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firebacon | 6 years ago

Things are starting to look pretty scary in Germany with the CDU coming out and defending their decision on this. The fascists have gained enough political control that the major conservative party is now starting to depend on their votes in parliament. There's a pertinent quote that made the rounds in german media yesterday:

"Den größten Erfolg erzielten wir in Thüringen. Dort sind wir heute wirklich die ausschlaggebende Partei. [...] Die Parteien in Thüringen, die bisher die Regierung bildeten, vermögen ohne unsere Mitwirkung keine Majorität aufzubringen." A. Hitler, 02.02.1930

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lidHanteyk|6 years ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted. AfD is basically a Neo-Nazi party, and while I don't hold a special animus towards Germans, I do worry about the European continent's ability to hold off war and genocide.

firebacon|6 years ago

Maybe I should have added that I actually hold a german passport. I realize that posting a hitler quote here looks really weird, but before instantly writing it off as a case of Godwin's law, do your research and check out what the AFD actually stands for. Sadly, the quote is extremely relevant to what has happened in Thueringen yesterday: It reminds us that this is how it all started before. That is why even conservative german media outlets have picked up on it.

The quote is from 1930, which is still at the beginning of Hitler's rise to power. In it, he reckons that the NSDAP had now become a major political force since the established parties in the state of Thueringen were, for the first time, unable to stand up a government without the votes of the NSDAP. This is pretty much exactly what has happened yesterday.

What's worse is that the "christian" conservative party, which is the largest centrist force in Germany, has basically given their tacit approval to all of this. They were the ones who teamed up with the nazis to put a center-right candidate into power. Without the votes of the nazis, he would have lost the election. Mind you, they did this after years and years of political campaigns claiming that they'd never cooperate with the AFD. That promise aged like milk.

To put it into perspective, it's a bit like the GOP of South Carolina teaming up with the local KKK to put a new senator into office because the KKK controls over 20% of the votes in the state. Imagine that for a second. It's scary...