From "Vance Tells Europeans to Stop Shunning Parties Deemed Extreme/His comments shocked attendees at the Munich Security Conference and seemed to target efforts to sideline the hard-right party the Alternative for Germany" (NYT).
What is that "history of use of Nazi language"? The link on that phrase goes to another NYT article, from last May, "German Court Fines Far-Right Leader for Using Nazi Phrase/Björn Höcke, a state leader of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, used the phrase 'Everything for Germany,' a slogan of the Nazi paramilitary wing, during a campaign stop." Excerpt:
During the trial... Mr. Höcke admitted to using the phrase “Everything for Germany” but claimed that he had not known about its Nazi origin and compared it to the American slogan “America first.”...
Mr. Höcke’s defense argued that the slogan was widely used and predated the Nazi era; it also argued that freedom of speech was more important than the prohibition of certain phrases.
Mr. Höcke directed an unusually passionate rebuke at the public prosecutor.... “Do we want to ban the German language because the Nazis also spoke German?” said Mr. Höcke. “How far will this go?”...
In delivering its verdict, the court made clear that it did not agree with Mr. Höcke’s view of free speech.... “We have the feeling that the mantle of freedom of expression is being severely overused,” Judge Stengel said.
And here is Musk's interview with Alice Weidel.
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82 comments:
I believe Casey Stengel had different views about freedom of expression than Judge Stengel.
They are smearing AFD because they don't want to address the issues, namely immigration and crime. Not to mention Germany paying for the war in Ukraine. The Germans just put a 96 y/o women in jail for doubting the Holocaust, and they don't believe in freedom of speech.
Maybe Vance's pressure will bring some freedom and liberty to Germany. Y'know "Democracy".
I give up on posting a comment. Blogger is a mess and if I can't use the browser of my choice, so be it.
When I lived in Germany I was surprised how many old Hollywood WWII movies with evil Germans were shown on the TV. It seemed like self-flagellation.
The Germans need to forgive themselves, basically, and move on.
I'd thought after 80 years, they'd were running out of steam on smearing people as Nazis, or rather, using the Nazi smear as a weapon against people they dislike, but they are literally punishing people for using phrases/word used by the Nazis, even though the words/phrases don't express Nazi Ideology.
Never expect Pols to behave in a decent manner, they have to be forced.
The Nazis were a hard-left party: Diversity, cancel culture, redistributive change, authoritarian, Mengele dreams, transhumane.
I don’t know the inner workings of German politics, but I trust the judgement of Elon and JD. The current German government has completely failed with electricity prices 4x of the US and a huge migrant problem.
The clips I watched showed JD talking about free speech - and please stop jailing people for speech crimes.
This is why we have the Bill of Rights.
The new Permission Structures.
If you oppose the radical left - you will be labeled an extremist.
Trump is Hitler, Musk is Hitler, Vance is Hitler, AFD is Hitler, everyone is Hitler.
Emigration reform to mitigate progress and collateral damage at both ends of the bridge and throughout. Diversity, Equivocation, and Indoctrination (DEI) is not something any civilized society should want to revisit or tolerate.
The left will turn everyone into Nazis - while they behave like Nazis.
Maybe AfD should just say, “Make Germany Great Again” and people will get the message.
Last time Germans and Muslims got together some thing happened.
You shall not Mock the Devil - which includes the White Soviet Leftist List of totalitarian actual Nazis.
One way or another the Germans are going to learn that Islam and its worshipers don't play nice. As they say in show business, "It's all about the timing."
"The Hun is always either at your feet or at your throat."
Winston Churchill said that, about the Germans. I wonder what he would think about Europe today, Europe and his own country. I don't think the term "Hun" and "Nazi" are interchangeable.
Now he needs to tell Germany to examine the role of its WW2 industrial firms in the Nazi program. Start with VW/Porsche, as stealing the design for the Beetle and being Hitler's handmaid. Move on to Daimler/Mercedes, etc.
Germany tried to put Nazism in the past through centrist suppression and a stern avoidance of the tough questions. They treated a deep cultural wound with a surface cover-up bandage. The chickens eventually come home to roost.
Not that long ago prominent US Democrats were KKK members. The left is A okay with that…
Alles für Deutschland as a nationalist rally cry dates to the 1830s.
