I hope Kristi Noem doesn't see this. What the Remigration video shows - AfD's fantasy- is almost the reality of deportation in the US, less the dancing flight attendants. What ICE services to the media is more cruel than seen here.
I think it's pretty simple: Marco wanted to head off any palace intriguer running to Daddy T (JD Super Eric comes to mind) to tell him about it and then ask Lil' why he hadn't properly denounced it.
I'll get ariund to reading it all asa my daily life allows me to some intelligent reading again
For now
1
headline today
AfD Kreisverband Köln has asked J.D. Vance for help
AbIk Tagesspiegel is a serious outlet and Cologne is a Carnival. Capital. I'd write THE if I had not preferred Mainz and found the Köln variant intolerably silly
2
I recently read that Germany's KGB has been reborne. AbIk the only time a 🇩🇪 political party was ever successfully verboten/closed down
3
what I assume listening to otherwise decent family is the stereotype, bur others do it the same thing. And as far as Ukraine goes the once upon a time possibly serious Gabriele Krone-Schmalz is the most unbeatable.
4
AfD publishes on its website the horrific Holocaust was just Vogelschiss in our glorious 1000 (sic) year history. (Stendhal was in charge of Braunschweig under Napoleon. To date I've only heard radio excerpts. We were not only a patchwork of wannabe greats we also were a backward mudhole aka if you want to be kind we as a we start in 1848.
Last but not least I give yr song a try - and thanks 🙏👍
AfD at O’Hare. As cavalier as the Proud Boys. Waiting and then boarding together, the intra-airport transit from the car rental / parking structure, were a couple, guys likely, based on appearance, from another country, the dumber in the nicer puffer jacket, the more savage in a shiny one. Once on the transit some quiet, melodic but non-English speech peaked my curiosity. Even while in my visits O’Hare seems 5% Anglo/Hispanic/African-American, these guys seemed ripen for my attention. But not one to just listen, unprovoked, I innocently inquired “Are you AfD?”. The self-assured and happy dumb one seemed happily surprised with such a question; the other guy not so much. Responded to his hesitating but implied request for clarification, I cheerfully asked again “Are you AfD”. The reply was as sincere and assured as it was quick and direct: “yes”, as if you ask in return “aren’t you as well”? I choked out a conciliatory “well, it’s great to be proud of one’s country and culture, especially for German persons !” “Yes, yes”, he jovially replied. So cavalier, and normalized. I finished by reminding him of that the Dugan Eurasia plan will bury that object of his immense pride. Maintain I got his jovial affectation he replied that “the future will tell”. What is revealed in such an attitude?
It has suddenly occurred to me that what Trump and Musk are doing makes sense, if the aim is to actually break up the European Union (by supporting national movements that support exit) while also giving America an outpost next to post-EU Europe (i.e. Greenland).
Something else I want to throw out while waiting for part 2 of the article is do we really know whether the AfD or more specifically its voters can be re-integrated or merged back in the CDU/CSU. There seems to be this great assumption both in Germany and outside of Germany that the AfD is really just ex-CDU voters waiting to come home. What if that is not the case and instead the AfD has kind become its own cultural bloc? There are actually many policies which the AfD is closer to the Greens and SPD than the CDU/CSU. Does the CDU really want this huge bloc of voters back in the fold that would shift the party to the left economically?
To pour more salt on the wound while both the AfD and Greens would deeply oppose the comparison there are definite similarities between two. The Greens in there early incarnations were basically people who attacked a lot of West German police officers while AfD are people who attacked East German police officers. Neither are particularly bourgeois in there origins.
I know this will warm WigWag's heart but I would argue Alice Weidel's sexual orientation is probably a bigger deal in the more religious church going parts of the CDU and CSU than in the AfD. Those who emphasize the Christian in both CDU and CSU. Remember again the larger East German base of the AfD grewup in an environment where religion was banned for 45 odd years. Can the CDU driven by 1980s pre reunification nostalgia ever capture this bloc of East German voters?
This is a great essay on the dilemma facing Western democracies, not just Germany.
What to do?
We talked about how France and The Netherlands are deporting anyone who espouses threats and commits violence, even citizens, whose citizenship is then revoked.
What do you think?
A quibble. Twice in Lowenstein's second quote, the word "prescribing" is used when surely the word should be "proscribing"? Is this a translation/AI error, or am I misunderstanding?
It's a transliteration error. The article was a PDF and something went wrong in the conversion. The whole article is full of typos, actually. I have to fix them.
Interestingly in the US the Supreme Court ruled back in the 1950s that under the US constitution citizenship revocation was unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. This was in relation to several US citizens who fought for the axis powers.
Ironically in the US unlike Canada and many other countries there is no policy or legal expectation against statelessness. So, someone can legally renounce there, US citizenship and become a stateless person whereas if someone wishes to renounce there, Canadian citizenship they must prove to the government of Canada they have another citizenship or will obtain one with effect of their renunciation (in the case of countries like Japan that prohibit dual nationality.
I believe that Canada and the US are perhaps the only countries that have birthright citizenship. I have a friend in Vanouver married to a nurse (she was born in China) whose job involves the natal care of Chinese women who come to Canada to give birth, and who then often return to China.
