Sadly, so true.
I am so sad the elections over here were before Trump was installed. Maybe we could have been like Canada, like Australia, and like Germany that saw the light: democracy has to be protected and defended, by law, against anti-democratic parties.
It's growing fast and the measures against it are so slow and often not enough. Vigilance is absolutely crucial.
I am not optimistic at all, we need this to be outlawed. But democracy is not properly set up to do that, it seems.
@hans I hear the 'could do more harm than good' argument a lot these days. But nobody seems to really explain why.
I mean, sure, it's not just a single court decision and they're gone. We need to close their offices, seize their money, ban them from the media, remove them from public jobs - it's a long way. But if we do not do this now, then when? They are haters, they are not going to go away peacefully if we just wait.
@hans For Germany, I think this needs to be outlawed/illegalized. We have humanitarian values in our constitution that should be the standard to measure policy against and fascism and racism simply do not hold up to that standard.
That said, we definitely have a larger societal problem to deal with, once we have made sure these fascists cannot take over our democracy.
To paraphrase Popper: no tolerance for the intolerant. Hard, but necessary
@pascaline @georgetakei Germany didn’t see the light. The AfD didn’t get a majority, but their vote share was way up from the previous election. (I dunno if you’re referring to the AfD now being classed far right extremist; that has nothing to do with Trump and nothing to do with law.)
And Farage’s Reform just won in a bunch of English local elections.
@pascaline Yeah, that’s been in the making for a long while. And the Verfassungsschutz doesn’t tend to be influenced by current events in their assessments.
Sadly, it will likely not have any effect on voters (and politicians are, predictably, prevaricating on whether to initiate the process to get the party banned).
All of us, except those on the receiving end of tax cuts, government contracts and subsidies, would presumably be a more accurate way to phrase it.
@georgetakei /AltTextr
: a Lucious scene with a white billboard
We're about 3 lines deep into the "first they came for" poem.
It's not a very long poem, folks.
/atltext.
When line ((3)) happened this time, the world rejoiced. 😢
You're not wrong. Still, you're still performing in that fabulous play in London, right?
You might want to ask to extend the run for another year or so.
Reverent Martin Niemöller looking back on Germany in 1933:
'When the Nazis came for the Communists,
I kept quiet,
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I kept quiet,
I wasn't a social democrat.
When they took the trade unionists,
I kept quiet,
I wasn't a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left,
who could protest.
It's a lot easier for you to emigrate your entire six degrees elsewhere to safe asylum than the rest of us, George.
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