Is the AfD neo-Nazi?

[SLD]

So yesterday the Alternative fur Deutschland party, AfD, became the third largest party in the German Bundestag. NBC's headline today is that the country is one step away from its Nazi past. I find that very disconcerting. I'm not German (actually technically I could claim it since I was born in Munich - US Army Hospital), but I do love Germany and would hate to see it return to even a remotely Nazi like past.

But everything I read about AfD though is that it may be conservative by German standards, but is still to the left of our Republican Party. They don't favor gay marriage, but they do favor civil unions. (not sure what the difference is.) But then one of their leaders is a lesbian who lives with her partner openly. They are climate deniers but mostly just against Merkel's refugee policy and bailouts of other Eurozone nations like Greece. Conservative views but hardly fascist. I haven't though heard anything about antisemitism in the party or whether maybe it is just attracting the true neo-Nazis.

Or maybe they really are Nazi like heirs and say one thing publicly (we're just against immigration) but another in private (they're all untermenschen)?

SLD

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If there was a German phrase for "Traditional Xenophobia Party" I think it would be a better fit.

 

[sharon45]

and would hate to see it return to even a remotely Nazi like past.

Uh, ya think?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Nazi's likely had many positions. It was the 'kill the inferior people' position that watered down all the other ones.

 

[whichphilosophy]

So yesterday the Alternative fur Deutschland party, AfD, became the third largest party in the German Bundestag. NBC's headline today is that the country is one step away from its Nazi past. I find that very disconcerting. I'm not German (actually technically I could claim it since I was born in Munich - US Army Hospital), but I do love Germany and would hate to see it return to even a remotely Nazi like past.

But everything I read about AfD though is that it may be conservative by German standards, but is still to the left of our Republican Party. They don't favor gay marriage, but they do favor civil unions. (not sure what the difference is.) But then one of their leaders is a lesbian who lives with her partner openly. They are climate deniers but mostly just against Merkel's refugee policy and bailouts of other Eurozone nations like Greece. Conservative views but hardly fascist. I haven't though heard anything about antisemitism in the party or whether maybe it is just attracting the true neo-Nazis.

Or maybe they really are Nazi like heirs and say one thing publicly (we're just against immigration) but another in private (they're all untermenschen)?

SLD

Anything right of Mao, Stalin and Trotsky seems to be right wing nowadays to some in America
The AfD may split. The Co-leader,Frauke Petry considered quite moderate resigned just after the election and is now an independent.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-go-further-right-after-leader-suffers-defeat

The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) looks set to turn further right after its co-leader, who has struck a more moderate tone of late, suffered a defeat when delegates refused to discuss her motion to shift the party into the “mainstream”.

Support for the party, which attacks the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for having allowed more than a million migrants into Germany in the last two years, has tumbled in recent months after reaching the mid-teens in opinion polls last year.

I believe that if this party edges on far right it will lose support in the next election. More extreme parties like the NDP gain a few seats in regional governments but have never won a seat in the National parliament.

 

[whichphilosophy]

If there was a German phrase for "Traditional Xenophobia Party" I think it would be a better fit.

The problem is mass immigration when there enough poor people in Germany. The AfD could be a one trick pony.

 

[bilby]

The problem with Nazis is that they are incredibly boring and ordinary.

Eighty years of propaganda, movies, books, TV specials, almost all of the History Channel that is not about aliens, comic-books, radio plays, and endless fear of something similar to the holocaust ever being repeated has left people in general with a caricature of the EVIL Nazi, who is so EVIL that he is inhumanly EVIL and EVIL, and whose EVILNESS is is defining characteristic, led by the embodiment of EVIL, the rather odd-looking little man with a funny haircut and a toothbrush mustache.

The difficulty is that humans expect evil to be visually obvious. There is a long running child safety campaign based on 'Stranger danger'. Kids are told to be wary of strangers, and not to go with them or take gifts from them. The result of this is kids who know that 'strangers' are a risk; But when asked to identify what a 'stranger' looks like, they expect a giant scary man with wild hair and eyes - a caricature of the scary evil person they have been told to expect. And when someone who seems perfectly normal, but who they don't know, asks them to go with him to see some puppies, they don't hesitate to go along - he doesn't look like a 'stranger', which to the kids is another word for 'ogre'.

Nazis are incredibly boring, lower middle class, suburban, ordinary people, who believe that people who are not like themselves are an existential threat, and need to be eliminated from society, by any means available.

People who are told that Trump supporters are neo-Nazis have much the same reaction as the kids who were told that the nice man with the bag of candy is a 'stranger' - He doesn't look like a stranger, so even though I don't know him, you must be mistaken about him being a stranger.

