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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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I am not saying they are just a conservative party. I also didn't thought the person I reacted to was only talking about AFD, but the general rise in right wing rhetoric in different parties and the populace. It's also not just the AFD that is problematic.
Just calling them Nazis plays right into their hands and won't help at all. They will simply turn it around and complain you insult them as Nazis and lament you are just trying to kill their arguments with it.
The term "Nazi" sees so much overuse, you gain absolutely nothing by using it. In my opinion it is better to directly address and call out what they say precisely.
The majority of people voting for the AFD don't do the Hitler salute and similar. And calling them Nazis won't change their mind but instead it will do the exact opposite! It will encourage them to vote for the AFD or similar parties because now they can claim you are just trying to insult them and won't address what they say. "The evil left just wants to silence us!"
Their arguments are easily refuted and that's what needs to happen again and again. While it might feel satisfying labeling them, it won't help the cause.
While I'm not convinced the distinction between extreme right wing supporters and Nazis is as significant as you suggest, I do understand that it is possible to object to unchecked mass migration without being a Nazi or even being right-wing.
Refugees and corresponding xenophobia are a pretty standard global topic for obvious reasons, and as much as I wish infrastructure could be instantaneously built, I know it can't be.
But:
We're well past discussing the nuances of "what separates Nazis from other far-right ideology" and plausible deniability when someone starts invoking the name of fucking Buchenwald. Even if the rest of that list were somehow acceptable or could be explained away, there's no mistaking what Buchenwald means.
I'm not surprised by the global rise of the right-wing rhetoric as the situation gets harder for 99% of people. I have been watching that closely for years. Xenophobia is always presented everywhere as the false easy solution. What I am surprised by is that Germany is allowing politicians to advocate specific Nazi atrocities when there are purportedly laws against glorifying Nazis.
Calling for a second holocaust, demanding refugees should be executed, all of this is forbidden in Germany. I don't know where you got your information from but none of this has happened:
There are Nazis in the AFD, though. They want to stop teaching so much about the Holocaust at schools and they use rhetoric tricks to get people riled up or circumvent the laws around denying the Holocaust.
For example Björn Höcke (who almost certainly is a Nazi) said: "Alles für Deutschland" (All for Germany) and has to go to court for this.
I think we still misunderstand each other on why calling right wing people in general Nazis is a problem. And Björn Höcke is a good example.
The word is used as if you are right wing, then extremely right wing and then you are a Nazi. As if this is somehow worse than being extremely right wing. But "Nazi" is not the superlative of being right wing. And people like Höcke will use this to get people to vote for the AFD.
A Nazi is someone who is, for example, denying the Holocaust. Or believes in Herrenrasse or something like that. Right wing people simply have to deny that they are Nazis (which is easily done, look above) and suddenly your "argument" is gone.
That's exactly what Björn Höcke did before and will do in court again. It will again be about whether or not he can be called a Nazi which is completely irrelevant if you want to tackle the problem that is people voting for AFD and other politicians being increasingly right wing.
When the court says: "Yes, Björn Höcke used Nazi rhetoric!" The AFD will say: "Oh no what an evil man! With Nazis we don't want to have anything in common! He is not AFD anymore." And all the people can continue to vote for AFD, they aren't Nazis afterall. Great!
Old twitter screenshot of Mirko Welsch's account apparently calling for Antifa to be deported to Buchenwald
I was unable to determine what other interpretations this might have:
Perhaps there is some nuance I have missed, 'nach' is a very versatile word even if the rest are very unambiguous.
This factchecker analysis looked even-handed enough for me to be satisfied it was not just my poor German or inaccurate auto-translation.
For the other incidents, I'll leave you to check the post I initially replied to for names and accuracy checking.
Literally every single one of these quotes where either proven as false or the people are not part of the AFD and/or they were brought to court and judged for it. That's all on the site of Faktencheck.
Are you referring to a different Factchecker than the link i posted? Or are you saying they just left up the page with incorrect information? "Proven as false" doesn't seem to match this quote from the link I posted.
The Link you posted does not match the quotes you claimed have been said. And also you wrote Germany allowed the AFD to say those things, but it is not true.
As I said previously:
For the Buchenwald quote, under heading list item 3: Mirko Welsch from the link I provided that you said proved false most of the claims despite it saying they were "mostly accurate":
Which directly contradicts what you said:
What I also said:
Were there legal consequences for Welsch saying this that I missed? Was there a trial and investigation?
Mirko Welsch is not in the AFD and of course there was a trial.
He is actually trialed regularly and he always changes his targets. Sometimes he insults groups on Facebook who are against (!) the right as antisemites. Then he insults the major of Hamburg as a "Fascist bitch". And other cases like this.
In your original post you claimed these are all things the AFD does that are allowed in Germany, but it is not true (that's why I said none of this has happened).
If the AFD would say this they could have easily be banned! That's even on the website and the links you posted yourself.
Mirko Welsch left the AFD quite some time ago, ironically, claiming that Björn Höcke is a neo fascist. This is a quote from Mirko Welsch why he left:
("As much as I stand for a conservative-patriotric awakening in Germany, just as much I oppose the ingradiation towards a right-wing extremist and nationalist milieu.")
https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=28385
This was around 2017, a few years before the tweet. Which says pretty much everything about these clowns.
The publicity about unimportant people like Welsch, the trials and the way they are thrown out of or leave the AFD with a lot of media attention is a tool to them. This is used by people like Björn Höcke or Alice Weidel to pretend they are centrist. They thrive from the discord in the other parties.
For example they will put "gender" on the agenda on purpose, because they know it will get the others fighting and then they can later pretend in front of their voters that the other parties talk about "unimportant stuff like gender" all the time. They don't advertise or use Nazi stuff openly, because that's very complicated in Germany and will easily get you banned or prosecuted.
