464
About 200,000 people protest across Germany against far-right AfD party
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
464 points (99.4% liked)
World News
38965 readers
2223 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
In places that were invaded, resistance were thrown from the top of buildings after they were interrogated, their bodies were left there to be collected by whoever dared. At night all you could hear were their screams while they were being tortured in cellars by the Gestapo. Dissidents were hanged from lampposts in the main street and left as warnings. The concentration camps were often in the middle of the town, not placed at a distance to avoid offending the locals.
And the next generation in those places grew up right next to those concentration camps and mass graves. They were raised by physically and psychologically scarred people, in places that were not funded by the Marshall Plan reconstruction funds that even West Germany received. Decades later there was still rubble and half destroyed buildings.
I appreciate there is much trauma involved in losing any family, friends or community members to war, or to experiencing the bombs being dropped around you. But, I think the level of cruelty and fear experienced by invaded regions was next level. And I don't think Germans generally understand the details of what life was like for the places that were occupied - but that is only my suspicion. I can't understand how else the AfD could discuss deportations or receive such a huge proportion of the vote.
Neither Axis aligned country tesidents nor the invaded would cherish reliving it, but they have had and continue to have very very different experiences as a consequence of the war.
If my post came across as a comparison, it was not meant to. Of course the average scale and intensity would be higher in occupied territories.
I just wanted to highlight that a vast majority of Germans have both the knowledge of the terror their ancestors committed due to the schools' focus on keeping every new generation well educated on it, while combining it with the traumas their own family or communities experienced.
This combines into a fairly strong anti fascist society.
Yes, we have neo nazis and all other flavors of right wing extremists, but they have much less real power than some international media reporting might make you think. Exactly because the majority of society is sensitive to this and does rise against it in numbers.
Even before the current wave, there never was a right wing demonstration or rally that wasn't accompanied by a liberal counter rally with at least a hundred times their number. And even then those weren't left wing extremists or other political radicals in the majority. Most of these types of rallies have a large number of very boring participants, people that are close to apolitical otherwise.
Regarding AfD: remember it's not an openly fascist party, unlike the previously existing NPD, which is now forbidden. AfD claims to be a neo conservative party, a bit further right than the big CDU ( which is center-right). And the AfD keeps dancing on this line, in some areas actively pushing out people as soon as their fascist activities become known and turning themselves, while simultaneously following a slightly tamer route. It's a dangerous and effective way of moving the goal posts of public discourse, especially with no other party effectively engaging their topics. The AfD group revraled to participate in the current nasty discussions is not even a hundred people. I'm confident you'll find a couple dozen idiots of their scale in every larger city of this world.
But every time they slip up like this in Germany, they experience massive setbacks.
It's still important to recognize their danger and work against them, but Germany is far from lost to their twisted ideology. But media does like to be sensationalistic, even when it has good intentions.
A US comparison might be how the tea party developed as an offspring of the Republicans, and how they subsequently shifted the entire political landscape, despite them actually only bring a rather small group. So many unthinkable policies that nobody would have even considered worth a discussion are now on the table for actual legislative processes.