They don't LOOK like Nazis, so even though they want 'those people' removed from their society, you must be mistaken about them being neo-Nazis.

Are AfD Nazis, or even neo-Nazis? Not yet. There are still a few Germans who remember what Nazis are - although most of them are dead now, and the rest are not far behind.

Are the GOP Nazis, in the Trump era? Probably. The Americans never really had their fascist tendencies put to the test the way that Europeans did, and those who went to Europe last time to fix the problem are mostly dead. So it wouldn't be surprising if the resurgence of naziism/fascism in the US was a little more advanced than it is in Europe.

Will things get better on their own, if we pretend that as long as the caricature isn't present, the reality cannot be present either? I doubt it.

Remember - Nazis are boring. They look like businessmen and accountants; They might use skinheads for muscle, but they also use cops and soldiers; and you needn't have a short haircut or a swastika armband to be a Nazi - all you need is a desire to see the 'other' disposed of, preferably without too much fuss.

 

[whichphilosophy]

The problem with Nazis is that they are incredibly boring and ordinary.

Eighty years of propaganda, movies, books, TV specials, almost all of the History Channel that is not about aliens, comic-books, radio plays, and endless fear of something similar to the holocaust ever being repeated has left people in general with a caricature of the EVIL Nazi, who is so EVIL that he is inhumanly EVIL and EVIL, and whose EVILNESS is is defining characteristic, led by the embodiment of EVIL, the rather odd-looking little man with a funny haircut and a toothbrush mustache.

The difficulty is that humans expect evil to be visually obvious. There is a long running child safety campaign based on 'Stranger danger'. Kids are told to be wary of strangers, and not to go with them or take gifts from them. The result of this is kids who know that 'strangers' are a risk; But when asked to identify what a 'stranger' looks like, they expect a giant scary man with wild hair and eyes - a caricature of the scary evil person they have been told to expect. And when someone who seems perfectly normal, but who they don't know, asks them to go with him to see some puppies, they don't hesitate to go along - he doesn't look like a 'stranger', which to the kids is another word for 'ogre'.

Nazis are incredibly boring, lower middle class, suburban, ordinary people, who believe that people who are not like themselves are an existential threat, and need to be eliminated from society, by any means available.

People who are told that Trump supporters are neo-Nazis have much the same reaction as the kids who were told that the nice man with the bag of candy is a 'stranger' - He doesn't look like a stranger, so even though I don't know him, you must be mistaken about him being a stranger.

They don't LOOK like Nazis, so even though they want 'those people' removed from their society, you must be mistaken about them being neo-Nazis.

Are AfD Nazis, or even neo-Nazis? Not yet. There are still a few Germans who remember what Nazis are - although most of them are dead now, and the rest are not far behind.

Are the GOP Nazis, in the Trump era? Probably. The Americans never really had their fascist tendencies put to the test the way that Europeans did, and those who went to Europe last time to fix the problem are mostly dead. So it wouldn't be surprising if the resurgence of naziism/fascism in the US was a little more advanced than it is in Europe.

Will things get better on their own, if we pretend that as long as the caricature isn't present, the reality cannot be present either? I doubt it.

Remember - Nazis are boring. They look like businessmen and accountants; They might use skinheads for muscle, but they also use cops and soldiers; and you needn't have a short haircut or a swastika armband to be a Nazi - all you need is a desire to see the 'other' disposed of, preferably without too much fuss.

The problem nowadays is the difficulty in absorbing large numbers of people entering Germany each year. There are of course racist organisations such as the NDP. I think there may well be neo-Nazis among those in the AfD who are trying to move it to the right. It may have attracted some votes from the small NDP.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

If there was a German phrase for "Traditional Xenophobia Party" I think it would be a better fit.

Oh that's easy:
Traditionellischfremdenfeindlichkeitparteischtuck

 

[DrZoidberg]

So yesterday the Alternative fur Deutschland party, AfD, became the third largest party in the German Bundestag. NBC's headline today is that the country is one step away from its Nazi past. I find that very disconcerting. I'm not German (actually technically I could claim it since I was born in Munich - US Army Hospital), but I do love Germany and would hate to see it return to even a remotely Nazi like past.

But everything I read about AfD though is that it may be conservative by German standards, but is still to the left of our Republican Party. They don't favor gay marriage, but they do favor civil unions. (not sure what the difference is.) But then one of their leaders is a lesbian who lives with her partner openly. They are climate deniers but mostly just against Merkel's refugee policy and bailouts of other Eurozone nations like Greece. Conservative views but hardly fascist. I haven't though heard anything about antisemitism in the party or whether maybe it is just attracting the true neo-Nazis.

