The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has published an amazing story about an anonymous professor in Hessen and his run-in with the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
It's as if someone read Kafka's "The Trial" and decided that was the best way to run society, except even worse because the bureaucracy is staffed by morally conformist, not terribly bright women
This is exactly right. Both society and the women themselves would be better off if theae women were looking after small children instead of working as nanny police state enforcers. That's not even a knock on childcare: I have a toddler and the job of raising good kids requires a great deal of time, energy, and patience.
yikes! German rap! German HR rap! That was punishment in itself, like an episode of The Office produced by the Stasi.
The Karenocracy sees itself as the world's cool mom who wants to be BFFs with all the kids and is down with all the latest styles and bands...they will tell you all the proper ways to think, feel and act—because they just CARE so much about you, the poor and the planet.
They're like a cross bw Sesame Street and Mao's Red Guard.
Yes. Hannah Arendt was actually wrong when she coined the phrase "banality of evil" for Adolf Eichmann, when he stood trial in Israel. She didn't sit out the proceedings to the end, by which time it became apparent to close observers that Eichmann was a clever manipulator
The "banality of evil" that she thought she had witness was actually the deceptive self-image Eichmann had constructed: the pure bureaucrat, who meticulously mapped out train routes (for the labor/death camps), an obedient public servant taking pride in his work with never a thought for the purpose of his calculations.
But the phrase has found its consummation in the present day in the managerial state whose offices are dominated by neurotic, childless women of inferior intelligence.
Thanks. I think Eugyppius should seriously consider using this video in an upcoming article as a prime exhibit, with English subtitles (although that may be too dispiriting a task). The paragraph of commentary by the X-uploader is worth reading, and I translate it here (not an automatic translation):
This is not merely Left-Greenism in its final phase - it is the Federal Republic in a nutshell. Infantilization taken to the limit. These are exactly the people that the German nanny state has been spawning over the course of decades: naïve, infantile, disconnected from reality, and easily manipulated. This is the kind of people who will take a dystopia for the proper way ahead, and who will orchestrate their own downfall. the kind of people who are doubtless to be found in any decaying empire.
Very well put Rocío. I would add that they also have lost the minimum standards of human decency as the grotesque persecution of this professor shows clearly.
A question I find myself asking a lot. Energy policy, immigration policy, socialism. Do they think they will escape the consequences? Or their children?
"... or their children?" - surely you jest, Spaceman? The German state is populated by cat ladies.
If the collapse comes, the starving cats will knaw the flesh off the bones of their mistresses, and then find a new, feral life among the ruins, as countless generations of cats have done before them.
In late-communist Hungary, I found a large, thriving colony of cats living in the ruins of former imperial offices the Communist state had neither the means nor the will to restore - the state merely boarded them off and bequeathed them to the cats.
As for the middle-aged humans in the layers of the state above the cat ladies, yes, they think they will escape the consequences, and they are probably right, since the collapse will only reach its worst phase after their deaths.
The cat ladies, though, believe in an inclusive, sustainable and ethically-sourced future. But in their famished, shivering final minutes, there might be a flicker of understanding in their shriveled minds.
If we reduce societal standards, morally, physically, and intellectually, so the less morally desirable, physically efficient, and intellectually valuable can have as much honor, be as included, and have as much wealth as the more desirable, physically efficient, and valuable,
then
we’ll have a more inclusive and equitable society that is morally less desirable, physically less efficient & effective, and intellectually less valuable.
Yes, something has to give. If you want to be nice all the time, don't expect to survive. The criminal justice system alone shows the folly of novel feelgood ideas; dangerous men walk the streets when in previous eras we would have hanged them.
I followed the link. I can't think of an English equivalent for "Betreuungsrepublik", unless it's "nanny state". Neither that nor "welfare state" has the same nuance.
It’s most disturbing that there is no retribution against the real perps…the mindless gnomes licking the boots of the overlords. It’s all a test lab to discover/eliminate weaknesses in their tyrannical game plan. Once satisfied this is coming to everyone.
