Nazis in camouflage - How the right organizes itself
The term Nazi has always been a political issue in Germany. Sometimes you called your political opponents that, sometimes you were one yourself. The reasons for being called a Nazi were varied and remain unfathomable to this day. But something has changed. Since the rise of the AfD and the embarrassing, persistent weakness of the federal government, more and more opinion makers have emerged who would not previously have been seen as right-wing extremists and certainly not as Nazis.
By Serdar Somuncu
By Serdar Somuncu
It is a colorful mixture of historical revisionists, reality-glorifiers and alleged plain-spoken speakers who apparently have made it their mission to speak for a silent majority in Germany. Whether these are documentaries about supposedly canceled comedians, dubiously externally financed opinion channels or harmless, patchwork reports: the dramaturgy of their appearance always has the same rhetorical elements. "We are the ones who practice democracy because we talk to everyone, even if they have a different opinion!". The innocently feigned interest in other people who think differently has now replaced the "you can probably say that again" of the seventies and eighties. Under the code of rebellion against injustice that has never been experienced before, latent inflammatory propaganda is transfigured into a forbidden opinion.
The new nationalists are divided into different groups, some of which pursue similar goals. The ideal ideological rallying point for all the hopeless and devious currently seems to be the AfD, because there has been no credible left-wing opposition so far. And whether Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW will replace her remains to be seen. Many extremists, disguised as harmless commentators and reporters, are up to mischief on the Internet and they use their opportunities more cleverly than those who could oppose them.
Being a Nazi means something different today than it did ten or twenty years ago. It means taking on the role of the underdog and balancing on an ambivalent tightrope in such a way that you are always suspicious, but never clearly. It is the recurring phrases and empty phrases that the Nazis hide behind today. They talk about remigration, foreign infiltration and floods of asylum. Constant exaggeration is her main stylistic device. Numbers rarely play a role. Because if you were to consult them, many of the Nazis' propagated fears would fall apart. In fact, compared to the world's major crises and conflicts, we have less immigration than ever before. Although the reasons why people come to us still exist and have increased significantly. It is the imbalance of a world in which the profit interests of the lobbies overshadow the general public's sense of justice.
So instead of talking about the unjust policies that cause people to leave their home countries and endure the hardships of fleeing, today's Nazis act as if they had a God-given right to benefit more from the privileges of our prosperity , than fulfilling their responsibility to share it.
The boundaries between national, conservative, reactionary and right-wing extremist are now blurred. It is above all the various groups of internet influencers, corona opponents and pseudo-scientists who are increasingly adopting the arguments of their role models from the AfD and other right-wing extremist circles and are even being exploited retroactively by their sponsors and clients. According to the motto, "If the average person talks about their problems like that, then we can too."
Some dazzling examples no longer hide behind empty phrases and slogans, but rather openly express what was long considered intolerable in this country. Anti-Semitic phrases and radical xenophobia, hatred of minorities and hostility to democracy are disguised as criticism of the system and resistance of a abused people who supposedly no longer allow themselves to speak the unpleasant truth. This results in absurd constellations.
For example, a well-known YouTuber and self-confessed AfD voter, who came to Germany as a Pakistani refugee child, sits in the pedestrian zone and encourages passers-by to have an "open" conversation about his views, only allowing them to take control of the microphone for brief moments and even for argumentative purposes Support for the trustworthiness of his stance is the AfD's "distancing" from "extreme" groups like the "Hitler Youth." Thank God! Whether it is due to his lack of education or the deliberate misunderstanding, in the end his stupid derivation remains not just a harmless joke, but is an example of how the AfD's method of throwing ambiguities into the room in order to use them as an afterthought Since Bernd Lucke's "degeneration of parliamentary democracy" and Björn Höcke's "monument of shame" have been established, it has been taken up and reproduced by subsequent generations.
The circles are closing more and more. Seemingly innocent reports about the CSD and other "absurdities" reveal a deeply radicalized world view, which is based on values that are rarely defined, but are mostly propagated subliminally. What is particularly striking is that the affinities to the scene are self-confidently shown and increasingly obscure coalitions of advocates and multipliers are forming, which make them and their concerns appear more socially acceptable. But if you look a little further, you quickly see the connections to right-wing extremists, such as the right-wing national weekly newspaper "Junge Freiheit" or the AfD Mouthpiece "Germany Kurier".
