Germany’s spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.
The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany’s constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an “intense and comprehensive” examination.
“The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,” the BfV said on Friday.
Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.
As we say in Germany: Hope dies last
That view is literally “in Germany” and is certainly widespread (if you count both people who support the AfD and people who support the mainstream’s party take on Israel), because it’s literally “in Germany” that politicians and a segment of the press have been spreading as “normal” to support or not of people based on their race.
It’s kinda the whole point of my post that if you spread and normalize Racist takes on other people you’re cultivating Racism and hence get lots of Racists, and that’s exactly what’s happening in Germany (and the US, and Israel, to name just a few other supposed Democracies were this shit should not be happening).
Now, if you think the political and press environment in Germany spreading Racist views on human beings I something that reflects poorly on Germans, that’s all you.
I agree with you that the the sentence “the view in Germany” could be interpreted as “one view in Germany” (the one you were talking about before in this case). But calling it “the” instead of “this” gives it a very universal tone that may lead a lot of people (including me at first read) to intepret this as “the one and only view in Germany”.
Ofc fascising medias and politics have an influence on people in Germany (and thz opposite is also true, its a vicious cycle), and ofc there are a lot of different opinions, some fascists, some antifascists, in a country with tens of millions of people, i think we both agree on that.
I think people, including me, reacted relatively vigorously to the wording of your post (and not its meaning) because a confusion between Nazis and Germans have been observed a lot after WWII, and it’s something we (at least I) try to fight.
If I passed that impression, I’m sorry.
I’m well aware that plenty of people in Germany are fighting Far-Right extremist in all its forms, both at home and abroad and I definitely don’t think of Germans as “all the same” (if I did I would be a massive hypocrite) - as with everybody else Germans come in all sorts, good, bad and everything in between: so is human nature.
What I see is a political and press environment in Germany (and, as I said, I see similar things in other countries) spreading a way of thinking about other people which is the same that the far-right has, hence in my view it’s indirectly boosting the far-right in that country partly by confirming to people who already thought like that, that it’s fine to think so, and partly by teaching others to think like that.
This is not a German thing: the same kind of environment anywhere else would have the same result.