OK excuse me you talk about material “fucking” conditions and ignore or relativize the colonial history of the Hegemon. You’re in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal “hearts and minds” or whatever the fuck it is that you’re looking to accomplish will ever be possible. I urge you so much more to read that exact book I’m pushing if only to see how the white communists and socialists and unionists kept fucking things up and kept playing into the racist divide with these kind of civility politics that you’re pushing, while ignoring the native american or black american comrade. Because its these divides that are currently being amped up right here in Germany, the second most subservient country to the Hegemon.
You’re in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal “hearts and minds” or whatever the fuck it is that you’re looking to accomplish will ever be possible.
Read some European post-war history. Ask the North Irish – both sides and yes that was a settler-colonial/apartheid situation. The examples are literally endless.
OTOH, point me to a single instance where Idpol has brought peace.
Why don’t you read some US history, I implore you to, then visit some of the nonwhite neighborhoods in major German cities and you will see how relevant it is for us today.
You mean immigrant neigbourhoods and I grew up in one, thank you. WTF is “nonwhite” even supposed to mean have you ever seen a Turk or Syrian. The principal systemic problem immigrants face is coming from low socio-economic status combined with our lack of social mobility, in places right-out enforced by the education system, which also affects Kevin. Reform of education is typically blocked by Bildungsbürger.
And I see you ignored my question: When has Idpol ever brought peace?
And before you mention it: No, the east didn’t suddenly turn Nazi. The west still has a larger proportion of people with closed right-extremist world-view, while the east still has a larger proportion of socialists. What’s happening is feelings of betrayal and people being fed up with voting for politicians who caused the issues they, as in the common man, have. We’re lacking over 1m social housing units, rent is becoming more and more unaffordable while the SPD opposes expropriating landlords, the CSU is talking about sanctioning 0.045% of welfare recipients (“Totalverweigerer”), 99.99% of which should probably be judged incapable of work and fall under SGB XII, and btw social darwinism is a form of group-focussed enmity. The greens rather bankrupt house owners than do the right thing, both when it comes to politics and technology, and give municipalities money to set up district heating. Yes, the AfD programme is turbo-neoliberal and against the interest of their voters – and the voters tend to know that. It’s the same kind of phenomenon that made Argentinians vote Milei into power: It’s bad, but at least not the established bad and it’s a boot up the arse of the established parties. I do have a fuckton of issues with Wagah Zarenknecht but expect her to soak up the vast majority of those AfD votes.
How fucking long have I heard “You can care about two things at the same time”, referring to “Yes we can have gay marriage and care about social housing”. The same parties then did the former, and that’s good and proper, but failed at the latter, while calling themselves the creme de la creme of leftists. That’s performativism. I’m sure a gazillion of gay homeless couples are glad that they now can be gay married homeless couples. The country needs a specific focus on the latter kind of matters. Fix that shit and you’ll find that a lot of other problems suddenly vanish because they were never causes, they were symptoms. “X is important to me and everyone and needs to be addressed but you aren’t so I’m going to block Y” is politics as usual, you can’t blue sky idealist yourself around that: If you want to fix Y get X fixed.
I grew up in Turkey. I have seen plenty of Turks, also Kurds also Arabs. Which is how I also know what it’s like to be a religious minority, what it’s like to have the police hound you for it or just the weirdness of sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb. Which is how experienced the importance of the community of people like oneself, a concept that often gets misrepresented in the so-called “identity politics” which therefore should be opposed, but that doesn’t make it less real. And if you think there is not a similar acceptable/non-acceptable split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines in our society then your dreaming. I completely ignored your question because this is not idpol. This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
I don’t know why you’d think I would say that the east has “suddenly” turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything we’re talking about. I guess you think I’m just doing “performative” leftism to ingratiate myself to minorities or something. I don’t know. I’m not, I just care about clear language that doesn’t hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because that’s how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters. The rationale that “if we all have the same opportunities, then how come the people with a non-standard german background are so much more dependent on social welfare” needs to be rooted out at the beginning of “we all have the same opportunities” because we don’t.