The African-American presenter of an internet magazine, which comes from the forge of the increasingly reactionary environment around BILD's former editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, also speaks in an ironically pathetic undertone about migrants and minorities and often uses hair-raising anachronistic distortions, only to insinuate a little later that Because of her skin color she is completely unsuspected of being a sympathizer of right-wing extremist ideology.
But being a Nazi doesn't just mean showing a confession or an attitude; a Nazi is someone who speaks Nazi texts or doesn't contradict them.
Now an open society could be trusted to endure these excesses confidently and trust in developing an adequate counterforce that is aware of the responsibility that exists in this country, unlike in other countries, to keep the memory alive and its Always take a position on current events based on this and make it dependent.
The so-called "Nazi club" as a symbol of the excessive caution of public morality in dealing with German history is a clear image that has been used again and again by right-wing extremists since the 1970s to portray themselves and their intentions behind it to hide the assertion of a normative dogma that does not actually exist.
However, because a large part of the new right sees neither a family connection nor a heritage-related context to history, they decouple themselves from this responsibility and at the same time establish the perfidious view and intention that lies behind their actions.
Namely, the establishment of a radical political power that prohibits others from expressing criticism through intimidation and denigration, covers them with ridicule and generates hollow applause for it. The world becomes so clear and its complexity becomes a danger for the thinking individual, who feels persecuted, harassed and patronized by the state as long as they do not unconditionally accept the status of social reality.
In this simple narrative, doubt is seen as counter-revolutionary and anyone who shows understanding for the suffering of others is seen as a traitor to the people.
The central themes of immigration and foreign infiltration become a paranoid-obsessive ostinato and they become a powerful weapon against the supposedly desolate constitution of a nation that has gone off the rails and is plagued by literally limitless freedom of movement. The remedy for recovery is a return to traditional values, the categorical exclusion of evident arguments, unconditional nationalism and a one-sided blame game that allows the narrative of the new and old right to merge and resurrect into a delusional dogma, the only distillation of which is "Germany Germans, foreigners out!" had already been made clearer and more innocuous by the NPD as its election campaign motto years before.
Unfortunately, the bourgeois center and moderate forces also allow themselves to be harnessed to this cart of intolerance by adopting their line of argument out of fear of losing part of the conservative clientele, even adapting it and thus artificially keeping the discussion alive.
The fact is and remains that in a world in which wars still function because there is an arms industry that has no interest in maintaining peace but in creating wars and economic interests far outweigh human rights, it will not be possible to avoid that the consequences of this policy will reach us at some point and that our response to them must be more complex than simply playing with fear.
Recognizing this and combating ignoring it is the central task of a self-confident society that does not celebrate its own egoism and greed for profit, but returns to true values such as humanity and compassion.
Current program "Soul Heil" can now be downloaded in the shop
02/06/24
*Serdar Somuncu is an actor and director
The new nationalists are divided into different groups, some of which pursue similar goals. The ideal ideological rallying point for all the hopeless and devious currently seems to be the AfD, because there has been no credible left-wing opposition so far. And whether Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW will replace her remains to be seen. Many extremists, disguised as harmless commentators and reporters, are up to mischief on the Internet and they use their opportunities more cleverly than those who could oppose them.
Being a Nazi means something different today than it did ten or twenty years ago. It means taking on the role of the underdog and balancing on an ambivalent tightrope in such a way that you are always suspicious, but never clearly. It is the recurring phrases and empty phrases that the Nazis hide behind today. They talk about remigration, foreign infiltration and floods of asylum. Constant exaggeration is her main stylistic device. Numbers rarely play a role. Because if you were to consult them, many of the Nazis' propagated fears would fall apart. In fact, compared to the world's major crises and conflicts, we have less immigration than ever before. Although the reasons why people come to us still exist and have increased significantly. It is the imbalance of a world in which the profit interests of the lobbies overshadow the general public's sense of justice.
So instead of talking about the unjust policies that cause people to leave their home countries and endure the hardships of fleeing, today's Nazis act as if they had a God-given right to benefit more from the privileges of our prosperity , than fulfilling their responsibility to share it.
The boundaries between national, conservative, reactionary and right-wing extremist are now blurred. It is above all the various groups of internet influencers, corona opponents and pseudo-scientists who are increasingly adopting the arguments of their role models from the AfD and other right-wing extremist circles and are even being exploited retroactively by their sponsors and clients. According to the motto, "If the average person talks about their problems like that, then we can too."
