Incidents at a school in the eastern German state of Brandenburg have given rise to fears over far-right sentiment in the classroom. Officials have expressed dismay, encouraging teachers not to shrink from hate.
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My German friends have told me for years that Nazis never went away. They are not “far-right”, they’re not neo-Nazis, they are Nazis. Gotta call them by their real name. Because this is real in Germany and also internationally and it should not be played down, like AfD is doing.
The thing is that the neo-nazi description is also correct as members of the actual “neo-nazi” movement formerly spread all over Western Germany moved to East Germany after 1990 to organize there (and given the much lower population numbers finally become a substantial amount of the population).
This is semantics and playing it down. The term Neo-Nazi is used for any post-war “militant, social or political movement” and it’s just bullshit, because they simply never went away. They didn’t “pop up” after the second world war, they remained and it’s important to understand that. They were not eradicated, many people are still supporting the same ideology and would follow Hitler now if he someone got back alive.
It is indeed semantics as our definitoon of neo-nazi seem to differ:
“Neonazism stands for the resumption and spread of National Socialist ideas in German-speaking countries after World War II and the end of the Nazi dictatorship. National Socialist ideas were also taken up in other countries after 1945, namely in the United States, and the Nazi regime was glorified. Representatives of neo-Nazism are called neo-Nazis; the term contrasts with “Altnazis”, i.e. the carriers of National Socialist ideology who had already espoused it during National Socialist rule.”
That the common definition I’m used to so we are indeed talking about neo-nazis. Or are you assuming those are either old enough to be actual nazis or learned their views from birth in direct line from their nazi families (to categorize them as orginal nazis) instead of part of a resurgent movement using parts of the same ideology?
PS: Also you seem to assume that far-right or neo-nazi is playing something down. It isn’t. Every form of hateful far-right ideology, nazism or fascism is equally despicable. The “real” neo-nazis only get “bonus” points for also openly venerating a former genocidal regime…
Nah they’re neo-nazis, and both old guard nazis, as in “actually once an NSDAP and SS member”, and neo-nazis, as in “too young for that” are nazis.
The old guard is definitely dying out by now so pretty much any nazi nowadays is a neo-nazi so the distinction becomes less meaningful. 20 years ago the situation was quite different where you still saw the mentor/mentee relationship between those two groups.
It’s a byproduct of the way the GDR was dissolved. The west Germans went through a rough time when they attempted to de-nazify themselves.
East Germany completely skipped that part. Thanks to the weird GDR indoctrination we know have a weird blob of underlying extremism. Fucking sucks and the right wing party gets an unfortunate amount of support because of it and the current politicians.
That’s absolutely not true. My father who is now in his 60s still had (Alt)nazi teachers in west Germany. West Germany mostly skipped denazification as it was not politically wanted. Some nazis at the top were prosecuted, sure, but most every day nsdap party officials never had any problems, kept their positions as judges, teachers, doctors and so on. Saying that west Germany was de-nazified is wrong. From what I know, denazification in the east was much more thorough, which makes sense ideologically. Why would the Soviets tolerate Nazis? No way. I think the bigger problem was that the allied nations needed a military partner against the UDSSR quickly, which meant that most Nazis just kept their position.
The official denazification ended in both parts of Germany before 1950. All the Nazis were needed. It was not talked about what individuals had done before 45.
In the GDR it was by definition that all the Nazis had gone to the FRG. Prosecution came to a standstill. Nothing like the Zentralstelle in Ludwigsburg existed.
The silence about the time ended in the FRG with the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt and the student movement from the mid 60ies onwards. Willy Brandt on his knees in Warsaw kicked off some hearty discussions. Later there was the Holocaust TV series with a heavy impact.
And this is the real denazification of the population. The discourse about personal responsibility for historical events changed the society. I had such Nazi teachers in the 70ies, but they got challenged by younger teachers and older pupils. My music teacher went into early retirement after he was challenged for his current and past behaviour.
This has reached about 2/3 of the population in the west. The rest is still authoritarian and votes for AFD and CDU. In the east authoritarianism is still wide spread, because challenging authority was not a good idea under SED rule. And after the Wende it was all sugar coated by Kohl.
The problem will sadly grow, I fear. Because people who are not happy with the political climate can move away. And they do it, just got a new neighbour from Chemnitz.
East Germany completely skipped that part.
That is absolutely not true, the de-nazification in east Germany, was much more thoroughly than in the west.
I beg to differ. It stopped shortly after the war in east and west. But the west had 1968 and in the GDR the older generation was never asked what they did in the war. All the nazis had gone to the west by definition.
For example:
https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html
Absolutely ahistorical comment. The GDR denazified much more thoroughly, especially in the conservative /monarchical-leaning juridical branch, with well known consequences (eg, lack of judges with proper education). You can make a point that the ideologically loaded suppression was fostering an resurgence after the fall of the wall, but what you write is … false.
The GDR denazified much more thoroughly, especially in the conservative /monarchical-leaning juridical branch, with well known consequences (eg, lack of judges with proper education).
But on the other hand, didn’t the SED give old Nazis a political home in the National Front, supposedly to keep them in check and prevent them from potentially becoming an opposition force?
GDR was not alone in using this strategy, but I’m not aware of anywhere that didn’t end up lending a lot of legitimacy to fascists and coming back to bite them in the end. Same story played out in my country of origin, but there it was the centre-right that decided that they should absorb the fascists in an attempt to control them, and it predictably backfired.
It’s sociologically similar to how the USSR (and now Russia) love to whitewash all the heinous shit the Soviet Union did around the same time - and considering that the GDR was a member state of the USSR, it’s easy to see how that created a positive feedback loop.
Yeah, it’s all deeply fucked. I don’t think I am capable of making up the best solutions to this issue other than finally banning the nazi party, which was already acknowledged as a nazi party a while ago and only needs to be banned.