Edit: Sorry I’m gonna add a bigger paragraph after posting about the whole white/non-white thing. I use these racist terms to describe how our racist society groups people according to their appearance and not as a scientific term where you can decide if someone is white or not, the fact that this is not possible is the precise contradiction that racists use to garner support from people they will oppress later. Whether someone is white or not, or “really” German or not, is very fluid and dependent on the situation. An ethnically Turkish person can pass as white and not be pulled from traffic into a routine check but they would probably be treated as non-white if during a traffic stop the cop learned their name. The way people treat a Jewish person might change after people find out that they are a Jew. They didn’t suddenly switch from white to nonwhite in a material way, those categories don’t really exist, but the way they are viewed and accordingly how they are treated did.
This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
Now I don’t know about how things are where you are but over here it’s more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian. Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying “This is all about people’s ancestors being from Turkey” is precisely idpol: You reduce the complexity of societal relations to create a normative in- and out-group, ascribing to it an imaginary internal coherence that makes you kin to the Grey Wolves. Remember Cem Özdemir complaining about discrimination against Swabians? That’s the Germany we’re living in. It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your “non-white” radar?) and before long people won’t blink at Cem’s surname same as they don’t blink at “de Maizière”. Also immigrant background, refugee even: His family came to Germany in the 17th century when France prosecuted Huguenots. Another good example of just how little specifically appearance matters is Philipp Rösler.
I don’t know why you’d think I would say that the east has “suddenly” turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything we’re talking about.
It relates to the “race relations are getting worse in the US” observation, I was preempting a “but here, too” rebuttal. The very lack of idpol is what allows figures like Zarenknecht to make a dent, because the material conditions aren’t buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity, the electorate is still able to recognise that policies will address causes, and thereby solve problems that “We need to segregate hairstyles harder” can’t dream to achieve. You still haven’t answered how idpol ever brought about peace, btw.
I just care about clear language that doesn’t hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because that’s how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesn’t become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
And no AfD voters aren’t labour-aristocracy you’re confusing them with the SPD – remember how long they kept those coal subsidies alive? The SPD is the political arm of the big powerful unions, foremost IG Metall.
Studies show that class-wise AfD voters are predominantly precariat, as I already said: People the established left doesn’t care about, even actively agitates against (“Sozialschmarotzer”). Maybe you’d know all that shit if you actually engaged critically with politics in this country instead of looking to the US of all places. Die Linke, at least in the east, on state level, where they’re relevant, is also labour-aristocracy and in practice firmly Socdem. Mabye a smidge on the left of the SPD but not by much: They don’t oppose expropriating landlords, but they also would not propose it. Basically SPD without the Seeheimer Kreis.
Now I don’t know about how things are where you are but over here it’s more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian.
So the fact that some people make Kumpir-jokes (arguably actually idpol) is supposed to assure me that there is no anti-turkish racism? I have family members whose business gets harassed by cops for no other reason than them being turkish. Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg. They aren’t as integrated as italians who by the way I’ve also witnessed being "other"ed on one occasion so clearly even they aren’t on-par with the non-immigrants in Germany.
Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying “This is all about people’s ancestors being from Turkey” is precisely idpol
Well I’m not. I’m talking about the cops double and triple checking turkish businesses in an unnecessarily disruptive manner for no reason other than them being suspicous of their turkishness. Don’t tell me that it isn’t “all about people’s ancestors being from Turkey” because it most assuredly is.
makes you kin to the Grey Wolves
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldn’t know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your “non-white” radar?)
