine.” Statistics require context to interpret successfully, and they also obey the rule of garbage in, garbage out. It would not invalidate the statistics at all if, for example, overall crime were down, but more crimes were being perpetrated out in the open where people could see them than occurred previously. They also only capture the crimes that are successfully reported. Sexual assault is pretty famously under-reported, owing to a variety of factors. Having lived in the hood for a long time, I’ve also experienced it first hand that cops just flat out refuse to take a report sometimes.
Whatever the case may be, if the topic of crime and safety comes up these days and you post something like, “I get the stats say its down generally, but my neighborhood/commute/city has deteriorated significantly over the last few years and I no longer feel as safe as I used to,” you’ll get a bunch of replies mocking you with a few canned responses like “The plural of anecdote isn’t data,” or calling you a Republican plant or something, and not one that actually tries to engage with it. You should be able to look at the Republican platform and realize this isn’t something that should cause one to overlook all the terrible things the GOP advocates, but many people will do just that when they feel that the Democrats have been ignoring them and their concerns for long enough.
If enough of your electoral base are voicing concerns that run contrary to your data, you really need to look into why that is and how to address it, or you run the risk of the opposition siphoning voters away when they acknowledge those concerns and validate them, even if you know for a fact they aren’t actually going to address them.
They make some salient pints but completely skip over the part where the oligarchy use their control of the media to promote these views. A lot of current dissatisfaction is rooted in growing inequality. Then the very people who cause this inequality turn arnd and use it to deflect the blame on minorities that are very much the victims and not in any way to blame for the mess.
points away from own hoard of cookies Look! The immigrant is going to take away your cookie!!!
The mass of fascism is the working class traitors. The petite bourgeoisie and those who pretend and desire to become that. Of course, they’re going to get shafted later, by the rich fascists.
Egocentric victimhood is linked to support for Trump, study finds
Ugh. Just ugh.
Why the far right is surging all over the world
Capitalism is decaying, and fascism is its inevitable conclusion. This isn’t news, either: The Question of Fascism and Capitalist Decay
That 1935 piece surely seems prophetic. For example this part:
Development of the anti-scientific and anti-cultural campaign, cutting down of education
For the last five or so years, I’ve been noticing a surge of anti-intellectualism. People are not any longer ashamed to publicly dismiss “smart alecks” and “know-it-alls”.
Those types of people used to be exceptions and now they feel like the norm.
It really is an incredible read, but to be fair, it was already the case back in the day, and even earlier, off the top of my head:
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/ye-olde-anti-vaxxers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco
Difference is we now have instant global mass media, so it all spreads much further, much faster.
But anti-intellectualism has always been a core feature of fascism
Is it decaying or is it in full bloom? I assumed that rampant inequality was an acceptable feature of capitalism.
Inequality is a feature. Decay is when it’s running out of runway and starts to turn catabolic. They eat each other, starting with the smaller ones.
A fascist regime helps to guarantee inequality. As capitalism decays, it gets worse for everyone who’s not rich, leading to more inequality. But there are feedback loops, people rise up, workers form unions and go on strike, and so on. Fascism is there to make sure that the “right people” are getting the benefits from the economy, they police this social hierarchy. The racism and other bullshit is there to draw those contrasting lines between classes. It’s always about exclusion. Economically, fascism embraces selective austerity. A middle class life for me, a miserable slave life for thee. So they align great with capitalism and liberalism in this economic sense. GDP 📈.
Them eating each other is a feature of capitalism. Can’t maximize growth if you have competition driving down prices.
I don’t mean just business “war”, I mean violent takeover, assassinations, corrupt officials doing big favors, mafia shit. Fewer lawyers, more goons.
Rampant inequality is deemed acceptable in return for rising living standards of the general population. The top is getting greedy and refused to give a penny to living standards, and standards are going down, so of course the population is getting agitated.
Being an acceptable feature to those removed from the harm they’re causing doesn’t give their perspective any validity - nothing about the current state of affairs is sustainable, that’s the point.
Oh, I completely agree. Just curious whether people see this a capitalism ‘decaying’ vs ‘working as intended’.
I’m not sure I understand, since the two don’t contradict - the system working as intended for capitalists, doesn’t stop it from also being decaying, it is a literal inevitability of an unsustainable system that only ever works for a tiny fragment of a percent of the population.
I don’t think I understand either :) If capitalism is decaying, how will it continue to work as intended for capitalists?
If capitalism is decaying, how will it continue to work as intended for capitalists?
I don’t think it necessarily will in their eyes, but as I see it, they view it in two ways that aren’t mutually exclusive. Firstly, as capitalism decays, it could give rise to a system that allows them to exploit others even more mercilessly than they already do, and they’re eager to reap the benefit of this development. Secondly, they think that their riches will allow them to escape the negative impacts of capitalism, regardless of what happens. Look at the billionaires buying up islands or building remote doomsday bunkers to escape to in the event things really go south. They fully expect that in the worst case scenario of extensive warfare, environmental crises and societal collapse, they’ll be able to retreat into their castles, pull up the draw bridge over the moats, and live out the rest of their days in comfort while the rest of us suffer and perish.
At some point it won’t anymore, but for many different reasons, they can’t see/don’t care.
First of all, as we mentioned, capitalism decays in to fascism, at which point (and why they actively working towards it) they will have even more power and less human rights to get in the way of the exploitation oppression and resource accumulation.
Then there’s also the fact that, being so far removed from the rest of society and being the ones who make the rules, they don’t feel like those should apply to them, not even rules of nature like “infinite growth is impossible in a finite world”.
