Samoth,

It is interesting and important that the popular perception of a socialist in the USA, as being on the far left, seems to be very different than the way many socialists portray themselves in Europe as being on the right side of the political isle. Hummm....

Coincidentally, what the USA considers "far left" is preeety "center-right" for the rest of the world :D

I agree.

I live in the USA and know how stupid the majority masses are here. They are typically uninformed and also do not care. They like to work themselves long hours almost to death and then come home for a few hours of junk television programs.

I just wanted to step in and point out that samoths statements aren't really representative for the German society. I was rather shocked on some of your points, especially the parts about the "trouble Turks" and the "good Turks". Maybe this is really the way you see things, maybe it's just the phenomena that people tend to overstate their opinions on the internet, but I can't understand how you could come across with such a stereotypical and highly one sided view of the situation.
And than you state that both east and west wished the reunion had never happened. I... well I honestly don't know what to say. Please don't tell people from other countries such things because they might actually believe this is the way the majority of the Germans perceive the reunion, not just a comparatively small group of people.
I could go on, but since you've written so much, that would probably cost me the better part of the day.

@3Ddreamer:
While Germany has a national socialist movement and political party, their influence is rather small and I can't really say that they are swaying politics in any meaningful way. They might come across bigger than they are because they tend to be much loader than most other parties. There is no evidence that the national socialists are going to take over the country or even get a saying in how the country should be run.
Germany currently has a problem with the integration of foreigners into the society, which (in my opinion) mostly steams from a deeply rooted xenophobia in some parts of the population and a general misunderstanding of each other. But the way I perceive it, things are getting better, but could do so a little bit faster.

But I'm also often astonished by what is seen as "far-left" by the USA. I can't even comprehend what for example German "far-left" parties might be seen as.

"trouble Turks" and "good Turks" [...] highly one sided view of the situation.

This is actually a highly two-sided and accurate view of the situation. Unless you are either one of the misled people who hate every foreigner (and probably ever other person too), or unless you are one of the misled people who believe that you should send people like "Mehmet" on holiday to reward them for their crimes. Oh wait, that isn't holiday or reward, it's... resocialisation.

Thing is, we have a lot of foreigners that are good, honest people and that no sane person has an issue with. But we also have an entirely different kind. The kind that makes up 5% of the population and commits 95% of the crimes.

And than you state that both east and west wished the reunion had never happened. I... well I honestly don't know what to say. P

You could for example ask all the people in the east who voted and still vote for the SED, which was later renamed PDS and later Linke if you don't know what to say.

Or you could ask all the neonazis, which are no more and no less than an expression of the economic situation. You don't become a neonazi because you are born with the evil gene or because you think it's cool. You become one because you come out of school and get no job, got no perpective, and no hope. And then a soulcatcher approaches you and tells you it's someone else's fault. That's what has been happening during the last 20 years and is happening more and more.

Oh right, that too is only my opinion, in reality we don't have any neonazis at all. That's why the Verfassungsschutz isn't worried about them. It is probably also the reason why they've manipulated the Landtagswahl a few years ago when the ultra-rights were voted in with a two-digit percentage. Suddenly, the party was "illegal" whereas a week before it was perfectly OK for them to participate in the elections. Of course nobody would have expected they'd get a 2-digit result...

preip,

Do you live in Germany? Are you a German citizen?

Guys, look, I am no Neo-Nazi, but I am an ethnic German who is a citizen of the USA. I care about my ancestral people no matter where they live, but especially in central Europe and in particular Germany. My ancestors came from Bavaria on my father's side (Volga River Germans for a few generations before coming to the USA) and from Prussia on my mother's side, by the way - just for your curiosity.

I have strong convictions for a free-enterprise, democratic blend of moderate national socialism, not only in Germany but also in some other countries such as Japan. Many Americans perceive this to be the state of culture and politics in Germany at this time. Here the "liberals" tend to praise it and the "conservatives" tend to have phobia about anything resembling socialist national policy such as universal health care.

What really is the condition of both the popular opinion in Germany and the national politics in comparison to American public thinking toward Germany? (Not that it actually matters much to Germany, of course. It seems to matter a lot more to certain ranting and bloviating pundits or uniformed ordinary people. )

Here the "liberals" tend to praise it and the "conservatives" tend to have phobia about anything resembling socialist national policy such as universal health care.

Your conservatives are right into spreading phobia, too. Why? Because public healthcare is neither freedom, nor social.

We have equal public healthcare for everyone. Except that's a lie.

It is mandatory for everybody who is working, no choice, except if you are a self-employed person, or in a "free occupation" (physicians, apothecaries, attorneys, notaries, engineers, journalists), or if your salary is over 3937.50 Euros monthly. In this case you can choose be in public healthcare or you can pay everything yourself or you can get a private insurance which costs a fraction at substantially better treatment.

