In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

August 29, 2018 2:55 PM

A far right riot in Germany has lead to suspicions about links within the Police Force and shows how much the far right is becoming a challenge for all of Europe.
They are being aided and encouraged by Steve Bannon.
An entry guide to European Nationalist parties which have full intention of taking over the European Union.
From Austrian Far right hipsters to Italians and Hungarians unifying to halt immigration these populist parties excel at stoking fears that aren't necessarily connected to reality.
posted by adamvasco (39 comments total)

aren't necessarily connected to reality.

...necessarily aren’t connected to reality.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:07 PM on August 29, 2018 [15 favorites]

That line is taken directly from the top of that link. adamvasco isn't mincing anything.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:10 PM on August 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

Michael Rosen
posted by lalochezia at 3:12 PM on August 29, 2018 [59 favorites]

Is it just me, or does anyone else get that thing where you go to bed, get up in the morning, read the headlines, and think maybe you’ve suddenly time traveled to 1932?
posted by valkane at 3:15 PM on August 29, 2018 [25 favorites]

"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

Although in the case of Trump those were all selling points for his base.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:15 PM on August 29, 2018 [17 favorites]

"Can we not mince words and just call them what they are: lying sacks of shit?"

It's really maddening. When someone is lying, call them a fucking liar. I have no idea why or when media outlets started being so goddamn scared to call out lies. At this point, someone could claim they are wearing a t-shirt made of jackalope skin that generates perpetual motion through wifi, while quite clearly being completely nude, and the news would still be reporting about it as if they didn't want to offend anyone who believes in the shirt, despite it literally being both impossible and verifiably false.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:30 PM on August 29, 2018 [18 favorites]

The entry guide link did not mention FRP in Norway (15%) or that almost a quarter of the British public would support an "explicitly far-right anti-immigrant, anti-Islam party" according to a recent poll by The Sunday Times.
posted by Julianna Mckannis at 3:30 PM on August 29, 2018 [4 favorites]

Saxony police have been forced to ask whether they are harboring far-right sympathizers after a TV crew was prevented from filming at a rally. It's not the first time German security forces have come under suspicion.
An incident last week in Dresden, when police detained a TV crew filming a far-right demo against German Chancellor Angela Merkel has done nothing to quell persistent suspicions about links between the far-right scene and Germany's security forces.
Those rumors were only strengthened with the subsequent revelation that the supporter of the anti-migrant PEGIDA movement who harassed the reporters and complained to the authorities was himself employed by the Saxony state police department.
The journalist in question — from public broadcaster ZDF — accused police of effectively acting as the "executive" arm of PEGIDA.
posted by adamvasco at 3:34 PM on August 29, 2018 [7 favorites]

Is it just me, or does anyone else get that thing where you go to bed, get up in the morning, read the headlines, and think maybe you’ve suddenly time traveled to 1932?

Yeah, except this time with global warming. We have bigger existential problems to solve that require global cooperation; we don't have time for this fascist bullshit!
posted by heatherlogan at 3:36 PM on August 29, 2018 [39 favorites]

These movements are only going to grow more powerful in the near future because* climate change is only going to get worse, probably faster than we think. When it does there will be less of everything - jobs, money, food, access to clean water, you name it - to go around, a situation which historically has usually fostered reactionary politics. People who are scared of what the future holds and diminishing prospects for their children will be easy marks for racists, fascists and right-wing demagogues of all kinds who will redirect their rage and desperation towards minorities and/or refugees, the latter of which there will be far more of, making it even easier to demonize them.

* for other reasons, too, including but not limited to our objective fact-free future and the entrenchment of worldwide surveillance on a level I don't think we can even really imagine, even now; I am not optimistic about our chances of being able to stick either of those genies back in the bottle.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:43 PM on August 29, 2018 [24 favorites]

They are being aided and encouraged by Steve Bannon.

How is this dangerous shitstain still breathing fresh air?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:43 PM on August 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yeah, except this time with global warming.

Bringing new meaning to the old question "Is it just me, or is it getting Weimar in here?"
posted by sfenders at 3:48 PM on August 29, 2018 [51 favorites]

At this point, someone could claim they are wearing a t-shirt made of jackalope skin that generates perpetual motion through wifi, while quite clearly being completely nude

That's, like, 7 Pinocchios.
posted by cj_ at 3:49 PM on August 29, 2018

Bannon is human paraquat.
posted by hilberseimer at 4:20 PM on August 29, 2018 [6 favorites]

That's, like, 7 Pinocchios.

