The first rule of New Normal Germany is, you do not compare New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany. If you do that, New Normal Germany will punish you.
It will sic the Federal Criminal Police on you. It will report you to its domestic Intelligence agency. It will ban your books. It will censor your Tweets. It will prosecute you on fabricated “hate-crime” charges.
I know this, because that’s what happened to me. I broke the first rule of New Normal Germany. I compared New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany. I did it with the cover artwork of my book.Unless you are the Health Minister of New Normal Germany, and you’re comparing your political opponents to the Nazis. Or unless you are a popular German celebrity, and you’re comparing the Russians and their supporters to the Nazis.
Or unless you are a mainstream magazine, and you’re comparing German populists to the Nazis.
In which case, displaying a swastika is fine. And is not “verboten.” And definitely not a “hate crime.”
And that’s the third rule of New Normal Germany. If you agree with the government, obey their orders, and parrot their propaganda, you are not a “hate criminal.” If you are the government, like an actual minister in the government, like the Minister of Health, you’re definitely not a “hate criminal.” And, if you are part of government’s propaganda apparatus, needless to say, you’re also not a “hate criminal.”
However, if you criticize the government, or if you compare the government to Nazi Germany, and if you do that using your book-cover art featuring a swastika behind a Covid mask, then you’re absolutely officially a “hate criminal,” and an “anti-Semite,” and a “trivializer of the Holocaust.”
I remember when the presiding judge read that out in court. I remember it distinctly, because the judge to her right, the bespectacled woman with the short white hair (see the photograph of the courtroom above), was glaring at me with bone-chilling hatred. We got into a staring contest, which she eventually won, because I couldn’t take it for very long. After a minute or so, I started having flashbacks of scenes from The Pianist, Roman Polanski’s film, and of the eyes of medical-mask-wearing Germans when they saw the protest message I wrote on the mask I was forced to wear in grocery stores in order to buy food during the roll-out of the “New Normal” in 2020-2022. That protest message read, “Befehl ist Befehl,” which roughly translates as “orders are orders,” and was the Nazis’ infamous defense at Nuremberg (i.e., “I was just following orders”). If you have never been surrounded by mobs of medical-mask-wearing Germans glaring at you with seething, utterly bone-chilling hatred … well, let me assure you, it is quite an experience. I experienced it, daily, for over two years.
2 comments:
The German mindset starting with the Nazis well remembered but forgotten the atrocities of the post war German Democratic Republic aka East Germany (Communist Dictatorship).
“The more things change, the more they stay the same”
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