I’m not sure if you saw it last time you were in Berlin MH, but there’s an extraordinary museum in the old Gestapo headquarters called the Topography of Terror, which chronicles the way the Nazis came to power. It’s chilling how they dismantled democracy bit by bit.
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I don’t even know how much time I spent there, because it was just spellbindingly horrific. It was a winter’s evening after sunset, so it just felt like a completely different universe.
But come on Craig you know better than this, museums are woke and DEI and elite and we don’t need this shit.
Without derailing this thread I love all those museums but my favourite is the Berlin Story Bunker.
I was set to go back in April but health drama has put a temp stop to that dammit.
But back to the election, which this thread helps my understanding because I knew fa about recent German elections. Keep it going.
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There’s this phenomenon that because the term Nazi has been used inflationary, you can’t even call an actual Nazi a Nazi anymore.
Not all AfD people (I mean on the party members/activists/active supporter level) are Nazis, some are just fascists, others Nationalists or just right-wingers.
But it’s missing the very strategic transformation of the Neo-Nazi scene of the 80s and especially 90s/early 2000s. These people and that scene isn’t gone - but the more strategic thinking ones knew they needed to get rid of or at least hide all that open (Neo-)Nazi stuff, the Skinheads, the symbols, the Nazi Rock stuff, the NPD etc.
People who were monitoring that scene were talking about these discussions back then, how they needed to look more acceptable, appeal to broader masses, more young people (mainly young men), infiltrate more youth cultures etc.
That brazen Neonazi stuff was just a turn off for too many people. And it got them in conflict with the laws here.
They found a perfect vessel in the AfD, which started as a Eurosceptic party, but was quickly infiltrated and to not a small degree taken over by more radical people and those mentioned above. No one that really stood against that wing inside the party has survived politically. People like Weidel are just there at the mercy of the likes of Höcke and worse. They’re useful as a front cover.
Edit: Insert a ‘Neo-’ in front of every Nazi mention here, if you think that just ‘Nazi’ can only refer to people alive in the 20s-40s of the last century
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I think you gave a very good summary of the AfD, their way from being a eurosceptic party to what they are now. I just want to underline your point that the largest part of their members, supporters and voters are not outright Nazis or extreme right-wingers but people who are used to feeling disadvantaged, who somehow made that feeling being their second ( or first ) nature. People who are looking for very simple answers to difficult problems. That doesn’t make it any better and its really depressing listening to their opinions of how our traditional parties, the EU, the Nato, the migrants are to blame for the ( supposed) sorry state Germany is in. I always sense a mixture of resentment, aggression and sheer stupidity when they talk plus a fascinating ability to block out facts, science and logic - the most horrifying example was Weidel on TV last Sunday.
All that doesn’t make it any better and as I have mentioned before I do not compare todays situation to the 30ies but what history teaches is that such a wide “movement” only needs a small number of devoted activists to gain a momentum that at a certain point enables them to take power - or in our case become a decisive power in finding new government and/or coalitions. Therefor it was important that you pointed out the role of the people in the back like Höcke and Kubitschek who are the heirs of our 80s/90s neonazi-scene. It’s just that they wear suits these days.
20% and slightly rising - I get the impression that large parts of Germany act like a child who gets bored with its favorite toy and starts demolishing it just to get a thrill out of it, not thinking about the day after tomorrow.
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Large parts of the world, in fact.
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Not joking, about 20 years ago I for some reason - don’t ask, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you ( 
) - got access to a fairly massive amount of data/papers by various sources who had infiltrated that scene at the time. Got handed over a whole bunch of CD-ROMs with that stuff at a secret meeting with someone, literally asked me if I was followed - fricking spy movie vibes. None of that stuff was published or anything, for obvious reasons. Fascinating insights.
I often think about the stuff I saw/read there, it was horrifying. And the discussions about shift of strategy. Most of that came true by now.
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This article provides some further context to why so many people feel drawn towards the AfD these days.
They are afraid of the future, and they certainly should be, but unfortunately, they don’t turn towards the people who can alleviate them. AfD will do nothing against climate change and the destruction of our natural environment. They’ll do nothing against social injustice. Guess what, they’ll not even do anything meaningful against illegal immigration, because they need new scapegoats coming to the country, in order to further fuel the flames of fear and hate among the population.
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You made a very strong post that I could only nod at. An excellent read. It was moving actually and I admired it.