I guess the lyrics of the AfD‘s ‚party song‘ were transcribed and translated by AI. Two notes: 1. The transcript states something about ‚Thalerhof’, but the actual word in the song is ‚talahon’, which refers to young male migrants of Arab heritage. This is used as a self-description by migrants and also as a racial slur by the far-right. 2. It is very hard to comprehend that line about Iran. For one, the line in the German transcript doesn’t make any sense, unless it’s an established term in the far-right subculture. I listened to it five times in a row and can’t tell if it really refers to Iran/Aryans. The words are blurry and almost drowned out by the music. Hard to tell. But given the openly racist language in the song as a whole, it‘s almost impossible to make it even more disgusting as it already is.
What is your most parsimonious definition of "racist" then? I can almost remember when, on my first ever visit to Germany, it both looked and felt like my imagined Deutschland.. By my second visit, it already didn't. What afD sing of i find therefore stirring, swiftly moving me to the most stirring rendering of Lied der Deutschen i can find (Perhaps all of it is in the nature of melody, i don't know!) But you seem so sure of what is "racism" I am not. Most broadly speaking, i cannot see that mass Muslim migration adds anything of value to that which we tend to think of as Germany. It only ever subtracts from it Is that the whole idea, would you say?
you, that she’s very offended by AfD turning a beloved, apolitical party song of her childhood into a song about kicking out foreigners. The truth is, that AfD comes way too late for its ‚big plans for Deutschland‘. The demographic ship has sailed about 4 decades ago. Our productivity is declining, we need immigration to sustain our crumbling economic model. We are facing deindustrialization because of an ageing population, exploding energy costs (thank you, various past governments!). And now, we have a lame-duck government, which can‘t seem to get anything done. Along comes AfD which offers easy solutions to complex problems and when in power always votes to make things worse for ‚Otto Normalverbraucher‘ (the average Joe). What started out as an honest attempt to fill the political vacuum to the right of CDU, created by Merkel’s clever shifting CDU to the left, quickly became a far right cesspool of disgruntled CDU members, revisionists, racists,
opportunists and neo-Nazis. These folks quickly got rid of the non-radical members, like Bernd Lucke. AfD is trying to fix things with a populism that appeals to the dark side of Germany, although it isn‘t even able to assess reality. After WWII Germany failed to formulate an immigration scheme. Yes, we hatched out plans to address worker shortages in the short term, but we failed to offer a vision of how to integrate these new immigrants into our society. Our politicians drove ‚on sight‘ alone. First we had people from southern Europe, then Turkey and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall we absorbed millions of East Germans plus people of German descent and a few Jews from the former Soviet space. Then came the Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians. All that without any government formulating a plan. In the US it’s just ‚leave your troubles behind, you‘re a US citizen now‘. But Europe is still the Old World and Germany is Germany. A few years ago Rammstein did a great portrait of the German struggle to find our identity in a drastically transformed world (nota bene: Germania is a woman of color here): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc&pp=ygUVcmFtbXN0ZWluIGRldXRzY2hsYW5k
I hadn't seen that before. It's brilliant, like so much of their work. (Till looks like hell these days. Like he's been drinking and doing drugs without respite for way, way too long.)
I am not a big fan of Rammstein, but I like some of their wordplays and a couple of their songs, like Seemann for example. It was covered by Finnish cello/metal group Apocalyptica featuring Nina Hagen on vocals. She starts lower than Lindemann did! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v-YzdvmD2aQ&pp=ygUUYXBvY2FseXB0aWNhIHNlZW1hbm4%3D
You‘re right, sort of. I mixed it up. Around 1:34 the transcript reads ‚jetzt singt der Thalerhof nach Haus‘, but the actual words are ‚jetzt fliegt der Talahon nach Haus‘ which means ‚the talahon is flying home, now.‘ Thalerhof doesn’t make any sense.
(It has to be "Aperol" in the first instance because otherwise there's no super-tasteful joke about the Spritzkrieg.) The awful thing is that the pun made me laugh. That's why the article Mitchell linked to above is really good: You'd have to be completely humorous not to see this video as funny. That. gives them the excuse to say, "It's just a joke, you uptight, humorless prigs." Except it's not, and we all know it. But because it *is* a catchy and witty song, it will both spread further and legitimize these ideas more readily than some dreary political pamphlet ever could.
One of the more important things you can do to keep your country out of the hands of the far right is to make sure your pop culture is more appealing than theirs. Democrats probably sealed their fate when they became the party of humorless prigs. Republicans used to play that role (think of Nancy Reagan and her "Just Say No" campaign, or Bill Bennett--does anyone remember him insisting a nude statue be draped?) Everyone will always want to belong to the tribe that's cooler and having more fun. (Fortunately for liberal democracy, there's just a limit to how cool and fun you can be without black people and Jews.)
From the wikipedia entry: Critics argue that the trend perpetuates stereotypes about young men from migrant backgrounds, portraying them as violent, misogynistic, and obsessed with material wealth. This has led to a polarised reception, with some using the term "Talahon" ironically to mock these stereotypes, while others embrace it as an authentic representation of their identity.[6][7]
The "Talahon" trend has faced significant backlash for its perceived glorification of violence and its patriarchal and misogynistic undertones.[8][9] Integration experts have criticised the trend, arguing that it promotes a regressive worldview that is harmful to societal cohesion. Additionally, there are concerns about the trend being co-opted by right-wing groups to further marginalise and stigmatise young men with migrant backgrounds
Apparently: "Talahon refers to a German trend on social media and other social media platforms in 2024. The trend is characterised by videos of young men, often with a migrant background, especially from Arab countries, adopting aggressive postures and showcasing luxurious, albeit often fake, accessories.'Talahon' does not have a fixed definition, but it is believed to derive from the Arabic phrase "taeal huna," (Arabic: تعال هنا) meaning 'come here,' or from the song "Ta3al Lahon" by Syrian-German[1] rapper Hassan, released in 2022." So says Wikipedia.
