Germany’s Far-Right Comeback | NYT Opinion

[Music] Gooden talk from Germany the country that needs saving according to Elon Musk but don't worry we know what we are doing and we know who we are we are Germans we are good at inventing long complicated words and we are really cool and relaxed but of course there's something else we Germans were really good at inventing Nazis Germany may have lost one or two world wars but we successfully turned it into a win and we became we are world champions at confronting our history a title we've held for 80 years in a row we

won this title by virtual signaling but with a German twist we are not just signaling virtue to others but also to our own guilty conscience living in Germany means being constantly reminded of our past every day 24/7 for now 80 years we've been telling ourselves never again remembrance of the Holocaust is everywhere in Germany a country stacked with memorials memorials memorials memorials just in case we forget to never forget unfortunately never again didn't come with a manual on how to never again our German extreme right party the afd is projected to win almost every every

fifth vote in our national election this February the party is called the alternativa forand which literally means alternative for Germany and they will probably become the second largest party in German Parliament out of around half a dozen here is what one of the afd's leading figures thinks of German never again I know it's subtle but afd's B hucker might sound a bit hitleresque which is French for slightly concerning hucker recently won a state election in Eastern Germany securing the first far-right win in a state election since World War II he by the way can legally

be called a fascist as the German court has ruled in one case so should the rest of the world be worried about a big German fascist comeback [Music] yes you should be worried let me explain why and since I'm German my explanation of course will be pointlessly complicated and inspiringly brutal like our traditional German bedtime stories for instance the one about a boy named Conrad who wouldn't stop sucking his thumbs until they were cut right off just for educational purposes of course so the afd was founded in 2013 and it primarily opposed EU policies then

it quickly radicalized anti-Semitism anti-muslim anti-migrant anti-establishment anti-mainstream media the afd worked and works the authoritarian Playbook and now they are twisting the truth by hijacking our world-renowned beautiful German language F in a spec of birdshit in German history that's what one of the afd's founders called Germany's Nazi past meaning the Holocaust was just a speck of birdshit in our overall successful history success of course meaning constantly losing world wars so far when Elon Musk the man who would never salute Nazis recently interviewed afd's chairwoman Alis Vel on X she gave another vibrant example on how

afd mastered blatant truth twisting the biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative he was exactly the opposite he wasn't a conservative he wasn't a Libertarian he was a communist socialist guy why not try a 100 180° turnaround from the truth let's try but these obvious little rhetorical tricks are actually effective thanks to one special German way to cope with our past g g forenight means actively forgetting our let me put it this way ambiguous past despite the endless memorials because honestly having to confront your

own history can be really really exhausting for us Germans but forhide is not a concept the afd just recently invented in 1952 for instance Conrad ardau one of the founding fathers of our modern democratic Germany signed a v a reparations agreement yet another beautiful accessible German word and did you know also a pretty common girl's name in Bavaria ah there little V up look at her cute blonde pigtail come over is ready in the oven vcom was our post-war reparations agreement with Israel but most modern democratic Germans have conveniently forgotten real motives in other words

beware the Jews are still powerful even though we try to kill them all so from now on we better be nice to them and then all is V good again thank you Conrad ARA but n never really went away in both germanies in the 2000s a Neo-Nazi terrorist group murdered at least 10 people their racist crimes continued for years because the German public and police could not even fathom that neo-nazis could be responsible instead they just publicly blamed immigrants for supposedly killing each other why are we Germans so blatantly dismissive towards the collective affection for

the farri partly because in Germany there's a discrepancy between Collective memory and individual guilt we acknowledge our Grim past never again yada yadada yada but our ancestors like personally our families ourselves we had nothing to do with it whatsoever yes my great-grandfather was in the vaff SS but he was a cook and the lasagna he made in Stalingrad tasted like shul Al so basically he tried to destroy the vaff s from within where's his memorial H by virtue signaling to our own guilty conscience we got rid of our Nazi past Germans have sworn to never

again so many times that it became an empty phrase and when a new right-wing leader calls for a 180 degree turnaround on never again we also don't take it seriously because it somehow feels empty as well because no matter what we do Germans can't be Nazis again that's the space in which the afd operates they can say and do Nazi things as long as they aggressively deny that anyone was ever a Nazi it's like giving the Hitler salute in front of a large crowd of right-wing extremists while denying being a [Music] Nazi it's a narrative

that seems to be successful all over the world we aren't Nazis we just don't fully support Liberty equality and the rule of law we aren't Nazis we just want white supremacy the afd is not the new Nazi party they just want Germany to be great again and that's why now in Germany the Kaka is unum [Music]