einvolk wrote:
greysnow first wrote:
[*]a widespread low-level racism even for many who would certainly disassociate themselves from the nazi tag but will agree with the hardened resident nazi or white power proponents on some topics, providing them with forum acceptance by entering into polite discourse with them;
don't anyone be nice to me, because...
he then wrote:
[*]the decision of the administrators of this board to let nazis and white power types post, in effect giving them hunting ground to look for prey.
I'm comin' to get ya!
Those were responses to a question by Svartalf who, after having been called a "Sonderkommando" by BeforeGod for being married to an Indian woman, was starting to wonder why racist values were being tolerated, chuckled at and not actively confronted here; I answered him with a short list of reasons that I thought responsible.
This post was from my early days on the board when I was frankly dismayed by the openly racist discourse that happens here from time to time. The second of my points quoted above seems exaggerated today, but will become clearer a little further down. Bear with me.
einvolk wrote:
greysnow also wrote:
Mainly in the east of Germany, regrettably, there are large no-go zones for foreigners, especially if they don't "look German".
inside outside upside down, still less dangerous there than for me in certain "no-go zones" in MY OWN COUNTY
Well, first of all let me just remark briefly about the inhabitants of your country that you seem to be afraid of that
it's also their country. They are American citizens, and so their ancestors have been since emancipation.
So, still less dangerous than where you live. I don't know that, and so don't you, and I don't want to enter into a pissing contest with you whose country is more dangerous to whom. You haven't been to Eastern Germany, I take it, and I haven't been to America. But I did not exaggerate about there being no-go zones for foreigners. And not just foreigners: some months ago, a German theater troupe was assaulted by Nazis in Halberstadt, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, evidently just because their assailants had a differing view about the type of culture they wished practiced on their turf; kind of reminds me of Göring: "Whenever I hear the word 'culture', I go for my gun". German camping tourists have been threatened as well.
I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I may come across as somewhat strident on racist topics. The rate of right-wing hate crimes in Germany, especially in the East, but not exclusively there, has risen continually in the recent years after a high in the early 90s abated a little in the middle of the decade. If you want to see the numbers, you can follow
this link, which unfortunately is in German, but the interesting lines of the table are the two bottom ones; the caption of the last but one line translates to "politically motivated violent acts with right-wing extremist background", and that of the last line translates to "other politically motivated offenses with right-wing extremist background".
It seems to me that to many American users on this board Nazism and racism are just positions in a debate, positions that one might not share oneself, but an acceptable standpoint to be refuted in civilized discussion. To me, the whole situation is different. I am a secular humanist who leans (a little!) to the left politically, and that position of course makes me an anti-fascist and anti-racist per se. Also, I loathe the thought that someone is looked down on or attacked for being just the way that they were born. That is just so stupid, mean and uncivilized. But all that is not the whole deal for me.
I guess that I, in spite of many protestations to the contrary that I have made to friends in the past, am something of a patriot. I would like to be proud of my country, but I can't. We did really well; we had managed to offer the world some of its greatest poets, philosophers, musicians and scientists. At least before WWI, but still sometimes up until WWII we were regarded as a model civilized nation. Then we managed to destroy our reputation in just a few years with an incredible act of barbarism. And right now, we can't even claim that we've learned from our mistakes; the blemish is
still with us, and it's growing. I am
angry at this, and pissed off about it, and I don't want this situation. To me, Nazism and racism are not just outlandish positions that can be written off with a shrug or debated for intellectual fun. In my country that I'd like to love, proponents of those positions actively hurt or threaten people on a daily basis.
Now I would like to explain my "hunting ground to look for prey" statement quoted above.
How did it come about that hate crimes are much more widespread in the East of Germany than in the West? Probably the level of xenophobia was a little higher from the start since people hardly ever had contact with foreigners in the GDR. But the main reason is another. The Berlin Wall had hardly come down when cadres of Nazi organizations from the West took to the East with the explicit plan to build a right-wing youth culture there. In many, especially rural parts of Eastern Germany, life doesn't offer much to a young person. Nothing much goes on. Life is boring. To a large degree, the Nazi cadres succeeded with their plan because they often were the only ones to offer something exciting amid the frustration of boredom and widespread job loss: camaraderie, "a purpose", a sense of elite, of belonging to a vanguard of the future, of being not just a pack of jobless, lazy Easterners who must surely be backward yokels for not yearning to quickly adapt to the new, stylish life and values of the West.
So this incursion was a success. In my country, in the not too distant past and continuing into the present, there
are racists looking for prey. They send people to distribute free comics and music in the schoolyards. They actively use any media that promise success of reaching young people. And NSBM has infiltrated the black metal scene to a large degree, again especially, but not exclusively in the East. You can't go to a gig there without seeing Nazis. At the PartySan black and death metal festival in the Eastern state of Thuringia one or two years ago you could even have the pleasant surprise of sleeping in a tent next to a drunken bunch of not just Nazis, but convicted murderers - you know of course which band I'm talking about. At the Under the Black Sun festival which is an exclusive black metal festival Nazi skins abound. NSBMers of a dangerous bent are not just a quaint phenomenon on the other side of the Atlantic ocean for me. For me, they are
here.
How do the other black metal fans who attend these festivals react? Well, a minority is against Nazis showing up. The majority tolerates them, tolerates an ideology that I consider poisonous in the extreme because they just don't care or because they share a common fascination for things Darwinistic, nihilist or "misanthropic". This, to me, constitutes a hunting ground.
I grew up with metal in the 80s, moved away from it and didn't follow the scene from about 1990 onwards (mainly because I didn't listen to much music at all) and returned to following it about three years ago (insofar, I gladly accept the title "metal newbie" for the time being, as regards the current scene). I was
dismayed to see how a basically apolitical style of music, maybe even a little left leaning in 80's thrash, was all of a sudden riddled with right-wingisms. Not only had a style of metal become the music of Nazis, no, tropes and styles of pagan romanticism occurring among Nazis only in the 80s (or at least among very suspicious esoteric types) had become cool in the metal scene. A lot of people on the board, it seemed to me, were discussing topics like Social Darwinism and racism favorably, without any distance, as if they had merit. I overestimated their numbers gravely, as later discussions have shown me; but the first impression was a shock to me.
I hope that the above may explain some of the stridency and radicalism that I sometimes seem to have about me when discussing Nazism or racism, and I think that it can also serve as answer to NeglectedField's last post:
NeglectedField wrote:
I agree with the sentiment that the left loves to curb political discourse to prevent the other extremes from getting a word in. This attests to their willingness to manipulate discourse for their own ends. For them it's more a case of "I/we must win" rather than "I am confident that I can refute their position in an environment where discourse is not restrained".
Normally, I am not an overly politically correct person, and I do agree with you that in a calm and civilized discourse held with an eye to get at the truth or a feasible solution to a problem, the debate must be open to all positions, the better arguments may just win, and censorship is oppression. Also, when I argue a position with the wish of convincing my fellow debaters to it, I find it both dishonest and ineffective to try do so by any other means than my, hopefully better, arguments alone. I want them to re-think, not to cower before censorship. But the opinions of people are usually not formed by attending this idealized kind of debate panel; I don't want teenagers and children especially to be influenced by Nazi propaganda, and so I support the German ban on it; note well, propaganda, not discussion. This is the extent to which I support curbing of political discourse, if one subsumes "propaganda" under "discourse", which from a technical standpoint of discourse theory, I believe, is normally the case.