I‘d say, the line about ‚Iranians remain‘ is a chiffre for Aryan people (as in ethnically pure Germans) given that Iran is ‚the land of the Aryans‘. Yet another way to circumvent German anti-hate speech laws (like the ones you mentioned plus 130 StGB).
Exactly this! I remember idly asking my dad why Persia was called "Iran" now and getting a lecture about Zoroastrianism and the co-opted eastern roots of European racial ideology. If you believe in inherited superiority, you can't just stop at Rome or Greece, you have to keep going back...
Must be why British skinheads study sanskrit so hard.
Let me get this straight; according to Claire, the AfD is the second coming of the Nazi Party. Yet the AfD’s leader, Frau Weidel, studied economics at the University of Bayreuth, earning her doctorate magna cum laude in 2011. She worked at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China. She lived in China for six years and became fluent in Mandarin. Frau Weidel is a lesbian with two children and her wife is a Sri Lankan-Swiss filmmaker.
I guess they don't make Nazi’s like they used to. The Führer must be turning over in his grave.
Mrs. Weidel‘s life-style is quite controversial in her party and she receives a lot of pushback for it. Not to mention that she lives comfortably in Switzerland while promoting her Neo-Nazi party just across Switzerland‘s border… Can’t stand this woman!
Yes, it is an ironic turn given the tragic history of the pink triangle.
But are you making a larger point here? Should Lesbian/Gay relationships be taboo in the politi-sphere of today's Far Right simply because they were under the Hitlerian regime?
one might think they should be, if any kind of model is proposed/specified to exemplify a human norm? That perniciously conflated - as it usually is - with what is said to he "natural"?
I'm not really trying to make a larger point. I'm just saying that most fair minded people would be skeptical of an accusation that a political party has fascist or even Nazi sympathies when that party has selected a gay woman married to a Sri Lankan immigrant as its leader.
Claire spent a fair portion of her essay exploring the fascist roots of the AFD. I don't doubt anything that she's said about this but I do wonder how relevant it is. After all, the Democratic Party in the United States started as a populist, pro-slavery political party. From the 1830s up until the Civil War a significant faction of the Party wanted the expansion of slavery. Up until then 1960s a significant faction of the Party opposed civil rights for African-Americans. Wouldn't questioning the motivations of contemporary Democrats be ridiculous if it were based on the belief of Democrats decades ago?
If it would be ridiculous, why isn't it ridiculous to criticize the AfD based on the same criteria?
Yes these parties are newish. But you and many other pundits have suggested that the AfD and other European far right parties have their roots in fascist movements so prevalent in the 1920s 1930s and 1940s. I don't doubt its true. But this fact, in and of itself, doesn't mean that these parties currently have fascist tendencies any more than the contemporary Democratic Party is tainted by the party’s previous support for slavery.
Would you like to comment on why a fascist party would appoint a lesbian married to a Sri Lankan as its leader?
While I don't question the aptness of your recitation of the historical facts about the evolution of the Democratic Party, the day of the Dixiecrat and southern Blue Dog Dem is long gone.
Today's Democratic Party is an often- messy, fractious coalition but it no longer suffers the anti-Black bigots in its midst (they moved to the Republicans during the Nixon Admin). I have never heard of any Dem longing for the "good old days when the "n--rs knew their place", if you get my drift. (yeah, I know you didn't put it in those terms, but your analogy invites this elaboration).
The article outlines the persistence of NSDP-aligned philosophy within at least one faction of AfD. As a casual reader who hasn't dug deeper into the subject, I don't know where the fissures between factions lie, or which is the dominant strain (probably varies greatly between former DDR and the western states) but I'd conclude that yes, there are those in AfD whose world view is very similar to the old, now-banned Nazi party, though perhaps leaving out the bit about the camps and the ovens.
The only thing I would point out is that the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party survived and, to some extent, thrived up until then 1960s. No rational person would criticize the contemporary Democratic Party because of the sins of its predecessors. Similarly, criticizing European parties that are frequently described as “far right” because the progenitors of these parties were fascist ignores the possibility that these parties may have evolved in a better direction just as the Democrats have evolved in a better direction.
By the way, I’m not saying the comparison I'm making is perfect. Its entirely possible that the Democratic Party has escaped its roots more successfully than Europe’s “far right” parties have escaped their roots.
But Claire’s suggestion that the AfD and other European “far right” parties are merely sanitized versions of the Nazis and fascists seems both naive and simplistic.
It's ridiculous because she quoted an essay about snakes in the grass of democracy, then you come hissing up to point out that her comparisons aren't one to one.
Considering that you wouldn't recognize an authoritarian asshole if he was throwing a Heil to the crowd, it should come as no surprise that you can miss the warning signs.
I got an email this morning with a photo from Die Welt or Die Zeit, showing Musk's head and face, but the outstretched arm part was covered by a blue blob. There were plenty of pix out there of that without the absurd and pathetic visual censorship mandated by German law.
