In its crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, Germany has normalized racism and state violence in a way that goes beyond any conflict abroad, reminding us this really is the country of the 1920s, again.
I don’t know about all the accusations of smearing etc. I can just say I live in Germany as well, a different part of it. I occasionally leave the house and mingle with people. And what can I say? I’m seeing different things than that journalist. Violence hasn’t been normalized here. In fact there’s always a big outcry and everyone hates it. We have ten times less of it than for example the US. Sometimes administration even does sane things. And we’re kind of proud that society still somewhat works out. And I don’t think state violence is on the rise either. You were never allowed to say some slogans here. I’ve been shoved around and nearly had a horse trample on my foot on some protest 20 years ago. That’s just how it is. My city has 2 cops to protect the jewish synagogue. I suppose you can’t do your Palestine protest there or do some grafitti. But other than that the protests happen and I don’t see more state violence than for example 20 years ago. So the premise of the article is pretty much the opposite of reality as I perceive it.
Idk, why? Am I wrong? Is reality wrong or do I need glasses? I’m not saying Germany is perfect btw. We have systemic issues. We’ve always had and have racism, inequality, police violence, criminals. And political discourse is getting uncomfortable these days. And the idiots are way louder than a few years ago.
And as a suggestion, maybe give some context if you’re a journalist. If you have a picture of a protester being arrested, tell your english-speaking audience they’re let go by police 5 minutes later. And in Germany it’s not like in the US where you’d be brought to jail and then maybe deported.
Look, like I repeated multiple times in this discussion, nobody is saying Germany is a totalitarian state. There are worrying signs. I get that in your immediate experience those might not be there. But lived experience is not a substitute for structural analysis. The article is not saying that they are pervasive, but that they are becoming more common and that’s alarming.
We are on the same side here: the side that wants Germany to be a free and democratic country. Sounding an alarm should not be cause for defensiveness but for vigilance.
I’m a dual EU-Canadian citizen. Canada is not an authoritarian country. However in the past few years, more and more, provincial governments are using a constitutional trick called the Notwithstanding Clause to push various political agendas without having to care about judicial oversight. If someone rings the alarm that this is an authoritarian tendency, a slippery slope that could fundamentally erode our rights as Canadians, should I start calling them anti-Canadian propagandists? Or should I take stock and weigh the danger and maybe use my position as a citizen of a democracy to make noise about it?
«The price of liberty is eternal vigilance» because democracies don’t fail overnight. They erode at the margins, starting with the people it is easiest to vilify. The time to speak up is not when repression becomes universal, but when it becomes noticeable at all.
I think that’s kind of my point as well. At least that’s why i started commenting. I think framing things to push an agenda, oversimplifying complex processes to sell “simple truths” and misrepresenting reality is what got us into the entire debacle with society. The main business model of those right-wing lunatics is to make up stuff and post it online. Sometimes they’ll find one example of something bad happening and they’ll frame it so immigrants are to blame. But that makes everyone stupid and hateful.
I see somewhat of the same dynamics here. They have one example of someone getting hit. Hence Germany arrived in 1920. But that’s framing. Looks to me like they wanted to push their opinion and get people riled up, then they got one example and went ahead to frame it that way. But that’s exactly the opposite from how journalism needs to work. We need to be concerned with facts first, analyze them and then arrive at some conclusion rooted in that. Not the other way around. We need the context. What happened to her and the cops, prior and after. We need to analyze whether this is one bad individual working in the police force or systemic issues. We’ll never be able to do anything about it unless we do our homework. I think this article is part of the problem. Riling people up and make them in-fight. Definitely not part of the solution. And then what’s with the censored things against Israel? There’s an entire complicated story behind it and why you can’t fly some banners in Germany. Is this censorship? I think it’s way more complicated than that because it’s not anything new and you can still express your opinion, so it might not even be what it’s portrayed as. And what’s with Friedrich Merz? The paragraph cuts off immediately after mentioning him. His stance towards Palestine is completely unimportant. But I think he’s super problematic in many ways and that needs to be discussed. Why name-drop him out of context and then also not give any background? And what’s with the cops in Berlin? First they mention Berlin in specific. And then it somehow generalizes to Germany. But every German knows Berlin isn’t alike other parts of Germany. Berlin rarely generalizes. Why do they omit talking about this? That’s just going to convey something to the reader which isn’t true. And what’s even with “our” stance towards Israel? I’ve heard things being said, even in the Bundestag which no one would have dared to say out loud a few years back… Is that important? Isn’t that kind of opposed to the sentiment on how Germany is becoming stricter? I’m fairly sure it’s more opinions out there these days than compared to 10 years ago. And what even is a Germany of the 1920s. Is this good? Bad? They kind of lead with this, assuming everyone knows all the details about the economy crisis, political landscape, society back then… Or is this just supposed to stir random emotions on how the 20s must have been bad?
I mean I’m not opposed to what you say. On the contrary. But I think we need to do way better than this. And we need to hold ourselves to higher standards. Especially with journalism. I’d hate if our media landscape deteriorates to what we see from America, where there’s two sides and everyone sells stupid opinions and frames them to fit into one of the two narratives. And no one is interested in facts or context or how things relate.
