Dialog International

AfD in Saxony: Where are the Women?

Things are bleak in Trump's America, but there is also very distressing news coming out of Germany.  Der Spiegel has a long piece on its English site about the demise of the "big-tent parties" which is how they translate Volksparteien - namely the CDU and SPD.  For the entire post-war era, these two political parties have formed the foundation of stability and democracy for the German nation.  But this era of stability appears to be coming to an end:

The stability of the country's big-tent parties was a guarantee of a stable political landscape. Their ability to integrate a wide variety of political opinions prevented the radical fringes from growing too strong. That reality, though, has now come to an end. Cool heads, to borrow Merkel's plea in Demmin, are few and far between.

The situation with the Social Democrats (SPD) is especially dire, and catastrophic in eastern Germany.  An article in today's Welt reports that the SPD has been overtaken by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)  - the party that I can only describe as neo-fascist - in seven of Germany's sixteen states ( Bundesländer ) according to the most current polling of voters:

Auf Basis des aktuellen Deutschlandtrends verlöre die SPD 33 ihrer derzeit 153 Mandate im Bundestag, wie sich aus Projektionen der Plattform mandatsrechner.de ermitteln lässt. Dieser Verlust ist umso gravierender, weil der Bundestag dieser Projektion zufolge noch größer wäre als das schon jetzt erheblich aufgeblähte Parlament.

And the situation is most alarming in the east:

Dramatisch ist die Lage für die Sozialdemokraten vor allem in Sachsen und Thüringen. Wäre am Sonntag Bundestagswahl, holte die AfD in Sachsen 13 Mandate, die SPD drei. In Thüringen käme die AfD auf sechs Sitze, die SPD auf zwei. Selbst die Grünen schnitten zurzeit bei einer Bundestagswahl in einigen Ländern besser ab als die SPD, so in Baden-Württemberg, Bayern und Berlin.

In Saxony, the AfD is now running neck-in-neck with the CDU in terms of popularity.  Why this disillusionment, if not outright hatred of democracy, in the east?  The New York Times published an article last week on the failed reunification (Wiedervereinigung) of east and west.  Here is one important clue: 

Eastern women, who were part of the work force and with free child care, were more emancipated than their western sisters, and proved to be more mobile than their male counterparts. Some eastern villages now have two or three men for every woman — the kind of ratio one otherwise finds near the Arctic Circle, demographers say.

The absence of women at AfD rallies is striking. Check out this speech by the AfD representative Andre Poggenburg.  A sea of men roaring in approval as Poggenburg shouts out his racist rant. Can you spot any women?

Der Spiegel sent a female reporter - Melanie Amann - to cover the AfD rally.  She also had a hard time finding any women - other than a couple of Russian blondes:

Die meisten Herren dürften um die 60 Jahre alt sein, wohlgenährt und an diesem späten Nachmittag schon auf Betriebstemperatur für einen politischen Aschermittwoch. [...] "Komm, setz Dich, Sonnenscheinchen!" Jürgen zieht einen Stuhl heran, spendiert einen Sekt. Frauen trinken doch immer Sekt. Der Rest der Runde trinkt Bier, und auf dem Tisch steht eine Flasche Absolut Vodka. Nur ein Unternehmer hat seine Frau mitgebracht, sie wird als einzige auf der Tribüne fasziniert allen Reden lauschen. Für die anderen ist der Abend eher wie ein Fußballspiel, das vorbeirauscht, und dem man sich nur zuwendet, wenn der Jubel der Fans einen neuen Höhepunkt ankündigt. Wenn die Menge "Abschieben! Abschieben!" ruft, oder "Wir sind das Volk!".

Of course, there are women in  the AfD; two of the party's leaders are women: Alice Weidel and Beatrix von Storch.  But unless there is a reverse migration of women into Saxony and Thuringia the entire region will become just a brown swamp of right-wing extremism.

How quickly democracies can die

Watching the Republican Party in the US marching lockstep with President Trump down the path of lawlessness should concern anyone concerned with preserving our democratic system. 

