Emphasis, mine.
How old are you? 
Old enough to know better. I stand corrected.
Yer, Lewes does get kinda crazy on Guy Fawkes Night.
:mad:
You should ask your family if it’s okay for you to stay home. I suspect you’ll find they’re surprisingly amenable to the idea of the Crazy Uncle Not Ruining Everyone’s European Vacation.
“They don’t just overcook a hamburger, Jerry!”
And again it ha nothing to do with Neo Nazis.
Besides the fact that this is nothing to do with Nazism (neo or not), I wonder if this is suffering from the common misinterpretation of the meaning of the word “news”.
There is anti-Semitism among Muslim immigrants and the pro-Palestinian crowd. There is everywhere, sadly. Occasionally there are these nasty outbursts. When it is displayed in Germany people, not least the Germans themselves, are particularly shocked. It is outside the norm. This is what news is.
I’d worry about heart problems and car crashes, not the anti-Semitism of a couple of German Muslims or your chances of being struck by lightening. But just to be on the safe side, if you see a protest and they’re carrying hateful signs: walk the other way.
(As general societal trend, yes, I think in Europe we should worry about it. In fact, we are worrying about it quite a bit. And it’s a difficult thing to worry about, when bigotry is being displayed by a very particular minority in society. Because you need to try to work on it without further marginalising that group, or it’ll turn it was you who was the bigot all along. But to worry about this on a personal level is really quite silly.)
Lived/worked all over West Germany for four years total (two years the first go, 1986-88; 18 months the second, 1995-1996, 6 month the last time, in 1998).
Never saw a single identifiable Nazi.
There are a lot of problems with this thread.
First. Is there anti-semitism & neo-nazism in Germany. Yes. But it’s extremely minimal. The chances you’re going to be affected by it are almost zero. In the same way that most people in America aren’t worried about random acts of gun violence even though shootings are on the news all the time.
Second, random people saying they’ve never seen a neo-nazi is not helpful. Foremost, anecdote isn’t data. Even lots of anecdotes. Second, depending on who that person is, that’s like a white person saying there’s no racism in America.
There are a few articles pointing to an influx of Israeli Jews coming to Berlin. Cite.
I know Berlin is not representative of Germany, but presumably they wouldn’t be emigrating there if they thought there was a substantial presence of Neo Nazis either inside or outside the city limits.
Also, it’s worth emphasizing that Germany has Proportional Representation when you talk about Neo Nazis in its Parliament. How many extreme right parties would get in Congress, or in local state government, if the US had PR?
Except that’s exactly what the OP asked for in the first post:
Every anecdote is a perfect answer to the question of the prevalence of Neo-Nazi iconography. If the OP had asked something like, “Do people wearing yarmulkes face harassment?” then your criticism would be warranted.
My Wife and I traveled southern Germany for three weeks one year ago. No neo-nazis at all. Well, nothing displayed. No skin heads either.
I think the punishment is VERY sever for displaying Nazi paraphernalia.
Well, there’s the rub, eh? It should be clear by now the OP isn’t interested in a factual examination of Neo-Naziism or anti-semitism in Germany but somebody to validate personal feelings, no matter the veracity of the facts supporting those feelings.
It makes the OP feel better to consider Germany a hotbed of anti-semitism and Neo-Naziism and to pour those feelings out onto the internet. It’s passive aggression due to being “forced” due a family commitment while not being able or willing to use the same level of vitriol with said family.
So, ok. Validation ahoy. Cartooniverses personal feelings are perfectly ok to have, facts be damned, if that’s what it takes to get through the trip with psyche intact. That said, it’s rather insensitive to other posters to completely dismiss their feeling (backed by facts no less) on the same matter. I guess it’s better to take it out on a country than on family, but the reaction to automatically judge an entire country to merely avoid a potentially emotionally charged discussion with family can’t be healthy.
