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Trump Nazis try to tell Germany what a Nazi is [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-04
Germany decided to label AfD as a "right-wing extremist" organization.
Marco Rubio had a different take on X:
"Germany just gave it spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That's not democracy --- it's tyranny in disguise."
"What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD --- which took second in the recent election --- but rather than the establishment's open border immigration policies that AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course." - May 2nd.
It's very strange that Rubio, being a Cuban, is supporting a group that would kick him out of the country should he show up at their border. A Cuban Nazi just doesn't fit, but he appears to be taking on that mantle.
The German Foreign Office was not pleased with his comments, replying on X:
"This is a democracy. This decision is a result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learned from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped."
It was Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) that designated the AfD as a "confirmed right-wing extremist" force.
AfD has all the earmarks of being a Nazi organization. Their xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and ethnic based understanding of German identity is incompatible with Germany's Constitution.
BfV said AfD "aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society and subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment and thus assign them a legally devalued status."
This all started back in February, when JD Vance visited Germany and met with Alice Weidel, co-chairperson of AfD, and snubbed a meeting with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Vance tried to give European leaders advice on how to handle their right-wing factions. "If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years." A swipe using Trump's claim of having a mandate.
"I expressly reject what US Vice President Vance said at the Munich Security Conference. From the the experience of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus: this is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties," said Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
National Socialist German Workers' Party was the name of Adolf Hitler's political party. You don't get any plainer than that. He was calling Vance's comments as Nazi in nature.
A senior AfD official, Maximilian Krah, has said that the Nazi SS had been "not all criminals." What is anyone supposed to make of that? Talk like a Nazi, walk like a Nazi, act like a Nazi, they must be Nazis.
Vance also accused the European leaders of "hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like 'misinformation' and 'disinformation.'" The man has embraced MAGA's alternate facts.
Standard playbook it is. We probably shouldn't be surprised after the embarrassing episode with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. Trump's US officials have taken the stance that we can criticize our allies for being democratic, and praise our repressive enemies as being our friends. It makes no sense. But, that's par for the course with the Trump Administration.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs said:
"This administration's normalization of the AfD --- a far right anti-immigrant, extremist party that has called Holocaust remembrance a 'guilt cult' --- fundamentally threatens the safety of Jews, countless other communities, and democracy around the globe."
Holocaust denialism. We have the same problem in the United States. In Germany, it cannot be allowed, for all too obvious reasons.
Amy continued: "Yet the Embrace of AfD is sadly unsurprising, as it aligns with the flurry of policies coming out of the White House targeting immigrants, communities of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and our basic democratic norms and institutions."
Alice Weidel's response to the extremist label was predictable, "Since the AfD is the strongest party in the polls now, they want to suppress the opposition and the freedom of speech." Weidel herself is a contradiction. She opposes gay marriage and yet she is raising two sons with her Sri Lankan born female partner, Susan Bossard.
Weidel is also generating an anti-EU sentiment and skepticism for NATO and Germany's participation in the Ukraine war. Sounds so much like Trump it isn't funny.
Vance had more to say on X, "The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt --- not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment." He didn't say the deep state, but he might as well have.
Elon Musk replied to Vance's post with, "Fate loves irony."
Musk hosted an hour-long conversation with Weidel back at the end of January, and Musk said there is "frankly too much focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their parents, their grandparents."
Musk just doesn't get it. Germany must remember the past so it never repeats it. This is so much akin to Trump celebrating Confederate traitors with statues, paintings and monuments. Our racism had suddenly come to a grinding halt one day and we didn't need to remember slavery anymore because it made some people feel uncomfortable. Afd is doing the same thing about Nazism.
Trump=anti-muslim-anti-immigrant-anti-NATO-anti-EU-anti-history=AfD. Two of a kind. Germany still has a chance to stop a new Hitler. We've already got ours.
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