Massive change is afoot within Europe’s far right. Just as voters across 27 countries prepare to go to the polls in EU elections, a split over the German far right’s allegiance to the Third Reich is driving a realignment.
The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European parliament last week expelled the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction from its ranks after a furore involving the leading AfD candidate Maximiian Krah.
The unprecedented move, initiated by Marine Le Pen, was officially a reaction to remarks Krah made in an interview with an Italian newspaper. Asked if his demand that all Germans take pride in their forbears would include those who were in the SS, the Nazi’s main paramilitary force, Krah said that “not all SS were criminals”.
“Not all ss were criminals”
How quickly we forget our history.
I mean yes some were technically unaware of what was truly happening. But do we really want to go down the path of being on the side of, or defending the ss?
I don’t think any were unaware of the general picture. There’s debate about how much Axis civilians knew about things like the Holocaust, but the SS were a select, elite group. They knew enough.
Nah, even what you wrote is overly-charitable.
The SS knew exactly what they were doing. Krah knows the SS knew exactly what they were doing. Krah is simply blatantly lying.
Agreed. You could make that argument perhaps for German civilians. And maybe even some of the Wehrmacht at a stretch. But the SS answered directly to the Nazi party and not the Army. They were the enforcers of Nazi ideology across Europe, and most were committed to Nazism. They knew what they were doing and carried out war crimes with enthusiasm.
Anyone who defends the SS in any shape or form is a very bad person.
Yeah, they weren’t all criminals because genocide was legal in the third reich.
This is all just optics, or “tactical” as the article terms it. There is no real difference in policy or opinion between the “new” right and the “old” right, they want the same things, but the “new” right are the ones who are somewhat smarter about eg. voicing support for fascists out loud too much – which will certainly change once they have enough power. And this is not to say that they don’t support fascists even openly, just that they do it so that it doesn’t generally end up in headlines.
Moderate conservatives are mythological creatures, much like unicorns or ethical billionaires.
The same Krah received quite a lot of Russian money visiting the US and was questioned by the FBI about it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The suspicion of mere tactics also hangs over the head of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who seems to actively encourage the ambivalence by nodding to the middle ground some days and to the extreme on others.
In fact “Melonisation” – catering to the middle ground, appearing to be “pro European”, supporting Ukraine, being kissed on the forehead by US president Joe Biden – has become a dirty word among their rank and file.
But the Krah case, as well as allegations about corruption by AfD figures and spying for Russia and China, along with the revelations about “remigration” after an ominous meeting in Potsdam, seem to have turned the tide.
When pretty much everything the AfD has to say about the federal republic in the 75th year of its democratic constitution is filled with disgust, but warm words are found for Putin’s Russia or the Chinese Communist party, voters may find it hard to see the love in any of this.
Krah himself recently published a book called Politik von Rechts, and aims at presenting himself as “erudite, friendly, elegant”, not as brooding and “bad tempered” as the old.
The reshuffling initiated by Le Pen could end up lumping her together within a new “super group” with Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party heads up the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
The original article contains 1,104 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
