Nazis, Nazis Everywhere!

These days German Communists are out on the streets marching against “Nazis”.

Oh, they don’t call themselves “communists” anymore — presumably the stigma of Stalin and the gulag and the Stasi would make for bad PR. Nowadays they call themselves Die Linke (The Left) or Die Grünen (The Greens). But it’s the same old ideology, and its adherents go to great lengths to demonize anyone who is even a smidgen to the right of the Social Democrats.

In recent months the communists have been more and more stridently attacking members of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany) as “Nazis”. What began as murmur of allusion about National Socialist tendencies has morphed into a full-throated scream of “Nazis! Nazis! NAZIS!” whenever the AfD is mentioned.

The three videos below provide various illustrations of this process. Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.

The first video features Katja Kipping, the leader of Die Linke, speaking to an adoring crowd in Dresden:

The second video shows an anti-AfD demonstration in Dresden. As Vlad points out, the demonstrators are completely in tune with George Soros and his “Open Society”:

The final video is the creepiest of the three. It features an East German woman named Marianne Birthler, a prominent veteran of the campaign for human rights in the DDR before the fall of the Wall in 1989. If anyone should know what real totalitarianism is all about, it is Ms. Birthler. Yet all she can do is join the chorus of “Nazis! Nazis! NAZIS!” against the AfD.

Note that the AfD said to have “stolen” the slogan “Wir sind das Volk” from the activists protesting against the DDR back in the 1980s. In other words, no group is allowed to proclaim “We are the People” without the imprimatur of the State:

Video transcript #1:

00:04   We’re especially happy to have her here today and that she took time to be with us and to speak.
00:11   She grew up in Dresden herself. She went to school here. She is the chairman of The Left Party.
00:18   Katja Kipping, please take the microphone.
00:22   Hello and thank you for being here. There are some many of us here and we are so diverse AND WE ARE INDIVISIBLE!
00:31   (sign: Whoever votes for the AfD, votes for Nazis) A big thank you to everyone for coming to Dresden during such weather
00:39   to send a clear signal. We are living in a time when racism and right-wing hate speech are poisoning our societal climate.
00:49   There are right-wing terror networks that are drawing up death lists. Now we know that some right-wing terrorists have
00:58   close contacts to the AfD. The murderer of the Minister President of Hessen Walter Lübcke, Stephan E., gave donations to the AfD.
01:07   He listened to AfD speakers like [Björn] Höcke and that’s why it is really important to know and to always remember:
01:18   Every AfD man in a suit there can be a Nazi with a gun ready to shoot. That’s why we say: No tolerance for Nazis!
 

Video transcript #2:

00:00   “Indivisible” — Demonstration in Dresden: Organisers say had 35,000 participants — “Sea Rescue is not a crime”
00:06   “Sea Rescue is not a crime”
00:20   (signs) #INDIVISIBLE / Brandenburg for Everyone — Refugees welcome!
00:47   (sign) #STAYINGHERE — against deportation, all powerful police and racism
01:02   Let’s go, let’s go Antifascists!
01:18   I think it is very important that we understand as a country, that by standing together,
01:24   by being indivisible, that our strength comes from diversity. This also make us a society that is open for the future.
01:32   A society that is against resentment and racism.
01:36   It’s unworthy of our democracy and unworthy of our freedom! (T-shirt) Have more courage for an open society
01:44   That’s missing in our governmental institutions and this law limits societal freedom.
01:48   We’re standing here together and there’s no hate. No one is excluded, but somehow there’s solidarity.
01:52   And for that you should give yourselves a large round of applause! Louder! A big round of applause!
01:59   A post-migration solidarity which is based on the recognition of social diversity which strives for participatory rights.
02:11   (Green Party signs) Open your heart, Fear out.
02:24   Right now in Brazil the Amazon is burning. The green lungs of our planet. It’s everyone’s problem.
02:31   The German government should remain silent. We should follow Mr. Macron’s example, along with Ireland and Finland.
02:38   We need to make it clear that we can’t make trade deals from the European side if the other side is
02:43   destroying the Amazon, we have to stop all Mercosur trade deals now.
02:51   (signs) Grannies against the Right.
02:57   We can’t allow our values to slip away. Things like respect and decency. Their are values that are indivisible.
03:04   In a country where the unspeakable is being spoken, we have to hold up the stop sign.
03:10   That’s why it is so great that so many people showed up here to show solidarity. Some things just aren’t negotiable.
03:15   (sign) The People (crossed out) / The population —Not isolated cases, but the difference was the neighbourhood stood together.
03:21   One week before the state elections, it important for us to show that there are many people in this country
03:27   that are against “right” ideologies and “right” activities. They are taking to the streets to show that
03:32   they want an open society, a society based on solidarity and they will fight for it. —They were trying to stop the police from taking
03:38   the man away in a car. —What is happening in Brazil at the moment, that the Amazon is burning is
03:47   another reason we are taking to the streets. It all connected. We need to stop the global shift to the right.
03:55   It’s right winged governments, it’s right winged white men that are grabbing back power at everyone’s expense.
 