Some dazzling examples no longer hide behind empty phrases and slogans, but rather openly express what was long considered intolerable in this country. Anti-Semitic phrases and radical xenophobia, hatred of minorities and hostility to democracy are disguised as criticism of the system and resistance of a abused people who supposedly no longer allow themselves to speak the unpleasant truth. This results in absurd constellations.
For example, a well-known YouTuber and self-confessed AfD voter, who came to Germany as a Pakistani refugee child, sits in the pedestrian zone and encourages passers-by to have an "open" conversation about his views, only allowing them to take control of the microphone for brief moments and even for argumentative purposes Support for the trustworthiness of his stance is the AfD's "distancing" from "extreme" groups like the "Hitler Youth." Thank God! Whether it is due to his lack of education or the deliberate misunderstanding, in the end his stupid derivation remains not just a harmless joke, but is an example of how the AfD's method of throwing ambiguities into the room in order to use them as an afterthought Since Bernd Lucke's "degeneration of parliamentary democracy" and Björn Höcke's "monument of shame" have been established, it has been taken up and reproduced by subsequent generations.
The circles are closing more and more. Seemingly innocent reports about the CSD and other "absurdities" reveal a deeply radicalized world view, which is based on values that are rarely defined, but are mostly propagated subliminally. What is particularly striking is that the affinities to the scene are self-confidently shown and increasingly obscure coalitions of advocates and multipliers are forming, which make them and their concerns appear more socially acceptable. But if you look a little further, you quickly see the connections to right-wing extremists, such as the right-wing national weekly newspaper "Junge Freiheit" or the AfD Mouthpiece "Germany Kurier".
The African-American presenter of an internet magazine, which comes from the forge of the increasingly reactionary environment around BILD's former editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, also speaks in an ironically pathetic undertone about migrants and minorities and often uses hair-raising anachronistic distortions, only to insinuate a little later that Because of her skin color she is completely unsuspected of being a sympathizer of right-wing extremist ideology.
But being a Nazi doesn't just mean showing a confession or an attitude; a Nazi is someone who speaks Nazi texts or doesn't contradict them.
Now an open society could be trusted to endure these excesses confidently and trust in developing an adequate counterforce that is aware of the responsibility that exists in this country, unlike in other countries, to keep the memory alive and its Always take a position on current events based on this and make it dependent.
The so-called "Nazi club" as a symbol of the excessive caution of public morality in dealing with German history is a clear image that has been used again and again by right-wing extremists since the 1970s to portray themselves and their intentions behind it to hide the assertion of a normative dogma that does not actually exist.
However, because a large part of the new right sees neither a family connection nor a heritage-related context to history, they decouple themselves from this responsibility and at the same time establish the perfidious view and intention that lies behind their actions.
Namely, the establishment of a radical political power that prohibits others from expressing criticism through intimidation and denigration, covers them with ridicule and generates hollow applause for it. The world becomes so clear and its complexity becomes a danger for the thinking individual, who feels persecuted, harassed and patronized by the state as long as they do not unconditionally accept the status of social reality.
In this simple narrative, doubt is seen as counter-revolutionary and anyone who shows understanding for the suffering of others is seen as a traitor to the people.
The central themes of immigration and foreign infiltration become a paranoid-obsessive ostinato and they become a powerful weapon against the supposedly desolate constitution of a nation that has gone off the rails and is plagued by literally limitless freedom of movement. The remedy for recovery is a return to traditional values, the categorical exclusion of evident arguments, unconditional nationalism and a one-sided blame game that allows the narrative of the new and old right to merge and resurrect into a delusional dogma, the only distillation of which is "Germany Germans, foreigners out!" had already been made clearer and more innocuous by the NPD as its election campaign motto years before.
Unfortunately, the bourgeois center and moderate forces also allow themselves to be harnessed to this cart of intolerance by adopting their line of argument out of fear of losing part of the conservative clientele, even adapting it and thus artificially keeping the discussion alive.
The fact is and remains that in a world in which wars still function because there is an arms industry that has no interest in maintaining peace but in creating wars and economic interests far outweigh human rights, it will not be possible to avoid that the consequences of this policy will reach us at some point and that our response to them must be more complex than simply playing with fear.
Recognizing this and combating ignoring it is the central task of a self-confident society that does not celebrate its own egoism and greed for profit, but returns to true values such as humanity and compassion.
Current program "Soul Heil" can now be downloaded in the shop
02/06/24
*Serdar Somuncu is an actor and director
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