It's a total bullsh*t, desperate and genuinely evil attempted deplatforming Musk... Netanyahu himself said so a coupla days ago. As did all the Trumpista Inner Party, and Musk himself blew it off as a prima facie absurdity...
And telegraphing perfectly the freaked-out desperation of our Global Obamazoid moral and intellectual superiors as they're getting mercilessly whacked with the the HAL 9000 treatment: viz, Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey, when after HAL murders the rest of the crew and tries killing Dave, Dave somehow manages heroically to get back inside the ship, and one-by-one, ejects HAL's memory banks. Reducing HAL in a minute to a pathetic idiot singing "Daisy Daisy... a Bicycle Built for Two".
See these clips, if that scene wasn't seared, seared into your memory when first seeing the movie when it came out in 1969 or so.
I am happy you found that podcast Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart did. I think I might have been the person who shared it with you. Anyways I have a lot of thoughts but probably too many write down in one go.
My understanding is that the band Rammstein has actually kind of gone woke over the last 20 years to the dismay of many of the original fans since you first wrote about them, but I think your original point way back when still stands is this genre of music even if not Rammstein's particular work was kind of a gateway into far right ideology. For me personally I have never quite gotten this type of stuff as the first thing that pops into my mind when hear this heavy metal music valorizing the far right are the Three Stooges play acting Hitler, Goebels, and Goring along with the slapstick incompetence of the Nazi's in the Indiana Jones movies(something very much intended by Jewish filmmaker Steven Spielberg)
If you don’t get a better answer, “In Deutschland wird nur noch im Iran” doesn’t mean only Iranians remain in Germany, but I think more like being in Germany is only like still being in Iran — that is, presumably, until the “deportation party” gets its way.
Steve Fleischer: as you are probably aware, "Lefties" are not the only people who are alarmed by and highly critical of Donald Trump. Many Conservatives are horrified by the man, by his unprincipled agenda of appointing hot-headed drunks, loonies and morons to high office, and promotion of his own crypto-currency. An utter disgrace, with worse yet to come, no doubt.
Normalization of Trumpism by the American press and electorate is craven self-abasement, in my humble opinion.
Turning to other matters: I would be interested in hearing what aspect of Sahra Wagenknecht's ideas or party do you see as the most dangerous? Thanks.
Funny, Claire... I was halfway through your lengthy posting before I realized that it wasn't about the Democrat Party, the Obamazoids, the Fubbies, and their apparatchiki/fellow travelers in the former U.,S., and A.
So sorry about abbreviating the "D" nomenclature (or should that be "nomenklatura?)! But maybe if you got out more, you'd know that's almost always the preferred usage by the smart-ass New Yorkers faction of us MAGATS.
Similarly, in Our Crowd, "Fubbies" is a semi-comic epithet for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Or should that maybe better be the "Feral Bureau of Instigation"?
Follows here below, re-posted from a comment thread several weeks ago in James Howard Kunstler's CFN blog...
"Speaking of 'gallows' on the Capitol mall, at 0600A hrs on Insurrection Day, 6th Jan 2021, a pickup truck arrived with a very nicely constructed prefab wooden gallows—replete with drop and noose. A well-rehearsed team of a half dozen clean-cut young Dudley Do-Right clones smartly unloaded and re-assembled this supposed infernal device of the Trumpista crazies intended for the righteous public execution of VP Mike Pence for refusing to question the obvious monkey-business entailed in the electoral vote counting. Then the fine young Dudleys climbed back into their truck and drove away, leaving the gallows in full sight for the whole day: specifically contrary to the laws and regs regarding such things. Presumably, the entire project was multiply videoed by the Blob's surveillence hardware. Some prog jerk fellow traveller soon published an account, still available from Amazon books, describing the whole thing: not as what it so transparently was —an Op by, e.g., the Fubbies— but as documented evidence of the Far Right's boundless evil and subversion. The Fubbie's infamous DNC/RNC pipe bomb drops was small potatoes by comparison; but also no doubt extensively and multiply archived by the local surveillance infrastructure."
I hope Kristi Noem doesn't see this. What the Remigration video shows - AfD's fantasy- is almost the reality of deportation in the US, less the dancing flight attendants. What ICE services to the media is more cruel than seen here.
I think it's pretty simple: Marco wanted to head off any palace intriguer running to Daddy T (JD Super Eric comes to mind) to tell him about it and then ask Lil' why he hadn't properly denounced it.
I'll get ariund to reading it all asa my daily life allows me to some intelligent reading again
For now
1
headline today
AfD Kreisverband Köln has asked J.D. Vance for help
AbIk Tagesspiegel is a serious outlet and Cologne is a Carnival. Capital. I'd write THE if I had not preferred Mainz and found the Köln variant intolerably silly
2
I recently read that Germany's KGB has been reborne. AbIk the only time a 🇩🇪 political party was ever successfully verboten/closed down
3
what I assume listening to otherwise decent family is the stereotype, bur others do it the same thing. And as far as Ukraine goes the once upon a time possibly serious Gabriele Krone-Schmalz is the most unbeatable.
4
AfD publishes on its website the horrific Holocaust was just Vogelschiss in our glorious 1000 (sic) year history. (Stendhal was in charge of Braunschweig under Napoleon. To date I've only heard radio excerpts. We were not only a patchwork of wannabe greats we also were a backward mudhole aka if you want to be kind we as a we start in 1848.