The real reason that they want to ban AfD and they won't admit it is because the party opposes supporting a country which still reveres leaders of the Waffen SS. The Ukrainians have repeatedly painted WWII era German crosses on the tanks we. supplied, and the US supports neonazi organizations all across Eastern Europe, and that doesn't give Scholz any agita at all. For example, look at Navalny. According to Wikileaks, we gave that guy $20 million to do his stiff armed salute and work up ethnic hatred in the Russian Federation, in order to split it along ethnic lines. The second pincer of this attack is to get our friends in ISIS, who never seem to attack anybody but enemies of the US, to do terror attacks in Moscow in order to further whip up ethnic hatred. It's SOP for the CIA, we used this tactic to split and take over Ukraine's foreign policy.
Anybody who knows anything about Hitler's rise to power knows that this is the very kind of ethnic hatred that Hitler used to seize power and to crush his opposition.
Freedom of speech is the only way to keep democracies from making stupid errors. Machiavelli said that man usually chooses to believe what he wants to believe, and he usually rejects the hard facts, and for this, man usually suffers his ruin. Or something like that. Free speech is the only remedy.
"Now he needs to tell Germany to examine the role of its WW2 industrial firms in the Nazi program. Start with VW/Porsche, as stealing the design for the Beetle and being Hitler's handmaid. Move on to Daimler/Mercedes, etc."
There's hardly a major industrial enterprise in modern Germany that does not have Nazi-era antecedents, and they all used slave labor.
"The current German government has completely failed with electricity prices 4x of the US and a huge migrant problem."
Natural Gas is now equivalent in price to oil at $100 a barrel. The Ukrainians blew up their pipeline bringing them enough cheap gas to run their economy. Their economy is in ruins, it shrunk last year. They have no cheap energy to run their factories, no reasonably priced feedstocks for their chemical industries. The Chinese are in Russia right now taking over the auto factors from VW that VW abandoned due to sanctions.
All of this was supposed to happen to Russia, but it didn't. The Europeans are still having wet dreams about Russia collapsing while they call Putin "paranoid," but it's the EU and NATO that are teetering on collapse, and it's all self inflicted.
Everybody's national history is checkered, without any exceptions. This should not be used as the source of shame. Allowing the behaviors that brought these shameful episodes about, is the source of shame. Vance is right: As surely as the small tree eventually destroys the adjacent sidewalk with its roots, the suppression of free speech and persecution of political adversaries is a sure path to tyrannical government. Much of Europe is already there.
Anybody who has been reading my comments under this handle, and my previous, more personally identifiable one —I have also left Vermont except to visit, knows that I have been consistent in my views on this almost since the war started, and my views have been largely, maybe nearly completely borne out. This was a stupid gambit on the part of Joe Biden and he pushed a lot of the West's chips onto the table, and we lost the bet that Joe Biden made for us, and all Vance and Trump and Hesgeth are doing is recognizing the reality, and if we don't make peace pretty soon, Ukraine is going to lose Odessa.
Europe does not want the Americans to leave. Europe has been spending their money on a generous welfare state while the US spends out borrowed treasure manning their defense against a country that has nothing to gain by invading. Europe is poor in resources, and has a huge population. Russia has a smaller population, and is the richest nation in the world in natural resources. Which way does logic say invasion will flow?
Germany and much of Europe are Islamist toast. Perhaps that explains their hostility to Israel’s resistance to jihad. It’s easier to cave in. Can you picture a BMW built by Palestinian refugees?
Europe in general, but Germany in particular, is circling the drain. They are de-industrializing and have taken in a large population who have no interest in assimilating. The ruling elite cling to power by banning their political opponents.
JD Vance told them what they need to hear but they aren't listening. One benefit of ending the Ukraine war would be giving us the latitude to disentangle ourselves from this sinking ship. If our allies no longer share our values, how are they allies?
Sailer points out that non-right parties in Denmark and Sweden adopted anti-migrant policies so the "far-right" wouldn't grow--or maybe they got tired of Muslim violence, too.
The German Defense minister saying it's "unacceptable" for Vance to point out their authoritarian tendencies proved his point. If disgruntled people lose their voice, some will resort to other means.
I meant to say that the way to keep the Americans in Europe is to keep the conflict going, which is what the Europeans want. A comprehensive peace in Europe means that the Americans leave.
We are in a giant game of cutthroat. The Europeans are out, they have lost, they are headed for an extended period of licking their wounds. It's now Russia, China, and the United States, and China is rising quickly. The logic of cutthroat says that we need to, if not buddy up to Russia, we need to put some daylight between Russia and China instead of pushing them together.
