In its crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, Germany has normalized racism and state violence in a way that goes beyond any conflict abroad, reminding us this really is the country of the 1920s, again.
Yeah, no. You’re misrepresenting the claim of the person you responded to.
Nobody is disputing the rise of the far right in Germany, nor the increasing police brutality. We experience the same authoritarian tendencies as other countries.
This article, however, paints the country as an already authoritarian police state where expressing the wrong opinion will get you jailed. That’s not happening (yet).
I hear you, and nobody is claiming Germany is already living under a totalitarian police state. Yet pretending the article says dissenters are immediately jailed is a misread, precisely the misrepresentation you’re accusing me of.
The article is documenting escalating repression, police violence against elected officials, chilling of speech, and a political culture that treats Palestine solidarity as criminal suspicion by default.
You can choose to read it as hysteria, or you take the rise of authoritarianism world-wide actually seriously and read it as a useful warning.
Look at how UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was smeared, disinvited from institutions, and treated as an existential threat simply for applying international law. That pattern should disturb anyone who cares about democratic norms.
And when people like @[email protected] and @[email protected] and @[email protected] jump in all over this thread and call critical journalism “propaganda” and accuse me of “scrapping the web for negative news to spread [my] propaganda”, it kind of confirms the point, doesn’t it? Criticism of state violence is instantly pathologized and viewed with suspicion. If this is what’s happening on fucking …lemmy, I honestly am a bit uncomfortable about what it means for mainstream discourse in the country! And yes, I agree, absolutely agree, that Germany has not crossed the line yet, but the line is getting closer, and pretending the raising of the alarm is the problem is exactly how democracies sleepwalk into disaster.
This is not an article but a cheap propaganda piece published via Substack written by a person who runs a YT channel called “Mad in Germany.” This person has no idea what is going on in Germany.
The piece’s statements are not true. Germany has not “normalized racism and state violence in a way that goes beyond any conflict abroad,” and, no, it is not “really the country of the 1920s.”
And, no, the fact that a German newspaper did not publish Ai Weiwei’s text is not “censorship,” it was a private magazine that refused to publish an absurdly weird article (read the text, we had a discussion on Weiwei’s article here on Lemmy a few days ago in another thread as you will remember).
And so it goes on. I don’t understand why such a post is not deleted.
What makes things worse is that such posts critical of Germany and Europe’s stance on rights violations often come from accounts praising China, Russia, and other autocracies for their politics. This is the case also here.
What makes things worse is that such posts critical of Germany’s and Europe’s stance on rights violations often come from accounts praising China, Russia, and other autocracies for their politics. This is the case also here.
This is a blatant ad hominem attack here. I’m a bit flabbergasted at this kind of unfounded vitriol and smear, presented in such a passive aggressive manner. What are your receipts?
a cheap propaganda piece published via Substack
Zeteo is a real new media organization, with “Mostly Factual” rating on MBFC, only because of the reviewer’s perception that it does “one-sided reporting that can sometimes lack opposing counterpoints”, without any failed fact checks in its history. Their choice of publishing platform is irrelevant: as far as I can see in the sidebar, [email protected] does not have a rule about Substack, this is not [email protected].
written by a person who runs a YT channel called “Mad in Germany.” This person has no idea what is going on in Germany.
Wrong: “James Jackson is a freelance reporter and broadcaster based in Berlin and covering news, business and culture in Germany and Central Eastern Europe for publications like the BBC, Sunday Times, Time Magazine and others. A former trainee at Deutsche Welle, he produced an award-winning documentary about the trans history of Berlin and is a Poland fellow of the International Journalist Programme.” That bio definitely does not scream “has no idea what is going on in Germany”. Source: https://www.madingermany.org/about
I don’t understand why such a post is not deleted.
So, first you call me a bootlicker of autocracies, then you ask for the post to be deleted. You are creating an extremely toxic discussion and at this point, I’m pretty sure you’ve broken Rule 3 of the community.
Beyond that, for what it’s worth: Your Ai Weiwei point also misses the point. A private magazine can decline to publish, but spiking a commissioned piece for its political content is still evidence of a chilling climate. The article’s core claims are about escalating repression, police violence at protests, and the narrowing of acceptable speech. These are contestable on facts, not on the author’s YouTube channel. If you think the claims are false, show counter-evidence on policing, on protest bans, on international warnings, and on the treatment of Palestine-solidarity voices.