I can only assume that you wrote this (and the rest of that paragraph) before I edited in my last paragraph in the comment above yours, so I’ll reiterate it here. I’m not the one ascribing white/non-white to people, I’m talking about groups of people that are racistly viewed as such and the effects such a view on people has. So e.g. an italian who might be too brown and gets clocked as “non-white” might experience discrimination in which case I would be talking about “discrimination against a non-white person”. People that are regularly discriminated against in such a way might group together to lobby for equal rights, create safe spaces where they can just be and form a community centered around the racist prescription they were given. Such groups, spaces and communities will then get under attack by the racists and therefore need special protection. That isn’t idpol. It is a vital strategy to form solidarity among people that experience discrimination others don’t. Something others cannot relate to, can’t see the full extent of damage caused and therefore can’t be as helpful in solving. It’s not about “segregating hairstyles”, it’s about listening to oppressed people and what they say they need in order to protect themselves and their community. I’m not saying they can’t be wrong, but I am saying people that don’t experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
because the material conditions aren’t buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together. Liberals then tried to “target audiences” by how they were grouped together creating idpol. By a similar logic I could claim that rainbow capitalism or pinkwashing is caused by the LGBTQ community coming together, that’s absurd and frankly puts the blame for racism on the people fighting it. The people importing idpol are the german right-wingers repeating the absurd lies of the US right-wing, not people that speak against racist discrimination.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesn’t become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
You don’t know what I talk about in regards to german politics because you’re replying to me in a thread kicked off about a comment I made about US politics! But I’ll be damned if I shut up about the racist barriers of entry non-white germans face in higher education.
You’re right about the AfD voters not being labor aristocracy, that was imprecise (therefore wrong). What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop “leeching” off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties don’t live up to it. I think that is how the BSW is going to make a dent, it hasn’t disappointed yet.
But at the heart of this “X people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systems” is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy) and the reality that people which can be grouped together by some trait depend more on welfare then necessarily implies that these people are innately more dependent on it. Coupled with the lie that there isn’t enough wealth for everyone and you have an effective way to get the precariat in arms against them. Maybe calling them a precariat aristocracy would be better but where the labor aristocrats already get payed more, they simply get promised more so I don’t know (precariat to-be-aristocracy? I’m just making shit up now). This isn’t the only strategy liberals use to agitate obviously but it’s a major and effective one.
And it must be countered by clear language that doesn’t flatten the labor class into a single homogenous entity in a way Bobby Reichs tweet does. This goes for the US and for us.
Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg.
Hamburg is a police state it’s very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a “danger zone”? That wasn’t about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by “people wearing St. Pauli scarfs”.
I’m not saying they can’t be wrong, but I am saying people that don’t experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk. By considering your groups’ issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, you’re othering yourself. Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality it’s about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or “low-class” native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing. The solution is not to preach “oh liberal landlord, you’re being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenant’s incomes” as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, we’re lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where there’s too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then they’d be willing to interview everyone – and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. It’s not just immigrants that don’t fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
makes you kin to the Grey Wolves
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldn’t know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
Just because you don’t want to deport or do worse to people doesn’t mean that the in-outgroup psychology isn’t the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. It’s also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk, and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
because the material conditions aren’t buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together.
Ah, there we have it. “AfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazis”. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as you’re denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didn’t suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didn’t suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop “leeching” off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties don’t live up to it.
I don’t think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, it’s always “those lazy buggers simply don’t want to work”. “Poverty is a choice” etc, etc. Social darwinism.
But at the heart of this “X people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systems” is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy)
Add “organic potato but parents live off Hartz IV” to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. “Bildungsferne Schichten”, as the euphemism goes. Then, ask yourself the following: Daughter of an Iranian Doctor of medicine. Is she going to study, or is she going to work at a supermarket? The career paths of children of Turkish Gastarbeiter aren’t that exceptional when you compare them not to the German average, but that of German Hauptschule graduates: None of their parents ever had a university degree (largely farmers from Anatolia), which meant Hauptschule, at best Realschule. A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because they’re Turks but because their parents didn’t study.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. It’s going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesn’t sound like “oh great another way for them to ignore us”. Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity, if OTOH you try to fix particular interests you risk getting lumped up with the exact people that try to avoid fixing core issues, and resistance will be stiff. This isn’t some new insight it’s political strategy 101. The quickest way to address Y is indeed to focus on addressing X, and do Y as soon as there’s enough trust that X is being taken care of.