Cartooniverse, how do you deal with living in the U.S., then, considering there are neo-Nazis over here? :dubious:
A quick perusal ( for those of you who are convinced I’m lying about all of this ) of my logged-in dates will show that indeed I was off the Dope entirely from 7/25 until a day or so ago. I was in Germany from the morning of 7/26 to the afternoon of 8/4.
I’m trying to bring my old Photobucket account back to life so I can upload the swastika photograph I took. Not in Berlin. Not in Mannheim or Frankfurt. It exists along a path in a small town called Hochspeyer, and exists on the Hochspeyerbach between these GPS coordinates: 49.443345, 7.895959 and 49.444302, 7.902820. Much hay made of how utterly useless “anectdotal evidence” is in threads like this. So, I witnessed Nazi iconography first-hand. The fact that I don’t have a pool of evidence with thousands of different sites and images does not invalidate what I saw. Nor does it inform me that this small village was not some seething hotbed of hatred. Instead, it informed me that anti-Jewish hatred is alive and well in Germany and in the most incredibly unlikely of spots, I was presented with fair and valid evidence of same.
It was the only one I saw. Then again, I was in Hochspeyer, on base at Ramstein ( and an Army base about 3 Kilometers from Ramstein ), the surrounding countryside and Neuweid-On-Rhine.
Great Antibob, your post was entirely mystifying to me. Passive-Aggressive so I wouldn’t be angry at my family? Wha ? Not at all the case. The reasons for my trip are personal, but it was a trip I anticipated with eagerness aside from my trepidations outlined in the O.P. You can say what you want, it’s The Internet. But I’m pretty secure in my knowledge that there was zero vitriol aimed at anyone I was visiting or traveling with.
And, again, if there’s no Anti-Semitism in Germany, could someone please explain exactly why the Washington Post would fabricate this pack of lies?. Oh. Wait. Because the facts are completely accurate. Anti-Semetic violent acts are indeed on the rise in Germany, Belgium and France. Cites of multiple acts in Europe..
We had a great time. We’ll be going back to Germany in the next year or two. It was quite sad to be proven correct- hatred of Jews is alive and well in Germany.
I can’t say they’ve learned nothing since WWII. I can, instead, say they have held onto hatred of Jews as the rest of the world has. Apparently their history has taught them exactly nothing. I don’t hate the modern Germans, but I sure do pity them.
Congratulations, I suppose.
So, having gone to Germany seeking evidence to confirm your theory that there was widespread hatred of Jews, you found that some asshole had painted a swastika somewhere?
No anti-semitism? Who claimed that?
There are two separate things people have claimed:
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Neo-Naziism does exist but is minor and frowned upon by the vast, vast majority of Germans.
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Most of the anti-semitic acts you have noted (INCLUDING IN THE LINKS YOU JUST PROVIDED) have been committed by Muslims, NOT neo-Nazis and also frowned upon by the vast, vast majority of Germans.
You haven’t contradicted either of these.
So you deliberately sought out contrary evidence. So what? Nobody claimed it didn’t exist - merely that (1) it was an extreme minority of Germans who engaged in actual Neo-Naziism and (2) that anti-semitism in general in Germany comes predominantly from Muslims not Neo-Nazis.
But congrats on making the trip, I guess.
QFT.
Believe me, you’re not the only one.
Anti-Semitism is still prevalent in Germany with some 19 million adults harbouring negative sentiments towards Jews, according to a new study.
The Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 Index found that 27 per cent of German adults answered ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ true to six or more of 11 stereotypes about Jews in the survey.
Here were the 11 stereotypes presented:
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Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/to the countries they live in]:
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Jews have too much power in the business world
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Jews have too much power in international financial markets
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Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust
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Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind
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Jews have too much control over global affairs
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Jews have too much control over the United States government
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Jews think they are better than other people
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Jews have too much control over the global media
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Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars
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People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave
That’s 19 million. From googling, German Muslims are 3 to 4 million. Let’s stipulate that they are ALL anti-semites. That still leaves 15 million non-Muslim anti-semitic Germans.