A group of eight Holocaust survivors drew parallels between the current political climate and that of Germany in the 1930s. Some of them condemned the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).

Eight Holocaust survivors have urged young people to shun far-right parties and vote to protect democracy at the upcoming European Union elections.

“For millions of you, the European elections are the first election in your lives. For many of us, it could be the last,” read the open letter, unveiled in Berlin on Tuesday.

“We couldn’t stop it back then. But you can today,” the eight authors wrote.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    If a party is supporting a country committing genocide along ethnic lines because of the very ethnicity that’s in control in that country and would not do it if a different ethnicity was dominant, then they’re at the very least extremely racist, “racist” because their support is based on ethnicity “extremely” because not even Genocide along ethnic lines makes them waver in their support.

    In the Modern Era (post WWII) extreme racism is a far-right trait.

    It looks at lot like in Germany most of the political landscape has not evolved away from seeing people and nations as etnics first and foremost, which is one of the core foundations of Fascist thinking, including Nazism.

    Outside the Racist, Fascist logic, “never again” is about such things not being done to any people not merely to people of a specific ethnicity.

    Even the non-Fascist Right would only ever rationalise support of a country committing genocide along ethical lines on money terms (just look at most of the US’ support for dictatorships) or security terms (I.e. “they’re valuable allies”) rather than ethnic composition of the government and population of the country.

    It was actually a major disappointment for me to discover that German political thing hasn’t actually moved all that much away from some Nazi principles about the worth of human beings.