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Right, ok, so I watched a couple minutes from 40 min. Zille starts by giving the wrong dates for the Weimar Republic. She then thinks about it & corrects herself. She's clearly not historically ignorant, but also no expert on the period for someone so confident about the analogy. https://twitter.com/calsuereynolds/status/1328334189725446148
Then reference to the 'limp wristed [yikes], appease everybody type leaders' of the Weimar govt. This seems to be the crux of the DA's warning. But what is it, precisely? That Weimar was too woke?
Analysing Weimar's weakness is a vital historical task - but it ought to be serious
Analysing Weimar's weakness is a vital historical task - but it ought to be serious
(Fwiw, Richard Evans stresses the role of the Citzens' Defence in the rise of the SA but I can't claim the broader historical understanding to make sense of what that might tell us
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n04/richard-j.-evans/men-he-could-trust )
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n04/richard-j.-evans/men-he-could-trust )
'Jews were an identifiable minority who were comparatively better of than the average German'. Hitler convinced Germans that 'most Germans were poor because the Jews weren't poor'.
It may be worth mentioning that the unusual prominence of middle class German Jews in cultural positions, and as visible intelligentsia, was the product of racial exclusion. There was a very narrow space in which Jews were allowed to flourish.
Presumably an analysis of 'white monopoly capital' is supposed to be analogous racism. But a claim of entrenched wealth along racial lines in post-Apartheid South Africa is a basic and significant fact. You can use the term crudely to foment hatred, but that's a different issue.
(If we absolutely have to make Nazi analogies, xenophobic rhetoric and violence is much closer to fascist scapegoating. Of course, the evil of xenophobia in no way depends on how closely the analogy fits.)
Anyway, who exactly in the fake news mainstream media (the Lügenpresse?) is falling over to defend the EFF? The violent turn of the Clicks protest was widely criticised, even by those sympathetic to the underlying reason for the protest.
That said, I don't want to make too much of the inexpertise of the historical comparison. Some eminent historian could defend the analogy with extraordinary erudition and it would still be tendentious.
So why not criticise the EFF on its on terms? They do plenty of bad things.
Because the DA wants to claim that the party's (ostensible) very radicalness is inherently fascist. That even an ideal version of the EFF is definitionally racist.
Because the DA wants to claim that the party's (ostensible) very radicalness is inherently fascist. That even an ideal version of the EFF is definitionally racist.