This also means that their view of reality is so warped they think they’ll always be on top/secure. For example - they’re all spending millions even billions on bunkers, but never stop to consider who will serve and protect them in that bunker and why anyone would still be willing to (when things get bad enough, their money will be useless), as well as what world they might come out to if they do survive. Never mind stop what they’re doing to prevent the need for a bunker in the first place (to them, being equal to everyone else seems like a worse fate than global destruction).
The problem is that capitalism is a global cancer, and one fascist coming to their end doesn’t mean the system that got them there has been destroyed, or even “fixed” (you can see this in the failures to de-nazify Germany after the war, or to de-racist America after it’s founding, or de-monarchize? the UK for example), and that is why we say “workers of the world unite”, because it will take a global effort, not only in revolution, but in creating an equitable, just, and inclusive foundation for something better to be built on out of the void (this will require mass deprogramming and unlearning of the social structures imposed by the kyriarchy, and re-learning solidarity, compassion, community, cooperation, and so on - all things that actually come naturally to us, but are beaten out of us by life under capitalism).
And now I’ve lost my train of thought, and I’ve probably rambled on enough, so I’m going to leave it there lol
Lets be clear, this is totally about the rich class and their propagandize base versus the working class.
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It’s because in many cases we’ve been told to be respectful and civil to those whose actions and views of us are not respectful or civil. In the United States specifically our fascists have festered and grown slowly and consistently over the last 100 years. We never had a reckoning with our faction of fascists here in the US. So why wouldn’t they have grown.
Capitalism degrades into fascism.
Or more specifically:
- Market grows
- Market saturates (no growth)
- Competitors merge into monopolies (appearance of growth)
- Regulatory capture of government
- Governments legislate growth focused policies
- Population resists
- Government goes fascist
I mean Germany also never really overcame Nazism. We just purged the highest Nazi leadership and some scapegoats and everyone else got off the hook and pretended like they were the victims. Military, police, secret services, government staff, courts were then filled with the same people who were doing that same thing for the Nazis. AFD leadership includes descendants of Nazis and even a Nazi minister. The whole country is and has always been blind on the right eye.
I don’t see this as a requirement to “tolerate intolerance”. I see this as an explanation of why we’re seeing the results we do. I’ve always had a kind of feeling that the extreme resurgence of the right is a hard reaction to the specific reforms of the left. The more reform, the more angst and reaction. It’s just nice to know this “feeling” has a name, and a proper theory.
Basically, the more social woes we fix, the more conservatives get pissed. Like they need time to adjust to their new reality or something.
So our options are: Pick and choose priorities, and slow it down, or face the right’s backlash, populism, and calls to arms, risking political turnover. This is not arguing appeasement. Just explaining their behavior, and the choices the left needs to make in how they govern. I.e., Slow and steady, or risky business.
Finally, I don’t think the right will ever stop trying to pull us towards The Handmaidens Tale, but given time to adjust to significant societal changes, their base becomes less charged and the backlash is less severe. See: Abortion rights.
This is a very thoughtful take. I just have one issue, which is the adjustment you’re talking about, where the base becomes less charged, isn’t something we can rely on anymore. The base in many cases doesn’t even understand the reforms, whether they’ve been implemented, or how they affect them.
For example, the ACA in the US gave health care to tens of millions of people, a huge amount of whom were stupifyingly demanding to not be given health care because it was “Obamacare.” Polls show that those people strongly wanted more affordable health care options, oppose removing the more adorable health care they are using, but also want “Obamacare” repealed.
Their reality is somehow kept separate from their experience, since their reality is defined by their consumed propaganda and their experience is subservient to their reality.
All that is to say: we still need to fix the right wing propaganda problem before any solution works, even the logical map in your post.
See here’s your problem you didn’t call it “Patriotcare”.
It’s no mystery, it’s the economies. Globalism shipped all of the Blue Collar type jobs to developing countries and kicked off a race to the bottom for wages. The majority of people have suffered a slow reduction in lifestyle for decades at this point and they are tired of it. In this environment the nationalist / protectionist policies espoused by the Right gained traction.
Literally every country that’s having problems with the rise of “Right Wing” politics fits the description.
That’s pretty much it.
I think that pro-immigration policies from centrist and left-of-centrist parties have been a major strategic blunder. Large numbers of people are really unhappy about that and, in my experience, even people who had been reliable left-wing voters often become really unhappy if the number of immigrants (especially poor immigrants) is large enough. I don’t think political parties that support immigration ought to be so surprised when these people vote for someone else - after all, in a democracy the people get to vote for the parties that propose the policies that people actually want.
prioritizing preserving the traditional white-dominant society over protecting their democracy
I don’t think that’s fair. White racists oppose immigration, but here in the USA plenty of Hispanic people are also unhappy about the Hispanic refugees.
People think it’s a crisis because the media tells them it is. They aren’t doing well and wondering why, and Fox News, and even Spanish news channels, tell them it’s because of the immigrants. It’s selfish, and awful to watch. I’ve had immigrant relatives wanting to shut the door behind them.
I think I need to bring up that the demographics of the German far-right are just completely different than the American one. To the point they must just be different phenomena.
Simple: elites have been so self-serving that promising to break the establishment is very popular.
We need to know who we are voting into office. Extremists and all their connections need to be exposed. People being confronted by big business need to come forth for the sake of transparency.
What is that bird flag on the right of the image? I swear I saw it on someone’s house in the US somewhere. From the context (all of their neighbors were flying Confederate and Trump shit) I assumed they were a full-on Nazi. Seems like I was correct. But I always wondered what that flag meant.
It’s just the german coat of arms slapped on the flag I think
Oh, I looked that up, I think you are right. Sucks to see the far-right trying to claim the symbols of a nation for their own use.
