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Germany arrests suspected members of neo-Nazi group plotting revolt (www.reuters.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Things are getting serious here, and I don’t think people are as concerned as they should be, people trust the system will hold.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

From the outside looking in, it does feel like Germany and France are ignoring a lot of the warning signs that other countries have fallen into with regards to rising fascist movements.

Germany's always seemed like this semi-utopic heart of Europe that learned all the right lessons from its history and miraculously emerged free and strong despite everything. But I'm worried there's been more laurel-resting than progress as of late, and the seeds of discontent are taking root.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Civilization is never more than two missed meals away from collapse. In a more general sense, existential threats (or the perception thereof) erode civility and make people susceptible to tribal thinking.

We (Germany) have a number of such threats:

  • Several immigration and refugee waves.
  • A flagging economy due to the impeding loss of several once-reliable markets. (China lost its appetite for German cars and the States have been increasingly volatile in recent years.) The German economy is very export-oriented.
  • Rising food costs due to the Ukraine war.
  • COVID-19.
  • The housing crisis.
  • Climate change.
  • The whole woke/anti-woke thing.
  • An increasing perception of all established political parties as useless or even actively detrimental.
  • The botched reunification. The Eastern federal countries have been disappointed by the mainstream parties so severely and continually that populists like the AfD can easily find an audience.
  • A (now defunct) government coalition where one of the parties had no interest in actually cooperating with the others, the second one has a recent-ish reputation for having no idea what they're doing, and the third one is the target of a sustained attack meme campaign. Oh, and the chancellor had a corruption scandal.

Add to that the massive online presence of the hard right and you get a lot of people who stop caring about civility and start caring about simple solutions to complex problems.

[–] shaserlark 2 points 4 days ago

Although the immigration and refugee waves have only become an issue due to the right wing narrative of a great replacement that got fueled by mainstream media and what were formerly centrist politicians. It was never actually as much of an issue as the other things you mentioned are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

We've had nothing but politicians working with americanism and populism for the last 25 years, people have become stupid and lazy. I remember the last time a right-wing populist party had 30% votes, the day before the election it came to light that they planned to work with extremist/nazis. They dropped below 5% over night.

Today the same situation just led to even more people voting for that party.

Only 40 years apart.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I was watching Where’s Wanda and was stunned to see a minor side character who was the German equivalent of a MAGA prepper, and who name dropped the Reich. I remember my German German teacher in high school talking about how society had collectively purged that stuff and anyone who talked like that would be completely ostracized.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Reichburgers

From my understanding their the German SovCits.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

They are, and they get about as much respect from the rest of us.