Last but not least I give yr song a try - and thanks 🙏👍
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/bitte-helfen-sie-uns-afd-kreisverband-richtet-nach-einstufung-vom-verfassungsschutz-appell-an-us-vize-vance-13629754.html
AfD at O’Hare. As cavalier as the Proud Boys. Waiting and then boarding together, the intra-airport transit from the car rental / parking structure, were a couple, guys likely, based on appearance, from another country, the dumber in the nicer puffer jacket, the more savage in a shiny one. Once on the transit some quiet, melodic but non-English speech peaked my curiosity. Even while in my visits O’Hare seems 5% Anglo/Hispanic/African-American, these guys seemed ripen for my attention. But not one to just listen, unprovoked, I innocently inquired “Are you AfD?”. The self-assured and happy dumb one seemed happily surprised with such a question; the other guy not so much. Responded to his hesitating but implied request for clarification, I cheerfully asked again “Are you AfD”. The reply was as sincere and assured as it was quick and direct: “yes”, as if you ask in return “aren’t you as well”? I choked out a conciliatory “well, it’s great to be proud of one’s country and culture, especially for German persons !” “Yes, yes”, he jovially replied. So cavalier, and normalized. I finished by reminding him of that the Dugan Eurasia plan will bury that object of his immense pride. Maintain I got his jovial affectation he replied that “the future will tell”. What is revealed in such an attitude?
It has suddenly occurred to me that what Trump and Musk are doing makes sense, if the aim is to actually break up the European Union (by supporting national movements that support exit) while also giving America an outpost next to post-EU Europe (i.e. Greenland).
Yes. This is what Putin has been trying to do.
Something else I want to throw out while waiting for part 2 of the article is do we really know whether the AfD or more specifically its voters can be re-integrated or merged back in the CDU/CSU. There seems to be this great assumption both in Germany and outside of Germany that the AfD is really just ex-CDU voters waiting to come home. What if that is not the case and instead the AfD has kind become its own cultural bloc? There are actually many policies which the AfD is closer to the Greens and SPD than the CDU/CSU. Does the CDU really want this huge bloc of voters back in the fold that would shift the party to the left economically?
To pour more salt on the wound while both the AfD and Greens would deeply oppose the comparison there are definite similarities between two. The Greens in there early incarnations were basically people who attacked a lot of West German police officers while AfD are people who attacked East German police officers. Neither are particularly bourgeois in there origins.
I know this will warm WigWag's heart but I would argue Alice Weidel's sexual orientation is probably a bigger deal in the more religious church going parts of the CDU and CSU than in the AfD. Those who emphasize the Christian in both CDU and CSU. Remember again the larger East German base of the AfD grewup in an environment where religion was banned for 45 odd years. Can the CDU driven by 1980s pre reunification nostalgia ever capture this bloc of East German voters?
This is a great essay on the dilemma facing Western democracies, not just Germany.
What to do?
We talked about how France and The Netherlands are deporting anyone who espouses threats and commits violence, even citizens, whose citizenship is then revoked.
What do you think?
A quibble. Twice in Lowenstein's second quote, the word "prescribing" is used when surely the word should be "proscribing"? Is this a translation/AI error, or am I misunderstanding?
It's a transliteration error. The article was a PDF and something went wrong in the conversion. The whole article is full of typos, actually. I have to fix them.
Interestingly in the US the Supreme Court ruled back in the 1950s that under the US constitution citizenship revocation was unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. This was in relation to several US citizens who fought for the axis powers.
Ironically in the US unlike Canada and many other countries there is no policy or legal expectation against statelessness. So, someone can legally renounce there, US citizenship and become a stateless person whereas if someone wishes to renounce there, Canadian citizenship they must prove to the government of Canada they have another citizenship or will obtain one with effect of their renunciation (in the case of countries like Japan that prohibit dual nationality.
I believe that Canada and the US are perhaps the only countries that have birthright citizenship. I have a friend in Vanouver married to a nurse (she was born in China) whose job involves the natal care of Chinese women who come to Canada to give birth, and who then often return to China.
I guess the lyrics of the AfD‘s ‚party song‘ were transcribed and translated by AI. Two notes: 1. The transcript states something about ‚Thalerhof’, but the actual word in the song is ‚talahon’, which refers to young male migrants of Arab heritage. This is used as a self-description by migrants and also as a racial slur by the far-right. 2. It is very hard to comprehend that line about Iran. For one, the line in the German transcript doesn’t make any sense, unless it’s an established term in the far-right subculture. I listened to it five times in a row and can’t tell if it really refers to Iran/Aryans. The words are blurry and almost drowned out by the music. Hard to tell. But given the openly racist language in the song as a whole, it‘s almost impossible to make it even more disgusting as it already is.
What is your most parsimonious definition of "racist" then? I can almost remember when, on my first ever visit to Germany, it both looked and felt like my imagined Deutschland.. By my second visit, it already didn't. What afD sing of i find therefore stirring, swiftly moving me to the most stirring rendering of Lied der Deutschen i can find (Perhaps all of it is in the nature of melody, i don't know!) But you seem so sure of what is "racism" I am not. Most broadly speaking, i cannot see that mass Muslim migration adds anything of value to that which we tend to think of as Germany. It only ever subtracts from it Is that the whole idea, would you say?