Even without being "guilty" - there is now law which could have been violated by the Professor anyway - he was stripped of a number of his basic rights and kept in this state of being a nobody for 16 months! So, as a perfectly innocent man! I cannot imagine a greater and obvious injustice than this - only comparable to what I've been experiencing during my 30 years behind the wall in the GDR. This comparison, however, is to me alarmingly obvious and perfect!
He might have been better off. If he appealed to leaders of the AfD, might they have stepped in and tried to protect him? I might be missing something, but I can't imagine that most popular political party in Germany doesn't have at least a little influence.
See the comment of ron - in addition - unbelievable as it may seem from outside Germany - AfD has until now no official influence - neither on the Offices for the Protection of the Constitution, nor on the jurisdiction nor on University Heads or the like. These are all tightly protected against any influence by the ruling parties and AfD is explicitly excluded. Lest we forget, the AfD itself is under the inspection of the Offices for the Protection (sic! :-) ) of the Constitution!
Except he wasn't a member nor apparently an active supporter of the AFD. Had he appealed to the AFD he would confirmed the investigators insinuation that he was a clandestine supporter of the AFD surreptitiously working in the University faculty.
Protection from persecution may become an excellent reason to join AfD.
This has probably happened in the US: lawfare caused never-Trumpers to cross over to MAGA: a mix of being disgusted by lawfare and seeing nothing to lose as the persecutions go further and further down the list to more tangential political enemies changes the calculus, from both the "idealism" / "principles" angle and the "pragmatic coward" / "I just want to grill" angles at once.
That the first court in his lawsuit dismissed his claim is most concerning. Did the appeals court award him his attorney's fees, or does he have to sue separately to try to get reimbursed?
Does he have standing to sue anyone for damages (for intentional infliction of emotional distress, loss of income, etc.)?
This would require time travel of course for me to collect, but I would bet my life that there were more people back in Nazi Germany willing to hide me under the floorboards than can be found in today's Germany or the US during Our Plague Era.
Here in the US the Democrats wanted us to elect the ticket including Snitch-Line Walz. Perhaps the only happy news today is that the BBC Director General and his associate had to resign for what was in truth their attempt to thwart Trump Redux--not just lying to their own countrymen but foreign election interference too.
Perhaps all of us need to keep a pushka box on our kitchen counters in which to save money for the legal defense funds of anyone, really, because anyone might need such help at any time. Ourselves not least.
I was mystified by the expression "to thwart rump Redux", but decided it must be about TRUMP's second term. And man, are we enjoying it. He is bound to be counted among America's few truly outstanding Presidents, a man who dumped the Dems into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
LOL they do seem to have quite a record of being allergic to success. Trump is a different animal though, and so are most of his top brass. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Trump's top brass are almost all drawn from the ordinary GOP. It's just that they were smart enough to see an apprenticeship with him as beneficial to their futures.
They're not the problem. The Senate and House are. All of industry, in one way or another, has greatly profited from illegal or sketchy legal immigration. Few in the GOP want Trump to succeed on his biggest issues. They just hope to ride out the next three years.
I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere and maybe here too. The GOP is a party of flabby losers ill-equipped to counter the Democrats who are a party of deranged vicious toddlers. I see this all over X which is a useful snapshot of the real world no matter how much some try to insist otherwise.
The vast majority of Americans are against illegal immigration, and they vote. For decades the business interests which profit from it have been able to keep it mostly in the shadows, but the Biden Administration's wholesale opening of the border turned it into a huge festering sore. Now the crime and filth from it is being felt just about everywhere, and I think it's going to drive presidential, and maybe congressional elections far into the future. Whether or not the GOP is willing to capitalize on that is the question. I'm not as pessimistic as you are. MAGA will not go away at the end of Trump's term.
At the moment conservatives are doing the Pod People Fingerpoint at one another all over social media while others are screaming "I'm MAGA!" "No, I'm MAGA!"
Meanwhile the GOP is still sanctifying Reagan who was the father of horrors foreign and domestic that brought us to this moment.