Or maybe they really are Nazi like heirs and say one thing publicly (we're just against immigration) but another in private (they're all untermenschen)?

SLD

Or maybe you need to read more Nazi history. The Nazis billed themselves as just another conservative party. Virtually everything the Nazis did was opportunistic popularising. They used the word "socialist" because that was trendy. But all their policies were the opposite of socialism.

The Nazis started out like the AfD. The SA brownshirts were only loosely attached to the Nazi party. It was a constant problem for the Nazi party to keep them from fucking it all up. They were just a bunch of uneducated unemployed thugs with nothing to do all day. Just like the same people who support AfD today.

The Nazis were also for democracy, until they weren't. A parellell is Jobbik in Hungary. Also a right wing populistic party. They were for democracy until they got enough power to abolish it.

What happened in Germany can happen again, and it can happen anywhere. Right wing populism is very dangerous. Trump is a right wing populist. How well is that going?

 

[Derec]

No, AfD are not neo-Nazis. They are quite right wing on some issues, but not Nazi.
They are also getting unfairly demonized over the migrant policy. Merkel letting in a million mass migrants with no vetting or restrictions was a huge disaster, but left wing parties want even more migrants be let in. And it is quite difficult to deport them, even when they commit crimes.

Right wing populism is very dangerous.

The only reason for the rise of AfD is that the other parties refused to acknowledge that mass migration is bad for Germany. CDU doesn't even want to implement an upper limit on migration, and other parties are even worse, especially Greens and LINKE who in effect want to make the open door policy permanent.

 

[fromderinside]

Bad for Germany with a less than ZPG birth rate for a while now?

Don't think so. Prior Soviet Germany persons have been reluctant to engage in capitalistic motives leading to major shortages in technical and skilled work categories. Germany has gone from large guest worker to high emigrant status attempting to shore up skilled worker demand.

The only thing bad with today's Germany is their emigrant integration measures, oh, and xenophobic fears.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Bad for Germany with a less than ZPG birth rate for a while now?

Don't think so. Prior Soviet Germany persons have been reluctant to engage in capitalistic motives leading to major shortages in technical and skilled work categories. Germany has gone from large guest worker to high emigrant status attempting to shore up skilled worker demand.

The only thing bad with today's Germany is their emigrant integration measures, oh, and xenophobic fears.

Problems can also be housing shortages, shortages of schools, healthcare etc., just like in Britain. I'm derived from 4 nationalities and get on with Arabs and everyone. However in both the UK and Germany, there's little or no room to put the new people.

 

[Derec]

Bad for Germany with a less than ZPG birth rate for a while now?

Then they should have more babies. They should not wholesale replace their population with millions of people from quite incompatible cultures like Afghanistan.

Don't think so. Prior Soviet Germany

Soviet Germany?

persons have been reluctant to engage in capitalistic motives leading to major shortages in technical and skilled work categories. Germany has gone from large guest worker to high emigrant status attempting to shore up skilled worker demand.

Yes. That's how the mass migration was sold to Germans in 2015. It was all about skilled workers, or Fachkräfte. But it did not go that way. Most of the mass migrants had little schooling and spoke no German. If you want skilled workers, it is actually easier to train German youth than to train a 20 year old Afghan with 8 years of schooling, no German and little English. That was clear from the beginning, and Merkel herself surely did not believe her own unrealistic proclamations.

The only thing bad with today's Germany is their emigrant integration measures,

If only those Muslims would emigrate back ...

oh, and xenophobic fears.

No. Being against mass migration of Muslims is not xenophobia. Now, some in the AfD I think are xenophobic, but most of their voters are not. They are just rightly concerned about the mass migration and Islamization.

And if AfD is attacked for being xenophobic, what about the Greens and their xenophilia?
Katrin Göring-Eckardt, one of the major Green politicians, then a cohead of their parliamentary group and possibly a future minister in a Jamaica coalition, said in 2015, about the mass influx of Muslim migrants:
"Unser Land wird sich ändern, und zwar drastisch. Und ich freue mich drauf!"
Our country wil change, drastically. And I am looking forward to it.
Die LINKE is not better either. These people on the Left are quite radical with actually explicitly supporting Islamization of Germany and replacement of its native population through mass migrants.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Problems come with immigration. A lot of people at the bottom class don't like immigrants either. Years later those people have moved up the socio-economic ladder and the immigrants are then at the bottom, being just as anti-immigrant as the last generation. Look at, say, Irish and Italian Americans for example. Originally, there was a lot of flack about them coming into the country. They lived in squalor, poverty, crime-infested neighborhoods and created problems.