You keep projecting what you think I’m advocating for when all I’ve so far revealed is that I’m advocating for clear language that doesn’t flatten reality but acknowledges the different struggles people face, including racist ones. Why do you think that would stop short of a person born into poverty or to one born to parents who didnt have the privilege of a higher education and therefore can’t pass on what they haven’t learned? You keep talking about this in ways that reveal that for you other peoples struggle is an abstract thought exercise, which is why I advised caution when telling others how to safeguard against or combat racism.
Hamburg is a police state it’s very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a “danger zone”? That wasn’t about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by “people wearing St. Pauli scarfs”.
Believe me I know.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk.
Obviously they do.
By considering your groups’ issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, you’re othering yourself.
No, I was othered unprompted. By Turks. They aren’t “my group” any less than the “east germans”. A comrade is a comrade, a racist isn’t.
Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality it’s about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or “low-class” native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing.
Not entirely. The prejudice Kevin faces is different from the one Jihad faces. That doesn’t make Kevins struggle less real. I don’t understand why you keep thinking I want to diminish someones struggle when I’ve repeatedly called for language that doesn’t hide injustices. I’ve helped both a “Kevin” and a “Jihad” try to find apartments while needing rent relief. One was presumed to have snuck into this country and probably dangerous and the other was “just” presumed to be lazy. It both sucks, but one of them had it harder. And we aren’t going to be addressing any of it if we can’t talk about how or why the systems is the way it is.
The solution is not to preach “oh liberal landlord, you’re being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenant’s incomes” as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, we’re lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where there’s too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then they’d be willing to interview everyone – and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. It’s not just immigrants that don’t fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
Complete projection. I don’t know where this is coming from.
Just because you don’t want to deport or do worse to people doesn’t mean that the in-outgroup psychology isn’t the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. It’s also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk
More evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you. The grey wolves kill people like me. The fact that you persist after I told you it was hurtful because you are so sure in your (wrong) assumption for why that might be tells me that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Which makes it less hurtful, so at least there’s that, but it’s a bad sign about how I think of you because I would like to think of you as a comrade. So why persist in something I told you to be hurtful?
and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
How about instead to those closest to drowning? What do you propose we do about the people that aren’t close to drowning but steal the vests from under the people that are?
Ah, there we have it. “AfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazis”. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as you’re denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didn’t suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didn’t suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
Even more evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you, when I’m talking about “the racists” I’m not talking about some abstract demographic, I am thinking of real people. I can visualize their faces. I wasn’t talking about “AfD voters and therefore the east” and the fact that your first response always seems to be “but won’t you think of the people voting AfD” is making me increasingly wary of you. I was working under the assumption that this “bridging the divide” thing is a pet project that you’re overly invested in but I’m increasingly running low on good faith to offer you especially since I don’t seem to get any in return.
To be sure I’m not against “bridging the divide” or dismissive of people in the east, especially since they got capitalism working against them double-time when compared to the west. I don’t think of them as AfD voting nazis. But you have to understand that for me to call someone who did vote AfD a comrade, they have to earn my trust first because they probably need to unlearn some racist shit or at the very least learn materialist thinking.
I don’t think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, it’s always “those lazy buggers simply don’t want to work”. “Poverty is a choice” etc, etc. Social darwinism.
Right, immigrants was used as a stand-in for really anyone requiring welfare. It’s just that the media focus really is on the immigrants at the moment. But again I am well aware that there are other marginalised groups.
Add “organic potato but parents live off Hartz IV” to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. “Bildungsferne Schichten”, as the euphemism goes.
They were never off the list. I do not understand why you think they would be.
A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because they’re Turks but because their parents didn’t study.
