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So - do you trust Germany? I do.
2025 is 80 years after 1945. And I think we've mostly trusted them not to repeat the ugliness for most of that, because they took steps internally to regain that trust.
The real question is, does the US have what it takes as a nation to disavow and prevent this once cured in the same way Germany did? And I don't know the answer to that.
@tbortels @Remittancegirl Germany fucked up 1991-21 by not taking redevelopment of East Germany seriously enough. The East never fully de-Nazified—they shot obvious Nazis, but then set up an authoritarian state where rank-and-file authoritarian types simply switched slogans and slotted right in, then they left the East to rot. This created the swamp in which the AfD emerged: a large region in which far-right reactionary politics is mainstream.
(Here in the UK I'm in no place to throw stones …)
@cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
The BRD made huge efforts of investment into the ex DDR.
It was no good. You can't wipe out
12 years of Nazism followed by 45 years of Stalinism that easily.
I crossed the iron curtain many times,
and life there was really bad according to my western standards.
But you can't beat nostalgia, because life is always cool when you're young.
45 years of propaganda, where Russians are the good guys and western democracies the nazis...
@MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl Bear in mind that in the east some things regressed drastically after unification: women's rights, for example (they'd had full employment participation in the DDR but AIUI got shoved back into the kitchen, hard by the CDU et al).
@cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
That's true, not EVERYTHING in the DDR was bad, public transport, housing was cheap, etc, but being spied on by an authoritarian state, belonging to those in power, the feeling of being powerless, the constant lies, the smell, the rotten environment, the walls that still showed the bullet holes from WWII.
It was a society that had nowhere to go to. They all wanted change at that time.
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl Public transport? I mean, they tried, but to this day the map of Berlin is weird because West Berlin could afford to develop the U-Bahn and East Berlin couldn't. The DDR was still mostly running steam locomotives at unification, and much as I love them, you get a much better service with electricity...
@denisbloodnok @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
Busses were cheap. Not everyone could get hold of even one of those Trabi cardboard cars. Or of an MZ motorcycle. But they all had to get to work...
@cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl until today, child care in „the east“ often is far better than in „the west“. After 1990 the „peoples“ companies were put under control of “Treuhand” whose job it was to privatize or shutdown. Many western companies acquired east companies to get access to contracts and shut down eastern production. 2 Generations witnessed turbo-capitalism that way. Local invest was hindered by unclear ownership. 50 years of NS and Communist injustice had to be reverted. So no renovation, no new building.
We now have 2 Generations whose best move from the east to the west 1/2
@cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl many towns have declining population. Who is put there? Refugees. And who is to blame? Left-wing LGBTQ Population-Exchange ideologists. This actually is where the far right thrives. They care. They organize, they support, they oppose.
These areas are not underdeveloped. Often they are objectively in a better situation than ever. But they change rapidly. Too fast for many. The right-wing phenomenon also ist not just an ex GDR thing: AfD is gaining in the west too. Intersting: Russian-German dominated areas largely vote ultra-right. No idea how to fix. 2/2
@supernova @cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl
Well as for "Who is put there? Refugees. And who is to blame? Left-wing LGBTQ Population-Exchange ideologists."
That's a very strange take. Most of the Nazi towns are "National befreite Zone", meaning no one there that looks non-arian. And you know this.
Blaming the LGBTQ community - shame on you. Typical blameshift.
Who's to blame for Nazis? Nazis.
@edgesoft @cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl 666 characters are too few for a consistent argument. Obviously, blaming the “Left-wing LGBTQ Population-Exchange ideologists” is not _my_ argument. It is a such ridiculous term, I would not have thought someone could get that wrong. But you might have seen what the green party has to endure, right? They are clearly blamed for all that is perceived to be wrong. And which party is more progressive than them?
@supernova @cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl
Well obviously I did not get the sarcasm. Sorry for that.
@supernova
@cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl
All this and demotions and terminations in the public sectors leads to a state where many of the influential positions are 45 years later still occupied by people with west German biographies. So you not only lose economic power, you lose political power, you lose academic power, and you also lose cultural power. On this background even if you are objectively privately better off, your do not feel that way.
@supernova @cstross @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl
Raising kids, though, is great. Whereas you have a right to child care starting from age 3 throughout Germany, you can expect to find a place for your child from age 1 in most of the former GDR regions (note: right to ≠ can expect to). The daily opening times are longer and you have child care in the afternoon in elementary schools.
I know young people that move back east, once they get children, because of this.
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl In Poland the standard of living has arguably improved since 1990, but a number of things that were taken for granted under communism are now gone. Whole industries were rolled back. Public healthcare is largely gone. One of first things "democratic" rightwingers did was a partial abortion.ban. Transition away from communism pulled the rug from under a lot of people.
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl My pet peeve is how the communists invested in housing. This stopped in the late 80s, but when I was finishing my studies in 2004 I still had a clear path to buying my own flat. Then the parliament decided it would be great to make it easier for people to take loans. Housing prices about doubled in three years. The older I get, the more I can't afford a home, which means I pay literally 3x as much for my home as a person who got one from their granny.
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl Had the Bundesrepublik not triumphalistically followed the Milton Friedman shock doctrine but instead kept subsidised DDR state industries through a smooth transition (or wound them down as workers retired), perhaps it could have been handled better
@acb @MEGA @tbortels @Remittancegirl Same here with Thatcher in 1979=81 taking an axe to the state-owned industrial base.
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl I believe part of this rift is that folks from the DDR/GDR had lifelong firsthand or parental experience living in and dealing with a state/government you can't trust.
And now they experience such a government here, but are out-voted by the mostly western part of the population who are successfully gaslit into not seeing the authoritarianism of their own government and administration. ...
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl So you are saying that, after 28 years of (mediocre, at best) isolation behind the wall, east Germans were indoctrinated so badly and so thoroughly that even 35 years of living in a so much better system couldn't beat that indoctrination out of them?
Please think about this argument long and hard before you ever make it again. There's a lot to be said against it, and none of that is pretty.
@MEGA @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl this is a joke, right?