1,315 words

It’s 2016-2020 all over again, it would seem. Those were the years when the German mainstream media did not go one day without publishing at least one headline telling us how dumb, dangerous, and insane Donald Trump was.

Well, Trump is slowly making his comeback in the headlines, but more importantly, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has now taken his place. It’s obvious what happened. Not long ago, the mainstream media were full of hysterical headlines about how much support those evil Right-wingers were gaining among the population. And then they realized: this was backfiring. They were de facto telling people on an almost daily basis how much support the AfD had and that, apparently, it was now okay to vote for it.

And so, more and more people did.

Suddenly, the headlines changed. The AfD has massively lost support! Look at all the rallies against the AfD by the general population! Look at what that dumb, dangerous, and insane AfD politician just said! This has now been going on for days and shows no sign of abating.

Concerning the aforementioned rallies, Claudio Casula of Achse des Guten wrote an article called “The Government Calls for a Demonstration” (my translation):

When those in power call for rallies, something is wrong. The list of alliances from the “demonstrations against the Right” show many state-affiliated groups that often depend on public funding.

Do governments call for demonstrations, and if so, when? Is this more likely to happen in democracies or autocratic regimes? What does it mean when the public media take part in such calls? If you ask ChatGPT, the answer is somewhat surprising: It is “extremely unusual in democracies for governments to actively call for demonstrations.” This is more likely to be the case “in autocratic regimes,” “to show supposed popular support or to suppress political resistance.” And: “If public media participate in such calls, this could indicate that the media are controlled or influenced by the state.”

Is ChatGPT, a tool that is usually greener than a queer climate activist from Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders program, suddenly becoming rebellious? Or are facts being stated here in a matter-of-fact way? In fact, some people are reminded of January 1990, when Neue Deutschland ran the following headline in response to a demonstration in East Berlin: “Our country now needs a broad united front against the Right.”

The political and media establishment thinks so, too, because on the one hand, the government’s popularity ratings have plummeted, while the ostracized AfD is now the strongest force in the eastern federal states and is poised to win the state elections in the autumn. It’s time to inflate the bogeyman of the acute threat to democracy to larger-than-life proportions. On the other hand, the massive protests by farmers and truckers, for example, show that there is a lot going wrong in the country and that people are not willing to put up with the government’s impositions any longer. . . .

So the masses have to be brought out onto the streets to simulate a broad united front against the Right. The Federal President and Chancellor themselves are calling for the rallies, and with them “alliances” from the relevant circles. The Ampel [traffic light] government is enthusiastic and very pleased with the masses who spontaneously took to the streets over the weekend in support of democracy with an ecological face. In Munich, the organizers were kind enough to publish their list of supporters. A broad alliance of over 130 organizations had called for the demonstration on Sunday.

Let’s take a closer look at the list. The much-vaunted “civil society” is dominated by the usual suspects: from the parties and their youth organizations, through the churches, trade unions, and state-pampered cultural institutions, to the far-Left groups and the rabid antifa. But the state-funded “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) are also well-represented, and of course the climate extremists of Letzte Generation [Last Generation], the feminists of Slutwalk, the notorious Omas gegen Rechts [Grannies against the Right], and the inevitable Volksverpetzer are all there. There are also groups that you wouldn’t expect to see at a political gathering, from the Kartoffelkombinat München ist ein Dorf [Potato Combine Munich Is a Village] to the climbers from Kraxlkollektiv [Kraxl Collective] and Küche ohne Grenzen [Kitchen without Borders].

The Bavarian Journalists’ Association is also involved; so much for “neutrality in reporting.”

Casula then went on to list all the organization taking part in the Munich demonstration and their affiliations.

None of this is shocking. It might even work; people without deeper convictions are very easy to sway in one direction or another.

I’m currently doing biographical research into the men and women whom Savitri Devi met during her time in Germany again. It should come as no surprise to any reader of Savitri’s books that she overly glorified my countrymen quite a bit. “You’re an idealist,” one of her new acquaintances even told her. The reality, as my research has shown so far, was far less resplendent: humans, not demigods. And yet, doesn’t it make you wish to live up to Savitri’s expectations? It probably had that effect on many of the people she met. She was an enabler. Not without reason did the British authorities at the Werl prison ban her from any contact with the imprisoned National Socialists.

My favorite book of hers is Pilgrimage, hands down. While Gold in the Furnace and Defiance are set in the “nightmare landscape” of immediate post-war Germany, Pilgrimage takes place in 1953, when the German economy was well on its way toward the Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle. Cities still had to be rebuilt, but things were looking up, and Savitri marveled at the fact — yet she also realized where things were heading politically, ideologically, and socially. She doesn’t acknowledge this realization; instead she only calls it a fear she has, if things were to go on as they were for much longer. Throughout the book she expresses her hope and expectation that Germany would rise up against the occupying forces and restore National Socialism to power within a few years. Obviously, this is not what happened, and all of Savitri’s fears came true. I am not a National Socialist, but I still find it hard to read her predictions, knowing what happened.

A colleague of mine who’s an ardent Leftist — he once said he would refuse to vote for Die Linke [The Left] party as long as Sahra Wagenknecht was still a member, as she is much too Right-wing to be tolerated by him — proudly reported on the huge turnout at the anti-AfD rally he was attending. Although there are unexpected signs to the contrary. My mother’s landlord casually remarked that “the system” would last only three more years at most, in his opinion. My mailman — well, woman, actually — and one of my neighbors also spoke about the Great Replacement. I keep meeting people who are hesitant to speak about certain things (“One shouldn’t be saying this, of course . . .”), but once they realize that not only do I not judge them, but I say these same things openly and more extremely than they ever would, they feel free to drop the shackles of political correctness.

People’s natural instincts are not dead. They just need to feel that they are not alone with their guilty secret. So here’s a job for us: be enablers. Get those people out of the closet.

A curse upon those who destroyed that splendid new world that we were building!” cried I, as though speaking to myself. “May they become slaves, and see the precious values for which they fought mocked and despised all over the earth, and may they sink into nothingness, not through the rapid and clean death of the heroic vanquished, but through the slimy path of vice! No wretched end is wretched enough for them!” — Savitri Devi, Pilgrimage