I don’t know about all the accusations of smearing etc. I can just say I live in Germany as well, a different part of it. I occasionally leave the house and mingle with people. And what can I say? I’m seeing different things than that journalist. Violence hasn’t been normalized here. In fact there’s always a big outcry and everyone hates it. We have ten times less of it than for example the US. Sometimes administration even does sane things. And we’re kind of proud that society still somewhat works out. And I don’t think state violence is on the rise either. You were never allowed to say some slogans here. I’ve been shoved around and nearly had a horse trample on my foot on some protest 20 years ago. That’s just how it is. My city has 2 cops to protect the jewish synagogue. I suppose you can’t do your Palestine protest there or do some grafitti. But other than that the protests happen and I don’t see more state violence than for example 20 years ago. So the premise of the article is pretty much the opposite of reality as I perceive it.
Idk, why? Am I wrong? Is reality wrong or do I need glasses? I’m not saying Germany is perfect btw. We have systemic issues. We’ve always had and have racism, inequality, police violence, criminals. And political discourse is getting uncomfortable these days. And the idiots are way louder than a few years ago.
And as a suggestion, maybe give some context if you’re a journalist. If you have a picture of a protester being arrested, tell your english-speaking audience they’re let go by police 5 minutes later. And in Germany it’s not like in the US where you’d be brought to jail and then maybe deported.
Look, like I repeated multiple times in this discussion, nobody is saying Germany is a totalitarian state. There are worrying signs. I get that in your immediate experience those might not be there. But lived experience is not a substitute for structural analysis. The article is not saying that they are pervasive, but that they are becoming more common and that’s alarming.
We are on the same side here: the side that wants Germany to be a free and democratic country. Sounding an alarm should not be cause for defensiveness but for vigilance.
I’m a dual EU-Canadian citizen. Canada is not an authoritarian country. However in the past few years, more and more, provincial governments are using a constitutional trick called the Notwithstanding Clause to push various political agendas without having to care about judicial oversight. If someone rings the alarm that this is an authoritarian tendency, a slippery slope that could fundamentally erode our rights as Canadians, should I start calling them anti-Canadian propagandists? Or should I take stock and weigh the danger and maybe use my position as a citizen of a democracy to make noise about it?
«The price of liberty is eternal vigilance» because democracies don’t fail overnight. They erode at the margins, starting with the people it is easiest to vilify. The time to speak up is not when repression becomes universal, but when it becomes noticeable at all.
I think that’s kind of my point as well. At least that’s why i started commenting. I think framing things to push an agenda, oversimplifying complex processes to sell “simple truths” and misrepresenting reality is what got us into the entire debacle with society. The main business model of those right-wing lunatics is to make up stuff and post it online. Sometimes they’ll find one example of something bad happening and they’ll frame it so immigrants are to blame. But that makes everyone stupid and hateful.
I see somewhat of the same dynamics here. They have one example of someone getting hit. Hence Germany arrived in 1920. But that’s framing. Looks to me like they wanted to push their opinion and get people riled up, then they got one example and went ahead to frame it that way. But that’s exactly the opposite from how journalism needs to work. We need to be concerned with facts first, analyze them and then arrive at some conclusion rooted in that. Not the other way around. We need the context. What happened to her and the cops, prior and after. We need to analyze whether this is one bad individual working in the police force or systemic issues. We’ll never be able to do anything about it unless we do our homework. I think this article is part of the problem. Riling people up and make them in-fight. Definitely not part of the solution. And then what’s with the censored things against Israel? There’s an entire complicated story behind it and why you can’t fly some banners in Germany. Is this censorship? I think it’s way more complicated than that because it’s not anything new and you can still express your opinion, so it might not even be what it’s portrayed as. And what’s with Friedrich Merz? The paragraph cuts off immediately after mentioning him. His stance towards Palestine is completely unimportant. But I think he’s super problematic in many ways and that needs to be discussed. Why name-drop him out of context and then also not give any background? And what’s with the cops in Berlin? First they mention Berlin in specific. And then it somehow generalizes to Germany. But every German knows Berlin isn’t alike other parts of Germany. Berlin rarely generalizes. Why do they omit talking about this? That’s just going to convey something to the reader which isn’t true. And what’s even with “our” stance towards Israel? I’ve heard things being said, even in the Bundestag which no one would have dared to say out loud a few years back… Is that important? Isn’t that kind of opposed to the sentiment on how Germany is becoming stricter? I’m fairly sure it’s more opinions out there these days than compared to 10 years ago. And what even is a Germany of the 1920s. Is this good? Bad? They kind of lead with this, assuming everyone knows all the details about the economy crisis, political landscape, society back then… Or is this just supposed to stir random emotions on how the 20s must have been bad?
I mean I’m not opposed to what you say. On the contrary. But I think we need to do way better than this. And we need to hold ourselves to higher standards. Especially with journalism. I’d hate if our media landscape deteriorates to what we see from America, where there’s two sides and everyone sells stupid opinions and frames them to fit into one of the two narratives. And no one is interested in facts or context or how things relate.