As a subscriber to the New York Times, I love going through the archives to see how historical events were covered at the time.   On January 31, 1933 the NYTimes reported on the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany with the following headline: Hitler Made Chancellor of Germany; Coalition Cabinet Limits Power.  Observers were convinced that the Nazis would be constrained by the realities of governing within a parliamentary democracy.  It is interesting to read the rosy assessment of the NYT reporters as well as the party officials they interviewed for this front-page piece:

"The National Socialists are in the minority in the Cabinet.  The Chancellor's activities are severely limited due to the presence in his Cabinet of Colonel von Papen, Baron von Neurath [(etc.) ...] Some Liberals welcome the new Cabinet. They reason that Herr Hitler has been removed from the street and saddled with the responsibility of office which will severely circumscribe his liberty of action.  {...} The Socialists are confident that Hitler "will blow up and be disposed of definitely.  They count on the Reichstag being dissolved if Herr Hitler meets a no-confidence vote next week."

 "Next week" turned into 12 years and the total destruction of Germany with the loss of tens of millions of lives.  But in January 1933 the NYT's editorial staff was impressed that "Herr Hitler swore obedience to the Constitution of the (Weimar) Republic." 

One aspect of the Weimar Constitution Hitler swore to uphold was the independent judiciary ( "Artikel 102. Die Richter sind unabhängig und nur dem Gesetz unterworfen.)  But the rule of law lasted exactly 28 days. On February 27, 1933 the Reichstag was gutted by a massive fire (likely started under orders from Hitler).  The next day the government issued the Reichstagsbrandverordnung ("Reichstag Fire Decree") which essentially nullified the Weimar Constitution and ended the rule of law in Germany.

Die Artikel 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 und 153 der Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs werden bis auf weiteres außer Kraft gesetzt. Es sind daher Beschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit, des Rechts der freien Meinungsäußerung, einschließlich der Pressefreiheit, des Vereins- und Versammlungsrechts, Eingriffe in das Brief-, Post-, Telegraphen- und Fernsprechgeheimnis, Anordnungen von Haussuchungen und von Beschlagnahmen sowie Beschränkungen des Eigentums auch außerhalb der sonst hierfür bestimmten gesetzlichen Grenzen zulässig.

(Article 1
Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Therefore, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations, as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.)

The Gleichschaltung of the German legal system happened very quickly after this. Just two months later, Hitler passed one of the earliest antisemitic laws, purging Jewish and also Socialist judges, lawyers, and other court officers from their professions. Further, the Academy of German Law and Nazi legal theorists, such as Carl Schmitt, advocated the nazification of German law, cleansing it of "Jewish influence." Judges were forced to let "healthy folk sentiment" (gesundes Volksempfinden) guide them in their decisions.

From a constitutional democracy to a dictatorship in 90 days.  

 

Herta Müller enrages the Serbs by speaking the truth

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Last month Nobel Prize-winning novelist Herta Müller participated in a public forum in Belgrade.  When asked about NATO and her support back in the 1990s for the bombing of Serbia Müller  responded:

“I still think the same. A lot has happened. A lot of evil was inflicted on Kosovo and Bosnia, all because of this horrendous nationalism. I was scared. I did not expect that from a country like Yugoslavia which, back in the day, was a haven. I did not expect for nationalism to explode in it. This country caused its own pain and suffering. Serbs inflicted evil upon themselves”.

The response to her words in Serbia was angry and swift:

Beschimpfungen prasseln auf Herta Müller nieder. «Skandal: Die Tochter eines SS-Offiziers spuckt auf Kirche und Serben», titelte die Zeitung «Kurir». «Müller missbraucht unsere Gastfreundschaft», empörte sich das Boulevardblatt «Informer», und die grösste Zeitung «Blic» sprach von einem «Schock». Die Literatin sei eine Vertreterin «des Angst machenden, tiefen und primitiven Hasses gegen die Serben, wie ihn die Deutschen sonst einzig gegen die Juden gezeigt haben», war in der Regierungszeitung «Novosti» zu lesen.

