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.
“germany knows what genocide is and this isn’t genocide”
“wtf would south africa know about genocide and apartheid”
Case in point: when Germany tried to intervene in the ICJ genocide case against Israel, Namibia issued an official statement:
President Geingob said Germany could not “morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia” and at the same time support Israel.
“The German Government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil,” he added.
I can only imagine what kind of awkward silence resulted at the German foreign ministry as junior diplomats scrambled to figure exactly how genocidal Germany had been in Namibia.
Love the video of the German diplomat trying to scold the Namibian president about accepting too many Chinese immigrants.
Having the gall to be an official representative of a country that was both the former colonial overlord and comitted genocide and deciding to scold them about the lack of German communities compared to Chinese.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
the usual spiel I get about this is that the genocide of the herero and nama is some far past history, like roman conquests, as if it wasn’t like 30 years earlier than the genocide. 30 fucking years!
Well they can’t just admit they support the genocide of nonwhites now, can they?
Be grateful the very idea of “Germany” wasn’t razed to the ground and scattered to the wind after your dear leader escorted himself out of the premises
As someone who has to live here, I’m not. I wish it was. There is nothing about being german that I find appealling and wouldn’t cast off in moment given the chance. And no this isn’t some self-flagellation, I genuinely cannot think of a reason for why I might want to continue to associate myself with this country if I had an alternative.
This article
https://jewishcurrents.org/bad-memory-2
is what finally put in words what I had always vibed and was the final nail in the coffin of what might have constituted a sense of attachment to my nationality.
My takeaway from Germany is that most people flying a German flag actually wants to put up a swastika but don’t want the backlash.
Genocide scholar Dirk Moses named this approach the “German catechism” in a 2021 essay that sparked heated debate. “The catechism implies a redemptive story in which the sacrifice of Jews in the Holocaust by Nazis is the premise for the Federal Republic’s legitimacy,” wrote Moses. “That is why the Holocaust is more than an important historical event. It is a sacred trauma that cannot be contaminated by profane ones—meaning non-Jewish victims and other genocides—that would vitiate its sacrificial function.”
God that so perfectly explains how I feel
if I had an alternative
Time to bring back the HRE states that were like the size of a single town
Oh god no, the only thing worse than someone identifying as “german” is identifying as “bavarian” or “hessian” or some other failstate, since that’s actually socially acceptable to be proud of and they will channel all their need to feel superior into that identity instead. “german” at least comes with some historical baggage that keeps them from saying what they think.
There is a concept of an immigrant german, but an “immigrant bavarian”? A “black bavarian”?
Alright, in that case, I guess it’s time to divide Germany into procedurally generated discontiguous blob-borders with procedurally generated gibberish names and national symbols. You are now a proud citizen of the Democratic Republic of Nichtdeutschmeer-Rheinenkrankenvogelwindendorf-Blinkenlichtenstein. Congrats!
Whoops sorry that name was already taken by a former duchy, lasting from November 1731 to March 1732
As long as it’s a democratic republic I’m happy. Could not care less about what it’s called, give me democratic republic please. I like breathing but its impossible to do so at my own expense. Everything here is built on blood. I feel icky thinking about the wealth at my uni that I benefit from because I know where its from. I can’t afford my computer which I need, the clothes I wear, the food I eat and so I must rely on the slavelabor which produces it. I know what it looked like 100 years ago where the building I live in stands now. And I’m supposed to be grateful to the state which claims to provide all these things for me. Supposed to be grateful for the alms my wife gets for not being able to work.
Ain’t that the truth!
Alright, in that case, I guess it’s time to divide Germany into procedurally generated discontiguous blob-borders with procedurally generated gibberish names and national symbols.
That’s just the state of lower saxony and it is not great
On the bright side it’ll make it easier to establish the state of Israel OR Palestine on top of those failstates
“Yeah, I’m a Zionist,”
Not to be confused with Israel XOR Palestine, Israel NOR Palestine, Israel AND Palestine, Israel NAND Palestine, or Israel XNOR Palestine.
We need Israel XOR Palestine and its complement in Bavaria and the Levant respectively
eh. just tow the whole thing out of the environment
It shouldn’t even exist. Retvrn to 200 different principalities and 400 town to town conflicts
You’re too kind
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.
As a German, i’m actually kinda pissed at the allies for missing that historic opportunity.
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 .
3 arrows logo
Keine Tankies oder Glorifizierung von „sozialistischen“ Diktaturen.
All the mistakes of Weimar era SPD antifascism. The first time as tragedy, the second time as LARP.
The US were smart to give us treats and keep us as vasalls or else we might have done another holocaust"
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.
What Germany thinks it’s saying: “Hey kids, a long time ago I committed a terrible crime and the consequences cost me everything. Don’t do what I did, stay in school and love your fellow man.”
What Germany has actually been saying: “I’m a convicted murderer so of course I’m an expert in the law. In my view, there is no way that my good friend Jeffrey Dahmer could have been a killer. If you think he’s guilty, you are stupid and wrong.”