“... But this fails to take into account the recent whitepaper by the Citizens for Democratic Restoration, employing a model unveiled by the GMU Economics department that promises 7.4 Pinocchios. Thus, _______ was simply reporting presumably unbiased academic findings, and so to be scrupulously fair we award those who criticized him two Pinocchios...”
posted by No-sword at 4:59 PM on August 29, 2018

Is it just me, or does anyone else get that thing where you go to bed, get up in the morning, read the headlines, and think maybe you’ve suddenly time traveled to 1932?
I'm getting on a bit now. 68 later in the year. I remember talking with my parents about the lead up to WWII. Everyone knew something was going to go off. They were resigned to War and just had to accept it as there was nothing they could do except stiff upper lip; king and country and all that crap. They had absolutely no idea of the horrors that would come. Father ended up in a POW camp for 4 years and Mother drove military supplies around in the Blitz.
It all seems to be going a bit faster this time around.
It's coming. No one really knows what shape it will take or what the "spark" will be and most of the politicians don't give a flying fuck. The multinational capitalists will see profit. It will be truely horrific whatever happens and my son, his wife and my grandson will be somewhere in the middle of it all unless they get out. Sobering and very frightening thoughts.
posted by adamvasco at 5:20 PM on August 29, 2018 [27 favorites]

my son, his wife and my grandson will be somewhere in the middle of it all unless they get out

Get out? To where?
posted by heatherlogan at 6:06 PM on August 29, 2018 [9 favorites]

When someone is lying, call them a fucking liar. I have no idea why or when media outlets started being so goddamn scared to call out lies.

It started around the time the right adopted the whole “liberal mainstream media” attack on media. It really was a stroke of genius on their part. It utterly intimidated media outlets. It was also the birth of media treating all sides as equals, no matter how marginal or deranged one may be.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:07 PM on August 29, 2018 [9 favorites]

It started around the time the right adopted the whole “liberal mainstream media” attack on media. It really was a stroke of genius on their part. It utterly intimidated media outlets. It was also the birth of media treating all sides as equals, no matter how marginal or deranged one may be.

2018 Edelman Trust Barometer [seriously check out that PDF it's bonkers]: America in Crisis:

In a year marked by turbulence at home and abroad, trust in institutions in the United States crashed, posting the steepest, most dramatic general population decline the Trust Barometer has ever measured. [...]

Among the informed public, the trust crash is even steeper, with trust declining 23 points, dropping the U.S. from sixth to last place out of the 28 countries surveyed. The informed public trust crash is universal across age, region and gender. As a result, the gap in trust between the informed public and the mass population has been all but eliminated. [...]

The result is an unsettled and unnerved public at large. Vast swaths of Americans no longer trust their leaders. Government had the steepest decline (14 points) among the general population. Fewer than one in three believe that government officials are credible. But no one is off the hook: trust in other institutions (business, NGOs and the media) fell heavily as well.

Our World in Trust:

In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. [link added—ragtag] To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. The following visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted" in the surveys 1972-2014. As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.

538: Americans Don't Trust Their Institutions Anymore [2016]
Gallup: Confidence in Insitutions: 1973-2018
Nicky Case: The Evolution of Trust [2017]

(Apologies for the US-centricity of my links, but I happened to be researching this already and had them handy. The general principles seem broadly applicable.)
posted by ragtag at 7:01 PM on August 29, 2018 [13 favorites]

"Can we not mince words and just call them what they are: lying sacks of shit?"

It's really maddening. When someone is lying, call them a fucking liar. I have no idea why or when media outlets started being so goddamn scared to call out lies.
-----
It's hard to call out liars when they refuse to accept what you say, or say, "So what?" in response. They are NOT going to cry "Uncle", even if they do know deep down they're full of shit. "Being full of shit" is just, whatever, to them. Their goal is to triumph above all others, not cooperate with other people. They don't care about other people. What upset me for a minute is that the media placates these trollers. But then I realized it's because those who run the mainstream media are running buddies with the higher-status lying trolls as it is, and then it just becomes a disagreement among friends.

Anyway, surely we've noticed this non-acceptance, this barreling ahead with bullshit happening with greater frequency lately. The fascists aren't even bothering to pretend to care. Look at Cheeto. Look at these right-wing European partisans. Do they care? They do not. They are selfish, greedy, lying, authoritarian con artists, and I'm sure they've been called out as such to their faces, and they just shrug it off. What's that Russian word again, the one that means they know that we know that they know they're lying and we can't do anything about it?

They're so obviously steeling themselves to play as long a game as they can, because their behavior shows that they DO accept the reality of, at the very least, upcoming demographic change that doesn't overwhelmingly benefit them, and maybe more to the point, resource scarcity, whether they want to attribute such to climate change or not.

If there's going to be anyone who has to turn out the lights, they mean for it to be one of them, if they can't manage to get out while the getting's good off to Mars. In their zero-sum world, that means if they're not going away, then someone else must go—and usually that's a lot of someones who look like me.