So they use sneaky tactics to bind actual neo Nazis but also the much bigger group of "centrist" conservatives and right wing people who do not want to associate with Nazis.
Link to trial information, please? I don't speak German well enough to know my way around your court document systems.
Also, as per the same factchecker article, a few sentences up:
He was the spokesperson for homosexuals in the AfD. Which is just a wild concept in itself, but whatever, self-haters gonna self-hate.
I quoted exactly what I said. I'll do so again so nobody has to scroll:
You said "none of this happened". In a language I don't even speak I found third party evidence of someone advocating for Buchenwald, one of the things in the 'never happened because ot is forbidden' list. You told me the factchecker link I posted said the opposite. Then when I showed you it didn't say the opposite, you said it didn't address the quote at all. Then when I showed you it did, you now say he isn't in the AfD. As though quitting cancels all your historical membership too.
All of this, after telling me that even though the AfD has Nazis in it, we shouldn't call them out as Nazis... because:
Much like you have started a discussion about whether Welsch really is AfD, or if Germany really "allowed" him to say it, or if he ever really said it at all, or if the factchecker really addresses it...
No. To your point about not calling people Nazis because they're assholes, I will continue to call assholes Nazis when they are Nazi assholes who explicitly call for repeating Nazi history, policy and/or beliefs. If they are assholes who do not call for Nazi repeat history, policy, and the same values, I will not call them a Nazi. Because they are just assholes, not Nazis.
If we stop calling Nazis out as Nazi, we choose to run the euphemism treadmill and give legitimacy to those who claim their grotesque conservative ethno-nationalist populism is somehow "different" from Nazis.
It's not different. I'm not going to wait until the gun is pointing at me and others before I call out the same dangers and patterns that led to the last time Nazis were allowed to enjoy mainstream popularity, and the last time people like me were tortured, raped, enslaved and ultimately killed.
Feel free to believe things aren't happening because there are rules against those things happening, I won't be joining you. I assume pre-WW2 had laws against murder too, which didn't seem to help much.
You are moving the goal post around because you got hung up on some stupid false information you don't want to admit was wrong.
Sorry, I won't request access to records at court for you, since you don't want to believe or don't understand the links I already posted. If you want to get access to the court documents about Mirko Welsch (lol) you can do so here, for example: https://www.saarland.de/lgsb/DE/home/home_node.html
I hate if people try to put things out as facts that simply are not facts. Because it will always bring more problems. I tried to explain why this will lead to problems, an explanation you ignored.
This is what you said:
And that is not true. You saw yourself and I explained and showed to you that some of these were false and the others were trialed. But it's like you really want it to be true.
Now you are trying to twist it around, it doesn't matter that it's not really AFD members. You aktschually didn't really mean to say it's the political party who said it, just in general.
And we'll, yeah, perhaps there were trials against those people who said it, even though they weren't politicians, but that also doesn't count because you just don't want to admit that your original post was false.
Instead you now switch on full virtue signaling mode and when I try to correct what you wrote you can go all "you are just trying to defend Nazis" on me. Sure. What a very constructive discussion.
That was something I quoted after you asked where I got my information. It's from the person I replied to. Which is why it is formatted as a quote in my post. I thought the connection that it was the same text might be obvious given it repeats the text I replied to, just without the names for brevity.
Then, I checked the Buchenwald quote and it was real, and then i provided you with that info. And then I noticed the factchecker had a bunch of other horrible quotes alongside it that were also awful and consistent with Nazis, which suggests AfD might not have a lone-nazi issue. But you told me they were all not valid for various reasons that were not in the factcheck or any other source.
Thanks to the link for a court homepage which didn't show anything. It's good to know that you have been able to post links to any independent information that would clarify any of the incidents the entire time, but for some unknown reason, you chose not to.
I'm still not certain which part of Welsch's tweet advocating for Buchenwald I misunderstood.I would have loved to have been wrong about that happening, but you never provided anything to suggest it didn't - beyond your own opinion.
Uh huh. "Virtue signalling" is one of those stale internet catchphrases popularised by the conservative media to trivialise real problems and deride empathy. And yet, I would still rather be accused of virtue signalling than look like I'm attempting appeasement of far right extremists by advocating for not using the accurate words which hurt their feelings.
If you think you can win over far right extremists by appealing to their sensibilities, fine, have at it. Many of us are not human enough in their eyes to be listened to in the first place, so I'm just going to keep calling ducks 'ducks'.
I have learnt a lot from all this, thankyou for the education.
I guess you are just a right wing troll trying to make the left look bad. My fault for falling to that old trick..
Did you ever argue with one of the AfD voters? They don't take facts well, they don't care about facts anymore. It's a bit like arguing with conspiracy theorists.
There definitely is overlap between them and those who believe in conspiracy theories. But there are a lot of average people who vote for them as well. Like, middle aged, not particularly poor or wealthy. Your typical boomer...
Many AFD voters I've heard talking or saw what they write believe that specifically Muslim immigrants are bad for Europe. And/or they think that the green party is responsible for them having less money.
For those AFD voters who are immigrants, they vote for them because they believe refugees specifically cost too much money and they are also against the green party. At least, that's what I hear from the people in my neighborhood, which is mostly people whose families migrated from Turkey, sometimes two generations ago.
A third group think they somehow get back at the "elite" when they vote for AFD. Like a poor example of an act of defiance.
I believe that at least those who are not primarily xenophobic are still people we could bring to the other side. We waited to long to ban the AFD. I fear if they ban them now, the next right wing party will get a headstart in voters...