Therefore I will only comment on the tiny edit you made. I differ (and I know this is the opinion of much of Academia on this subject) between neo nazi and nazi, not because of the specific time frame of the war, but because of how they actually differ as a social and political movement.
Over 90% of neo nazis are sad people, often very violent racists; but never the less usually always social losers. Many of them are often to be pitied. Of course they are still dangerous (certainly to immigrants!) and certainly when in a flock. But mostly they are pathetic. And to put it mildly, they usually lack dicipline. It is my view that most of today’s vulgar neo nazis would have been considered degenerates (fairly close to Untermensch) by actually ideologically pure nazis (certainly late stage nazism when SA were no longer necessary to fight street battles with communists and Social Democrats). They barely have the dicipline to be even used as Sturmabteilung, and we know how the more rowdy elements in that organisation later were purged historically.
Allow me to use something I seldom lower myself to use, an inaccurate meme (inaccurate because most nazis did not actually have a Ritterkreuz), but it sort of spells out the gist of what i am trying to say when I differentiate between the neo nazi social losers and those of a some what higher calibre (who probably indeed would have despised neo nazis):
The AFD however, is far more dangerous. They have elements in that party that has cast aside the vulgarity of neo nazism, while still embracing elements of nazism, but obfuscating it as you say in a socially and politically acceptable mask. They are not pure nazis of course. The Nazi movement, such as it was, will probably never come again in its same shape and form. It is a dead and spent ideology and for its admirers to ever gain power, they must embrace most aspects of the enemies of nazism. I.e. today that would be Liberalism (economic) and Conservatism (social), and State Corporatism as a model they must probably cast aside (Hitler-Germany never really embraced that model fully in truth because it was not convinient at the time, but that is probably besides the point).
Anyway, my post isn’t important at all and I don’t object to anything at all really. As I said, flowers to you for your excellent post ! I could only nod along the entire post, except for an (really insignificant) detail.
Maybe this was just a way for me to waste 10-15 min writing. I certainly didn’t contribute anything outstandingly informative
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Sort of too late to delete this, but I suppose I just became inspired to write something as I read the thread. Really not my proudest moment in hindsight, spending 20 min nitpicking on semantics. Because I am honestly probably the only one interested.
Ah, but no harm done I suppose. But I should probably have spent my time writing about something more important than digress the topic like I did above in my post. Sometimes I forget myself and go Out of Topic in my digressions.
I apologice.
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Nah, all good. Agreed that much of the OG Neo-Nazis were/are just brutal, ‘useless’ losers. But yeah, I find that eerily similar to early Nazi rowdy street/pub fight stuff. And the development from that to a much more dangerous organisation, getting rid of some of those people when they aren’t needed anymore - I’m sorry, I see similarities. Granted these analogies never work perfectly for obvious reasons, that’s impossible.
Personally I think a lot of people in Germany are totally naive as to at what stage of that development we’re already are in. Infiltration or at least very good connections/sympathies in police/military/intelligence. I think the stuff that comes to light is only the tip of the iceberg, people that are stupid enough to get ‘caught’.Or, just as an example, the role people like e.g. Hans-Georg Maaßen play(ed) - former CDU appointed head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Most importantly the ongoing normalisation of the AfD. I’ve never been so worried about the state of the Bundesrepublik and don’t think it’s hysteria at all. Maybe people like me are wrong, sure hope so.
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I noticed that on the ARD documentary about racism in football, they invited an AfD politician on who made some completely unfounded comment about ethnic minority Germans having a quota of places in the national team. The interviewer didn’t push back on him, and I don’t think it was pointed out that it was a barefaced lie.
Freedom of speech is an important part of democracy, but that does not mean freedom of lying.
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Cue someone shouting ‘all politicians are liars, they’re all the same, so…’
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Getting back to the election - 3 parties (Linke, BSW and FDP) are within 1% or less of the 5% threshold in the polls - so definitely margin of error territory.
If all 3 of those were to make it, ‘Grand’ coalition might not have enough seats.
So in that scenario all options aside of a CDU-AfD coalition, which the CDU (currently?) is ruling out, would be 3 party coalitions.
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I wonder how much of the country would protest if they were to go back on their word, and how much would celebrate…
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I don’t think you get much more clown-like than the Beer Hall Putsch.
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Meh, that’s out of thread and not important at all. A further diverson from the topic, so I deleted my unessecary response. Apologies for making this a history discussion, it was not really truly relevant for the present. I should have better dicipline.
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A lot of people would protest, as we have seen recently.
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