This is some existential shit, folks. It's going to be hard to figure out how to counter this sort of response to a potential looming extinction event (even if "extinction" merely means that white people realize they're going to lose their grip on global power), but we must try to get enough people to realize the truth and stand up for all of humanity, and fuck this perverted Darwin stuff.
posted by droplet at 8:06 PM on August 29, 2018 [6 favorites]

Just two weeks ago Linkswende member and comrade David Albrich came to talk to us here in Sydney. He talked a lot about anti-fascist organising in Austria, and to a lesser extent about Germany. It's the same story as here and as can be seen in the US. The anti-semitism is being kept slightly below the surface, although still definitely visible, but the main targets of much of their rhetoric in public are refugees and Muslims. Queers and workers, women and the disabled, there's no-one who is 'safe' from fascists.

Linkswende and the "Platform for a Humane Asylum" united front broad coalition are doing everything they can, working with their unions and pre-existing organisations but the fightback needs to keep growing. Anti-racist, radical Queer and labour organising will be and have been at the forefront of that push, so you don't need to join a specifically anti-fascist group to make a difference, there's many sides to this conflict.

We're not giving up or going away any time soon though, and we're taking to heart his lessons for our praxis here. The Freedom Party, Alternative Fur Deutschland, Trumpist, Hansonite, whatever they choose to call themselves or how they choose to organise, they're not going to succeed while we all stand together, a wall against the wind.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:29 PM on August 29, 2018 [5 favorites]

I physically can't fathom how a group of people construct their entire identity and political beliefs solely on the color of their skin. How absolutely vapid must your life be that this is what you want to define yourself with? Hell, I'd sooner associate myself in public with my alcoholism than dare believe the melanin in my skin has any bearing on the person I am. How the absolute fuck do you even communicate with a person who's entire conception of the world revolves around an individual's fucking hue? It's the equivalent of trying to convince a solipsist that, yes, you do indeed exist.
posted by Westinghouse at 9:25 PM on August 29, 2018 [5 favorites]

Bit more on the Chemnitz riots in English on German sites: Spiegel, Deutsche Welle.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:59 PM on August 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

Have you heard it on the news
About this fascist groove thang
Evil men with racist views
Spreading all across the land
Don't just sit there on your ass
Unlock that funky chaindance
Brothers, sisters shoot your best
We don't need this fascist groove thang

Speaking of speaking, the BBC banned Fascist Groove Thang because they were scared of pissing off Ronald Reagan. The link above was recorded by the BBC 30 years after the song's release, and six years after Reagan's death.

Along similar lines, Australia immigration is looking to ban Chelsea Manning from entering Australia for a speaking tour, despite allowing Lauren Southern in recently (which flopped for her, and Australian tax payers). There would be far fewer protestors at a Manning talk, and it would be less divisive.
posted by Thella at 12:43 AM on August 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yup. At the same time as a debacle over immigration Minister at the time Dutton finagling matters for his mates second cousin's au-pair. Snap protest tomorrow, Town Hall @12

Of course, we've just heard that Gavin McInnes, figurehead of fascist street group the Proud Boys will be coming to visit in November. Yiannopolous, Southern, McInnes, they've not got a lot of traction right now, but any fool can see they're trying and it's almost like our government prefers white supremacists to anyone who might actually criticise them.
Say it loud, say it proud: Fascists are not welcome here.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 1:47 AM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

beat me to it Thella ;-)

It's going to be a long slog for Europe, just as it's currently proving to be for the U.S., and arguably harder, given that language barriers compound the perceived divisions/individualisms. (Where MeFi's political megathreads have seemed like modern-day, stateside Klemperer diaries, there's never going to be any one place for all Europeans to turn to.)

Italy's managing to short-order-rally a few thousand protesters against the Orban-Salvini cahoots, but also nazi-saluting the latest hundred-odd disperati (whom the Catholic Church stepped in to take out of Salvini's latest illegal power-play).

While in Germany and Austria, even some former left/greens have been right-shifted over refugees/migrants (viz. Wagenknecht/Pilz).

So, as we know: time to be alert, and look for the helpers (thanks adamvasco and AnhydrousLove).
posted by progosk at 2:21 AM on August 30, 2018 [6 favorites]

The entry guide link did not mention FRP in Norway (15%) or that almost a quarter of the British public would support an "explicitly far-right anti-immigrant, anti-Islam party" according to a recent poll by The Sunday Times.

The volume of people calling first past the post undemocratic has been going over the last few years. Maybe people realising that having a greater diversity of political views represented isn't always so great.
posted by atrazine at 3:19 AM on August 30, 2018

-Populists, Authoritarians Now Oversee Most of G-20 Output
-Strong-Arm Governments Are Taking Over the Global Economy
posted by kliuless at 3:21 AM on August 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

An entry guide to European Nationalist parties which have full intention of taking over the European Union.

