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Comment by 013a | Hacker News Reader

What is it with Germany and a continual bias toward fascism?

I am a foreigner living in Germany, and my diagnosis is that Germany is one of the lesser fascist nations in the western world. The UK is more fascist, certainly Austria and many eastern europe nations. Italy. Maybe even the US.

Germany has a weird divide. It is the one nation earth that REALLY tried hard to deal with its past — on the other hand it didn’t reach all the people. Especially not the eastern Germans who grew up under Soviet rule and who (much like many other ex soviet states) developed a weird nostalgia for the strong hand of the state — they are aware that comunism is dead, so they go for something else.

I don’t think German society is especially fascist in any way. Not more than other nations, it might be a little less so.

However especially CDU politicians are kinda hardline and they got many of their laws revoked by the constitutional court, as many acrivists predicted. Public surveilance is nowhere close to UK levels tho.

isn't it a global phenomenon at this point? it is trendy to call for a smaller world/craft anti-populace measures lest it get "out of control". the internet is basically the wild west and just like the wild west it will be tamed for profit

It's not just Germany. It's human nature. Look at the current media and political environment in the US. People with influence want to push us towards fascism or its equally aborrent flip-side - socialiam. And people are naturally drawn to it. There is an excellent book called "Escape From Freedom" by erich fromm which deals with people and their relationship with authority.

Because Spain and Italy never went down that road. And now Turkey and Hungary.

It's not a German thing, it's a late state capitalism thing.

I think you mean "late stage". It's supposed to be a cancer pun.

Yes. Although now that you point it out, I think it works either way [ed: as a cancer analogy, rather than a pun, though] .

We don't need the antisemitism here, thanks.

Antisemitism? I think you mean Marxism? I'm not sure how one would construe a clear statement about sosio-economic theory to be an ethnic slur?

That was certainly not my intention.

[ed: or clear opinion. A statement might be more along the line of: the build up of anti-democratic and anti-labour power structures arise naturally in a saturated marked that see a higher and higher concentration of wealth, and growing inequality - the state increasingly becomes a tool for safeguarding the wealth of the few against sharing with the many]

It's antisemitic because "The Rich" and "The Bankers" are common codes for the Jews.

Thank you for explaining your interpretation. But surerly all critic of capitalism as an economic system can't be seen as antisemitic?

It was certainly not my intention to allude to some kind of coded hate speech.

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