Serbia is so closely aligned with Russia that any criticism of the country is perceived as an attack on Putin and the Kremlin.  Predictably, the pro-Putin (and pro-Milosevic) media in Germany was also quick to condemn Herta Müller.  In the pro-Putin propaganda portal NachDenkSeiten Albrecht Müller contrasted Herta Müller's "warmongering" with the pacifism of another German Nobel Prize laureate Heinrich Böll:

Beide haben den Literatur-Nobelpreis bekommen, Heinrich Böll 1972, Herta Müller 2009. Böll demonstrierte in Mutlangen gegen die Aufstellung von Atomraketen, Herta Müller wirbt für Kriegseinsätze der NATO. Und sie unterscheidet messerscharf in Gut und Böse. So auch bei einem Auftritt in der serbischen Hauptstadt Belgrad in der vor-vergangenen Woche. Wir sind von einem deutschen Studenten, von Lucas Maximilian Schubert, auf dieses Ereignis aufmerksam gemacht worden. „Diese Woche ist Herta Mueller der Hauptgast an der Belgrader Buchmesse und hat einige sehr interessante Statements geäußert. Vor allem sprach sie für militärischen Interventionismus seitens der NATO zum „Schutz der Menschenrechte“, von der Alleinschuld des serbischen Volkes für die Kriege im ehemaligen Jugoslawien und der „Arroganten Haltung der Serben gegenüber dem Militärbündnis“

It is true that Heinrich Böll's Catholic faith informed his pacifist positions, but Böll was also a champion of dissident writers and scientists in Soviet Russia.  In any case, I can't see him supporting the authoritarian kleptocracy of Putin's Russia, much less actively promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda like NachDenkSeiten. 

But the outrage at Herta Müller's comments in Belgrade reflects a larger issue: the total lack of Vergangenheitsbewältigung with respect to the war crimes in the Milosevic era: 

Serbia, political analysts say, is creeping steadily backward politically to the ominous days of the 1990s amid a groundswell of nationalist sentiment. The government in Belgrade is even welcoming convicted war criminals and associates of Slobodan Milosevic, the former dictator and indicted architect of Serbia’s genocidal program who died in 2006, back into the fold. And as Russia pushes to expand its influence in the Balkans — Europe’s “soft underbelly,” in the words of the political scientist Ivan Krastev — it is finding a receptive ally in Serbia. This comes even as the country is likely to become the next member state of the European Union.

Conspiracy theories about Western plots against Serbs are rife in the country, spread by the pro-government news media, which also orchestrates smear campaigns against government critics.

Now we are seeing similar conspiracy theories being propagated in Germany on the far left and radical right (the so-called Querfront).

Hans-Hermann Hoppe and the Schism in the Alt-Right Movement

For several years I haven't written anything about Hans-Hermann Hoppe - the former student of Jürgen Habermas who became the leading "philosopher"  of anarch0-libertarianism.  I thought I'd check in with him, since many of his ideas have been embraced by Trumpists and followers of the Alt-Right movement. I recently came across a speech he delivered earlier this fall that directly address the Alt-Right and some of the problems he sees with it. 

There is much Hoppe likes about the Alt-Right movement: the hatred of minorities, the contempt for egalitarianism, the rejection of "social justice".  Like the Alt-Right, Hoppe sees the idea of liberty reserved for white, Western European culture:

We must further recognize that there exist plenty of enemies of liberty as defined by libertarianism and that they, not we, are in charge of worldly affairs; that in many parts of the contemporary world their control of the populace is so complete that the ideas of liberty and of a libertarian social order are practically unheard of or considered unthinkable (except as some idle intellectual play or mental gymnastics by a few “exotic” individuals); and that it is essentially only in the West, in the countries of Western and Central Europe and the lands settled by its people, that the idea of liberty is so deeply rooted that these enemies still can be openly challenged.

And it is these white people of European descent - especially white men - who are victimized by the the enemies of liberty: immigrants, people of color, intellectuals, educators, representatives of "the State".

"Accordingly, given the present constellation of affairs, then, any promising libertarian strategy must, very much as the Alt-Right has recognized, first and foremost be tailored and addressed to this group of the most severely victimized people. White married Christian couples with children, in particular if they belong also to the class of tax-payers (rather than tax-consumers), and everyone most closely resembling or aspiring to this standard form of social order and organization can be realistically expected to be the most receptive audience of the libertarian message (whereas the least support should be expected to come from the legally most “protected” groups such as, for instance, single Black Muslim mothers on welfare)."

So Hoppe agrees with the Alt-Right movement that "white, European culture" is under attack.  Hoppe's problem with the Alt-Right is their advocacy of a white Volksgemeinschaft under some sort of national-socialist order - the antithesis of a libertarian order:

"When (Alt-Right leader Richard) Spencer appeared here, several years ago, he still exhibited strong libertarian leanings. Unfortunately, however, this has changed and Spencer now denounces, without any qualification whatsoever, all libertarians and everything libertarian and has gone so far as to even put up with socialism, as long as it is socialism of and for only white people. What horrifying disappointment!"