Video transcript #3:

00:00   Almost no one else in Germany could evaluate the psychological condition of East Germany better
00:04   than our guest today. She was a civil rights campaigner in the former German Democratic Republic
00:07   and then served as the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records [investigated the crimes of Stasi].
00:12   A warm welcome, Mrs. Birthler. An authorised representative of the German government says people
00:16   who live in East Germany are doing better than they were in 1990. However, that has little
00:19   to do with the perceived discrimination experienced there.
00:22   Yes, we all know about it. Each one for themselves.
00:25   This of course has a lot to do with our financial circumstances, but it also has to do with pride,
00:32   and whether we are afraid for the future; and whether or not
00:36   others give us the feeling that we are second-class Germans.
00:40   All these things play a role, and the question is very difficult to answer.
00:44   Certainly objective factors are involved,
00:48   but mainly it is a question of mentality. Another example is: whether we,
00:52   I mean the East Germans, are even included in
00:56   important decisions made in this country. —How much does
01:00   the “disinterest” of West Germany play a role?
01:04   The “West” operated according to the motto “we pay”,
01:07   but that’s about it. —Well, I had widely differing experiences.
01:10   There is a great interest, but within the larger picture
01:14   there’s a general perceived feeling of contempt.
01:18   Actually there always this attitude that the “West” knows everything better.
01:22   Even I, someone who wasn’t
01:25   One of the losers, because I had a lot of luck; even I
01:28   was sometimes offended or hurt when I had the feeling that the West Germans
01:32   were always two steps ahead of us. They already know everything because they had
01:36   a head start by a few decades and we won’t be able to catch up. That’s never good for adults.
01:43   You once wrote that 40 years of separation require 40 years of healing.
01:46   I was really optimistic, wasn’t I?
01:49   Exactly, 30 years have already passed. Could it be that we need a whole generation?
01:54   Yes, absolutely. I said that at the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the Reunification,
01:58   but now I have to say I was too optimistic.
02:01   It is a generational issue and… —Didn’t you said generations?
02:05   As in more than one? —Yes, if you calculate
02:09   a generation to be 20 years, it will take considerably longer.
02:13   This topic even plays a role for my grandchildren.
02:16   So I think, not only do we need political intervention, we also need more societal acceptance.
02:23   Of course we need to speak clearly concerning attitudes and behaviour that are not tolerable.
02:29   Let’s have a look at the recent situation for the upcoming elections. The AfD has stolen the motto
02:34   “We are the People” from the East German civil rights activists.
02:38   Why are so many people attracted to the AfD?
02:42   Well, we just went over the reasons why
02:48   there’s a widespread feeling of neglect. The AfD is basically
02:54   just making everyone worried and afraid. Out of this fear they win votes. It is an easy recipe.
03:00   The AfD doesn’t even have a single good idea of their own to help people improve their lives.
03:04   So they exploit the situation. The fact that they are
03:09   using the motto from 1989 is brazen, but let me reformulate this.
03:14   If the AfD were setting goals like we did at that time:
03:18   Demanding an open country where people can speak
03:22   with each other liberally and a country that respects human rights,
03:26   which includes respect for minorities. Which they don’t —
03:29   on the contrary, they just use the slogans. —Yes, well, I’m not convinced this is well-received
03:33   by people. Maybe just the people who were hiding behind their curtains back in ’89 and for decades
03:37   have regretted not taking to the streets back then. Maybe this is
03:40   how they compensate for missing it (1989) in order to
03:43   feel they were a part of it. That’s not going to work. Not really. —With 20% or 25% in Saxony?
03:48   Yes, we should be worried. I can only hope, I assume
03:52   that they aren’t ALL Nazis. People have to be told
03:55   if they vote for this party, they are voting for Nazis, whether they
03:59   want to or not. Old Nazis, neo-Nazis or whatever.
04:03   It needs to be said clearly and without false courtesy. —Mrs. Birthler, thank you. —Gladly.
 

9 thoughts on “Nazis, Nazis Everywhere!

  1. The Baron and most contributors to this site persist in stating that Greens and Left are communist. This may make the former feel better or nostalgic for the Cold War.

    But how does this fit with them verbally hiving Globalism (the enemy) off from capitalism (an alleged Good Thing)? Because that implies that Communist Greens and LINKE are (capitalist) globalists, which seems confused.

    Calling Greens /LINKE communist is as erroneous as calling the AfD, with its free marketism, lesbian co-leader and black and Jewish party members, “Nazi”.

    Because just look at the transcripts of the 3 videos. Except for a reluctant reference to “financial circumstances” there is no communist/Marxist analysis of economics and class struggle at all. Instead, we read the homoglobalist mantra of “diversity”.