That’s an untrue simplification. Turkish people are racistly discriminated against even in school. If their parents didn’t have a good education obviously getting Abitur will be even harder, same as for any other person, but they might face additional hurdles or just different hurdles than others. Same for disabled people, they will face bigger hurdles than their able-bodied friends with the same background. Same for girls getting into STEM, their gender probably will cause the barrier for them to be even higher than for boys with a similar non-academic household. Naming the reasons for why some people face different obstacles isn’t idpol, it’s materialist.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. It’s going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesn’t sound like “oh great another way for them to ignore us”.
Kevin always had my solidarity, but I expect to have his. It’s not unconditional. Also it doesn’t need to be budgeted? What a weird way of thinking about it.
Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity,
True, which is why I’m advocating for precise language to name concerns so that we get to those with the most first. Because time and again once the majority got theirs the minority was left behind. The people whose only motivation is that their concerns get addressed will lose any motivation once they are. Tit for tat is not solidarity and will never achieve justice.
OK excuse me you talk about material “fucking” conditions and ignore or relativize the colonial history of the Hegemon. You’re in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal “hearts and minds” or whatever the fuck it is that you’re looking to accomplish will ever be possible. I urge you so much more to read that exact book I’m pushing if only to see how the white communists and socialists and unionists kept fucking things up and kept playing into the racist divide with these kind of civility politics that you’re pushing, while ignoring the native american or black american comrade. Because its these divides that are currently being amped up right here in Germany, the second most subservient country to the Hegemon.
Read some European post-war history. Ask the North Irish – both sides and yes that was a settler-colonial/apartheid situation. The examples are literally endless.
OTOH, point me to a single instance where Idpol has brought peace.
Why don’t you read some US history, I implore you to, then visit some of the nonwhite neighborhoods in major German cities and you will see how relevant it is for us today.
You mean immigrant neigbourhoods and I grew up in one, thank you. WTF is “nonwhite” even supposed to mean have you ever seen a Turk or Syrian. The principal systemic problem immigrants face is coming from low socio-economic status combined with our lack of social mobility, in places right-out enforced by the education system, which also affects Kevin. Reform of education is typically blocked by Bildungsbürger.
And I see you ignored my question: When has Idpol ever brought peace?
And before you mention it: No, the east didn’t suddenly turn Nazi. The west still has a larger proportion of people with closed right-extremist world-view, while the east still has a larger proportion of socialists. What’s happening is feelings of betrayal and people being fed up with voting for politicians who caused the issues they, as in the common man, have. We’re lacking over 1m social housing units, rent is becoming more and more unaffordable while the SPD opposes expropriating landlords, the CSU is talking about sanctioning 0.045% of welfare recipients (“Totalverweigerer”), 99.99% of which should probably be judged incapable of work and fall under SGB XII, and btw social darwinism is a form of group-focussed enmity. The greens rather bankrupt house owners than do the right thing, both when it comes to politics and technology, and give municipalities money to set up district heating. Yes, the AfD programme is turbo-neoliberal and against the interest of their voters – and the voters tend to know that. It’s the same kind of phenomenon that made Argentinians vote Milei into power: It’s bad, but at least not the established bad and it’s a boot up the arse of the established parties. I do have a fuckton of issues with Wagah Zarenknecht but expect her to soak up the vast majority of those AfD votes.
How fucking long have I heard “You can care about two things at the same time”, referring to “Yes we can have gay marriage and care about social housing”. The same parties then did the former, and that’s good and proper, but failed at the latter, while calling themselves the creme de la creme of leftists. That’s performativism. I’m sure a gazillion of gay homeless couples are glad that they now can be gay married homeless couples. The country needs a specific focus on the latter kind of matters. Fix that shit and you’ll find that a lot of other problems suddenly vanish because they were never causes, they were symptoms. “X is important to me and everyone and needs to be addressed but you aren’t so I’m going to block Y” is politics as usual, you can’t blue sky idealist yourself around that: If you want to fix Y get X fixed.