For Hoppe, racial purity ("whiteness") doesn't nearly go far enough to achieve a libertarian order.  After all, the enemies of liberty (women, Muslims, African Americans, Hispanics, etc) have all been enabled by white men. Further, the racial "minorities" are genetically ill-equipped and lack the intelligence to carry out their attack on liberty on their own:

"I believe it to be a serious strategic error to make “whiteness” the exclusive criterion on which to base one’s strategic decisions, as some strands of the Alt-Right have suggested to do. After all, it is above all white men that make up the ruling elite and that have foisted the current mess upon us. True enough, the various protected “minorities” mentioned before take full advantage of the legal privileges they have been accorded and they have become increasingly emboldened to ask for ever more “protection,” but none of them and all of them together did not and do not possess the intellectual prowess that would have made this outcome possible, if it were not for the instrumental help that they received and are receiving from white men."

So the true libertarian order can only be achieved by white Christian males who reject the State and are willing to act on their libertarian principles.  Here Hoppe repeats his "solution" that he first put forward in his book Democracy - The God That Failed: the violent removal of any persons or groups that are ethnically and intellectually unfit:

"Just as a libertarian order must always be on guard against “bad” (even if non-aggressive) neighbors by means of social ostracism, i.e., by a common “you are not welcome here” culture, so, and indeed even more vigilantly so, must it be guarded against neighbors who openly advocate communism, socialism, syndicalism or democracy in any shape or form. They, in thereby posing an open threat to all private property and property owners, must not only be shunned, but they must, to use a by now somewhat famous Hoppe-meme, be “physically removed,” if need be by violence, and forced to leave for other pastures. Not to do so inevitably leads to – well, communism, socialism, syndicalism or democracy and hence, the very opposite of a libertarian social order."

Hoppe doesn't say where the "greener pastures" are where the democrats and other enemies will be deported to.  Sobibor and Theresienstadt come to mind. 

So, while Hoppe has major reservations about Trumpism and the Alt-Right movement, he does see some progress towards the realization of his anarch0-fascist utopia. 

See also my blog post: The (Sick) Mind of Hans-Hermann Hoppe

 

Is Heroic Resistance Possible Without a Transcendent Ethos?

The FAZ has an interesting interview with Klaus von Dohnanyi about his father Hans von Dohnányi, who was an important member of the anti-Nazi resistance. Hans von Dohnányi was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and was executed - along with his brother-in-law, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer - in April 1945, just days before the collapse of the Third Reich.

When asked whether the current generation would have the same courage to resist tyranny as his father and the others in the anti-Hitler resistance Klaus von Dohnányi answered as follows:

Ich weiß nicht, ob die heutige Generation so tapfer wäre wie die Generation, die nach 1933 Widerstand geleistet hat. Wird eine solche moralische Kraft heute noch vermittelt? Und kann man Anstand lernen? Die Demokratie kann die Fundamente nicht schaffen, auf denen sie steht, so etwa schreibt Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Braucht diese Kraft vielleicht doch eine transzendente Substanz? Etwas, das nicht rational zu erschließen ist? Wenn es in den zehn Geboten heißt, du sollst nicht töten, dann heißt das eben, du sollst nicht töten! Wenn Sie aber die zehn Gebote nicht kennen, dürfen Sie dann aus „guten“ Gründen töten, wie im materialistischen Sowjetsystem?

("I'm not sure that today's generation would be as brave as the generation of the resistance after 1933.  Is such a moral force even mediated today? Can a person be taught decency?  Democracy is not capable of creating the foundation required for such a stance - as Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde writes. Doesn't such a powerful motivation perhaps require a transcendent substance? Something that can't be completely explained rationally? When the Ten Commandments declare Thou Shalt Not Kill, that means simply you should not kill! If however you are ignorant of the Ten Commandments then there may be "good" reasons to kill, like in the materialistic Soviet system.")

By referencing the Ten Commandments Klaus von Dohnanyi seems to be referencing Christian faith.  The younger generation seems to have drifted away from organized religion, as evidenced by the empty pews in German churches.  He seems to imply that this absence of religious faith would result in cowardice in the face of evil.