I'm not MAGA. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Libertarian. I'm just an ordinary person with a burnished-by-experience deep appreciation for the Western Enlightenment and what the US Founders managed to achieve in an extraordinary moment in time and I wish we had a country able consistently to live by those values.
This is true; and you've got reasons to fear such a turn of events, although those reasons do not reside in the White House. But look on the sunny side, since the political tide runs in our favor. Right now the Dems are in disarray, and may remain so until they snap out of their ideological daze. In the meantime we have several solid Republican successors for a Trump 3rd and 4th term. And there are precedents for one of the parties remaining in office for 2 or 3 decades. So don't despair!
Trump is a unique political animal and in that sense he has no natural successor. Unless the GOP is demolished and reborn it will be a grim landscape ahead.
Conservatives are making idiots of themselves hourly on X which in fact is an excellent weather-vane for real-life consequences. They've an unerring instinct for the worst things to put all their energy in while the left is remarkably successful at gaining control of the most crucial engines in society.
It's all up to the younger generation now. I've fully expiated my two votes for Obama and can die with a clean conscience whenever I get shoved off this mortal coil. But we do or should want the very best for our children and we see how many people fail so terribly at giving them a fighting chance.
Viewed in our provincial lens, there is some optimism. But like it or not we're part of a world civilization and economy, and a lot of the rest of the world is acting like it had elected Kamala.
The authoritarian government they fear the AfD would impose is already in operation. Idiots. What is next, bureaucrats chanting “We had to destroy the Federal Republic in order to save it!”???
Yes. Also their intriguing collaboration, which I didn't get into here: When the professor complained to his employer, they referred him to the Office, when he complained to the Office his suspension was a university decision and not their concern. Presumably the internal uni 'disciplinary' investigation, which saw the professor and his wife interrogated, yielded materials that went straight to the constitutional protectors' files.
That is the lesson from America. Various forms of fleeing work in a physically big nation. But you can't run forever. At best you are leaving the civil war for your own children.
Simple question. How do you tolerate this situation? Oppressive government, isn't this similar to the Stasi? Is the taint of the nazis still so strong that someone justifies this governmental behavior. Time to stop
It seems quite a few German people not only consent, find this normal, but even support it and strongly oppose any critics. I see in the Belgian press, how quite a few Belgians mix in the German political situation with banners against AfD. That is IMO just as bad, as people from country X still supporting or opposing the X regime, even though they have lived many years abroad.
I have a very bright academical curriculum and am considered by the people that know me a being anything but retarded. You are not only a fool, but a fool with very bad manners. With peoole like you one can better understand the behaviour of Germans in the nazi period.
One can feel the utter delight of the university president, the sense of being a tautly stretched human balloon skinful of IMPORTANCE, living through a dramatic and glorious moment in his long career of being a Very Good Boy:
"The President ostentatiously leafed through a folder and finally explained that he had a report from the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution "
Given the extent to which Germany has become a police state, I wonder how long it will be before the authorities ring eugyppius's doorbell to inform him that he is under investigation for disclosing the embarrassing extent of the German dystopia. In the US, by way of contrast, we have a 1st Amendment that provides us with free speech rights and because we have the 2nd Amendment, which vouchsafes our right to bear arms, we are able to protect the 1st Amendment.
I can't imagine how many generations need to pass before the legacy of what happened in Germany is finally digested and pooped out. I believe it is still illegal to publish a book in Germany with a Swastika on it--we might regard that as a breech of our constitutional rights but we have no clue what it is like to live a generation or two after that experience ie of naziism. That people and the government react strongly, even if wrongly, should not be surprising and we have plenty of examples in the good ol USA.
Considering "German's" have been perfecting all of this for 90 years I would expect you should be worried. We had a short test run here in the US and I am sure it will come back in the future. It seems to be the human way.
"Bauman’s “Retrotopia” argues that, as the public loses faith in future progress and political solutions, it retreats into a nostalgic and tribalistic idealization of the past as a refuge..."
It's as if someone read Kafka's "The Trial" and decided that was the best way to run society, except even worse because the bureaucracy is staffed by morally conformist, not terribly bright women
gotta employ the overeducated midwits somehow, why not as police state bureaucrats?
