Any Austrian with deportation fantasies should be kept out of Germany, just to be sure.
Why is it always Austrians?!
Austria is low key awful country that skates by on old reputation and sheltering world’s oligarchs.
Vienna’s a lovely city, a lot of Austrians are great people, yadayada.
I get the impression that, unlike Germany, it’s a country that hasn’t fully come to terms with its Nazi past. A lot of Austrians seem to be in denial about the Anschluss or how popular it was. Many will even argue that Austrians were victims, while ignoring that there was overwhelming popular support for the Anschluss at the time.
Here’s a relevant article:
This isn’t just Austria, obviously.
For example, my grandfather would often sarcastically remark that the Dutch resistance gained most of its members after 1944. To quote Adolf Eichmann on Dutch collaboration: “The transports run so smoothly that it is a pleasure to see.”
In Belgium, you have a similar issue where some Flemish nationalists (sometimes disingeniously) minimize the extent of their relatives collaboration during the war, as it’s politically incovenient and embarassing. Same thing in France with Vichy. Same thing in much of Europe, tbh.
That is unfortunately pretty true. The So-called Austria victim theory, which is basically “oh, we poor Austrians were Nazi Germanys first victim!”, is obvious bullshit.
This was only really officially stated to be definitely false in the late 1980s … and there’s still plenty of people who probably would believe it or at least like to pretend that that was the case.
But as I said: at the very least we got to the place where pretty much any official/political actor has to acknowledge that it’s wrong.
I was literally taught this in schools, " the first victim of Nazi Germany was Austria who was annexed against their will."
It wasn’t until after highschool with me getting more into ww1/2 history that I found out that was total bullshit.
“anschluss” was just a word nobody would explain to me from the Sound of Music. Watching that movie was somewhat different afterward too, since a lot of references went over my head as a kid.
Mind me asking where that was? Highschool/Sound of Music makes me guess the US. And what decade roughly?
If it was the US then I’m impressed how successful that myth was communicated outside of Austria. I always thought that was mostly our own delusion.
Same in Japan too. Search for ‘unit 713’ if you hate your mental peace.
*731 but yeah, that’s some heinous shit to say the least! 😬
What scares me more is that researchers found many more units and branches in that network. Yes, it wasn’t just one institution in Harbin that most talk about for it was discovered first. They were all over occupied China torturing whoever they can get a hold of.
They were pretty clever about hiding it, moreso than germans who were running when the first camps got seen by the armies. I’m pretty depressed at a thought that monsters like that could’ve succeed in it, or that many attrocities are still unknown to us.
WW2 was very, very toned down in every aspect of my formal education.
Basically the only war crimes we learned about was “Germany starved Jewish people and worked them to death”
But holy shit that’s just the surface level.
It wasn’t just jews, it wasn’t just death camps, it wasn’t just Germany and it wasn’t just starvation.
If I had learned everything, I’d have had nightmares about humanity.
Austrians haven’t still come to terms with the fact that the main Nazi was an Austrian, I don’t really expect them to come to terms to Nazism in Austria as a whole
Honestly I don’t believe “Hitler was an Austrian” is as important for Austria to come to terms with as it is to accept/finally internalize that Austria wasn’t “the first victim”, but to a large degree welcomed the Anschluss (not 100%, obviously, but quite a big majority).
It is, because the denial regarding Hitler’s origin is part of Austria’s victimisation. It is when you see Austrians argue they’re the good guys and Germans the bad guys because “Hitler was German” or when they use it as an argument to deny/not acknowledge the long history of state backed antisemitism in what it’s now modern Austria.
It’s like they’ve never seen the sound of music
Fun fact: that movie is in fact way less known in Austria than elsewhere. Fun fact: I once saw Michael Moore talk in Vienna and he made some “Sound of Music” joke/reference and the reaction by the audience was … crickets. No one knew what he talked about.
What? France is more than open about Vichy’s collaboration. I don’t know about Belgium and the Netherlands, but it seems you’re trying to dilute the responsability and lack of accountability of the Austrians
Some French people have come terms with their past. Some haven’t.
I’ll give you an example:
This is just one example, obviously. I didn’t need to go back to Jean-Marie. 40% at the last election, wouldn’t be surprised if she becomes the next French president.
Not singling out France. Not trying to dilute Austria’s responsibility, given I was the one who brought it up in this thread. Just saying that much of Europe had a collaboration problem and that a lot of Europe is still in denial about their role in the war.
Similar thing for the US too. German-American Bund, Father McCoughlin, Charles Lindbergh, “America First Committe”, etc. Once again with a perhaps predictable impact on the current political situation in their country.
Let me guess, he also tried to become a painter but failed?
I think I’ve read this story before.
The irony of him trying to subvert the German constitution is that he loses all of his own constitutional protection.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
German authorities are closely examining the possibility of an entry ban for the far-right Austrian whose master plan for the deportation of immigrants is at the heart of a storm gripping Germany over the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
Martin Sellner, the founder of the so-called Identitarian Movement, which preaches the superiority of European ethnic groups, could be banned from entering Germany if he is deemed to pose a threat to German democratic stability, according to members of the interior affairs committee of the Bundestag.
Martina Renner, the anti-fascism spokesperson for the leftwing Die Linke and the party’s representative on the interior affairs committee, said she had raised the question this week as to whether the government of Olaf Scholz intended to take measures against Sellner to prevent his entry.
Another committee member, Philipp Amthor, of the conservative CDU, who backed the motion, said: “In our robust democracy we should in general not tolerate any agitation against our constitutional order, especially not from foreign extremists like Martin Sellner.
He also confirmed his intention of using the meeting to help construct rightwing extremist public support for identitarian ideas, with the help of influencers, in part to alter the “climate of opinion” towards the “decades project” of remigration.
In a letter to the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, he cited the increase in a “transnational network of rightwing extremist actors” and the “threat they pose for internal security in Germany”.
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No paywall link: https://archive.is/qoiGh