Surely Klaus von Dohnany's father knew the problem with this point of view.  Under the the NS-Regime and the "Deutsche Christen" movement  the Protestant -and to some extent the Catholic Church - had become a perversion of Christianity - with a  dejudicized Jesus.  

By chance I happen to rereading Bonhoeffer's Letters & Papers from Prison, where he talks extensively about his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi and mentions visits by Klaus and his siblings. In the preface to the American edition Bonhoeffer holds the Church accountable for not resisting the NS-regime.

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?"

The Church had failed.  In response Bonhoeffer came to advocate a "religionless Christianity" that would embrace an unmediated "true discipleship" of Jesus:

"Only the one for whom the final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these, when in faith and sole allegiance to God he is called to obedient and responsible action: the responsible person, whose life will be nothing but an answer to God’s question and call."

So perhaps von Dohnanyi's pessimism about the younger generation is unwarranted.  Plenty of people have left the traditional religious institutions asking themselvs "are we still of any use?" But they could still embrace an Ethos that is aligned with that of Bonhoeffer and others who resisted Hitler.

Revival of the "Clean Wehrmacht Myth" - Legende von der sauberen Wehrmacht

One of the more insidious aspects of the rise of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is the success the party leaders have achieved in their attempt to rewrite history - or, as they would claim: reclaim history ("unsere Vergangenheit zurückholen"). The most glaring example was the provocative Kyffhäusertreffen speech by AfD candidate Alexander Gauland delivered just a couple of weeks before the national election this fall (video of the speech here).  Here is the key section of Gauland's speech:

“Und deshalb, liebe Freunde, haben wir auch das Recht, uns nicht nur unser Land, sondern auch unsere Vergangenheit zurückzuholen. … Wir haben das Recht, stolz zu sein auf die Leistungen deutscher Soldaten in zwei Weltkriegen.“

("And therefore, dear friends, we also have the right not only to take back our country, but also take back our history... We have the right to be proud of the achievement of German soldiers in two world wars.")

And with that, Gauland revives the myth of the "Clean Wehrmacht" - the myth that German soldier on the front was simply fulfilling his patriotic duty with glory and honor, and had nothing to do with the Holocaust, which was carried out by a small group of SS officers.  This myth is a cultural zombie in Germany that won't die.  We thought it was dead after the hugely successful Wehrmacht Exposition of 1995-1999, which documented the Wehrmacht's participation in the extermination of Jews as well as non-combatant Poles and Russians.  The Expo traveled to 33 cities in Germany and Austria and had over 1.2 million visitors.  But now, with Pegida and the right-wing populism of the AfD, the Clean Wehrmach myth is making a comeback, and historical revisionism is once again infecting millions of Germans.

Rainer Werner, a teacher and author, writes on the blog Starke Meinungen about his father, who was a Wehrmacht soldier.  As a young boy, Rainer tagged along with his Dad at „Kameradschaftstreffen“, - reunions of WWII veterans - where the men could reminisce about the "good old days".  At these events the memories were scrubbed clean of any atrocities:

Der Krieg im Osten wurde in erster Linie als herausragende sportliche Leistung gewürdigt. Von Entgleisungen einzelner Einheiten und von der Verstrickung in Kriegsverbrechen war nirgendwo die Rede. Es gab auch keine selbstkritische Einsicht, dass es sich beim Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion um einen Angriffs- und Vernichtungskrieg gehandelt hat.

{"The war in the East was heralded first and foremost as a sporting achievement.  There was never any mention of any mistakes made by individual units or any involvement in war crimes. There was also never any recognition that the war against the Soviet Union was one of aggression and annihiliation.") 

With respect to the historical revisionism of Gauland the AfD Werner writes:

