Why do Germans think that having committed the Holocaust gives them special privileges to speak about Jews?
Why do Germans think that having committed the Holocaust gives them special privileges to speak about Jews?
108 comments
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not sure if it directly answers your question but have to pass on this from @the_kid@hexbear.net in the news mega
really great article if you want to understand the German brain-type
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It's really funny to see Turks having a problem with putting themselves into the "repentant perpetrator" and not "potential victim" role, though.
Typical German behavior on the Holocaust is problematic in the sense that they put their own shame above the reality and possibility of other real genocides, some happening now. So if their repentance means endorsing a genocide committed by someone else - it's fine, their repentance is more important for them.
So moral play is made more important than moral action, or even than refraining from immoral action.
EDIT: Ah, and if you are in conflict with this worldview of theirs and you are Jewish, - no, they are not going to shut up.
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Thanks for the article. It was a good read
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It is absolutely the most galling shit and every imperial core lib does it.
"Yes we did some horrible things in the past, but we've learned not to which makes us wiser than everyone else"
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We freed the slaves all on our own accord, which if you think about it makes us the most moral people to ever exist!
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Germans project and believe an image of themselves as being a self-critical society that acknowledges the evil of their Nazi past and has now moved past it.
At the same time, they barely even understand who the Nazis were and how they came to power and who beat them into submission so they think it's just being racist and having swastikas.
As such, they're still pretty fash even though they don't know it and feel they have special brownie points to lecture everyone else about what counts as racist or Nazi even though they're idiots.
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guy who started a grease fire in the kitchen by accident going on to give seminars in fire safety without ever having learned what causes grease fires
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The existence of the current German state was founded on and exists because of that fundamental refusal to understand the Nazis.
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Cause they've learned thats the only bad thing they did
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It's so pervasive there are people who describe themselves as anarchists and zionists as if those things are possibly compatible. And there are a lot of them especially online.
https://novaramedia.com/2023/12/11/whats-up-with-germanys-pro-israel-left/
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And there are a lot of them especially online.
They are far from a terminally online phenomenon tbh, even if they are in a slow decline for the last decade or so (mostly because many become regular liberals or right wingers).
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I think we can all agree that the world would be better off if the German speaking peoples were still scattered across a thousand tiny states called like the Grand Archbishopric of Pissdrinken
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I was once in Jordan with a bunch of them - they accused everything of antisemitism. After seeing a pic of an Israeli soldier in nazi garb eating children (EDIT: Yeah, that one was antisemitic, they saw it everywhere though, with a generalized contempt for these arabs not having the noble german guilt to bear), they commented on how antisemitic that was and the swastika being drawn the wrong way around and I bursted out "Glad we are here to show them how it's done" and I still think that is the best summary of german thought I can give
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Eating children is a classic blood libel trope tho.
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That one was true tbh, didn't mean to defend the jordanians here, I meant to say they didn't just see it there
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Here's a whole podcast with some good resource/analysis in the links.
Edit: Also a lot of Norman Finkelstein's "The Holocaust industry" goes into the issue with German reparations, the maleable definition of "holocaust survivor," and how "Establishment" organizations largely funnelled the funds to pro-Israel organizations.
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Because in the typical euroid fashion, they still believe they have superior opinions.
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Because in the typical euroid fashion, they still believe they have superior opinions.
An elegant way of conveying a thought I've had for a while, that being that when eugenics and the open discussion of killing the poor and the mentally disabled was publicly talked about, and how acceptable colonialism was, they thought themselves superior to the non-Western world; when they realized it was insane and evil and stopped, they still believed themselves superior. There doesn't seem to be a point where they see the rest of the world as equals.
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They understand that all people are equal....unlike all those lesser people who don't realize that.
That is the essential contradiction of modern liberal eurocentrism. They uphold a basic rejection of their own actions being bad, as why they ARE still superior. Everything is couched in this exclusivity
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German libs seem to be the only ones in the West truly enjoying supporting Israel's genocide. They're totally convinced that supporting Israeli murder of Palestinians makes them clever/moral good boys who are just better than everyone else. Everyone else is sheepish about it or just doesn't want to talk about it, but the Germans watch their media blatantly propagandizing them to support this crime against humanity and eat it up like Uncle Sam dripped some lard over their kibble this morning. It really encapsulates everything that is sick and wrong in the German political consciousness. They've really got a lot going for them as a society, as loathe as many of us here are to admit it, but it makes them so damned arrogant and blind to their ideological domination.
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They've really got a lot going for them as a society
Could you expand on that? Thinking of moving
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Cause that's how cracker chauvinism works. When you do a lot of heinous shit, you arent guilty. You've simply become an expert.
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I'm suddenly very tempted to ask German libs if they condemn the Warsaw Rising.
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I think there'll be a split. The, eh, vanilla modern German view would be strongly in favor of it (EDIT: the uprising). But the fringe where the opposite opinion is acceptable starts not that far from it.
