The Good Column | Right-wing extremist? A good feeling

We're looking for a bolt from the blue or something similar: but please only after dinner at the Federal Press Ball. Photo: dpa/Annette Riedl Apparently, German editorial staff still believe that they can bring the right-wing extremist electorate to their senses by telling them in what feels like the thousandth article that the Blue Painted Party's program is "unfinanceable." As if this fact would stop someone who runs through the streets shouting “foreigners out” from voting for her. How does the average German media idiot imagine this? Maybe like this:

German media idiot: "Did you know that what is in the party's program - that is, that in the future free beer will bubble out of all public fountains in Saxony-Anhalt every day for all Germans who can prove their ancestry without a doubt - that it cannot be financed?"

Interviewed passerby from Saxony-Anhalt: »Oh! Oh, really? I didn't know that. In this case, I will of course change my voting decision immediately and vote for another party that has demonstrably presented a financially viable election program. Thank you for this important information!”

Even on yesterday's election evening, ARD cheekily claimed that "only" 40 percent of the electorate were right-wing extremists or people who were "far right."

Or German journalists have fallen into the mistaken belief that the misled or confused voters don't know who they are voting for and therefore urgently need to be informed about the true character of the so popular party ("partly right-wing extremist", "definitely right-wing extremist"). That is why these journalists occasionally point out parallels between the popular right-wing party and the NSDAP, that high-ranking party officials used to give Nazi salutes or were once leading cadres of this or that banned right-wing extremist organization, that they ardently admire one or another present-day dictator, that they want to "erase" the memory of the Nazi era, or that, shockingly, even further right-wing extremist demands are put forward in the right-wing extremist election manifestos. Well, who would have thought.

These journalists seem to seriously assume that if voters were only sufficiently informed and instructed, the light would suddenly dawn on them, that the realization would then hit them like a bolt from the blue and that they would come to their senses and then turn away from the party in outrage. Hmmm. How realistic is this assumption in view of voters who sometimes shout "Sieg Heil!" or "Gass!" at election campaign events, who loudly and blatantly express their urgent need to deport, hang or shoot this or that person in every street interview, and who also openly display their incorrigibility and their tendency to violence? Answer: not very realistic.

People still believe that they can question the party's leading figures, "disenchant them," or reveal their true intentions. But they don't hide these intentions at all, they write them in their social media profiles and their election programs. And they answer questions either evasively, defensively, lying or using platitudes and propaganda. Incidentally, most attempts to conduct conversations or interviews with voters follow the same pattern: "Do you know that the party is definitely right-wing extremist?" They bring a breath of fresh air." - "Can you give an example?" - "They speak to the people!" - "Did you know that the party wants to strengthen the rights of landlords and corporations and weaken tenants and employees?" - "I'll vote for them anyway." - "Are you a tenant?" - "Yes." - "Then why do you want to vote for a party that will be disadvantageous for you, possibly causing your rent to rise?" - "It doesn't matter. They make me feel good.«

Just as right-wing extremist politicians don't use knowledge, facts or arguments or give sensible answers to questions, neither do their voters. But while the party's officials prefer to camouflage their lies and agitation with pathetic motivational phrases ("Everything is possible"), the stupidity and baseness of the voters interviewed at election campaign events is reflected in the open expression of fascist fantasies of annihilation ("clean out everything").

Does no one really come to the obvious idea that when a party announces that its central social projects are barbarism and re-stupidization, there are plenty of barbarians and re-stupid people who have always dreamed of such an ideal society, apparently designed by a gang of Lodenjoppen Taliban with antisocial personality disorders?

For decades people did not want to admit - and still do not want to - that many Germans do not want to "come to terms with" National Socialism, but rather mourn it. In the recent past, everything has been tried in the media to put these people's political convictions and infamy into perspective. They have even been given new names just so they don't have to be called "neo-Nazis": "Patriots," "National Conservatives," "Civil Libertarians," "New Political Center," "Citizens with a Positive Basic Attitude toward German Identity."

Or they have been trivialized as "disappointed", "frustrated", "disaffected with politics" or ennobled as "protest voters", without wanting to admit that their anti-civilization activities are not an aberration, but rather a necessary consequence of the utopia that they have in mind: an authoritarian state system in which the supposedly foreign, the feminists, the left and all those who deviate from rigorous norms are given the best possible treatment the mouth is stopped immediately. Germany, but normal. Even on yesterday's election evening, ARD cheekily claimed that "only" 40 percent of the electorate were right-wing extremists or people who were "far right." Unfortunately, the remaining 60 percent were not classified more precisely by Jörg Schönenborn in his fictional 50 Shades of Brown scale. I would have been interested in the exact gradations and nuances.

I'm not sure the kind of better future imagined and threatened by these so-called patriots is better prevented today rather than tomorrow.

In any case, one thing is certain: sooner or later - traditionally rather later in this country - one will have to admit that right-wing extremists do right-wing extremist things and that their staff, their supporters and their voters are recruited from right-wing extremists.

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