Alexander Gauland fällt mit seiner Forderung, wieder stolz auf die Leistungen der Wehrmacht sein zu dürfen, hinter den gesicherten Erkenntnisstand  der Militärforschung zurück. Er sabotiert damit den bislang einvernehmlichen Konsens in unserer Gesellschaft, die Verbrechen des Nationalsozialismus in all ihren Facetten aufzuklären und  zu ächten. Er beschädigt damit  die Erinnerungskultur und beleidigt die Opfer.  Wenn jemand die Verstrickungen der Wehrmacht in die Verbrechen der NSDAP leugnet oder verharmlost, kann er nur im Schilde führen, diese Verbrechen in einem weniger schlimmen Lichte erscheinen zu lassen. Gaulands Einlassungen zur Wehrmacht sind Teil des Geschichtsrevisionismus, den die AfD mit Eifer betreibt. Von ihrem Vorbild Wladimir Putin haben sie gelernt, dass es bei der Geschichtsbetrachtung nicht darauf ankommt, der  Wahrheit zum Durchbruch zu verhelfen, sondern die Geschichte so zu deuten, dass sie heutigen politischen Zielsetzungen oder Interessen dient. Wie der Kreml  heute die Verbrechen Stalins als patriotische Taten rechtfertigt, verharmlost  Gauland die Verbrechen Hitlers als „falsche Vergangenheit“.

The mention of Putin and revival of the Cult of Stalin in Russia reminds us that Germany is not the only nation grappling with historical revisionism.  Historical revisionism is a powerful component of totalitarian ideologies which, as Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post, are once again gaining traction around the globe. 

"Nothing is ever over. No historic trauma is ever resolved. No historic villain is ever buried, and no historic lessons are permanently learned. Everything and everyone can be revived, and anything can be unlearned — even in the most settled civilizations.Evidence of this is all around us. After two generations of atonement, an elected German politician — Björn Höcke, speaker of the parliamentary group of the new far-right party Alternative for Germany — wants Germans to stop apologizing for Nazi crimes; he describes the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a “monument of shame.” In China, a government once embarrassed by Maoism is peddling a sanitized version. Last year, 17 million Chinese made pilgrimages to the chairman’s home to pay homage to the man whose madness starved far more of his countrymen than that. [...] Totalitarian ideologies never die, and neither do their appeal, and so their consequences must be carefully re-explained for each generation. Supremacist and imperialist ideas make people feel better; mass movements offer confidence and safety. History is always available for rewriting, and wars can always be refought. France’s border wars with Germany lasted for centuries; Serbia’s modern struggle with Kosovo dates to a battle that took place in 1389. We will be refighting our Civil War 700 years from now, too, so we might as well prepare for it. "

See also my review of Wolfram Wette's The Wehrmacht

True Face of Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party revealed in Weidel eMail

She was supposed to be the "moderate" face of the right-wing nationalist AfD: a PhD management consultant who is in a lesbian relationship.  She comes across in her stump speech and debates as a mainstream conservative, more concerned about the role of EZB (European Central Bank) than in deporting immigrants.  As the public face of her party, Alice Weidel could appeal to right-wing CDU voters who are not happy with some of Angela Merkel's policies:

Weidel's poise and her knack for sidestepping the racist and xenophobic remarks by its leading politicians has led her critics to believe that her main role is to lure voters otherwise put off by rhetoric that smacks of the country's Nazi past. "I have no use for nationalistic ranting," Weidel told the Südwest Presse in 2016. In subsequent interviews she has described the AfD's tendency toward far-right sentiments as problematic and a distraction from important discussions. Instead of ranting about the refugee crisis or Islamist terrorists, Weidel opts for a calm tone. Photos of refugee suffering "broke her heart," she said on a national talk show in 2016 - but pointed out that Germany couldn't help everyone.

But this "moderate" image of Alice Weidel has been shaken by the discovery of a 2013 email, sent by "Alice Weidel" to a small group of friends:

"Lille" was Alice Weidel's nickname at the time.  Here is my translation:

(The reason why we are overrun by culturally foreign people such as Arabs, Sinti and Roma is the systematic destruction of civil society as a possible counterweight from the enemies of the constitution by whom we are governed.  These pigs are nothing more than marionettes of the WWII Allied victors whose job is to suppress the German Volk through mini-civil wars in our urban centers induced by this foreign infiltration.  Just follow this link concerning Germany's "sovereignty". The fact that Germany is not at all sovereign can be seen in the repulsive fatalism of our policies - such as expropriation due to the bailout of the euro, corrupt judiciary (the German constitutional court)....  More on this later. )

Weidel has attempted to block publication of this email, claiming that it is Fake News.

Under normal circumstances, a blatantly racist email such as this would turn voters away from the AfD and torpedo Weidel's chances of taking a seat in the Bundestag.  But, as we saw with the candidacy of Donald Trump - whose poll numbers soared with every racist or sexist comment he made -, there is a sizable contingent of voters who are thrilled by such incendiary statements.  My guess is that the AfD's support will surge in the final days leading up to the national election. 