I grew up in Turkey. I have seen plenty of Turks, also Kurds also Arabs. Which is how I also know what it’s like to be a religious minority, what it’s like to have the police hound you for it or just the weirdness of sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb. Which is how experienced the importance of the community of people like oneself, a concept that often gets misrepresented in the so-called “identity politics” which therefore should be opposed, but that doesn’t make it less real. And if you think there is not a similar acceptable/non-acceptable split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines in our society then your dreaming. I completely ignored your question because this is not idpol. This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
I don’t know why you’d think I would say that the east has “suddenly” turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything we’re talking about. I guess you think I’m just doing “performative” leftism to ingratiate myself to minorities or something. I don’t know. I’m not, I just care about clear language that doesn’t hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because that’s how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters. The rationale that “if we all have the same opportunities, then how come the people with a non-standard german background are so much more dependent on social welfare” needs to be rooted out at the beginning of “we all have the same opportunities” because we don’t.
Edit: Sorry I’m gonna add a bigger paragraph after posting about the whole white/non-white thing. I use these racist terms to describe how our racist society groups people according to their appearance and not as a scientific term where you can decide if someone is white or not, the fact that this is not possible is the precise contradiction that racists use to garner support from people they will oppress later. Whether someone is white or not, or “really” German or not, is very fluid and dependent on the situation. An ethnically Turkish person can pass as white and not be pulled from traffic into a routine check but they would probably be treated as non-white if during a traffic stop the cop learned their name. The way people treat a Jewish person might change after people find out that they are a Jew. They didn’t suddenly switch from white to nonwhite in a material way, those categories don’t really exist, but the way they are viewed and accordingly how they are treated did.
Now I don’t know about how things are where you are but over here it’s more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian. Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying “This is all about people’s ancestors being from Turkey” is precisely idpol: You reduce the complexity of societal relations to create a normative in- and out-group, ascribing to it an imaginary internal coherence that makes you kin to the Grey Wolves. Remember Cem Özdemir complaining about discrimination against Swabians? That’s the Germany we’re living in. It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your “non-white” radar?) and before long people won’t blink at Cem’s surname same as they don’t blink at “de Maizière”. Also immigrant background, refugee even: His family came to Germany in the 17th century when France prosecuted Huguenots. Another good example of just how little specifically appearance matters is Philipp Rösler.
It relates to the “race relations are getting worse in the US” observation, I was preempting a “but here, too” rebuttal. The very lack of idpol is what allows figures like Zarenknecht to make a dent, because the material conditions aren’t buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity, the electorate is still able to recognise that policies will address causes, and thereby solve problems that “We need to segregate hairstyles harder” can’t dream to achieve. You still haven’t answered how idpol ever brought about peace, btw.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesn’t become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
And no AfD voters aren’t labour-aristocracy you’re confusing them with the SPD – remember how long they kept those coal subsidies alive? The SPD is the political arm of the big powerful unions, foremost IG Metall.
Studies show that class-wise AfD voters are predominantly precariat, as I already said: People the established left doesn’t care about, even actively agitates against (“Sozialschmarotzer”). Maybe you’d know all that shit if you actually engaged critically with politics in this country instead of looking to the US of all places. Die Linke, at least in the east, on state level, where they’re relevant, is also labour-aristocracy and in practice firmly Socdem. Mabye a smidge on the left of the SPD but not by much: They don’t oppose expropriating landlords, but they also would not propose it. Basically SPD without the Seeheimer Kreis.
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So the fact that some people make Kumpir-jokes (arguably actually idpol) is supposed to assure me that there is no anti-turkish racism? I have family members whose business gets harassed by cops for no other reason than them being turkish. Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg. They aren’t as integrated as italians who by the way I’ve also witnessed being "other"ed on one occasion so clearly even they aren’t on-par with the non-immigrants in Germany.