    Secondly, communists were traditionally always big on international Peace. But by Joseph Fischer, Green Foreign Minister and Yugoslav War aggressor at the latest, German Greens threw Peace under the bus. The unique Cohn-Bendit prattled on about “multicultural Sarajevo” at the time and the need to stop the horrible Serbs.
    Fischer had caught a ballon full of dye in the ear at a Green public meeting thrown by a peace activist already a quarter century ago and more.

    Those on the inside in Germany and reading German know that the Greens and to a lesser degree the LINKE are pro-NATO and anti-Russian, as one can see from Bundestag speeches and membership in transatlantic bodies.

    They are the creatures of the US neocons in the Deep State, who Trump may or may not be fighting still.

    To sum up, the Greens and LINKE are globalist Identity Politics “progressives” and far from anything Marxist.

    • “communists have always been big on international peace.” really? the only reason the communists were supposedly for peace in world war I was because they were being paid millions by germany to try to keep Russia out of the war. in world war II they invaded Poland two weeks after germany. they were the fourth member of the axis powers. they started the Korean war. they started the Vietnam war. they started a war in Afghanistan. they started numerous wars in Africa. the communists were instrumental in founding the so-called peace movement. a movement that never protested for peace but only protested against whomever was fighting the communists. in 1939 the peace movement was protesting the imperialist war against the Nazis. in june 0f 1941 after the communist”s ally Nazi germany turned on communist russia the peace movement did a 180 and supported the war of liberation against the Nazi. when the communists started the Korean was, despite us all knowing that war is not the answer, the peace movement protested against the people fighting against the people that started the war. after the communists started the Vietnam war in 1951, the peace did exactly the same thing it did in the Korean war. your claim that the communists have been for peace is nothing more then a bare faced communist lie!

      • @McDonnell: Bare-faced Communist lie ? I thought that anything “communist” is the same in your collective Right view as Islamic?, ….and given that pious Muslims all keep their beards, communist lies can never be “bare faced” :-)))

        But I digress: you make a category error in your erroneous historical listing since WW1. The error is to attribute good old national interests to ideological figleafs. Russia always behaved in its national interest and was quite xenophobic, as German Communists who fled to the USSR after 1933 found to their cost, cf. the memoirs of those who survived the Hotel Lux.

        No, when I wrote “communists have been big on international peace”, I should have specified the type of naive Western internationalist played by Clare Bloom as the female Communist Party librarian in the film “Spy who came in from the Cold”. That is, the rank and file of Western progressives since 1917.

        My point was that such people are now utterly marginalised in the Greens and LINKE if they are members at all and have no spokesmen in German parliament.
        Wikileaks had already published a cable from the US Ambassador in Berlin describing how Gregor Gysi, leader of the LINKE at the time was being nice to him.

        @JohnF: thanks for the link to Marx’s letter.

        For example, recently, Central Bank of Ireland stated frankly that immigration to Ireland has to kept up, else per capita GDP will drop because wages will rise too much (sic).

        But many contributors to GoV will reply that the central bank is “globalist” and not capitalist.

    • A major contradiction you forgot to mention, that demonstrates the Greens and LINKE are not communists, concerns immigration. Marxists are against open borders, because they swell the reserve army of labor and pit one part of the working class against another. See, for example, https://portside.org/2017-02-19/marx-immigration

    • Instead of calling them communists or Marxists, how about the calling the present, loud lot, just that: “Globalist Identity Politics Progressives”, or GIPPs.

  2. https://strelka.com/img/e997edd75222319a/p14544612.jpg

    https://sun1-14.userapi.com/c852236/v852236372/1a7c35/58BkQPAaIUk.jpg

    I don’t even know what topic to put these photos on. Let them be here, since we are talking about totalitarianism.
    Gorky Park: vintage photos and modern, where Muslims wash their feet in a drinking fountain.
    The second photo resonated in social networks, imagine, Muslims mostly justify them, for them it’s a mark of the territory, like dogs.

  3. Nazis? There is only ONE truly Fascist total state in the world now. It is China. It is a corporatist authoritarian monster that only exploded into a super power when it became a corporatist fascist state with EVERY classic element of Mussolini’s original model and now the concentration camps, mass murder and organ harvesting worthy of Dr. Mengele’s wet dreams.

  4. In my personal experience , the fiercest ” antifaschists” here in Germany are with the “VVN- Antifaschisten”.(Union of the Nazi-prosecuted). They are with no exception communists, no jews to be found in their ranks, but hey, wait a minute: they once sent an old lady,Esther Bejerano, to a TV show.She had been to concentration camps and is ….a commnist.
    I once confronted kindly a one-man demo holding a placard saying that the Nazis are back in parliament. I offered to accompany him to report that fact to the nearest police station, the Nazis being an illegal organisation. He smelled my tripwire and prefered to hold his position. No that stupid,this idiot.

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