Harvard University's Contribution to Mein Kampf

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler has a detailed explanation of the Nazi Rassentheorie and how the mixing of the Aryan race with inferior races was resulting in the decline of civilization.:

"Die Blutsvermischung und die dadurch bedingte Senkung des Rassenniveaus ist die alleinige Ursache des Absterbens alter Kulturen; denn die Menschen gehen nicht an verlorenen Kriegen zugrunde, sondern am Verlust jener Widerstandskraft, die nur dem reinen Blute zu eigen ist." (Hitlers "Mein Kampf", S. 324).

Was this something he just dreamed up on his own, or overheard in a Munich beer hall?  No, Hitler was basing his treatise on the most advanced "scientific research" coming out of the United States.  The field of "eugenics" originated in Great Britain, but it was the Americans who latched on to the theory and began to develop social and medical (forced sterilization) programs based on the junk science.  American eugenics grew out of the Social Darwinist ("survival of the fittest") misinterpretation of evolution popular in the late 19th century and a crude interpretation of genetics which began to emerge early 20th century America.  Much of the  eugenics "research" and policy recommendations came out of America's great universities, and at the forefront was the country's oldest and most prestigious institution: Harvard University.  This is personally painful for one who owes much to Harvard, but - to the university's credit - it has completely acknowledged this shameful chapter in Harvard's illustrious history: 

"As eugenics grew in popularity, it took hold at the highest levels of Harvard. A. Lawrence Lowell, who served as president from 1909 to 1933, was an active supporter. Lowell, who worked to impose a quota on Jewish students and to keep black students from living in the Yard, was particularly concerned about immigration—and he joined the eugenicists in calling for sharp limits. “The need for homogeneity in a democracy,” he insisted, justified laws “resisting the influx of great numbers of a greatly different race.” Lowell also supported eugenics research. When the Eugenics Record Office, the nation’s leading eugenics research and propaganda organization, asked for access to Harvard records to study the physical and intellectual attributes of alumni fathers and sons, he readily agreed. Lowell had a strong personal interest in eugenics research, his secretary noted in response to the request."

Keeping inferior human genes out of the United States became an obsession with Harvard geneticists.  One prominent member of the Harvard science faculty, Professor Edward M. East, sounded the alarm about uncontrolled immigration in a best-selling book:

In his 1923 book, Mankind at the Crossroads, East’s pleas became more emphatic. The nation, he said, was being overrun by the feebleminded, who were reproducing more rapidly than the general population. “And we expect to restore the balance by expecting the latter to compete with them in the size of their families?” East wrote. “No! Eugenics is sorely needed; social progress without it is unthinkable….”

Hitler began writing Mein Kampf shortly after the publication of East's book.

It would have been bad enough if the Harvard professors had kept their junk science confined to Harvard Yard, but they were intent on infecting government institutions and the public at large with the eugenics gospel of genetic superiority:

"In 1894, a group of alumni met in Boston to found an organization that took a eugenic approach to what they considered the greatest threat to the nation: immigration. Prescott Farnsworth Hall, Charles Warren, and Robert DeCourcy Ward were young scions of old New England families, all from the class of 1889. They called their organization the Immigration Restriction League, but genetic thinking was so central to their mission that Hall proposed calling it the Eugenic Immigration League. Joseph Lee, A.B. 1883, A.M.-J.D. ’87, LL.D. ’26, scion of a wealthy Boston banking family and twice elected a Harvard Overseer, was a major funder, and William DeWitt Hyde A. B. 1879, S.T.D. ’86, another future Overseer and the president of Bowdoin College, served as a vice president. The membership rolls quickly filled with hundreds of people united in xenophobia, many of them Boston Brahmins and Harvard graduates.Their goal was to keep out groups they regarded as biologically undesirable. Immigration was “a race question, pure and simple,” Ward said. “It is fundamentally a question as to…what races shall dominate in the country.” League members made no secret of whom they meant: Jews, Italians, Asians, and anyone else who did not share their northern European lineage."

America's attempts to keep "inferior genes" from its shores through restrictions on immigration found a great admirer in Adolf Hitler, who advocated similar controls for Germany.

