Last week, I got into one of the Facebook discussions I seem to get into a lot because I cannot shut up. This time, unlike most of the other times when the topic is a certain orange maniac in the US, I ended up being called a Nazi for praising my home country of Germany. Saying good things about Germany is really unpopular, especially when Germans say it. And last week I was that person. I was the one that praised Germany on its refugee policies and how proud I am of Germans for handling it largely well which caused my peers to call me a Nazi as they thought I was closing my eyes to racists committing arson and discriminating against foreigners. I tried to defend myself. As of this week, I no longer can…
The “Alternative für Deutschland”, a right-wing populist party, was nothing but a collection of assholes yesterday, today they are the second strongest party in one of the states in Germany. That’s right, last week I was arguing Germany has a relatively small problem with nationalism, this week I’m a nationalist for saying Germany has not fallen for the stupid, moronic attractions of populism if I continue to voice this stance. My inkling of pride about Germany having resisted the Europe-wide opposition to a crisis that may affect all of us but cannot be solved by fearmongering and hate speech is now officially in recline and I have to admit that my country, just like all of them, has not learned from its past.
All the other countries are not Germany, a country that has previously been torn apart by ideologies along that end of the spectrum. Now I don’t expect another holocaust soon, but considering we all grow up being educated to the max about how the Third Reich could lose control like it did, it is inconceivable that Germany would want to be anywhere near these ideologies. Does anybody truly believe that the answer to the problem of Syrians knocking on our doors can be solved by being hardline racists who cannot differentiate between egoistic gains and concessions to those we are morally and politically obliged to? The answer is no, they don’t.
The numbers coming out of Germany today are truly frightening, the most horrible one of them being the number of people who admitted to voting for AfD only as a protest vote. That number lies at 49%. Now we are back at the point I made in that Facebook thread last week, and that was that we don’t have a nationalist problem, we have a problem with morons. I can now officially stand by that with a number like that. Whoever considers voting for an unpredictable, quite publicly xenophobic and verging on disgusting party just to piss the established parties off because they did something that displeased the voter is not a nationalist, or racist, or even a political fallacy. Only a total idiot would do that. The kind that doesn’t understand what that fancy idea called "democracy" means.
Ignorance and misinformation on nationalist ideas, however, is a problem Germany, out of all countries, shouldn’t have though. I am in shock that citizens that no way in hell never heard of the word nationalism, and the subsequent drastic problems it could cause, would be willing to forget that knowledge. Being born German comes with many rights and advantages but one right we don’t have is the one that allows us to be neglecting what misery our bad judgement about far-right sentiments unleashed on Europe. And here we are, doing it again! Now we might not end up in another war this time, at least I’d like to think that the amount of lunacy present in Germany today is infinitely smaller than the one we found in the 30s, but any development towards a community that makes hate reign over love should clearly not be the aim, and shouldn’t end up a consequence either. Just make it stop!
Nobody really has an excuse for these numbers. Even the media is shocked. However, evidently up to every fourth voter was not shocked by these results. I cherish democracy and I’m happy people had the right to express their opinion; its their opinion I criticize. In a society in which a party of dickheads can accumulate support is a society that is on a bad path. I don’t blame politics: there are and always will be bad politicians. In fact, even Nazis, like the actual national socialists, are still around and in disguise offering themselves up for election. It’s our job to say no, thanks! We can’t blame Hindenburg on the failures of judgement this time. We can’t blame the bad education system and redneck American idiots for the election of a seemingly insane populist. We have a society that 100% should know better and the fact that we don’t is frightening and disappointing…
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