Right now Russia has said that they consider themselves in a state of war with the United States. What will this mean if we get into a dustup with China? Blinken told Congress that we pulled out of Afghanistan, without demanding that the benchmarks that Trump had laid down be actually met, was because our troops would be in harms way in the case of a conflict with Russia, which we were plainly planning. Putin would have armed the Taliban. Well look at what Putin would do given the opportunity of the US being distracted by a conflict with China?
Reality has come a-knocking, and Trump is just the messenger.
Jaq's comments, listening to Vance's speech, and reading the reaction to it has led me to mull over the 20th Century. World leaders back then were fighting the last battle. Appeasement in the 30's went on for so long because WWI was so devastating. No leader wanted to make that mistake again. Now, Europe can't see beyond WWII: every leader is a stand in for Hitler, damn the consequences that come to stop him.
Vance, Rubio and Trump seem downright Churchillian in their quest to show them they're missing the new war. It's remarkable.
Jaq said...
Machiavelli said that man usually chooses to believe what he wants to believe, and he usually rejects the hard facts, and for this, man usually suffers his ruin.
I thought that was Paul Simon in "The Boxer"?
All lies and jest, still the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
At some point the Krauts will have to stop acting like a conquered nation and say "Enough is enough. WW II ended 80 years ago, almost no one alive today voted for Hitler. Time to move on."
But when brainwashing takes hold, its hard to break. Especially since White Europeans and Americans have some weird fetish for suffering and virtue signalling.
Saying "Everything for Germany" is forbidden in Germany? Now I've heard it all.
AFD drinks water. You know who else drank water? NAZIS!!
"Often reveled" What does Grok say? You should be able to put some numbers on it considering the Wayback machine and all. Prose is nice for fiction.
Oooooh, the Germans are mad!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPNMO1pnZOc
Nazis spoke German. Therefore, everyone who speaks German is a Nazi.
AfD is the only party addressing the prime concern of Germans: Unchecked Immigration. If the other parties want to stop AfD, they will have to do the same.
As far as Germans liking the Nazi era, I have a small anecdote. During my first tour in Germany, AFN broadcast reruns of "Hogan's Heroes" throughout Europe. It was pretty popular. AFN broadcast in NTSC format, which was not compatible with the European PAL format. Most American household had two TVs, one for each system. There was great demand among the German populace for used NTSC TVs. They really liked the "Hogan's Heroes" broadcasts.
Jaq:
Trump has already figured this out with the new trade deal with India. China is isolated.
The coming election on the 23rd will be interesting- if AfD can win 25% of the seats it will likely be impossible for any of the other parties to assemble a majority coalition that doesn't include all of the non-AfD parties. This will lead, I have long predicted, to AfD becoming the sole right of center alternative as the CDU/CSU is merged with SPD and Greens in a center-left party.
Jaq--Those aren't German crosses, which is the term applied to the swastika. They are Iron Crosses, which were used as military honors in Prussia long before the Nazis. The German Army began using it again in 2009 in its original Prussian form.
The swastika has been around for over 5,000 years. It predates Christianity.
In America we have freedom of speech, but I do draw the line at saying we need to acquire Canada and Greenland because we need more lebensraum.
Makes me wonder if the Kraut authorities have ever listened to their national anthem.
How does it go?
Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles . . .
I did nothing that I'm aware of to trigger the italics. My apologies.
"Europe does not want the Americans to leave. Europe has been spending their money on a generous welfare state while the US spends out borrowed treasure manning their defense against a country that has nothing to gain by invading."
Well, that's what we all thought. It appears our borrowed treasure has been waste, fraud, and abuse. And much of it used for propaganda after being laundered.
AfD's leader is in a lesbian relationship with a woman from Sri Lanka, so it isn't your grandfather's Nazi Party. The far-right parties in the postwar period (SRP, NDP) were more clearly linked to the Nazi past (as were more than a few individuals in the other parties).
Virtually everyone who's questioned Europe's immigration policies is likely to be labelled far-right, so it's hard to get at the truth about what is really going on in the dissenting groups.
This from someone who refuses to accept the US 2020 election result.
We are supposed to take the thoughts of JD Vance seriously when he branded Trump an A—hole and America’s Hitler. It’s not exactly a slight variation in opinion, he’s made a 180 degree change in his motivations. Pointless little man….,
If I were JD Vance I'd be more worried about the threat from his taste in eyeliner.