Except again, if you fell for Schröder's scam of the Ich-AG (another socialist thing they did some time around 2000 or 2001). Basically this is a legal governmental scam to trick people into not taking advantage of unemployment insurance when they are entitled to it. Instead they get another founding, but have to pay healthcare themselves, and find themselves out of the retirement pension system afterwards. They don't count towards the jobless statistics any more, though. Which is the whole point.

So much for fairness, so much for being social. The poor have no choice, and the rich can get a private insurance. It is often said that we do not have a "two-class medicine", but we certainly do. If my neighbour goes to see a specialist, he gets an appointment in two weeks. If I want to see one, I'll wait 15 mins. Of course they'll charge my insurance a three-digit sum just for saying good morning, but well, you get what you pay for.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. But that is only because the system is working fine for me. Doesn't mean it's fair, though.

I'm all for free choice and for getting what I pay for, and for earning what I work for. But I am also for being somewhat fair. It's not right to patronize people and to force them into some social bullshit, and then not giving them what they paid for. That's just what the socialists are doing, though.

free-enterprise, democratic blend of moderate national socialism, [...] Many Americans perceive this to be the state of culture and politics in Germany at this time.

Not at all the case. The general state of culture has been being cowardish anti-national and self-humiliating. All my youth I've been told (even in school) how it's our fault and how we are the heirs of blah blah, and it is our debt and whatnot. Except it isn't my fault at all, even my parents weren't even born earlier than 3 years after the end of that war. Those who live in the USA today are the heirs of the people who murdered the indians. Does this ever come up? Does anyone care? No. Are you being told that you have a heritary debt? No.

Countless examples could be told about similar atrocities that happened within the last centuries (including during the last world war, and including e.g. the Vietnam war). Does this ever come up? Well, Vietnam does come up, very rarely. But not in the same way.

Whenever someone didn't like something about Germany during the last 50 years, he would quote "but the Nazis did...". Doesn't matter what it is or what kind of lie it is.

Such as when Greece was to pay its debts: the Nazis stole their gold, and Germany never paid repairs. Truth is, Greece had this "stolen gold" transferred to the Bank of England long before the Nazis came, and it's presumably still there. Truth is also that Germany did pay repairs back in the 60s (and not precisely little!). But nobody dares to speak up because it is unpopular.

You can also see this in the lack of respect that many other countries show. For example, when the foreign minister went to the US for that NSA story, they didn't even receive him. Granted, he is kind of a loser and I have a hard time taking him for serious, too. But still it shows a great lack of decency to do such a thing. It's the political equivalent of saying "yeah you know what, fuck you, we don't care what you have to say".

On the other hand, we do have some serious neo-nazis, and their number (and danger) is increasing. We also have a non-neglegible number of radical far-lefts. Both of these groups are minorities, but they are ready for violence, and not few of them are armed (legally or illegally).

That is, contrary to the USA, in a country where the common man does not have the right to buy a firearm. Still, the nutters, the extremists, and the crimials have them anyway.

It was recently (last week?) in the papers how the neonazis are systematically recruiting people with no perspective right after school. Of course that isn't anything new, it is how it works in every ideologically driven organization. Whether it's Jehova's Witnesses or radical muslims, or neonazis, the pattern is always the same:

• There is an enemy (jews, christians, foreigners, everybody-who-is-not-witness, ...)
• You are a loser, but it isn't your fault. The enemy did it. They want to destroy you.
• Actually, you are part of the superior race/religion/group. You only didn't know until now.
• The enemy must die. Go fight.

This easy pattern works surprisingly well, it has been applied for millenia.

Geez, the more I read about and talk to people from other countries, the more I appreciate the near-perfect country in which I live.

This is actually a highly two-sided and accurate view of the situation.

Well your right, it's actually a two sided thinking. What I meant was your extremely black and white thinking in that case but I should have worded that differently. You might be aware that there is a huge gap in opinion between "hating every foreigner" and "sending them on holiday", like you call it.

Do you live in Germany? Are you a German citizen?

Yes I live in Germany and I'm a German citizen. I just like to avoid the word "we" when I'm talking about my country, because that feels like I'm coming across like some archetype German, which I'm not and of which there are not many because the country and the people are very different depending on where you live. This is of course also true for every other sufficiently sized country.

While I don't want to deny that there is a problem with right-wing extremism in Germany, one should not exaggerate the situation. Germany certainly has no blend of moderate national socialism in their government. What the country does have is a blend of moderate socialism, which despite the similarities in wording is a totally different thing.