This is exactly right. Both society and the women themselves would be better off if theae women were looking after small children instead of working as nanny police state enforcers. That's not even a knock on childcare: I have a toddler and the job of raising good kids requires a great deal of time, energy, and patience.
it's all another lesson in don't tear down the old fences until you understand why they were put up in the first place.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I wouldn’t turn my toddler over to them.
We really don't. Let them starve if they have no skills anyone would spend their own money on.
Pretty much
Only because now every sperm is sacred. In the old days they’d have stepped on a cactus and died of sepsis.
And this is how the Berlin justice department is staffed: https://x.com/reitschuster/status/1987267133257003350?t=1SoVW0diNe9lygjKRhU7Ng&s=19
yikes! German rap! German HR rap! That was punishment in itself, like an episode of The Office produced by the Stasi.
The Karenocracy sees itself as the world's cool mom who wants to be BFFs with all the kids and is down with all the latest styles and bands...they will tell you all the proper ways to think, feel and act—because they just CARE so much about you, the poor and the planet.
They're like a cross bw Sesame Street and Mao's Red Guard.
"a cross between Sesame Street and Mao's Red Guard"....lol, yes! Maybe a bit of the 'banality of evil' thing......
Yes. Hannah Arendt was actually wrong when she coined the phrase "banality of evil" for Adolf Eichmann, when he stood trial in Israel. She didn't sit out the proceedings to the end, by which time it became apparent to close observers that Eichmann was a clever manipulator
The "banality of evil" that she thought she had witness was actually the deceptive self-image Eichmann had constructed: the pure bureaucrat, who meticulously mapped out train routes (for the labor/death camps), an obedient public servant taking pride in his work with never a thought for the purpose of his calculations.
But the phrase has found its consummation in the present day in the managerial state whose offices are dominated by neurotic, childless women of inferior intelligence.
'a cross bw Sesame Street and Mao's Red Guard', indeed, with Paranoia as their middle name :-((
Thanks. I think Eugyppius should seriously consider using this video in an upcoming article as a prime exhibit, with English subtitles (although that may be too dispiriting a task). The paragraph of commentary by the X-uploader is worth reading, and I translate it here (not an automatic translation):
This is not merely Left-Greenism in its final phase - it is the Federal Republic in a nutshell. Infantilization taken to the limit. These are exactly the people that the German nanny state has been spawning over the course of decades: naïve, infantile, disconnected from reality, and easily manipulated. This is the kind of people who will take a dystopia for the proper way ahead, and who will orchestrate their own downfall. the kind of people who are doubtless to be found in any decaying empire.
Very well put Rocío. I would add that they also have lost the minimum standards of human decency as the grotesque persecution of this professor shows clearly.
I couldn’t watch the whole thing. It made my spine tingle, and not in a good way.
Absolutely terrifying. What goes on in their heads?
A question I find myself asking a lot. Energy policy, immigration policy, socialism. Do they think they will escape the consequences? Or their children?
"... or their children?" - surely you jest, Spaceman? The German state is populated by cat ladies.
If the collapse comes, the starving cats will knaw the flesh off the bones of their mistresses, and then find a new, feral life among the ruins, as countless generations of cats have done before them.
In late-communist Hungary, I found a large, thriving colony of cats living in the ruins of former imperial offices the Communist state had neither the means nor the will to restore - the state merely boarded them off and bequeathed them to the cats.
As for the middle-aged humans in the layers of the state above the cat ladies, yes, they think they will escape the consequences, and they are probably right, since the collapse will only reach its worst phase after their deaths.
The cat ladies, though, believe in an inclusive, sustainable and ethically-sourced future. But in their famished, shivering final minutes, there might be a flicker of understanding in their shriveled minds.
I suspect even at the end they will embrace their delusions. We really do have the wrong people making decisions.
Thats solid gold right there!!