It's really important (from where I'm sitting in the UK, at least) to note that the European Union needs to be taken over by these people because it has a strong role in the guardianship of human rights through its power to challenge and overrule state interference in people's lives.

So they want to take it over to stop it being a good thing. There isn't a huge amount of power that it would have to make member states more fascist.

Apologies for the slight digression, but fighting for the UK to stay in, or at least on good terms with the EU is the most important thing that UK readers can do in order to put a dampener on fascism all across Europe, by starting in that big influential country we already live in.
posted by ambrosen at 4:02 AM on August 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

(seriously, what is the Russian word for "they know that we know that they're lying, but we can't do anything about it" ?
It sounds like a useful word these days.)
posted by ovvl at 6:33 AM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

Get out? To where?
This is Europe specific so outside of Europe is the best bet.

The future is impossible to predict but as this is shaping up to be left vs right; as in the US but with many differences as previously observed of language and national political culture, it will probably result in mid level internecine conflict with the police turning a blind eye to the rights' atrocities and allying with them.
Maybe the sort of breakdown in society as enacted by Golden Dawn in Greece where refugees were constantly harrassed and driven from the streets.
This is primarily a white nationalist movement but other minorities will be included, LGBT and of course antifa and anyone else protesting the true doctrine. Outspoken opposition will be assassinated. Bastions of non white / non christian communities will come under attack.
As the right gains "legitimate" political power all the quiet discrimination will become rampant, in schools for instance, job selection, bank loans and credit.
Life in the white middle class suburbs will continue as usual for the moment but violence will grow. Those who speak out quickly become targets.
Mussolini very much comes to mind.
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.....
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy......
War is to man what maternity is to a woman. From a philosophical and doctrinal viewpoint, I do not believe in perpetual peace.
posted by adamvasco at 7:24 AM on August 30, 2018

So there's a Europe-wide call to action "For an Open and Free Society - Against Nationalism for a United Europe" for October 13th - organised in Berlin by #unteilbar (transl: #indivisible), and elsewhere by 13-10.org.
posted by progosk at 8:11 AM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

Spiegel: The Riots in Chemnitz and Their Aftermath.
posted by adamvasco at 5:38 AM on September 1, 2018

Summer 1991 found me travelling the peaceful villages of Belgium, one day I met a businessman who seemed to take me for an intellectual, I can't remember the context but the Balkans came up and he said "Belgium will be the next Yugoslavia, the next flashpoint" sweeping an arm across the small town scene, he recommended no one put down roots in his country.

I don't understand the why racism either (it just seems a horrible political expediency), I meet someone and have a great chat, later someone else will say what colour was he/she; I often can't remember - it doesn't seem germane to meeting another engaged human.

Thanks for posting this adamvasco
posted by unearthed at 7:24 PM on September 2, 2018

There are too few initiatives to follow up on a basic insight: people are afraid of what they don't know? So: get them to meet/know one another. Sometimes it takes so little...

As regards Chemnitz, currently the local main reaction seems to be the #wirsindmehr concert today (with some offering free transport there).
posted by progosk at 3:22 AM on September 3, 2018

I survived the Warsaw ghetto. Here are the lessons I’d like to pass on.
Stanisław Aronson
I’m 93, and, as extremism sweeps across Europe, I fear we are doomed to repeat the mistakes which created the Holocaust.
posted by adamvasco at 5:47 PM on September 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

(Independent). Kothen: Far-right crowds march through German city demanding 'National Socialism now'.
Deutsche Welle has more with some worrying articles linked at the bottom of the page.
posted by adamvasco at 4:36 PM on September 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists; Yanis Varoufakis.
Our task is not unprecedented. Fascists did not come to power in the mid-war period by promising violence, war or concentration camps. They came to power by addressing good people who, following a severe capitalist crisis, had been treated for too long like livestock that had lost its market value
posted by adamvasco at 2:54 PM on September 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Good old Varoufakis. I don't agree entirely with his methods, but it sure is nice to have a respected economist who has some idea and shares it of the political immediacy of the situation.

Interestingly, that article also includes a short response by B Sanders at the bottom.

Also of possible interest to some, YV wrote an interesting new intro to the Communist Manifesto recently. There's an adapted version here that stands very well on it's own.

A couple of nice selections.
“Equally inevitable,” the manifesto states, is the bourgeoisie’s “fall and the victory of the proletariat”. So far, history has not fulfilled this prediction, but critics forget that the manifesto, like any worthy piece of propaganda, presents hope in the form of certainty.

...we cannot end this idiocy individually; because no market can ever emerge that will produce an antidote to this stupidity. Collective, democratic political action is our only chance for freedom and enjoyment. And for this, the long nights seem a small price to pay.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:40 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]