"Mein Kampf also displayed a familiarity with the recently passed US National Origins Act, which called for eugenic quotas. "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."Hitler proudly told his comrades how closely he followed American eugenic legislation. "Now that we know the laws of heredity," he told a fellow Nazi, "it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Harvard's infatuation with the "science" of eugenics was eventually played out by the 1930's and the university - and America - reversed course and rejected the junk science.  But the damage was done.  And even today we see the remnants of eugenics in the rhetoric of Donald Trump, who calls immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere "rapists, murderers, drug dealers and gang members."  Or in Thilo Sarrazin's book Deutschland schafft sich ab,  - an anti-immigrant screed that draws heavily on the work of Charles Murray (Harvard University, Class of 1965).

Full Video of Nazi Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

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Root cause of right-wing extremism in eastern Germany

What comes to mind when one thinks of the eastern German states that comprised the former GDR?  Pegida marches, neo-Nazis, burning refugee shelters, assaults against foreigners, "Merkel muss weg!" etc.  But how fair and accurate is this image?  According to a new study by the Göttinger Instituts für Demokratieforschung the situation is far more nuanced.  In cities such as Jena and Leipzig there is widespread resistance against right-wing extremism.  But still, there are towns where neo-Nazis are in firm control and the authorities can't or won't do anything to curb their activities. And even in relatively liberal cities like Erfurt there are districts that are "no-go" areas for foreigners:

Auch im Vergleich zu Sachsen schneidet Erfurt deutlich besser ab, so würden rechtsextreme Taten und politische Einstellungen hier kaum relativiert. Eine Ausnahme stellt allerdings der Erfurter Stadtteil Herrenberg dar. Dort habe sich über Jahre eine rechtsextreme Szene "fest in das Stadtviertel integriert", schreiben die Autoren der Studie. Sie sprechen gar von einer "rechtsextremen Vereinsstruktur" mitsamt einem Vereinshaus und "rechtsextremer Erlebniswelt", die sich vor allem an sozial benachteiligte Jugendliche richtet. Diesen wird beispielsweise auch schulische "Nachhilfe" angeboten.Herrenberg ist eine Plattenbausiedlung, wie es sie in vielen ostdeutschen Städten gibt. Nach 1989 wurde das bis dahin diverse Viertel zu einem Wohnort für jene, die aus finanziellen Gründen dort bleiben mussten. Integrationsfiguren oder soziale Vorbilder seien rar, weswegen Rechtsextreme besonders frei agieren konnten.

The authors of the report cite several "root causes" for the extremist pockets in the eastern states: the relative isolation of the DDR, lack of exposure to diverse populations, little awareness of German history (absence of Vergangenheitsbewältigung), poor economic prospects, etc.   And their proposed remedy?

Um dem Rechtsextremismus in Ostdeutschland entgegenzuwirken, sei ein ganzes Bündel von Maßnahmen notwendig, die nur langfristig erfolgreich sein könnten, schreiben die Autoren. So müssten das historische Bewusstsein gestärkt und politische Konflikte offen angesprochen werden – vor allem vonseiten der lokalen Politik. Weil die DDR sich als antifaschistischer Staat begriff, habe man sich auch nicht in gleicher Weise mit der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit auseinandergesetzt wie im Westen. Positive Beispiele gebe es, auch auf sie solle man sich stärker fokussieren.

I'm sure the authors of the report have good intentions.  But, sorry, history lessons will do little to help.  The situation will only gets worse - especially outside of the few major metropolitan centers in the region.  The eastern states are in a steep decline - in terms of economic prospects, productivity and population. 

If it were still a country, East Germany would be the oldest in the world. Nearly 30 years after unification the region still suffers the aftershock from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when millions—mostly young, mostly women—fled for the west. Those who remained had record-low birth rates. “Kids not born in the ’90s, also didn’t have kids in the 2010s. It’s the echo of the echo,” says Frank Swiaczny from the Federal Institute for Population Research, a think-tank in Wiesbaden. The east’s population will shrink from 12.5m in 2016 to 8.7m by 2060, according to government statistics. Saxony-Anhalt, the state to which Bitterfeld-Wolfen belongs, is ahead of the curve.

Paradoxically, the region most desperate for an influx of immigrants is the most hostile to foreigners.  This is the "base" for the right-wing extremist party Alternative for Germany (AfD).  The party's continued success in the region ensures only that the region's economic and cultural decline will only accelerate.