Incidents at a school in the eastern German state of Brandenburg have given rise to fears over far-right sentiment in the classroom. Officials have expressed dismay, encouraging teachers not to shrink from hate.
Incidents at a school in the eastern German state of Brandenburg have given rise to fears over far-right sentiment in the classroom. Officials have expressed dismay, encouraging teachers not to shrink from hate.
It’s a byproduct of the way the GDR was dissolved. The west Germans went through a rough time when they attempted to de-nazify themselves.
East Germany completely skipped that part. Thanks to the weird GDR indoctrination we know have a weird blob of underlying extremism. Fucking sucks and the right wing party gets an unfortunate amount of support because of it and the current politicians.
That is absolutely not true, the de-nazification in east Germany, was much more thoroughly than in the west.
Absolutely ahistorical comment. The GDR denazified much more thoroughly, especially in the conservative /monarchical-leaning juridical branch, with well known consequences (eg, lack of judges with proper education). You can make a point that the ideologically loaded suppression was fostering an resurgence after the fall of the wall, but what you write is … false.
But on the other hand, didn’t the SED give old Nazis a political home in the National Front, supposedly to keep them in check and prevent them from potentially becoming an opposition force?
GDR was not alone in using this strategy, but I’m not aware of anywhere that didn’t end up lending a lot of legitimacy to fascists and coming back to bite them in the end. Same story played out in my country of origin, but there it was the centre-right that decided that they should absorb the fascists in an attempt to control them, and it predictably backfired.
It’s sociologically similar to how the USSR (and now Russia) love to whitewash all the heinous shit the Soviet Union did around the same time - and considering that the GDR was a member state of the USSR, it’s easy to see how that created a positive feedback loop.
It is also similar to the way the US and the UK do not like looking at their own problematic history. Probably other countries too but I am not familiar enough with their politics.
That’s absolutely not true. My father who is now in his 60s still had (Alt)nazi teachers in west Germany. West Germany mostly skipped denazification as it was not politically wanted. Some nazis at the top were prosecuted, sure, but most every day nsdap party officials never had any problems, kept their positions as judges, teachers, doctors and so on. Saying that west Germany was de-nazified is wrong. From what I know, denazification in the east was much more thorough, which makes sense ideologically. Why would the Soviets tolerate Nazis? No way. I think the bigger problem was that the allied nations needed a military partner against the UDSSR quickly, which meant that most Nazis just kept their position.