Their religion--Catholicism--was also seen as a big problem. The view in the mid-1800's was that Catholicism was a national security threat. Catholics were blamed for drunkeness, violence, and destroying American culture.

After some generations, they earned spots in middle-class America. Then, they turned on new immigrants coming in. No not all, maybe not most, but a significant number. The eventual integration and upward mobility of immigrants--including refugees--is indeed a thing to look forward to....and the constant xenophobia is a thing that happens, but it ought to be largely reviled.

 

[DrZoidberg]

No, AfD are not neo-Nazis. They are quite right wing on some issues, but not Nazi.
They are also getting unfairly demonized over the migrant policy. Merkel letting in a million mass migrants with no vetting or restrictions was a huge disaster, but left wing parties want even more migrants be let in. And it is quite difficult to deport them, even when they commit crimes.

Right wing populism is very dangerous.

The only reason for the rise of AfD is that the other parties refused to acknowledge that mass migration is bad for Germany. CDU doesn't even want to implement an upper limit on migration, and other parties are even worse, especially Greens and LINKE who in effect want to make the open door policy permanent.

You wouldn't recognise a Nazi even if it hit you in the face. People like you cheerfully carried Hitler into power. And then regretted it.

No, they're not old school Nazis. But they are the modern equivalent

 

[Bomb#20]

Or maybe you need to read more Nazi history. The Nazis billed themselves as just another conservative party. Virtually everything the Nazis did was opportunistic popularising. They used the word "socialist" because that was trendy. But all their policies were the opposite of socialism.

Have you even read the 25 Points? They used the word "socialist" because at the time they picked a name for their party they were socialists. Then they spent the next fourteen years evolving away from socialism. Then they murdered the remaining prominent socialist Nazis on the Night of the Long Knives. Maybe you need to read more Nazi history.

 

[repoman]

Problem is that mass immigration is now partially subsidized. Why?!?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Or maybe you need to read more Nazi history. The Nazis billed themselves as just another conservative party. Virtually everything the Nazis did was opportunistic popularising. They used the word "socialist" because that was trendy. But all their policies were the opposite of socialism.

Have you even read the 25 Points? They used the word "socialist" because at the time they picked a name for their party they were socialists. Then they spent the next fourteen years evolving away from socialism. Then they murdered the remaining prominent socialist Nazis on the Night of the Long Knives. Maybe you need to read more Nazi history.

I just did. What in this list do you think makes it socialist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP

Here's the one's that are the most socialist:

All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:
Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

Haven't you pinpointed the wrong antonym, ie on what dichotomy national socialism is the opposite of? National socialism is the opposite of liberalism. More precisely, "social liberalism". I think that the "social" part of national socialism refers to the idea that the government has a paternal responsibility to take care of it's citizens. And because of that they also have very far reaching rights to infringe on the rights of those citizens. The term "social liberal" stems from this age as well.

In the end of the 19'th century socialism, communism, social Darwinism, democracy and nationalism were all movements exploding in popularity. The meaning of these words evolved rapidly, and drifted around a bit. Initially communism and socialism were synonyms. But during the 1880'ies they split due to irreconcilable differences. To the point when an anti-communist movement (NSDAP) called themselves socialists. Also, pay attention to the words they use. Goebels and Hitler attack the USSR for their "Bolshevism". Not "communism". These words have shifted in meaning over the 20'th century. Mostly due to the newspeak of the USSR and China.

The nazis main problem with the USSR was their perceived liberalism. Not economic liberalism. But social liberalism. The fact that the Soviet liberalism was mostly just talk, is another matter. We find the idea that the USSR was considered liberal today as absurd. But they lived in a different time.

They lived in a time when massive corporations just grew and grew and grew. Private companies that could compete with the wealth of national governments. That was a new thing, and people didn't quite know what to think about it, or what we should do about it. A lot of people thought it was wrong somehow. For a variety of reasons. The state nationalising private property was not seen as an inherently communist (modern word usage) thing. It was just a thing that governments could do.

Also worth noting is that in the super conservative world, ie world of mercantilism, governments nationalized private companies all the time. Back then it was associated with social conservatism.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Problem is that mass immigration is now partially subsidized. Why?!?

I don't think anything has happened. I think the problems of "mass immigration" (it wasn't) was mostly a media product. When a lot of people suddenly move quickly it will get a little messy for a while. So people are super sensitive to anything new happening. I don't think we got any problems due to mass migration and I don't think any of those (non-existent) problems went away either.