When I was a youngster and the Cold War was still pretty hot, somebody said the Germans were better people when they had an American standing nearby keeping an eye on them. The implication being, the Germans would revert to being imperalialist Nazis, or at least imperialists, were there no longer a strong American presence in Germany and Europe. I'd add that the former Ossies even now lead to the option of imperialistic communist Germans, again allied with Russia. So yeah, Germany is both sometimes powerful and stupid sometimes.
Over the years I have learned that Germans like doing things together in groups with other Germans. This makes them the best minorities in other countries, because they do a lot of civic-minded things that benefit everyone. But put that same dynamic to work in a majority, and they go invading Poland.
So maybe it will be a wonderful thing when the Germans become a minority in Germany. After all, the US counties with the highest social mobility--in terms of children being consistently better off their their parents across all 5 income quintiles--are mostly ethnically German counties in Iowa. Probably the parts of Germany with the most Germans will be the more economically successful in the migration-fueled dystopia they have been building, so they've got that going for them, which is nice.
The problem for the Germans is that the "Brandenmauer" is going to prevent the largest block from forming a coalition with the second-largest block. Together they will be close to 50%. The other parties possible espouse policies that the two largest don't, but any possible government will have to support. So in order to save parliamentary democracy, they are destroying it. They literally cannot go on this way.
Btw, Vance's speech is receiving massive attention in Germany. Judging by the six thousand comments on two articles pertaining to it in Die Welt, of which I have only sampled about 2.5 thousand, most of the German citizens are broadly supportive of his speech. They have an election this coming week. I don't see how the positions of the current party leaders can be maintained in a representational political system.
This is hilarious -- JD Vance -- who literally eagerly signed up to be the sidekick for a guy he compared to Hitler thinks some other countries have a tyrant problem.
Germany's Christian Democrats foolishly followed Merkel's open border and (anti-)energy policies. After she was gone, they could have regained some common sense, but they allowed the left (SPD and Greens) to box them in by demonizing as racist anyone who opposed flooding the country with immigrants who at best have no interest in western culture and at worst hate it.
Voters naturally turned to the only party willing to honestly discuss immigration, AFD. If you tell voters their concerns are illegitimate, they will go to the party that recognizes their concern. Are there unsavory elements in the AFD? Of course, but no worse than the marxist elements in the Greens and SPD, not to mention the die-hard communists among the Linke. By joining in the demonization of AFD, the Christian Democrats trapped themselves into forced coalitions with the equally unsavory marxists in the leftwing parties.
As has been pointed out by some Germans, even the great post-war chancellor Adenauer worked with parties whose voters had been real nazis in order to contain the marxists. This eased the path for voters to move away from these nazi remnants and be absorbed into a truly democratic party. But by erecting the firewall against AFD, the Christian Democrats are ensuring that voters can find no home except with the AFD.
Worse, the Christian Democrats are dooming Germany to 4 or 5 more years of stagnation under a grand coalition with SPD-- and perhaps even with the Greens or the Linke (now polling at 7%), if the SPD collapses even more in the upcoming election.
The Liberal Party (FPD), a natural ally for the Christian Democrats, destroyed itself by entering the coalition with SPD and the Greens and allowing many of its members in the parliament to vote against the reasonable immigration law recently put forward by the Christian Democrats. FDP is unlikely to get the minimum 5% of the vote needed to enter the post-election parliament.
Vance's speech was a wake-up call to the Christian Democrats and FDP, but they have plugged their ears.
Why are so many people like Hitler, but no one is ever like Stalin or Mao? In Germany, why are so many like Hitler but no one is like Honecker? Why does a slope that tilts right lead inevitably to Nazi Germany, and a slope that tilts left lead to peace, bread, and land?
Deutschland wieder groß machen!
it's a warning to europe, especially UK not to go after elon's twitter and fining them heavily for not doing enough censorship on "disinformation"
What's the difference between a Communist and a Socialist?
In America, journalists never call the Left "far left" as if there is no such thing, however, fair minded people would consider Communists to be far left, and Socialists slightly less so.
America has a lot of people who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, or so they claim. All I know is that it's "lefty loosie" and "righty tighty"
Narr said…
“I did nothing that I'm aware of to trigger the italics. My apologies.”
I think the italics on the word “lebensraum” in the previous post needed some more living space.