Well I’m not. I’m talking about the cops double and triple checking turkish businesses in an unnecessarily disruptive manner for no reason other than them being suspicous of their turkishness. Don’t tell me that it isn’t “all about people’s ancestors being from Turkey” because it most assuredly is.
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldn’t know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
I can only assume that you wrote this (and the rest of that paragraph) before I edited in my last paragraph in the comment above yours, so I’ll reiterate it here. I’m not the one ascribing white/non-white to people, I’m talking about groups of people that are racistly viewed as such and the effects such a view on people has. So e.g. an italian who might be too brown and gets clocked as “non-white” might experience discrimination in which case I would be talking about “discrimination against a non-white person”. People that are regularly discriminated against in such a way might group together to lobby for equal rights, create safe spaces where they can just be and form a community centered around the racist prescription they were given. Such groups, spaces and communities will then get under attack by the racists and therefore need special protection. That isn’t idpol. It is a vital strategy to form solidarity among people that experience discrimination others don’t. Something others cannot relate to, can’t see the full extent of damage caused and therefore can’t be as helpful in solving. It’s not about “segregating hairstyles”, it’s about listening to oppressed people and what they say they need in order to protect themselves and their community. I’m not saying they can’t be wrong, but I am saying people that don’t experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together. Liberals then tried to “target audiences” by how they were grouped together creating idpol. By a similar logic I could claim that rainbow capitalism or pinkwashing is caused by the LGBTQ community coming together, that’s absurd and frankly puts the blame for racism on the people fighting it. The people importing idpol are the german right-wingers repeating the absurd lies of the US right-wing, not people that speak against racist discrimination.
You don’t know what I talk about in regards to german politics because you’re replying to me in a thread kicked off about a comment I made about US politics! But I’ll be damned if I shut up about the racist barriers of entry non-white germans face in higher education.
You’re right about the AfD voters not being labor aristocracy, that was imprecise (therefore wrong). What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop “leeching” off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties don’t live up to it. I think that is how the BSW is going to make a dent, it hasn’t disappointed yet.
But at the heart of this “X people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systems” is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy) and the reality that people which can be grouped together by some trait depend more on welfare then necessarily implies that these people are innately more dependent on it. Coupled with the lie that there isn’t enough wealth for everyone and you have an effective way to get the precariat in arms against them. Maybe calling them a precariat aristocracy would be better but where the labor aristocrats already get payed more, they simply get promised more so I don’t know (precariat to-be-aristocracy? I’m just making shit up now). This isn’t the only strategy liberals use to agitate obviously but it’s a major and effective one.
And it must be countered by clear language that doesn’t flatten the labor class into a single homogenous entity in a way Bobby Reichs tweet does. This goes for the US and for us.
Hamburg is a police state it’s very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a “danger zone”? That wasn’t about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by “people wearing St. Pauli scarfs”.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk. By considering your groups’ issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, you’re othering yourself. Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality it’s about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or “low-class” native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing. The solution is not to preach “oh liberal landlord, you’re being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenant’s incomes” as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, we’re lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where there’s too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then they’d be willing to interview everyone – and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. It’s not just immigrants that don’t fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
Just because you don’t want to deport or do worse to people doesn’t mean that the in-outgroup psychology isn’t the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. It’s also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk, and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
Ah, there we have it. “AfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazis”. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as you’re denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didn’t suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didn’t suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
I don’t think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, it’s always “those lazy buggers simply don’t want to work”. “Poverty is a choice” etc, etc. Social darwinism.
Add “organic potato but parents live off Hartz IV” to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. “Bildungsferne Schichten”, as the euphemism goes. Then, ask yourself the following: Daughter of an Iranian Doctor of medicine. Is she going to study, or is she going to work at a supermarket? The career paths of children of Turkish Gastarbeiter aren’t that exceptional when you compare them not to the German average, but that of German Hauptschule graduates: None of their parents ever had a university degree (largely farmers from Anatolia), which meant Hauptschule, at best Realschule. A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because they’re Turks but because their parents didn’t study.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. It’s going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesn’t sound like “oh great another way for them to ignore us”. Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity, if OTOH you try to fix particular interests you risk getting lumped up with the exact people that try to avoid fixing core issues, and resistance will be stiff. This isn’t some new insight it’s political strategy 101. The quickest way to address Y is indeed to focus on addressing X, and do Y as soon as there’s enough trust that X is being taken care of.
