New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:
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Agreed mostly.
But your analysis of AFD in Germany is wrong. AFD, by their own declarations, stands in the tradition of the men who killed millions in gas chambers (Jews and all kinds of people they declared unworthy of living), the men who started a devastating war, and the men who used Christian Nationalists in Germany to deceive Christians until the moment where they did not need them anymore to assert their power and began to persecute and kill nationalist “German Christians.” Maybe liberals now reject AfD as authoritarian, too, but the main point why the majority of German voters reject them is their violent racism, their violence against anyone who disagrees with them, and their pursuit of the same policies, Hitler’s NSDAP once did. And it is not only “liberals” who reject AfD. It is three quarters of the population.
I agree that closing off 25% of the German electorate from participating in the political process is wrong. But then, keep in mind that Hitler’s party was far from having a majority in parliament when a coalition of conservative democrats lifted Hitler into the position of Chancellor. In the last elections before Hitler was made chancellor, in November 1932, his party won 1/3 of the national votes. These things are in the back of the mind of many Germans now - fears and memories that Americans do not share and, I pray, never will. That’s also where the analogy between MAGA and AfD breaks down.
Sooner or later, the other parties in Germany will have to find a way to deal with the dissatisfaction that makes people vote for AfD in ways other than just declaring that party to be pariah.
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Absolutely. My take on things is that like Reform in the UK, AfD is motivated by the politics of resentment, and IIRC its support is mostly from the not-very-well-off areas of the former East Germany. Immigrants - and this has happened before in an American context - are easy to blame.
Dear Juergen,
Not “maybe.” They do, as I demonstrated by quoting mainstream Germans’ label for them: “Authoritarian National Radicalism.” I didn’t intend to speak to all the reasons EU libs reject their populist movements springing up like moles across the zone, but only to demonstrate that “authoritarianism” is the chief bogeyman libs trot out in opposing the populists—all the while demonstrating themselves the same in their own castigations and censoring of (for instance) AfD.
I was not providing an analysis of German politics, but merely demonstrating the bogeyman is authoritarianism.
Love,
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What’s most worth noting is not the movements. We may try to dismiss them. The chattering classes here in America have the same conceit about MAGA: that it is the politics of resentment mostly popular among the poor (their placeholder for the uneducated, and therefore ignorant).
But oh my the response of the educated and wealthy both in UK and Germany! “They’re monsters! Censor them! Shut them up! Ban them from all political coalitions! Don’t let them demonstrate! Make it a crime.”
Everyone seems to think their authoritarianism is necessary to oppose their enemies’ authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, the church. Love,
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