If you ask my daughter, she’ll tell
you, that she’s very offended by AfD turning a beloved, apolitical party song of her childhood into a song about kicking out foreigners. The truth is, that AfD comes way too late for its ‚big plans for Deutschland‘. The demographic ship has sailed about 4 decades ago. Our productivity is declining, we need immigration to sustain our crumbling economic model. We are facing deindustrialization because of an ageing population, exploding energy costs (thank you, various past governments!). And now, we have a lame-duck government, which can‘t seem to get anything done. Along comes AfD which offers easy solutions to complex problems and when in power always votes to make things worse for ‚Otto Normalverbraucher‘ (the average Joe). What started out as an honest attempt to fill the political vacuum to the right of CDU, created by Merkel’s clever shifting CDU to the left, quickly became a far right cesspool of disgruntled CDU members, revisionists, racists,
opportunists and neo-Nazis. These folks quickly got rid of the non-radical members, like Bernd Lucke. AfD is trying to fix things with a populism that appeals to the dark side of Germany, although it isn‘t even able to assess reality. After WWII Germany failed to formulate an immigration scheme. Yes, we hatched out plans to address worker shortages in the short term, but we failed to offer a vision of how to integrate these new immigrants into our society. Our politicians drove ‚on sight‘ alone. First we had people from southern Europe, then Turkey and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall we absorbed millions of East Germans plus people of German descent and a few Jews from the former Soviet space. Then came the Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians. All that without any government formulating a plan. In the US it’s just ‚leave your troubles behind, you‘re a US citizen now‘. But Europe is still the Old World and Germany is Germany. A few years ago Rammstein did a great portrait of the German struggle to find our identity in a drastically transformed world (nota bene: Germania is a woman of color here): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc&pp=ygUVcmFtbXN0ZWluIGRldXRzY2hsYW5k
I hadn't seen that before. It's brilliant, like so much of their work. (Till looks like hell these days. Like he's been drinking and doing drugs without respite for way, way too long.)
I am not a big fan of Rammstein, but I like some of their wordplays and a couple of their songs, like Seemann for example. It was covered by Finnish cello/metal group Apocalyptica featuring Nina Hagen on vocals. She starts lower than Lindemann did! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v-YzdvmD2aQ&pp=ygUUYXBvY2FseXB0aWNhIHNlZW1hbm4%3D
It is actually Aperol: https://archive.is/nGfpI (and see the video around 1:50)
Thanks for that link. Good article.
You‘re right, sort of. I mixed it up. Around 1:34 the transcript reads ‚jetzt singt der Thalerhof nach Haus‘, but the actual words are ‚jetzt fliegt der Talahon nach Haus‘ which means ‚the talahon is flying home, now.‘ Thalerhof doesn’t make any sense.
(It has to be "Aperol" in the first instance because otherwise there's no super-tasteful joke about the Spritzkrieg.) The awful thing is that the pun made me laugh. That's why the article Mitchell linked to above is really good: You'd have to be completely humorous not to see this video as funny. That. gives them the excuse to say, "It's just a joke, you uptight, humorless prigs." Except it's not, and we all know it. But because it *is* a catchy and witty song, it will both spread further and legitimize these ideas more readily than some dreary political pamphlet ever could.
One of the more important things you can do to keep your country out of the hands of the far right is to make sure your pop culture is more appealing than theirs. Democrats probably sealed their fate when they became the party of humorless prigs. Republicans used to play that role (think of Nancy Reagan and her "Just Say No" campaign, or Bill Bennett--does anyone remember him insisting a nude statue be draped?) Everyone will always want to belong to the tribe that's cooler and having more fun. (Fortunately for liberal democracy, there's just a limit to how cool and fun you can be without black people and Jews.)
I'll update this with the correction. What's the etymology of "talahon" as a slur?
From the wikipedia entry: Critics argue that the trend perpetuates stereotypes about young men from migrant backgrounds, portraying them as violent, misogynistic, and obsessed with material wealth. This has led to a polarised reception, with some using the term "Talahon" ironically to mock these stereotypes, while others embrace it as an authentic representation of their identity.[6][7]
The "Talahon" trend has faced significant backlash for its perceived glorification of violence and its patriarchal and misogynistic undertones.[8][9] Integration experts have criticised the trend, arguing that it promotes a regressive worldview that is harmful to societal cohesion. Additionally, there are concerns about the trend being co-opted by right-wing groups to further marginalise and stigmatise young men with migrant backgrounds
Apparently: "Talahon refers to a German trend on social media and other social media platforms in 2024. The trend is characterised by videos of young men, often with a migrant background, especially from Arab countries, adopting aggressive postures and showcasing luxurious, albeit often fake, accessories.'Talahon' does not have a fixed definition, but it is believed to derive from the Arabic phrase "taeal huna," (Arabic: تعال هنا) meaning 'come here,' or from the song "Ta3al Lahon" by Syrian-German[1] rapper Hassan, released in 2022." So says Wikipedia.
I‘d say, the line about ‚Iranians remain‘ is a chiffre for Aryan people (as in ethnically pure Germans) given that Iran is ‚the land of the Aryans‘. Yet another way to circumvent German anti-hate speech laws (like the ones you mentioned plus 130 StGB).
Exactly this! I remember idly asking my dad why Persia was called "Iran" now and getting a lecture about Zoroastrianism and the co-opted eastern roots of European racial ideology. If you believe in inherited superiority, you can't just stop at Rome or Greece, you have to keep going back...