If we reduce societal standards, morally, physically, and intellectually, so the less morally desirable, physically efficient, and intellectually valuable can have as much honor, be as included, and have as much wealth as the more desirable, physically efficient, and valuable,
then
we’ll have a more inclusive and equitable society that is morally less desirable, physically less efficient & effective, and intellectually less valuable.
Yes, something has to give. If you want to be nice all the time, don't expect to survive. The criminal justice system alone shows the folly of novel feelgood ideas; dangerous men walk the streets when in previous eras we would have hanged them.
60 cycle ground loop hum.
Church choir or Kindergarten? Seriously!
C'mon guys, dystopia is fun!
I followed the link. I can't think of an English equivalent for "Betreuungsrepublik", unless it's "nanny state". Neither that nor "welfare state" has the same nuance.
Stop - before it gives Putin a hernia from laughing too much.
*clicks link*
...
Why did I do that to myself?!
very painful video to watch … looks like a collection of autistic sheep looking for pasture
It’s most disturbing that there is no retribution against the real perps…the mindless gnomes licking the boots of the overlords. It’s all a test lab to discover/eliminate weaknesses in their tyrannical game plan. Once satisfied this is coming to everyone.
"Der Process." My thought exactly.
Wow. I mention Kafka, post it, and the first comment that loads is this. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Well said
I thought immediately of “ The Trial “ as well
And if he had been “guilty” of being an active member of the AfD, then what?
The distinction made between “innocent” and “guilty” in this case is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all.
Even without being "guilty" - there is now law which could have been violated by the Professor anyway - he was stripped of a number of his basic rights and kept in this state of being a nobody for 16 months! So, as a perfectly innocent man! I cannot imagine a greater and obvious injustice than this - only comparable to what I've been experiencing during my 30 years behind the wall in the GDR. This comparison, however, is to me alarmingly obvious and perfect!
That’s very scary.
He might have been better off. If he appealed to leaders of the AfD, might they have stepped in and tried to protect him? I might be missing something, but I can't imagine that most popular political party in Germany doesn't have at least a little influence.
See the comment of ron - in addition - unbelievable as it may seem from outside Germany - AfD has until now no official influence - neither on the Offices for the Protection of the Constitution, nor on the jurisdiction nor on University Heads or the like. These are all tightly protected against any influence by the ruling parties and AfD is explicitly excluded. Lest we forget, the AfD itself is under the inspection of the Offices for the Protection (sic! :-) ) of the Constitution!
Except he wasn't a member nor apparently an active supporter of the AFD. Had he appealed to the AFD he would confirmed the investigators insinuation that he was a clandestine supporter of the AFD surreptitiously working in the University faculty.
Protection from persecution may become an excellent reason to join AfD.
This has probably happened in the US: lawfare caused never-Trumpers to cross over to MAGA: a mix of being disgusted by lawfare and seeing nothing to lose as the persecutions go further and further down the list to more tangential political enemies changes the calculus, from both the "idealism" / "principles" angle and the "pragmatic coward" / "I just want to grill" angles at once.
That the first court in his lawsuit dismissed his claim is most concerning. Did the appeals court award him his attorney's fees, or does he have to sue separately to try to get reimbursed?
Does he have standing to sue anyone for damages (for intentional infliction of emotional distress, loss of income, etc.)?
Good questions, in a country with any vestige of justice and morality the answers would have to be yes.
It is clear that this "country with any vestige of justice and morality" is not Germany today.
Not much better than the GDR.
This would require time travel of course for me to collect, but I would bet my life that there were more people back in Nazi Germany willing to hide me under the floorboards than can be found in today's Germany or the US during Our Plague Era.
Here in the US the Democrats wanted us to elect the ticket including Snitch-Line Walz. Perhaps the only happy news today is that the BBC Director General and his associate had to resign for what was in truth their attempt to thwart Trump Redux--not just lying to their own countrymen but foreign election interference too.
Perhaps all of us need to keep a pushka box on our kitchen counters in which to save money for the legal defense funds of anyone, really, because anyone might need such help at any time. Ourselves not least.
I was mystified by the expression "to thwart rump Redux", but decided it must be about TRUMP's second term. And man, are we enjoying it. He is bound to be counted among America's few truly outstanding Presidents, a man who dumped the Dems into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Correction made!