Ah the Germans have "formally classified" AfD as "extremist"? That's nothing. The Biden DOJ "formally classified" Catholic congregations and school kid parents as "extremist"---even as "terrorists". Those crazy Krauts--always one goose step behind the curve.
If using “Nazi language” is illegal in Germany, how do we know they’re not all secret Nazis too scared to say what they think?
"But put that same dynamic to work in a majority, and they go invading Poland."
Hitler demanded that the Poles negotiate the return of Hamburg to Germany. Hamburg was a city full of Germans, speaking German, which had been separated from Germany as part of the Versailles atrocity. Roosevelt, the British, and the French all urged the Poles not to negotiate, and promised to support them against Hitler, even though none of them were in any position to do so. They tried to get Stalin to help, but of course, Stalin's price for helping was the Eastern half of Poland. Which he duly seized, as soon as his allies, the Germans, had destroyed the Polish Army.
Kaka, but these other countries are actually banning speech, If that isn’t tyrannical, nothing is
@ Jupiter - I don't think you have the correct German city. Hamburg is in the western part of Germany, along the north coast. Maybe Danzig/Gdansk?
Revised Prof M.D.
"Over the years I have learned that Jews like doing things together in groups with other Jews. This makes them the best minorities in other countries, because they do a lot of civic-minded things that benefit everyone. But put that same dynamic to work in a majority, and they go invading Gaza, Syria, the West bank of Jordan, and Lebanon."
Wow, just change a few words and it seems to apply to a lot of people.
We had some post a while back about men constantly thinking about the "Roman Empire". Well for every 1 minute they think about Romans they think about Nazi for 50 minutes.
With women the ratio of time spent on Nazis vs. Romans seems to be about 1 thousand to 1.
People love Nazis. Nazis are everywhere, and WW II happened yesterday. LOL!
"Well for every 1 minute they think about Romans they think about Nazi for 50 minutes."
Maybe some do. The thing about the Roman Empire is
a) It was spectacularly successful, with much that is admirable about Western Civilization deriving directly from that success, and
b) It ultimately failed.
How anyone concerned with the nature and fate of our civilization, male or female, can fail to be fascinated by Roman history is beyond me.
The NAZIs were spectacularly successful, and there are aspects of that success that might bear emulation, but their failure was, in historic terms, immediate. Instantaneous.
And before you tell me how awful I must be to find anything admirable about NAZI Germany, Rome was no tea party.
“We have the feeling that the mantle of freedom of expression is being severely overused,” Judge Streicher would have said.
@Clyde; You are correct, Gdansk. Danzig, not Hamburg. That didn't feel right, I should have looked it up.
In the excellent movie Valkyrie, about the Staiffenberg plot to blow up Hitler, Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg exclaims “Everything for Germany!” as the firing squad shoots him.
So if it’s the motto of the guy who literally tried to kill literal Hitler, how can it be a Nazi slogan?
JSM
You could never make that movie now. Bill Nighy, Ian MacNiece, and the rest of the British acting community all playing Krauts in full swastika’d regalia. And the movie solves the foreign-language problem by having them all speak English with their normal accents. Which makes them all relatable.
JSM
Better say that the left-wing totalitarians (incl. this NYT scribe) revel in lies and care only to smear any rivals to their absolute power+control.
Danzig, not Hamburg.
Hence the pre-war motto of the pacifists, isolationists, appeasers, and fascist sympathizers: "Why die for Danzig?"
This phrase is very well remembered in Poland, and makes an appearance whenever Western European perfidy and cowardice are being discussed.
Jaq.... "because our troops would be in harms way in the case of a conflict with Russia, which we were plainly planning. "
************
Doncha just luvvit when Jaq offers those airy throw-away lines so effortlessly?
Hocke seems to have made his modest free speech point.
Without having to shoot a bunch of judges and other political figures in the head like Germany's real post-war fascists: the commies and socialist Red Army, who now operate within the system, destroying Germany with hostile Muslims.
One can shoot the messenger, but the World has changed and Germany needs to question all its old assumptions about security, energy and trade. I hope it does while retaining all the values that makes the country great.
One can presume that a Chancellor Merz will take a long look eastwards and conclude that Germany should provide itself with nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Ultimately Putin is going to be staring into German guns.
It is hard to imagine the Germans just strolling into "neutrality" and obeisance towards the Eurasian autocrat.
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