Must be why British skinheads study sanskrit so hard.
Yes, another reader already wrote explain that. I'm feeling a bit stupid for not figuring it out myself.
You should never feel stupid Claire. Besides me you’re the smartest person on Substack.
Yeah, but this was like missing an obvious clue in the Monday crossword puzzle.
Let me get this straight; according to Claire, the AfD is the second coming of the Nazi Party. Yet the AfD’s leader, Frau Weidel, studied economics at the University of Bayreuth, earning her doctorate magna cum laude in 2011. She worked at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China. She lived in China for six years and became fluent in Mandarin. Frau Weidel is a lesbian with two children and her wife is a Sri Lankan-Swiss filmmaker.
I guess they don't make Nazi’s like they used to. The Führer must be turning over in his grave.
thankyou Mr Wig. My tail has begun to Wag again after a particularly gruelling post by CB!
Mrs. Weidel‘s life-style is quite controversial in her party and she receives a lot of pushback for it. Not to mention that she lives comfortably in Switzerland while promoting her Neo-Nazi party just across Switzerland‘s border… Can’t stand this woman!
It’s an unusual lifestyle for what Claire suggests might be a Führer in waiting.
Yes, it is an ironic turn given the tragic history of the pink triangle.
But are you making a larger point here? Should Lesbian/Gay relationships be taboo in the politi-sphere of today's Far Right simply because they were under the Hitlerian regime?
one might think they should be, if any kind of model is proposed/specified to exemplify a human norm? That perniciously conflated - as it usually is - with what is said to he "natural"?
I'm not really trying to make a larger point. I'm just saying that most fair minded people would be skeptical of an accusation that a political party has fascist or even Nazi sympathies when that party has selected a gay woman married to a Sri Lankan immigrant as its leader.
Claire spent a fair portion of her essay exploring the fascist roots of the AFD. I don't doubt anything that she's said about this but I do wonder how relevant it is. After all, the Democratic Party in the United States started as a populist, pro-slavery political party. From the 1830s up until the Civil War a significant faction of the Party wanted the expansion of slavery. Up until then 1960s a significant faction of the Party opposed civil rights for African-Americans. Wouldn't questioning the motivations of contemporary Democrats be ridiculous if it were based on the belief of Democrats decades ago?
If it would be ridiculous, why isn't it ridiculous to criticize the AfD based on the same criteria?
What roots? This party hasn't been around that long. All of this is *contemporary,* Wigwag. This is a party that gets more radical by the year.
Yes these parties are newish. But you and many other pundits have suggested that the AfD and other European far right parties have their roots in fascist movements so prevalent in the 1920s 1930s and 1940s. I don't doubt its true. But this fact, in and of itself, doesn't mean that these parties currently have fascist tendencies any more than the contemporary Democratic Party is tainted by the party’s previous support for slavery.
Would you like to comment on why a fascist party would appoint a lesbian married to a Sri Lankan as its leader?
While I don't question the aptness of your recitation of the historical facts about the evolution of the Democratic Party, the day of the Dixiecrat and southern Blue Dog Dem is long gone.
Today's Democratic Party is an often- messy, fractious coalition but it no longer suffers the anti-Black bigots in its midst (they moved to the Republicans during the Nixon Admin). I have never heard of any Dem longing for the "good old days when the "n--rs knew their place", if you get my drift. (yeah, I know you didn't put it in those terms, but your analogy invites this elaboration).
The article outlines the persistence of NSDP-aligned philosophy within at least one faction of AfD. As a casual reader who hasn't dug deeper into the subject, I don't know where the fissures between factions lie, or which is the dominant strain (probably varies greatly between former DDR and the western states) but I'd conclude that yes, there are those in AfD whose world view is very similar to the old, now-banned Nazi party, though perhaps leaving out the bit about the camps and the ovens.
Did you leave the "A" (for "Arbeiters", i.e., workers) out of "NSDAP intentionally or subsconsciously?
The only thing I would point out is that the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party survived and, to some extent, thrived up until then 1960s. No rational person would criticize the contemporary Democratic Party because of the sins of its predecessors. Similarly, criticizing European parties that are frequently described as “far right” because the progenitors of these parties were fascist ignores the possibility that these parties may have evolved in a better direction just as the Democrats have evolved in a better direction.
By the way, I’m not saying the comparison I'm making is perfect. Its entirely possible that the Democratic Party has escaped its roots more successfully than Europe’s “far right” parties have escaped their roots.
But Claire’s suggestion that the AfD and other European “far right” parties are merely sanitized versions of the Nazis and fascists seems both naive and simplistic.
It's ridiculous because she quoted an essay about snakes in the grass of democracy, then you come hissing up to point out that her comparisons aren't one to one.
Why should anyone pretend you have legs.
Considering that you wouldn't recognize an authoritarian asshole if he was throwing a Heil to the crowd, it should come as no surprise that you can miss the warning signs.
I got an email this morning with a photo from Die Welt or Die Zeit, showing Musk's head and face, but the outstretched arm part was covered by a blue blob. There were plenty of pix out there of that without the absurd and pathetic visual censorship mandated by German law.
It's a total bullsh*t, desperate and genuinely evil attempted deplatforming Musk... Netanyahu himself said so a coupla days ago. As did all the Trumpista Inner Party, and Musk himself blew it off as a prima facie absurdity...
