German Nazis

We've been so fixated on Russia that we've lost sight of events in Germany. The AfD -- Alternative for Germany -- is the new Nazi party, and they've gained 92 seats in the German parliament (Bundestag), which has a total of 709 seats. By way of comparison: In 1928, the Nazi party had 12 out of 491 seats. A mere five years later, Adolf Hitler was elected. The AfD has adopted the color blue, which hardly makes them more pleasant than their brownshirted forefathers.

Despite the misleading blue, AfD populism remains deeply fascistic rejecting much of what modernity has to offer. It is profoundly xenophobic, racist, glorifying heroic manliness and it is misogynistic.

Unsurprisingly, among the new AfD parliamentarians barely ten are women. This mirrors the “3Ks” of Nazi ideology. Women should be confined to kitchen, kinder, and Kirche (i.e. church). Still, like the old Nazis’ “League of German Girls”, the AfD has some use for women. The very recent defection of long-time AfD front-woman Frauke Petry demanded a quick replacement with another female face: Alice Weidel. A Goldman Sachs banker, now mutated into a “Nazi Slut”, Weidel represents the traditional “Nazism-Capitalism” link with a pretty Lesbian face. She is part of today’s, Germany’s right-wing populism that now has 92 parliamentarian voices. Unlike in the USA and the rest of Europe, Germany’s right-wing populism has one crucial difference: Auschwitz. True to its ideological forefathers, the AfD still wants to “build a new underground railway directly to Auschwitz” (14th September 2017).

Much of AfD populism centers on racism often expressed as a xenophobic hate of everything foreign. Accordingly, it draws a “sharp line” between the Germanic race and multiculturalism and Islam. Xenophobic populism is often underscored by a hatred of modernity. Consequently, the AfD comes with rampant Anti-Americanism. Individual freedom, democracy, a free press and liberalism are values AfD populism rejects. Rejecting the USA (AfD slogan: “Go to hell, USA”) is pared with the glorification of what the AfD calls the “good twelve years”, i.e. the time when their ideological ancestors –the Nazis– ran Germany while destroying Europe and killing millions. True to Nazi populism that still lingers in Germany, the AfD believes in Germanic greatness, a racially cleansed Aryan Volk, and a strong nation.

For a while now, I've been wondering: Are the comments on some pro-Trump sites actually coming from Germany, as opposed to Russia?

I lost the link, so I can't prove what I'm about to say. If you choose to disbelieve me, fine. But a month or so ago, I visited a pro-Trump, Alt Right site and was shocked by the quasi-psychotic hatred of the United States on display in the comments section. It was clear that the writers were foreigners pretending to be American Trump supporters -- except on this occasion, something about the original post triggered a reaction that was even more insane than usual. They dropped the "American" disguise, at least in part.

The writers made grammatical errors, but not the kind of errors commonly made by people born in this country. For example, nobody used "would of" instead of "would have." I didn't notice the usual cliches and trite conversational gambits. The English was fluent, but the writing style seemed foreign. These writers thought in another tongue.

Were these spouters of anti-Americanism Russian? They didn't seem so, although only a linguist fluent in both English and Russian could say with any certainty. Like most of you, I've read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in translation, and I've seen a lot of subtitled Soviet-era movies. My opinion may not be worth much, but I just didn't get the feeling of a Russian mind behind these texts.

Besides, I don't think that the trolls of St. Petersburg are motivated by that kind of visceral, bone-deep hatred of all things American. Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the impression that those trolls are in it for the money.

Were they German? Possibly.

I used to date a German-into-English translator who specialized in technical work but sometimes handled literary projects. Although I don't know German, we devised a method of working together when she faced an impossible deadline: She would quickly punch out a very literal translation ("Schweinhund" became "pig-dog") which I transformed into something a little more natural ("pig-dog" became "asshole"). In this tag-team fashion, we translated a ridiculously overlong film script in less than two days. (I can't tell you which one.)

That experience gave me some appreciation for German sentence structure and thought patterns. I suspect, but cannot prove, that the comments on some of these English language Alt Right sites are actually written by Germans. No, I didn't see obvious tells: None of the writers said "My name is rabbit" or "comparing apples and pears." With verbs their sentences did not end. And yet...and yet. Subtle clues were there. I got a German vibe.

If I see any further examples, I'll bookmark the link (as I damned well ought to have done before) and write a further post on this topic. If you see any examples of possible "German-ness" in the allegedly American Alt Right, do let me know.

Remember when the Trumpers started to toss around the phrase Lügenpresse? Apparently, that term had seen some circulation on Breitbart and cognate sites. Where did they get that? How did that word enter the vocabulary of Cleetus and Billy-Bob?

Added note: Remember the "three fingers" scene in Inglourious Basterds? My former girlfriend told me about that little cultural difference back in the '80s. Yet I still didn't notice the giveaway the first time I saw that scene!