Toxic terms from Hitler’s era trending in Germany

[Tennis]

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...n-germany.html

BERLIN — In a recent tweet, a German lawmaker used a highly specific term to describe her anti-migrant angst. Suggesting her country’s national identity was under threat, she cried “Umvolkung” — a word roughly translated as “ethnic conversion.”

It is also a word that was last in vogue when Adolf Hitler ruled the land and its appropriation by a politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling party sparked an uproar. Yet the tweet highlighted the term’s resurgence in Germany — where a glossary of a half-dozen terms long associated with the Nazis are staging a comeback.

Hitler and his propagandists wielded a toxic lexicon in the early 20th century, deploying vocabulary meant to exalt ethnic purity and own Germany’s only real truth. And the re-emergence in social media, literature and political protests of words that were weaponized by the Nazis is generating a fierce debate here over the power of language in politics, especially as nationalists surge on both sides of the Atlantic.

“While we’re at it, why don’t we just give a positive meaning to the word ‘concentration camp?’ ” quipped television satirist Hans-Joachim Heist after a different German politician recently defended another word — völkisch — used by the Nazis to conjure images of a racially pure state.

Forces on the political right are hailing the exhumation of such words as a triumph over political correctness and war guilt — as well as a nod to free speech in Europe, which came under the spotlight after the guilty verdict Friday against Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders for inciting hate against Moroccans. Calling it time to reclaim German words tainted by the Nazis, proponents see a new tell-it-like-it-is discourse taking shape over an influx of nearly 1 million mostly-Muslim migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

In a post-factual world, some reclaimed words are meant to stake ownership over truth. At least one — Lügenpresse, or “lying press,” a slur aimed at the mainstream media — popped up among Donald Trump supporters on the U.S. campaign trail. In Germany, it’s become a fixture at anti-migrant protests and a word lobbed like bombs on Twitter and Facebook against the media.

Critics, however, see heightened usage of ethnically charged terms as an attempt to detoxify them — as well as the racist notions they once represented.

As linguistic political tools, experts rank them alongside “alt-right” — coined in the United States to recast the white supremacy movement. Rather than mint new words, however, the Germans need only look to history for a nationalist thesaurus. Critics say those embracing such vocabulary are playing a coy game, winking at German nationalism without openly saluting Hitler.

“If someone said ‘Sieg Heil’ today, it would be clear this is about National Socialism,” said Georg Schuppener, a noted German linguist and language historian. But the words popping up now “at first don’t sound like National Socialism, but nevertheless suggest it.”

All the words in question predate the Nazis but became tainted in the public mindset after their deployment in Nazi propaganda. After World War II, some terms lingered in beer hall talk and neo-Nazi circles. During the Cold War, a few found a perch in communist East Germany.

But German linguists point to a resuscitation of nationalist terms in 2014, when the anti-migrant group PEGIDA began staging massive demonstrations nationwide. Two years later, the rapid rise of the populist, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) — coupled with massive public skepticism of Merkel’s refugee policy — has these terms rolling off the tongues of politicians and flying around social media in a manner that has shocked many Germans.

In a September interview with Die Welt, the AfD’s chief, Frauke Petry, declared it an “undue simplification” to call the German word “völkisch” fundamentally racist. Though used by Hitler and his lieutenants to describe a racially pure population, she argued that modern Germans should give the term “a positive connotation again.”

Last month, Stefan Räpple, another AfD lawmaker, described peers from German parties as “Volksverräter” — or “traitor of the people.” Used in the Nazi era as an official charge against enemies, the term has additionally burst forth from the mouths of protesters at anti-migrant political rallies and protests. In August, for instance, right-wing demonstrators taunted Merkel’s deputy chancellor by calling him “Volksverräter.”

In a 1933 speech, Hitler’s propaganda minister Joesph Goebbels used the word “Überfremdung” to denounce what the Nazis saw as the infection of German intellectual life by Jews. Following losses in local elections this year, conservative dissenters in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), used it to define citizens’ fears toward the migrant wave.

