this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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And stil the state refuses to ban them, refuses to arrest and sentence their leaders.
It will be Weimar 2.0 with liberals being either too incompetent or too unwilling to stop fascism.
Fascism is not stopped at the podium or in parliament. It is stopped with bullets and bombs. The longer you wait the more bullets and bombs it will take and the more lives it will cost. We need a new, this time thorough, denazification.
Liberal does not mean leftist outside of the USA. Liberal actually means what is called libertarian in the USA.
I have not called liberals leftist and never would. I'm not on that American brainrot.
in most contexts here ive heard "liberal" used to describe neoliberalism rather then leftism or libertarianism (though I know many conservatives in the US use it as a catch all for the left)
I think it's enough to just do: arrests of leaders (and banning them from public speaking but for life) + breaking up the party + outlawing the party + banning people who decide to take up the mantle of/act as a declared proxy for the party and attempt to visibly pick up where they left off.
That last one I learned from my own country''s current situation: in Romania, a crazy far right candidate came out of nowhere (on the wings of illegal undisclosed campaign donations) to win the first round, and as soon as that happened our mainstream far right party's candidate started supporting him. Then they canceled the election because of the undisclosed donations (he literally declared 0 campaign spending!) so now, in the redo of the election, this other guy is basically running as his proxy and will likely try to appoint him PM if he wins.
Ideally arrests and executions will be enough. I think letting fascists live out their lives in prison is too dangerous. Too many political enemies have been released historically after government changes. Hitler himself didn't even have to serve for life and was released early.
Weimar was a small civil war between soldiers who returned from WW1. That's why both the left and the right had fighters. Where should the fighters who shoot the bullets come from now?
The fascists came to power because the elite feared that the communists could win. Otherwise, despite massive manipulation, the fascists never got an absolute majority.
There are many issues that other parties simply ignore. There would be far less voteres for the AfD if the other parties would listen. The AfD started with the demand that the rules about euro stability shouldn't be ignored. That's not a fascist position.
The other parties are not taking up AfDs made up causes because they are made up.
For example:
A sack of potatoes falls.
AfD: Foreigners are causing the sacks to fall! We must gas them! And the jews!
Other parties: This is so stupid it doesn't even warrant a response.
General public: but the foreigners!!111!1!!!11 and the potatoes!!1! I am outraged!!!111!!!
Unfortunately, the other parties are very well taking up the Nazis' lies. The Nazis are playing the political establishment like a fiddle.
To stick with your example of the potato sack, the established parties do just jump the Nazi bandwagon and parrot their narrative in a less extreme manner, like "Illegal immigrants kicking over potato sacks is a severe problem, we need to protect our potato sacks by border controls and increased deportations."
Just as one AfD politician remarked last year, (after the election in Thuringia, if I recall right) the AfD is ruling without actually being in the government.
This reflects American politics as well.
I think the problem can be summed up as poll driven politics.
It's a feedback loop, they do focus on a topic some opinion poll has shown to be somewhat popular, the resulting exposure increases popularity, which reflects in the polls, which leads to increased political focus on the topic...
In America at least, this is as a direct result of corporate media and money in politics both controlling the narrative. None of this was naturally occurring.
Not that different in Germany. The biggest difference in the media landscape, the pretty large public broadcasters aren't really a difference, because their governing bodies and leadership positions are stuffed with (ex) politicians and their relatives.
Same thing here, but with basically every industry and not just news media. We call it the "revolving door" effect.
The revolving door effect is separate from large political parties' influence on public broadcasters, but it exists, too. It, and many other forms of legalised corruption, have led to an erosion of trust in politicians and political institutions in which the Nazis of the AfD thrieve.
Over here, it's a bit of the opposite, but also the same in some ways, where the newsmedia controls our politicians and populous (especially Fox News with the Republicans). Behind the scenes, there are almost definitely dealings between Fox News and the Republicans that isn't public. Fox News spent a significant chunk of the past 4 years denying the outcome of the 2020 election for the benefit of Trump.
It's a half/half mix of our politicians being stupid/brainwashed by the newsmedia and also corrupt. I'm sure you've seen what some of our politicians have been spewing out of their mouths.
It's a bit more complex, but essentially the same. Corporate media control politicians who in turn control the public broadcasters.
The German rough equivalent of Fox news, the Axel Springer publishing corporation, which runs the infamous Bild tabloid and multiple other media outlets, has been continuously campaigning for a reactionary cause since its founding shortly after WW2. They do set a lot of the political agenda by pretty much dictating the public discourse.
It's a few different companies over here (Fox, Sinclair [who controls basically all local media nationwide, John Oliver did a good segment on them], Newsmax, One America News, CNN, MSNBC), but same result that the media controls the Overton Window.
In 1987, America abolished the law that forced newsmedia corporations to cover the news in a specific way (which you can read about here). This has a massive negative effect on our media's news coverage. It started to become just about ratings and profit.
The German media landscape got liberalised in the 1980s, too, with private TV being legalised by a constitutional court verdict in 1981 and the first private TV station coming online in 1984. Private TV was from the start groomed by "conservative" politicians as a tool to further their agenda.
These days, the TV programme is mostly driven by market share, even the public broadcasters have jumped that bandwagon, which over time has lead to an overall decline in quality, as they are trying to emulate the private channels.
I wonder if there's a money trail that can be traced back to a single source for both the German and US (and probably others as well) media outlets to corporatize/liberalize at around the same time.
The laws here directly reflect the wishes of corporations, including the relealing of the Fairness Doctrine, and there is a money trail showing which politicians took money from who for their political campaigns.
The Heritage Foundation also played a big role in influencing policy during the Reagan administration. These are the same people who wrote Project 2025.
In Germany, there is a big political movemet that transcends pretty much all party boundaries, which calls itself "transatlanticists" its core values are subservience to the USA, or some form of transatlantic corruption.
I wouldn't be surprised about all kinds of money trails. Our future head of government "worked" for BlackRock, an US investment corporation, for the most part of his career. And there are many more like him. As I already said, most forms of political corruption are legal in Germany.
But starting and organizing a violent opposition seem like so much effort. And I really have to finish some shows I've been watching.