generalspeaking

Saturday, September 07, 2019

Germany Divided

"The Syrians who came to us still have their Syria. But if we -- through the Syrians -- lose our Germany, we will not have a homeland any more."
"[Germany's symbol of shame -- the Holocaust memorial's installation in the heart of Berlin distinguishes it as the only world capital to be so unnecessarily tarnished.]"
Bjorn Hocke, a leader within Germany's AfD Party

Supporters of the anti-Islam movement PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) gather following the federal state elections of Saxony during a demonstration at the main railway station of Dresden, Germany, September 2, 2019.Wolfgang Rattay / Reuters

Founded in 2013 by a number of professors of economics fed up with the economic crisis in Greece whereby the European Central Bank poured immense sums of money to prop up the Greek economy in the wake of the global collapse of 2008/2009, the party has been the mainstay of disgruntled populists in Germany ever since. Since its initiation the AfD has grown in popularity among the disaffected, and recently realized major advances in Brandenburg and Saxony state elections.

In the Bundestag, the AfD has become the official opposition, thanks to its electoral strength. That strength gained momentum with Germany's open border policy when Europe was being inundated by illegal entrants seeking haven and economic opportunity; all the more so when Angela Merkel's government accepted a million Syrian refugees to join the already-present five million Muslims resident in Germany.

Germany's large Turkish population has invited the unwelcome internal interference of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a thorn in any European country's side.

Germany, famously prosperous above all others in the EU, was contributing huge Euro treasuries to Greece, elevating German resentment at both their government, and membership in the EU. Germans imagined their wealth slipping away from the country, the hard-won earnings of German industrial workers, going to benefit the lazy, sun-worshiping Greeks.

AfD insisted Germany must exit the Eurozone, returning to the Deutschmark to restore German conservative economic policies. The ruling Christian Democratic Union, once fiscally conservative, was seen as abandoning that position.

Traditional German culture has found a home now with the AfD. It is at heart anti-Muslim, anti-refugee and within its ranks are those who foresee the disappearance of Germany as a Christian state with its lost history, heritage and culture. And they have a right to be alarmed, given the mass influx of another culture and religion that encompasses all walks of life, adhering to sharia law.

Anti-immigration AfD has polled strongly in two eastern states of Germany, its electoral heartland [Getty Images]

Unfortunately among the AfD';s leaders, some have collaborated with neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites even as the party itself manoeuvres between right-wing politics and the country's Nazi past. The AfD chafes under the guilt of Germany's past. Feeling that German atrocities and its responsibility for the deaths of an estimated 50 million people during World War II should best be shelved as an anomaly in world affairs.

And according to another founding member of the AfD, the Nazi era would be best forgotten, not continually referred to, burdening the people of Germany for it was but "a speck of birds--t" on Germany history. As though trivializing the most despicably violent assault on mass humanity with a shoulder-shrug would restore Germany to its past glory, its role in the wholesale atrocity of the annihilation of Europe's Jews a mere footnote.

AfD members marched along with neo-Nazis and other right-wing groups proclaiming their anti-Islam, anti-immigration policies a year ago in Chemnitz. The open-door policy for a million Syrian Sunni Muslims fleeing Bashar al Assad's murderous assault on his Syrian subjects saw a backlash as German towns were flooded with Muslims upsetting their traditions and sense of well-being.

With the new entrants to Germany, came a stark rise in anti-Semitism.

When a regional AfD leader forged links to a group of Holocaust deniers, a crime in Germany, the party expelled Doris von Sayn-Wittgenstein from their ranks. Claiming a number of Jewish members, the AfD insists it is positively pro-Israel. This on the one hand, while refusing to accept a dreadful blot on German history committed by Nazism.