Yes, I got what I voted for but the GOP can be reliably counted on to do everything possible to enable the Democrats to win again.
LOL they do seem to have quite a record of being allergic to success. Trump is a different animal though, and so are most of his top brass. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Trump's top brass are almost all drawn from the ordinary GOP. It's just that they were smart enough to see an apprenticeship with him as beneficial to their futures.
They're not the problem. The Senate and House are. All of industry, in one way or another, has greatly profited from illegal or sketchy legal immigration. Few in the GOP want Trump to succeed on his biggest issues. They just hope to ride out the next three years.
I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere and maybe here too. The GOP is a party of flabby losers ill-equipped to counter the Democrats who are a party of deranged vicious toddlers. I see this all over X which is a useful snapshot of the real world no matter how much some try to insist otherwise.
The vast majority of Americans are against illegal immigration, and they vote. For decades the business interests which profit from it have been able to keep it mostly in the shadows, but the Biden Administration's wholesale opening of the border turned it into a huge festering sore. Now the crime and filth from it is being felt just about everywhere, and I think it's going to drive presidential, and maybe congressional elections far into the future. Whether or not the GOP is willing to capitalize on that is the question. I'm not as pessimistic as you are. MAGA will not go away at the end of Trump's term.
At the moment conservatives are doing the Pod People Fingerpoint at one another all over social media while others are screaming "I'm MAGA!" "No, I'm MAGA!"
Meanwhile the GOP is still sanctifying Reagan who was the father of horrors foreign and domestic that brought us to this moment.
I'm not MAGA. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Libertarian. I'm just an ordinary person with a burnished-by-experience deep appreciation for the Western Enlightenment and what the US Founders managed to achieve in an extraordinary moment in time and I wish we had a country able consistently to live by those values.
I don't consider Trump a Republican. That's just the skin covering he put on so he could run for president.
He's not your parents Republican. I don't think he is, at all. I no longer think I am one.
This is true; and you've got reasons to fear such a turn of events, although those reasons do not reside in the White House. But look on the sunny side, since the political tide runs in our favor. Right now the Dems are in disarray, and may remain so until they snap out of their ideological daze. In the meantime we have several solid Republican successors for a Trump 3rd and 4th term. And there are precedents for one of the parties remaining in office for 2 or 3 decades. So don't despair!
Trump is a unique political animal and in that sense he has no natural successor. Unless the GOP is demolished and reborn it will be a grim landscape ahead.
Conservatives are making idiots of themselves hourly on X which in fact is an excellent weather-vane for real-life consequences. They've an unerring instinct for the worst things to put all their energy in while the left is remarkably successful at gaining control of the most crucial engines in society.
It's all up to the younger generation now. I've fully expiated my two votes for Obama and can die with a clean conscience whenever I get shoved off this mortal coil. But we do or should want the very best for our children and we see how many people fail so terribly at giving them a fighting chance.
Viewed in our provincial lens, there is some optimism. But like it or not we're part of a world civilization and economy, and a lot of the rest of the world is acting like it had elected Kamala.
As far as I'm concerned, if they think that, they can have her. Complete with a red bow on top of the burdensome unburdenings, and all the rest of it.
Yep.
The authoritarian government they fear the AfD would impose is already in operation. Idiots. What is next, bureaucrats chanting “We had to destroy the Federal Republic in order to save it!”???
Ah, but the right people, such as themselves, need to be the ones in power, you see…
Until they are not any longer.
Note the ideological overlap between the Hessian Office and the targeted employer (higher ed) and the degree of compliance.
Yes. Also their intriguing collaboration, which I didn't get into here: When the professor complained to his employer, they referred him to the Office, when he complained to the Office his suspension was a university decision and not their concern. Presumably the internal uni 'disciplinary' investigation, which saw the professor and his wife interrogated, yielded materials that went straight to the constitutional protectors' files.
Lesson: Never look for courage in university offices. Or almost any office, for that matter.