Further, you are choosing to double down on your smear precisely in response to a comment where I very very clearly say “I agree, absolutely agree, that Germany has not crossed the line yet, but the line is getting closer, and pretending the raising of the alarm is the problem is exactly how democracies sleepwalk into disaster.”
Do you have anything to contribute beyond toxicity, smears and paranoia?
Yeah, no. You’re misrepresenting the claim of the person you responded to.
Nobody is disputing the rise of the far right in Germany, nor the increasing police brutality. We experience the same authoritarian tendencies as other countries.
This article, however, paints the country as an already authoritarian police state where expressing the wrong opinion will get you jailed. That’s not happening (yet).
I hear you, and nobody is claiming Germany is already living under a totalitarian police state. Yet pretending the article says dissenters are immediately jailed is a misread, precisely the misrepresentation you’re accusing me of.
The article is documenting escalating repression, police violence against elected officials, chilling of speech, and a political culture that treats Palestine solidarity as criminal suspicion by default. You can choose to read it as hysteria, or you take the rise of authoritarianism world-wide actually seriously and read it as a useful warning.
Look at how UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was smeared, disinvited from institutions, and treated as an existential threat simply for applying international law. That pattern should disturb anyone who cares about democratic norms.
And when people like @[email protected] and @[email protected] and @[email protected] jump in all over this thread and call critical journalism “propaganda” and accuse me of “scrapping the web for negative news to spread [my] propaganda”, it kind of confirms the point, doesn’t it? Criticism of state violence is instantly pathologized and viewed with suspicion. If this is what’s happening on fucking …lemmy, I honestly am a bit uncomfortable about what it means for mainstream discourse in the country! And yes, I agree, absolutely agree, that Germany has not crossed the line yet, but the line is getting closer, and pretending the raising of the alarm is the problem is exactly how democracies sleepwalk into disaster.
@acargitz
This is not an article but a cheap propaganda piece published via Substack written by a person who runs a YT channel called “Mad in Germany.” This person has no idea what is going on in Germany.
The piece’s statements are not true. Germany has not “normalized racism and state violence in a way that goes beyond any conflict abroad,” and, no, it is not “really the country of the 1920s.”
And, no, the fact that a German newspaper did not publish Ai Weiwei’s text is not “censorship,” it was a private magazine that refused to publish an absurdly weird article (read the text, we had a discussion on Weiwei’s article here on Lemmy a few days ago in another thread as you will remember).
And so it goes on. I don’t understand why such a post is not deleted.
What makes things worse is that such posts critical of Germany and Europe’s stance on rights violations often come from accounts praising China, Russia, and other autocracies for their politics. This is the case also here.
This is a blatant ad hominem attack here. I’m a bit flabbergasted at this kind of unfounded vitriol and smear, presented in such a passive aggressive manner. What are your receipts?
Zeteo is a real new media organization, with “Mostly Factual” rating on MBFC, only because of the reviewer’s perception that it does “one-sided reporting that can sometimes lack opposing counterpoints”, without any failed fact checks in its history. Their choice of publishing platform is irrelevant: as far as I can see in the sidebar, [email protected] does not have a rule about Substack, this is not [email protected].
Wrong: “James Jackson is a freelance reporter and broadcaster based in Berlin and covering news, business and culture in Germany and Central Eastern Europe for publications like the BBC, Sunday Times, Time Magazine and others. A former trainee at Deutsche Welle, he produced an award-winning documentary about the trans history of Berlin and is a Poland fellow of the International Journalist Programme.” That bio definitely does not scream “has no idea what is going on in Germany”. Source: https://www.madingermany.org/about
So, first you call me a bootlicker of autocracies, then you ask for the post to be deleted. You are creating an extremely toxic discussion and at this point, I’m pretty sure you’ve broken Rule 3 of the community.
Beyond that, for what it’s worth: Your Ai Weiwei point also misses the point. A private magazine can decline to publish, but spiking a commissioned piece for its political content is still evidence of a chilling climate. The article’s core claims are about escalating repression, police violence at protests, and the narrowing of acceptable speech. These are contestable on facts, not on the author’s YouTube channel. If you think the claims are false, show counter-evidence on policing, on protest bans, on international warnings, and on the treatment of Palestine-solidarity voices.
Further, you are choosing to double down on your smear precisely in response to a comment where I very very clearly say “I agree, absolutely agree, that Germany has not crossed the line yet, but the line is getting closer, and pretending the raising of the alarm is the problem is exactly how democracies sleepwalk into disaster.”
Do you have anything to contribute beyond toxicity, smears and paranoia?