Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. As I reported this week in the Intercept, four people in Berlin – three EU citizens and one US citizen – are set to be deported over their involvement in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza. None of the four have been convicted of a crime, and yet the authorities are seeking to simply throw them out of the country.
The accusations against them include aggravated breach of the peace and obstruction of a police arrest. Reports from last year suggest that one of the actions they were alleged to have been involved in included breaking into a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.
But the deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviours: chanting slogans such as “Free Gaza” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blockades (a tactic frequently used by climate activists), and calling a police officer a “fascist”. Read closely, the real charge appears to be something more basic: protest itself.
Germans never stopped being nazis. They just laid low until they found a new acceptable target.
Much of the mentality that enabled nazi Germany stayed. I’m half romanian, half german. I’m also part jewish. My ancestors died in the Holocaust. The German love for law and order scares me. They’re overly obedient. Rarely walk out of line on serious matters. Mark my words, but someday the AfD will come to power, and they’ll make use of all the tools the liberals implemented for them (suppressing protests, deporting people, cutting funding, and so on) and no one will bat an eye. Because a law is a law and therefore it is to be followed. Hopefully I’ll manage to be far away by that time.
What mentality do you mean? The obedience? I feel like it’s more nuanced than that. Yes, following the rules everyone agreed on is lived in a rather inflexible way. If you think about it though, that’s democracy. It’s a commitment to the compromise. The unwritten contract between the majority and the minority. We recognize that the moment you start thinking “I don’t like this law, so I won’t follow it”, democracy falls apart. People here want law and order even for laws they disagree with, because collectively that means that laws they agree with will also be followed by everyone.
There are limits though. While I agree that it’s scary to see the AFD become more and more popular, I disagree with your prediction. The idea of “never again” regarding the Holocaust guides every single part of public life. There are not many Germans who would say they are proud of their country. Only every two years, when Germany plays soccer in the international leagues, flying a German flag does not feel weird. Shame for your own country. That’s what Germans think everyone expects us to feel.
Strong military? We’re watching you. Your Great-Grandfather did what? Be sorry. Proud of Germany? How dare you.
The very first words of our constitution (“Human dignity is untouchable.”) are a testament to the Holocaust. It’s an incredibly well chosen sentence that every single law is measured against. We know the entire world expects us to uphold this principle forever.
I am not arguing against the danger for democracy that the AFD poses. It’s very real. But in Germany we even have a law to actually make parties illegal that are against the constitution, most importantly the first sentence of it.
So, if Germans are obedient to the law, and the most important principle of our law makes anything even close to the Holocaust illegal, isn’t obedience a good thing then? The real question is, would Germans decide to just accept unconstitutional laws, or rather insist on upholding the constitution? I think the huge protests in the past months have made clear that many people are already standing up for the constitution. Not because they just follow rules blindly, but because they actually believe in the principles of compromise, democracy and dignity.
It’s amazing what articulating your thoughts properly does for the votes. Maybe OP could learn a thing or two.
Nazis were installed in East and West Germany
Nazis were kept at industrial managers for West/East Germany
Nazis that weren’t punished got hired via Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim, scottfree from the mass murder.
Nazis that escaped to Argentina eventually got influence there and back home.
I know hindsight is 20/20 but we should have arrested every single one of them until they died from old age, and let their graves be a monument to their atrocities and a public bathroom.
Careful, your ignorance is leaking.
Explain to me how deporting people for protesting against genocide is a thing decent people do.
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I was responding to your original premise, that “Germans never stopped being Nazis” - and you know it. Don’t try to feign outrage at being called out for condemning an entire country’s people (“Germans”) for the actions of a few (The Berlin Senate Administration.)
Do better, and perhaps people will earnestly engage with you for the better instead of just getting upset with you.
Germany’s post-World War II government was riddled with former Nazis
For a more than 20 years fter World War II, nearly 100 former members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party held high-ranking positions in the West German Justice Ministry, according to a German government report.
From 1949 to 1973, 90 of the 170 leading lawyers and judges in the then-West German Justice Ministry had been members of the Nazi Party.
Of those 90 officials, 34 had been members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Nazi Party paramilitaries who aided Hitler’s rise and took part in Kristallnacht, a night of violence that is believed to have left 91 Jewish people dead.
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The prevalence of former Nazi officials in the ministry allowed them to shield one another from post-war justice and to carry over some Nazi policies, like discrimination against gays, into the West German government.
One lawyer who helped craft discriminatory laws barring marriages between Jews and non-Jews during the Nazi regime held a top family-law position in the post-World War II Justice Ministry, according to The Local.
“The Nazi-era lawyers went on to cover up old injustice rather than to uncover it and thereby created new injustice,” said Heiko Maas, Germany’s justice minister who presented the report Monday, according to AFP.
The infiltration of the post-war West German government by former Nazis was not limited to the Justice Ministry. A report released late last year found that between 1949 and 1970, 54% of Interior Ministry staffers were former Nazi Party members, and that 8% of them had served in the Nazi Interior Ministry, which at one point was run by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
Is your premise that people cannot see the errors of their ways and therefore cannot change? Or are you presenting facts in an attempt to imply that all this time there’s been a shadow Nazi government? Or…? I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but during the war years, everyone had to be a member of the Nazi party. All youth groups that weren’t official Nazi organizations were banned.
In the years between WWII and German reunification, there was an active effort to stamp out Nazi ideals in the West. Children learned in graphic detail what atrocities were committed, and many of them took those learnings to heart. To this day, spending on military in Germany, surveillance by the state, are fraught topics. German politics couldn’t be further from a 1 or 2 party system.
What was informs but doesn’t dictate what is. I have spent a lot of time in Germany, and I’m certain that in spite of the rise of AfD, Germany is the European country furthest from Nazi ideals.
The fact that it hasn’t even been a century and they’re already reverting is proof enough for me that they didn’t change.
Yeah as an american I absolutely can’t relate to the experience of people blaming an entire country for the actions of their government. Especially by europeans who always act like they’re better than us despite starting two world wars, the slave trade, and currently falling back into fascism, which they invented by the way. That could never possibly happen and I apologize for acting in retaliation for these actions which have not happened.