“The concern about a loss of identity and Überfremdung of the country has seized many citizens,” they wrote in a manifesto.

Previously known for his bestselling novels about cats solving crimes, the writer Akif Pirinçci published a tome this year titled “Umvolkung — How the Germans are quietly being replaced.” Though Turkish born, Pirinçci has now aligned himself squarely with German nationalists. His book assailed Merkel’s open-door policy toward asylum seekers from the Middle East and beyond, warning that Germans were becoming “strangers in our own country.”

This is very very troubling.

I hope Chancellor Merkel clamps down on this in her next term in office. Time to take off the gloves.

[Theodarzna]

Heaven forbid people speak about what goes on in their own words.

[monkmastaeq]

censorship is very troubling . you shouldn't ban words and phrases

[Deleted]

Heaven forbid people speak about what goes on in their own words.

Not their own, but the words of 3rd Reich. Tennisace is right, we need to take serious actions against that. Social Media should be focused!

[Theodarzna]

Not their own, but the words of 3rd Reich. Tennisace is right, we need to take serious actions against that. Social Media should be focused!

We must ban people from having any thoughts contrary to revolutionary leader Merkel and Honorable Chairman Trudeau for sure.

[yetgdhfgh]

Banning words hey? Thats sure to end well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

[Bytch]

Umm..The USA used the Bellamy Salute for decades before changing only because the Nazi's were using it.

[BreakerOfWills]

We must ban people from having any thoughts contrary to revolutionary leader Merkel and Honorable Chairman Trudeau for sure.

It's a weird time when progressives get labeled nazis because nazis are saying nazi shit and they call them out.

Because there's nothing the anti-pc crowd hates more than people calling them mean words.

[Theodarzna]

It's a weird time when progressives get labeled nazis because nazis are saying nazi shit and they call them out.

Because there's nothing the anti-pc crowd hates more than people calling them mean words.

Considering in Europe they have means of arresting people for their political opinions, we are talking about more than the dumb callout culture Liberals jerk themselves off with.

[eillas]

I don't think she will get another term

[Azadina]

Considering in Europe they have means of arresting people for their political opinions, we are talking about more than the dumb callout culture Liberals jerk themselves off with.

Infact so do you in the US, with no trial given. You can jail someone indefinitely on suspected terrorism charges, which you can just forge against whom you like. Or "freedom of speech" (bribe) someone to do it for you.

[Deleted]

Considering in Europe they have means of arresting people for their political opinions, we are talking about more than the dumb callout culture Liberals jerk themselves off with.

Idk what in the world would feed you the notion of that Europe is bad, comparing it to the US.

And that is after having refined my thought a few seconds, so i did not spew out my initial reaction over the actual wholesome of which ignorance is shown in the attempted jab at Europe bashing.

[Deleted]

So fucking what ? What if i told you that Germany still uses Nazi laws ?

[Wells]

I give it 6 months before we hear "lugenpresse" used seriously

[Kaleredar]

We must ban people from having any thoughts contrary to revolutionary leader Merkel and Honorable Chairman Trudeau for sure.

So in this example are the nazis the heralds of free speech, or... what, exactly, are you saying?

[Northy]

Idk what in the world would feed you the notion of that Europe is bad, comparing it to the US.

America is good at freedom. Europe is good at freebies and calling it freedom.

[Deleted]

America is good at freedom. Europe is good at freebies and calling it freedom.

The freedom to the point of that you don't actually have it.

[Azadina]

The freedom to the point of that you don't actually have it.

Can't have freedom without the freedom to not having freedom

[Deleted]

Can't have freedom without the freedom to not having freedom

We have to go deeper!

[Azadina]

We have to go deeper!

Atleast few more levels ^^

Where have you been anyway? You're behind on all the shitposting that awaits to be done!