So lets talk some numbers:
The number of right-wing extremists in Germany is roughly 25k[1][2] and the whole population is currently ca. 80M. That means we are talking of a whopping 0.03% of the population, but the dark figure might be higher. Also keep in mind that I'm talking of extremism here, not of people with a right or conservative mind set.
The German national socialist party has currently 5400 members[3], while the social democratic party has 474.820[4] and the Christian democratic union has 469.575[5] (which are the two biggest parties in Germany).

So this is the huge threat we are taling about. Like I said, they are more visible because they are louder than the other minorities and they tend to be much more violent, which of course corresponds to a much bigger public outcry. None the less the number of crimes motivated by right-wing extremism has taken a huge rises since the nineties[6] which is a big problem.

There is currently another attempt to ban the national socialist party[7] in Germany, which might or might not be successfull.

Geez, the more I read about and talk to people from other countries, the more I appreciate the near-perfect country in which I live.

Well if I would be reading this without knowing the situation a little bit better, I would probably think the same. Which is why I tend to give another point of view on that matter.

(Sorry, sources are in German)

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Rechtsextremismuspotential_in_Deutschland.gif&filetimestamp=20121230151730&

[2] http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/artikel/rechtsextremismus-zahlen-7552

[3] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPD

[4] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPD

[5] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU

[6] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Politisch_motivierte_Straf-_und_Gewalttaten_von_rechts_in_Deutschland.gif&filetimestamp=20121230152215&

[7] http://www.bundesrat.de/DE/presse/Thema/Thema-node.html?__nnn=true

You might be aware that there is a huge gap in opinion between "hating every foreigner" and "sending them on holiday", like you call it.

There is also a huge gap between "hating every foreigner" and recognizing that among the many good foreigners, there are a lot of particularly bad apples, too. Which is bloody obvious, unless you are deliberately trying not to see it.

Of course that's not your fault, it is decades of "we must bow and apologize to everybody and we must not say a word, lest someone thinks we're Nazis" education that you get in school, and in the newspapers, on tv, and everywhere. This naturally leads to a mindset that when someone says there are bad foreigners that are criminals and who still live quite good lives off welfare, then this translates to "that guy hates all foreigners".

Yes, there are Germans who commit crimes in Germany, too. There's some (an increasing number) that abuse the social system as well. No surprise. But the point is, you do not have a choice, you're stuck with them. That isn't the case for criminal foreigners, though. You do have a choice. You need not give them money, and you need not tolerate them in the country if they don't behave. Doesn't mean you have to gas them, but you do not have to tolerate everything either.

And sure enoug, you do not have to pay them holidays

When talking about hating foreigners, look at other countries. See what they did to that boy 4 or 5 years ago who presumably raped this girl in Antalya. The girl turned out being a virgin upon medical examination, and confessed that she had lied. The Turks nevertheless kept him in prison with real rapists for over a year because he is a "fucking foreigner". What did the German government do about it? Nothing of course, of fear that the Turks could dislike us. Schönbohm was the only one who dared to stand up in a significant way by making the statement that Turkey was showing that they're not ready to enter the European Union (but of course that was more for his political motives than for the boy's sake).

The number of right-wing extremists in Germany is roughly 25k

Which means as much as 10% of the population. 25,000 is 10% of 250,000. You will remember that the Greens got together 250,000 people to protest for the Energiewende after the Fukushima accident. The Energiewende was immediately realized after this manifestation, because the people wanted it.

I sure didn't want such a rash decision and such an overhasty change which was guaranteed to fail (as has been demonstrated). Nobody who I've talked with since then wanted it. But that does not matter, all that matters is whether you get together a "critical mass" to be seen, then "the people" wants it.

Worded differently, it does not matter how many people you have in comparison to some abstract number (like inhabitants of the country, which includes many 80+ year olds and children). What matters is how many people you have that are willing to get active (and violent!), and how many people you have relative to the number of people who are willing to get vocal (and violent).

That, and the fact that the neonazis are quite well-organized and networked (BND connections, anyone?) and that virtually every single one of them has a firearm. Not few of them aren't worried using them either. 25,000 people who are ready to use a firearm because you have the wrong skin color or because your nose is a bit too crooked to pass as Arian are a real danger. They're nothing to laugh about.

The ultra-left aren't much different, they even have their publicly known "traditional havoc days" when they put fire on cars and houses and roam the streets destroying things and throwing rocks and molotovs at people. Apparently that isn't even illegal because the police isn't doing much against it. Try and do that in some other countries, depending on where you try, the police might either bash your skull or put you down with a riot gun (those things that shoot 2 inch-sized plastic bullets), or put up a machine gun and fire into the crowd.