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Because its literally illegal to support Palestine in Germany. It got written in law decades ago so now every political party must support Israel. Who is going to articulate to them the reality? Online foreigners? Thats just people who never had to face their antisemitism.
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The only time you should ever hear a German's opinion on genocide is if you want to know how to conduct one.
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I hate that now that the Russian SMO is underway, you have Germans saying genocidal rhetoric, for example that Russians have a different view towards death and don't value life (like WEEEEEEE in the West do), and that they're not really Europeans.
I wonder why being or not being European is even worth bringing up in the first place, surely it's not a racism thing, riiiiiiight?
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KKKrackers think they have authority on every subject
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Trying to make themselves feel better probably
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Yup as somebody who was raised catholic I can confirm that's them trying to squash down that internalized guilt.
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There's no right-wing politics in germany. That is to say, of course there is - lots of it - but nobody would ever proudly proclaim it like elsewhere, because it carries the immediate association with being a nazi, which is widely disregarded. And THAT is to say, it is widely disregarded to be considered a nazi, not so much doing nazi stuff.
This seems to shift the overton window into the fucking 4th dimension as nobody can admit to being a right-winger anymore.
EDIT: The conclusion to the entire idea of being maybe sort of close to the nazis, ideologically, is that most people can have horrible shitty political opinions but convince themselves that's actually progressive, and you get this crap
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Europe is absolutely lousy with progressively worded bigotry. Take for example all the gay rights concern trolling islamophobia
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Because they're crackers.
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Offloading guilt + "to catch a murderer you need to hire a murderer" logic. Really fucked up.
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"to catch a murderer you need to hire a murderer" logic
which is I believe how they recruit cops
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Pretty sure it's the same mentality as you see other places.
"I was a Nazi, so I get to tell you what is a Nazi, why they became a Nazi, why..." whatever else. Like when right wingers "become reformed" (they just mean they watch different YouTube videos but with the same overall themes) so they get to police "the left" on what is beneficial towards our goals and such. And their discord logs always leak and it's always full of the most colorful and unsurprising racist and homophobic slurs you can think of. But they know better and we should listen to them because they've "been there" or whatever.
If you came from such a background and just suddenly became aware that racism is bad I do not value your criticism of "from the river to the sea" chants or the name "black lives matter" for a movement. I don't care, the people who are oppressed and suffering don't care, the only ones who care are the liberals, which these "reformed right wingers" always still are. If they were actually radicalized to the left they'd not be saying the above dipshittery.
There's probably some fancy psychological term for people who realize they were wrong to some degree, change their opinions, but still remain overly critical of the opinion they claim to have changed to.
I have to imagine there's a lot of that going on with Germans broadly. "I truly understand this because my grandfather did it." As if an outsider can't... read? There's a lot of weird shit tied up in it and on the subject of Israel Germany is so incredibly wrong that it's almost shocking. All I can think is "you motherfuckers learned NOTHING!" There takeaway doesn't seem to be "genocide is bad" but rather "genocide is bad... depending on who is doing it."
There's probably some guilt element tied up in it and some level of "fear" that as a German they can NEVER speak out against Israel because people will immediately go "German accent? Nazi." which might have some truth to it, but they aren't beating the stereotype by openly supporting another genocide now.
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vee hev tou protekt te joos in Israel vrom te eevil muslims!
Edit: But seriously, Germans are entirely obsessed with the idea of Israel absolving them of criticism. Germans in Europe are seen as brash, obnoxious know-it-alls who think everything in Germany is better. Superficially they are an extremely obnoxious people who should (and need) to tamper down their voice and brashness. Under the hood however they are extremely insecure and have the need to compensate the failures of modern Germany and their ancestors with moral bombasticism. Israel is a perfect surface to project their supposed moral superiority. After all, aren't they nobely supporting the Jewish cause by their uncritical support of Israel? How could Germany be antisemitic if they are taking the morally superior stance of protecting jews from scum Muslims?
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ake nuance-cookery, bootlicking, both-sideism, and "akshually" 101 philosophy wannabe-majors and you got a complacent and unaware populace. In germanys underfunded and class-segregated education system historic revisionism and pop-lib history is widespread. Its countryside is controlled by American-founded CDU country lords. German society is also still conservative and regressive. The lower class of german society is very effectively sidelined, I know it from my father, who doesn't speak up or criticizes his bosses because of a sense of "Oh they are more qualified than me". Its a very weird hierarchal structure.
To alleviate some people's fears here, the hardcore pro-zionism is widespread amongst the higher chambers of german society, especially the "highly educated" section. I come from working-class surroundings and most of the people there are not that extreme, they also are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. But just like with most countries, its the voice of the upper-class English-speaking "techie" population that gets amplified
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Firsthand experience of course!
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Why do Germans think that having committed the Holocaust gives them special privileges to speak about Jews?