You keep projecting what you think I’m advocating for when all I’ve so far revealed is that I’m advocating for clear language that doesn’t flatten reality but acknowledges the different struggles people face, including racist ones. Why do you think that would stop short of a person born into poverty or to one born to parents who didnt have the privilege of a higher education and therefore can’t pass on what they haven’t learned? You keep talking about this in ways that reveal that for you other peoples struggle is an abstract thought exercise, which is why I advised caution when telling others how to safeguard against or combat racism.
Believe me I know.
Obviously they do.
No, I was othered unprompted. By Turks. They aren’t “my group” any less than the “east germans”. A comrade is a comrade, a racist isn’t.
Not entirely. The prejudice Kevin faces is different from the one Jihad faces. That doesn’t make Kevins struggle less real. I don’t understand why you keep thinking I want to diminish someones struggle when I’ve repeatedly called for language that doesn’t hide injustices. I’ve helped both a “Kevin” and a “Jihad” try to find apartments while needing rent relief. One was presumed to have snuck into this country and probably dangerous and the other was “just” presumed to be lazy. It both sucks, but one of them had it harder. And we aren’t going to be addressing any of it if we can’t talk about how or why the systems is the way it is.
Complete projection. I don’t know where this is coming from.
More evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you. The grey wolves kill people like me. The fact that you persist after I told you it was hurtful because you are so sure in your (wrong) assumption for why that might be tells me that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Which makes it less hurtful, so at least there’s that, but it’s a bad sign about how I think of you because I would like to think of you as a comrade. So why persist in something I told you to be hurtful?
How about instead to those closest to drowning? What do you propose we do about the people that aren’t close to drowning but steal the vests from under the people that are?
Even more evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you, when I’m talking about “the racists” I’m not talking about some abstract demographic, I am thinking of real people. I can visualize their faces. I wasn’t talking about “AfD voters and therefore the east” and the fact that your first response always seems to be “but won’t you think of the people voting AfD” is making me increasingly wary of you. I was working under the assumption that this “bridging the divide” thing is a pet project that you’re overly invested in but I’m increasingly running low on good faith to offer you especially since I don’t seem to get any in return.
To be sure I’m not against “bridging the divide” or dismissive of people in the east, especially since they got capitalism working against them double-time when compared to the west. I don’t think of them as AfD voting nazis. But you have to understand that for me to call someone who did vote AfD a comrade, they have to earn my trust first because they probably need to unlearn some racist shit or at the very least learn materialist thinking.
Right, immigrants was used as a stand-in for really anyone requiring welfare. It’s just that the media focus really is on the immigrants at the moment. But again I am well aware that there are other marginalised groups.
They were never off the list. I do not understand why you think they would be.
That’s an untrue simplification. Turkish people are racistly discriminated against even in school. If their parents didn’t have a good education obviously getting Abitur will be even harder, same as for any other person, but they might face additional hurdles or just different hurdles than others. Same for disabled people, they will face bigger hurdles than their able-bodied friends with the same background. Same for girls getting into STEM, their gender probably will cause the barrier for them to be even higher than for boys with a similar non-academic household. Naming the reasons for why some people face different obstacles isn’t idpol, it’s materialist.
Kevin always had my solidarity, but I expect to have his. It’s not unconditional. Also it doesn’t need to be budgeted? What a weird way of thinking about it.
True, which is why I’m advocating for precise language to name concerns so that we get to those with the most first. Because time and again once the majority got theirs the minority was left behind. The people whose only motivation is that their concerns get addressed will lose any motivation once they are. Tit for tat is not solidarity and will never achieve justice.