The Far-Right Gears Up (Germany)

[mgc1961]

"In the night between Feb. 13 and 14, 1945, 796 Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped more than 2,600 tons of bombs on Dresden, a city overflowing with thousands of refugees from the East. The next day, 311 American B-17 bombers dropped another 700 tons of bombs on the city's Baroque center. Dresden, once known as Florence on the Elbe, was virtually wiped off the map, and about 25,000 people were killed.

Commemorating such an incident is an important element in a civilized society. But it is important who is doing the commemorating, and how. There is, after all, a danger that memory becomes exploited for political propaganda. But what, then, should be the response? Should a city sacrifice democratic freedoms of assembly to deny dangerous populists a platform?"

Read the whole report at http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,677078,00.html

[sui generis]

1. my aunt survived the bombing of Dresden

there is very very little that she won't talk about from the war years and after, but the bombing of Dresden is one of them.

[mgc1961]

2. I completely understand.

Just reading the details of such events can be life changing.

[sui generis]

3. Some things Americans don't understand about neo"nazi"

and other self-described "far right" misguided stupid children is, it's NOT genetic.

I have friends in Rome and Venice who once confided they're very tired of living in the 16th century - everything is a historical marker, building or preserved against modernization.

The other side of that are people who "own" their identity ... in a relatively small town, that identity is the "character" of the town. Doing things like allowing foreign influence, building minarets, and any change at all (read: conservative) is an assault on their personal identity and that makes people irrational.

It's not the followers of a stupid pathetic idea who are at fault. They're sheep and always will be sheep, if somewhat more violent and unpredictable. It's their leaders who know exactly which buttons to push to keep their flock bleating and braying and carrying on in anger.

Like here, where the perception of illegal immigrants taking away "good jobs" from the unemployed noble citizenry rankles among conservatives, former non EU workers from slovakia and the former yugoslavia and turkey and greece are looked down on as willing to work for less or transplant other people and those stereotypes, including that immigrants practice a lower quality of living and reduce quality of living for everyone are stereotypes that are hard to update for conservatives. People love to keep hating.

So, young, disenfranchised people who feel personally assaulted by "the foreigners", by what they view as radicalization by the left (political and religious tolerance, immigration and loss of identity and character) are much more susceptible to being manipulated into finding their identity among like minded people serving a cause that feed and fuels their anger at the world.

It's really sad to see those grown-up people not self-aware enough to step away from those adolescent fits.

[mgc1961]

4. That's a good observation.

Back to World War experiences, one of the former cafeteria staff members at the University of Tennessee was born in London. She told me over breakfast one day about having been shipped off by her parents to rural parts of the United Kingdom during the London Blitz.