The diffusion of accountability is the super power of managerialism. You wouldn’t even know whom to shoot, should you decide to run amok.
Well, you could shoot them all and let a higher power sort them out.
Given the nature of that particular target rich environment, I suspect it'd be a *lower* power, in the end...
"Let's see, which circle does *this* one belong in?"
Just like they did in 1209, after the siege of Béziers. Except that was before firearms.
run
No, rather fight. In the end we'll run out of places to flee to.
That is the lesson from America. Various forms of fleeing work in a physically big nation. But you can't run forever. At best you are leaving the civil war for your own children.
Sadly, America learns nothing that did not emanate from their own corrupt heads.
Where to? Certainly not to here in the UK!
absolutely. This is worse IMO than the former communist countries, or at the least as bad.
It is worse because the communists were oppressing the nations, this Western cabal and its goons are destroying them with gusto.
Not as bad. Yet . . .
Simple question. How do you tolerate this situation? Oppressive government, isn't this similar to the Stasi? Is the taint of the nazis still so strong that someone justifies this governmental behavior. Time to stop
It seems quite a few German people not only consent, find this normal, but even support it and strongly oppose any critics. I see in the Belgian press, how quite a few Belgians mix in the German political situation with banners against AfD. That is IMO just as bad, as people from country X still supporting or opposing the X regime, even though they have lived many years abroad.
This is so German. But it's also British now too
"Is the taint of the nazis still so strong that someone justifies this governmental behavior"
Yes, it's still so strong that in an effort to avoid it, they have become what they hate.
Many germans believe insults do not fall under free speech.
It depends on the identity
of the insulted. The law is not equal for everyone.
Go fuck yourself.
If you were not the fool that you are, you would have understood that you confirmed my point with your post.
If you were not retarded you would not start arguing with me on this matter in the first place.
I have a very bright academical curriculum and am considered by the people that know me a being anything but retarded. You are not only a fool, but a fool with very bad manners. With peoole like you one can better understand the behaviour of Germans in the nazi period.
One can feel the utter delight of the university president, the sense of being a tautly stretched human balloon skinful of IMPORTANCE, living through a dramatic and glorious moment in his long career of being a Very Good Boy:
"The President ostentatiously leafed through a folder and finally explained that he had a report from the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution "
The pomposity is tangible.
Yes!
looks like Germany is a police state once again. Sad. Another reason, why the US needs to stay out of European entanglements.
Given the extent to which Germany has become a police state, I wonder how long it will be before the authorities ring eugyppius's doorbell to inform him that he is under investigation for disclosing the embarrassing extent of the German dystopia. In the US, by way of contrast, we have a 1st Amendment that provides us with free speech rights and because we have the 2nd Amendment, which vouchsafes our right to bear arms, we are able to protect the 1st Amendment.
I wonder if the fact that he publishes in English rather than German helps to keep him off their radar.
words fail me
I can't imagine how many generations need to pass before the legacy of what happened in Germany is finally digested and pooped out. I believe it is still illegal to publish a book in Germany with a Swastika on it--we might regard that as a breech of our constitutional rights but we have no clue what it is like to live a generation or two after that experience ie of naziism. That people and the government react strongly, even if wrongly, should not be surprising and we have plenty of examples in the good ol USA.
As I understand it, you can't put a swastika on a book cover, even if it's in service of criticizing Nazism.
Wolf Biermann commented on this digestive process in 1965:
https://youtu.be/N4s5Ozkv9ZA?si=l85af8vlFUTOcm1o
Considering "German's" have been perfecting all of this for 90 years I would expect you should be worried. We had a short test run here in the US and I am sure it will come back in the future. It seems to be the human way.
"Bauman’s “Retrotopia” argues that, as the public loses faith in future progress and political solutions, it retreats into a nostalgic and tribalistic idealization of the past as a refuge..."
I can see that…
Scariest thing I have read in years.
This is where our wonderful canadian progressives wish to take us as well.
Ask your friendly neighborhood ostrich. It was forbidden to conduct independent testing or photograph the incident..
I saw some before and after photos of that. Absolutely heart-breaking.