this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Calling AfD Nazis is an exaggeration watering down the term.
I'm not saying actual honest-to-God Nazis are not coming back. In fact, I'm sure they are, no evil is ever defeated forever. Time to cast away stones and time to collect stones.
The Verfassungsschutz (Office for Protection of the Constitution) classified the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as right-wing extremists just last Tuseday. A year before that the AfD Thuringia was classified similarly by the respective Landesverfassungsschutz (State's Office for Protection of the Cnstitution), but was reclassified a level just before that as a suspected extremist right-wing party by the federal constitution protection office. The AfD-Juniors ("Junge Alternative") were classified as right-wing extremists last April by the Verfassungsschutz.
They regularly catch ones attention with antisemitic, xenophobic statements at best and inhumane, anti-democratic sentiments at worst.
Considering that they start to get more and more political posts on a communal level, and remembering that the communal political landscape played a pivotal role for the rise of the NSDAP (I would provide a source, but it's in German) I would certainly say that's something to be very worried about.
I don't know what else you need. They speak like Nazis, they act like Nazis. They are Nazis. Just because they haven't reached that level of political power to set Jews and foreigners on fire again, doesn't mean they are harmless or that calling them out for what they are would "water down the term 'Nazi'".
Yes, I've heard of that. I've also heard that they vary much in, eh, ideological climate in different states. So - it may be just a result of them being a populist party.
That'd be fine, I can't write and speak in German, but a wee bit better at understanding texts.
Not really, I've actually took a lot of interest in how Nazis really spoke when I was 15 years old. It was a weird time in my life, so wanted to know more closely things surely known to be evil and good to recognize evil and good in my surroundings.
(Thinking of Klemperer's book.)
"Antisemitic and xenophobic" statements are not limited to Nazis, while some specifically Nazi traits of speech I can see being more popular, but really not limited to AfD and the likes. Even here one can encounter such.
I don't think they've started killing their opponents on the streets yet, or forming paramilitary groups.
You may be right, but parties and entities more similar to Nazis in other parts of the world usually were pretty open about their intentions from the very beginning, while AfD doesn't send the same signals.
As far as I can see it, this is spreading.
Regarding the source, here is one I was thinking about earlier:
From: https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/ls_thueringen/2007_Wei%C3%9Fbecker_Kommunalpolitik_NSDAP.pdf page 2.
Regarding the remaining part of your reply:
It seems that you understand Nazis in a form when they were already at a state of having considerable amount of power. I understand Nazis already on a mere ideological level, that's why I see a lot of similarities between Nazis back then when they were just starting out, and those Neo-Nazis now who come in several colours and shapes. And especially the AfD seems to be a magnet for those extremists.
Yes of course not. This is just another exemplary piece of the whole image.
As I said before, they haven't reached that level of power yet. Besides that:
The politician Wolfgang Lübcke was killed by a right-wing extremist who had ties to the AfD. Even though - in all macabre "fairness" - the party is not responsible for that, this again shows a severe lack of distancing from right-wing extremism within the party.
Then there is the "Reichsbürger" (citizen of the Reich) milieu, against whom police raids were conducted where plans to overthrow the government were revealed and a over 100 weapons were confiscated. This is not the AfD, yes. But here again, a lot of AfD members seem to tolerate or even downplay this (see for example this article). And let's not forget how a AfD politician gave tours to Reichsbürger-members through the government disctrict in preparation of them planning to storm the Bundestag.
Even (former) AfD members criticize their (former) party and make comparisons with the NSDAP, like a former AfD city councillor.
Let's deal with this here:
Oh boy, I can give you many many many examples. But let's take one promiment one, since I've already written a lot: The floor leader of the AfD Thuringia, Björn Höcke, got his immunity lifted several times and against whom a criminal process is currently running for demagoguery and using the SA (Sturmabteilung of the NSDAP) slogan "Alles für Deutschland". (Since there are several articles about that and is also listed on wikipedia, you can easily find according sources yourself, but I'll leave you one article on that here for your convenience: Björn Höckes Immunität erneut aufgehoben .) There is so much more regarding his views and what he said, which makes it hard for me to not see him as a Nazi.
Maybe a slightly deeper dive into AfD talk might change your mind ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--UWifFi978 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCScM7qd8g ). That's were our experiences seem to differ. It's a slow process, but there are many problematic signals (and as time goes on we get more and more of them) which show that the AfD are becoming a serious problem if they don't start to fight against extremists within their own party. The NSDAP didn't start sterilizing disabled people from day one either.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=--UWifFi978
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=2YCScM7qd8g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
A party tolerating Nazis in their ranks is not worth differentiating from a party made entirely out of Nazis.
Ya know, if politicians have Himmler's instruction to produce more "aryan" babies hanging in their bedroom as a poster, it is safe to say it's a Nazi party.
Anything is worth differentiating from a thing which is, well, different from it.
Kemalists are not the same as Young Turks, for example (however, saying that Kemal and Kemalists are not a direct continuation of Young Turks for all intents and purposes is something only a clueless European would do, trying to whitewash them because Kemalist Turkey joined NATO early).