And telegraphing perfectly the freaked-out desperation of our Global Obamazoid moral and intellectual superiors as they're getting mercilessly whacked with the the HAL 9000 treatment: viz, Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey, when after HAL murders the rest of the crew and tries killing Dave, Dave somehow manages heroically to get back inside the ship, and one-by-one, ejects HAL's memory banks. Reducing HAL in a minute to a pathetic idiot singing "Daisy Daisy... a Bicycle Built for Two".
See these clips, if that scene wasn't seared, seared into your memory when first seeing the movie when it came out in 1969 or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpvOUnz4T7Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH37JTBpi2A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7WQ1tdxSqI
Arthur C. Clarke was a genius. These scenes are a perfect parable for AI.
"Netanyahu himself said so a coupla days ago. As did all the Trumpista Inner Party, and Musk himself blew it off as a prima facie absurdity"
3 out of 3 foxes agree, coop security spending is unnecessary and decadent.
Oh puh-leeeze, dude!
I am happy you found that podcast Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart did. I think I might have been the person who shared it with you. Anyways I have a lot of thoughts but probably too many write down in one go.
My understanding is that the band Rammstein has actually kind of gone woke over the last 20 years to the dismay of many of the original fans since you first wrote about them, but I think your original point way back when still stands is this genre of music even if not Rammstein's particular work was kind of a gateway into far right ideology. For me personally I have never quite gotten this type of stuff as the first thing that pops into my mind when hear this heavy metal music valorizing the far right are the Three Stooges play acting Hitler, Goebels, and Goring along with the slapstick incompetence of the Nazi's in the Indiana Jones movies(something very much intended by Jewish filmmaker Steven Spielberg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVZg5j8vg70
https://youtu.be/vEApJmUXamg?si=gR8mGA73cHf595h-&t=196
Maybe we need to re-introduce this kind of slapstick portrayal of Nazis and the far right to younger generations.
If you don’t get a better answer, “In Deutschland wird nur noch im Iran” doesn’t mean only Iranians remain in Germany, but I think more like being in Germany is only like still being in Iran — that is, presumably, until the “deportation party” gets its way.
I think Andre's answer, above, is probably the correct one.
I have watched the insanity arc of lefties; it started with dislike of Trump; it moved on to TDS; and has now reached batshit crazy.
I remember Claire's columns as better.
Claire, suggestion; if you want to identify danger, look at Sahra Wagenknecht.
Steve Fleischer: as you are probably aware, "Lefties" are not the only people who are alarmed by and highly critical of Donald Trump. Many Conservatives are horrified by the man, by his unprincipled agenda of appointing hot-headed drunks, loonies and morons to high office, and promotion of his own crypto-currency. An utter disgrace, with worse yet to come, no doubt.
Normalization of Trumpism by the American press and electorate is craven self-abasement, in my humble opinion.
Turning to other matters: I would be interested in hearing what aspect of Sahra Wagenknecht's ideas or party do you see as the most dangerous? Thanks.
Ref: craven abasement, why, Mr. Hodson, do I somehow misperceive your "humble opinion" as not in the slightest signaling your boundless humility?
Yep.
Funny, Claire... I was halfway through your lengthy posting before I realized that it wasn't about the Democrat Party, the Obamazoids, the Fubbies, and their apparatchiki/fellow travelers in the former U.,S., and A.
What means please, "the Fubbies"?
Also, Alan, correct usage is "Democratic Party" rather than "Democrat Party". (Yeah, yeah, 'picky-picky'. Just thought you needed to know.)
So sorry about abbreviating the "D" nomenclature (or should that be "nomenklatura?)! But maybe if you got out more, you'd know that's almost always the preferred usage by the smart-ass New Yorkers faction of us MAGATS.
Similarly, in Our Crowd, "Fubbies" is a semi-comic epithet for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Or should that maybe better be the "Feral Bureau of Instigation"?
Follows here below, re-posted from a comment thread several weeks ago in James Howard Kunstler's CFN blog...
"Speaking of 'gallows' on the Capitol mall, at 0600A hrs on Insurrection Day, 6th Jan 2021, a pickup truck arrived with a very nicely constructed prefab wooden gallows—replete with drop and noose. A well-rehearsed team of a half dozen clean-cut young Dudley Do-Right clones smartly unloaded and re-assembled this supposed infernal device of the Trumpista crazies intended for the righteous public execution of VP Mike Pence for refusing to question the obvious monkey-business entailed in the electoral vote counting. Then the fine young Dudleys climbed back into their truck and drove away, leaving the gallows in full sight for the whole day: specifically contrary to the laws and regs regarding such things. Presumably, the entire project was multiply videoed by the Blob's surveillence hardware. Some prog jerk fellow traveller soon published an account, still available from Amazon books, describing the whole thing: not as what it so transparently was —an Op by, e.g., the Fubbies— but as documented evidence of the Far Right's boundless evil and subversion. The Fubbie's infamous DNC/RNC pipe bomb drops was small potatoes by comparison; but also no doubt extensively and multiply archived by the local surveillance infrastructure."
Thanks for clearing that up for me; now I can rest easy with my new-found insights into modern-day journo vocab!! Woohoo!
Third hand eye witness testimony at an event attended by people desperate to be lied to? PT Barnum would be a billionaire in our day.