A
is speaking. It's time to (not) listen -
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108 comments
As a German: Because we have a lot of Holocaust memorials and are taught a lot about it in school, we love jerking each other off about how much we've learned from our past as opposed to say, Japan, who deny the atrocities they've committed to this day.
But of course, all the changes and improvements are completely superficial and meaningless. We are a neoliberal hellhole and maybe the most pathetically loyal US client state in all of Europe, which is saying a lot. Our political parties will performatively decline engaging with the fascist AfD, but still implement all their same policies because we are a capitalist nation in decline.
Germans think because their newscasters speak in a monotonous, boring voice, that what they're being presented is completely unbiased and nothing but the truth. They really do believe themselves to be the adults in the room. Trump derangement syndrome is also huge in Germany, our equivalents of Bill Maher or whatever still make fun of him, the president of a foreign country who hasn't been in office for over 3 years, while self-fellating over how much better our democracy is because instead of 2 identical parties, we have 5.
Germans think they're the most reasonable, objective and intellectual people in the West while blindly following whatever the current US propaganda campaign says, so completely deluded, ignorant and pathetically loyal that we will happily shoot ourselves in the leg to serve American interests.
I fucking hate this country. I hate its self-aggrandizing, pseudo-repentant, pathetic ass-kissing of Israel. I hate how everyone in this country is a staunch defender of the status quo, how everyone loves to dunk on America with a less-than-surface level understanding of why America is the way it is and complete ignorance about how we're on the exact same track but maybe 3 years behind. Even our "left" loves Israel because there is not a single person in this country who understands literally anything, it's all fucking vibes. Israel could literally come out tomorrow like "We have decided to rebrand the war against Hamas as "Holocaust 2"" and we would lick their assholes for it.
Germans are probably the dumbest, most ignorant and at the same time most self-important people on this godforsaken planet. The dumbest American is 10x more curious about the world than the smartest German. If the US told us to, we would happily exterminate the Jews again, our news would tell us that the Jews started it and that would be enough for the average German to feel proud and righteous about it.
Americans in the room after reading this be like
Be grateful that you can't read German twitter
The amount of Israel worship among self-described communists would activate the school shooter gene in US leftists
Edit: I've said before that the reason why the entire world can dunk on the US and the UK is because everyone understands what you're saying at all times. Nobody outside of Sweden can dunk on unhinged ramblings of random Swedes in TV interviews, because their interviews are in Swedish.
I honestly can't fathom a nation being dumber than America. Maybe that's my American exceptionalism talking but we really are dumb.
There is something to be said for being openly and unashamedly dumb. I feel like us Europeans have this holier-than-thou superiority complex while still being dumb and horrible as shit. But then again, could also be my bias speaking. I would still rather live here than in the US for material reasons.
america number 1!!! U S A! U S A! U S A!
As a german, the least I can say that we at least have the decency to all hate ourselves openly
I had an Australian tell me recently that their liberal party being frothing fascists is because Trump set a precedent for them or something? It's not like they only legalized gay marriages less than a decade ago.
"Erdogan is basically the Turkish Trump"
"Milei is basically the Argentinian Trump"
"Wilders is basically the Dutch Trump"
"Orban is basically the Hungarian Trump"
Wow, could there be material reasons for why all these right-wing figures are popping up with similar rhetorics?
NO, IT MUST BE BECAUSE OF THE ORANGE MAN'S BAD VIBES
trump forced them to be a settler colony, actually
This is too accurate. It's wild that despite the massively strong competition, Germans might genuinely be the worst Europeans
I think the perfidious albion inches just ahead personally, but it's a close one
The Canada of Europe
I could literally say the same thing about the UK except we know we're not very clever
I wish we did too
Socratic ignorance is still a type of knowledge
but we do like to think of ourselves as smarter
I could imagine this being true of other Anglophone states besides Ireland (which has some real Catholic morons, don't get me wrong, but also has some more intelligent people), but really? Germany? I suppose I have a prejudice because of German art, but I don't imagine the better among Germany as being nearly this dumb.
Being part Armenian, part Jewish, I'll say mentioning unapologetic, but peaceful and harmless Japan in this sentence is the easy way, chosen instead of mentioning Turkey which is closer and which is still butt friends with the EU in general and Germany in particular in everything but words (because actions, like numbers for trade and military cooperation, matter, and words don't).
I mean, it can be read as just a detail deepening your point, so whatever.
Yes, that thing seemed OK 10-15 years ago, but now is kinda starting to stink.
That last paragraph is unfair to Germans, seems to me that it's true for most of the humanity.
Japan is part of the West and by no means "harmless"
Yeah it's hyperbolic to say the least. I'm just so fucking frustrated. I was never much of a "I hate my country" guy until October 7th happened and everyone in this country showed their entire ass all at once. Every delusion I had about this country has been shattered since then, it's been a lot to deal with.