The repentance culture shit is the highest form of western chauvinism and eurocentrism. They suppose that they are the most effective at genocide, as they are the most enlightened at all things. Everyone else must just be copying them and everyone else is not really capable of redemption or feeling bad because only the Europeans, and among them only really the Germans, can understand why genocide is bad. It is part of why the efficiency myth is so pushed, because it makes the Holocaust a tragic outcome of German superiority.
The Krauts MUST be superior to the point that they are superior at being wretched, and we must all pay attention and learn from THEM. I hate them so fucking much
Can you expand on the efficiency myth? I thought germany had a lot of industry, thats why they industrialized even genocide. Am i blabbering shit?
I swear there is a Chomsky segment about America being fixated on Nazi efficiency but I cannot find it. The point is that the Nazis were deeply inefficient, their industry was disorganized and corporatized so extremely that they couldn’t get their shit together. Tanks needed parts made by one factory only and couldn’t be repaired with the same piece from another, shit like that.
Part of the fixation on this industrialized genocide is that that is how the Holocaust capital H was portrayed by the Nazis in western Europe. There is a reason we call what happened in the east the Holocaust by Bullets, at least specifically in the occupied USSR. The exterminations in the east, and frankly most of them in the entire war, were hasty, brutal, inefficient, and not uniform. We have this need to almost romanticize the Holocaust, make not only the exterminations the Nazis did, but even specifically the killing of Jews in camps into this one specific image. It becomes pageantry.
Germany was industrial and loved pushing that, but importantly even the Autobahn was a failure, and the Nazis never used trucks as their primary means of logistics in WW2, it was always horses, but they made sure that in propaganda people just saw cars moving artillery
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/horses-the-mechanized-myth-of-the-eastern-front/
Numbers range from 75% to 80% of the German forces relying on horses. And they didn’t even come close to the efficiency the Soviets had with them. America actually had some spats with the Brits over beasts of burden. WW2 at Sea covers an example with a British admiral being pissed that for Operation Husky invading Sicily the American commander he is to carry units for is bringing mules. They fight over it and eventually the American wins. Low and behold by the time the sun is coming down on the first day incredible progress is halting because trucks are breaking down on the rocky inclines from the beaches, the one unit to make it over though, the one that was able to switch to using mules when their trucks stalled. The admiral later admitted he was an idiot
The admiral later admitted he was an idiot
most introspective amerikkkan
Nah he was the brit. Connolly. Truscott was the Yankee. Because of course a Brit would be obsessed with his fancy ship more than winning a war
most introspective
amerikkkananglo
Oh here’s a fun one, pedal reflectors on bicycles got patented by some chauffeur for the SS dipshit and patented it, then they were required by law and the patend payments got kick backed to the SS by the chauffeur dipshit
Like that’s the kind of efficiency the nazis were good at. They were in power anyways but instead of doing like, a normal tax, it had to be this convoluted corruption scheme
IIRC Hitler also had a little postage stamp kickback scheme going on.
Yeah Hindenburg mocked him over it. Saying he would make him postmaster so he can lick stamps with his face on them. Essentially Hitler licensed his face so every stamp with him on it that was used would give him proceeds
He also had a grift going where the German state bought copies of Mein Kampf for all newlyweds. Not only did it provide couples with some light romantic reading on their honeymoon, it also earned Hitler a shitload of royalties. When he did the one good thing he ever did, he was the richest man in Germany.
Hitler also constantly promoted infrastructure vaporware and everything that did get built was totally dysfunctional. Starting to think he was actually a time traveling Elon Musk
“trust us, weve fallen for this before”
and again and again and again
These fucking krauts just can’t shut the fuck up about how they have some specialized knowledge of fascism because they’re krauts.
You know, there’s the old joke that nobody in germany likes to talk about '39 - '45 in britain and the us, which is of course wrong, as everybody likes to talk about that time, constantly, except of course business histories.
The maddening thing is that joke would be entirely correct on the money if it just picked like '45 to '90 or something. Everybody in germany is convinced because the education system places so much focus on the nazis (up until '45) that they’re experts on it but they’re all super surprised when they find out like nigh all of those nazis just basically kept trucking along in the institutions
Idk which Germans you’re talking to but honestly I don’t think many of them would be super surprised to find out, I think they already know. Or at least I did and I don’t come from a super progressive family or anything. Nazis were also part of running east germany
I think they already know.
Not that it shouldn’t be news but I point you to the nationwide shock about Maaßen being considered a right wing extremist despite being head of the Verfassungsschutz for a good while, backed by the CDU, as if “right wing extremist being head of the Verfassungsschutz, backed by the CDU” hasn’t basically been the status quo since the thing was founded.
Ya Germany 🤌
Germany folded in the wrong direction
escorted himself off the premises
Incredibly good post
No need to slander Joe Pissmonger. He may not have expertise on fascism, but boy does he know piss.
I will defer to the pissmonger’s authority on topics of piss
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They will find a way to make it use coal
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Germany is ready to pay for its sins with the blood of the last Palestinian child, heartwarming
