today a fascist won an election for the first time since 1933. here, in germany.

i don't care if it's just one (out of 16) states. björn höcke is a fascist. a court decided not long ago that it's allowed to call him a nazi. bc he is one. not "far right" or "conservative" - he is a nazi.

here. in germany. and he just won an election.

it hasn't even been 100 years.

i am scared.

i'm so sorry, op. this is terrifying. (i hope it's okay that i added a few links.)

Prüft ein AfD-Verbot!

If you're from germany, please sign this petition to have the AfD investigated and potentially banned. And if you're not german but have german followers, please spread this post around.

❗❗❗SIGNAL BOOOOOOOOOOOOST❗❗❗

When even GERMANY is like 'ok.. maybe Israel was lying on this one...', something crucial is shifting.

"Everyone hates the police"

Half French half German graffiti seen in Berlin

Model of a decomposing Tyrannosaurus rex at the Altmühltal Museum by Aart Walen. Bavarian Forest, Germany

What a wonderful, evocative, REAL sculpture. It really brings home how these were living thing, flesh and blood, not immortal. Fellow earthlings.

What the fuck

"I have repeatedly and unequivocally condemned Hamas. I have repeatedly said that the 7 October attacks were unspeakable and horrific. Apparently, this is deemed insufficient. In the German context, the term Zivilisationsbruch (“breach of civilisation”) is used by scholars as a reference to the Shoah [the Holocaust]. In effect, the museum is arguing here that they can’t show my work because I have not acknowledged an equivalence between the Holocaust and the 7 October attacks. To demand that such an equivalence be pronounced, as a condition for exhibiting my work, is to effectively demand that I relativise the Holocaust. In order to comply, I would have to betray my fundamental understanding of the Shoah as a singular historical event. Need I point out the absurdity of Germans dictating to Jewish people how they should articulate their reactions to the heinous massacre of Jewish people at the hands of terrorists? What will come next? Will every Jewish person in this country be asked to retrospectively condemn the Shoah and unequivocally deny having empathy for the Nazi regime?"

"The notion that every progressive Jew in this country can be assumed to be harbouring antisemitism unless they publicly denounce Hamas is patently ridiculous. One is apparently guilty by default, until one declares oneself innocent. This reminds me of the post-9/11 climate, in which Arabs, Muslims and Sikhs who did not publicly condemn the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were automatically suspected of condoning al-Qaida."

wish you guys would hate norway for the intense medical transphobia the way you hated swedes for not feeding people. we couldnt get a legal gender marker change without forced sterilisation until 2016. theres 1 board in 1 hospital in the whole country that's allowed to give HRT and they go by 1950s gender roles (i.e. if you're a trans man who wears nail polish, or a trans woman who wears pants, or you're gay, you're denied), and there's a minimum of a full year of psychological evaluations before any treatment is given (they ask helpful and relevant questions like "did you play with cars or dolls as a child" and "do you think about your parents when you masturbate"). anyway burn down rikshospitalet

[ID: tumblr tags that read #i hope im not deflecting when i say this happens in other countries as well #i'm german and it's basically the same here. forced chemical sterilization was required to change your gender marker until 2011 #and if self-id doesn't pass we will continue to have to put up with insane amounts of medical gatekeeping #it's disgusting and dehumanizing and i need more people to talk about this #it's a widespread issue that countries that have a rep for being progressive don't get criticized enough. end ID]

you're absolutely not deflecting, this is super important. so many european countries claim equality and good healthcare while also actively killing trans populations with medical neglect and gatekeeping.

we are being murdered by our governments. they are refusing us life saving medical care. we NEED more people to talk about this

"Where do you think my grandmother spent the Second World War?"

"Adam Broomberg, a prominent Jewish artist and Berlin-based photographer, asked this of the police after they grabbed him by the neck, threw him to the ground, beat him on the back then led him away in handcuffs."

(later in the article...)

"The justification for a pre-emptive ban on a child-friendly afternoon action to hold up watermelons, the fruit associated with Palestine, would almost be comedic if it weren’t quite so cynical—’antisemitic watermelons’. On Nakba Day itself, police vigilance was so extreme that police at one point stopped people from dancing the dabke on the basis that this traditional Palestinian dance potentially amounts to ‘political expression.’ All literature about BDS and any flyer containing the word ‘Nakba’ was seized."

Related [8 Oct 23]

In the soup

I noticed this morning that my main blog over at Out of Ambit had had a sudden spike in pageviews, the last couple of days. So I went under the hood and looked around, and sure enough, there was a note that a post of mine had been linked to from a page at a Terry Pratchett book club podcast, Pratchat.

As soon as I glanced down their page, I saw what they'd been discussing... and had to grin. So here for those of you who may not have heard the story yet, may I present two brief tales:

How Terry Pratchett Found Out That His German Publisher Was Putting Ads For Maggi Soup In His Books (And Altering Terry's Text To Do So)

And, new to me, from a German source:

What Happened Afterwards*

*Besides a lot of snickering as Peter and I made our way up the Eiger the next day...

After thys performans, why notte visit Harga's Hous of Ribs for the Finest in Hawt Cuisyn?

(if they did this in MOVING PICTURES I think the universe would have to collapse in on itself in a puff of purest irony)

Fever is a hilarious immune response. Our bodies tell the disease “hey, wanna see which one of us dies of overheating first? No? Too bad.” and honestly they’re not even the winners a decent chunk of the time but it works often enough that we never evolved it away or anything. Fantastic work.

this reply is killing me

Forgot that in Germany and Austria people just like to eat a 1 inch thick slab of random meat in between two pieces of bread with no toppings or condiments

Introducing fleischbrot :^) It is unseasoned :^)

*** watch with sound ***

cc: @petermorwood

Before 1933, Germany was a center of LGBT+ community and culture, with several renowned organizations serving and supporting trans and gender non-conforming people. Hitler’s Nazi government, however, brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures. As transgender people are now increasingly targets of discriminatory legislation and hate, join the Museum for a program exploring these stories and experiences prior to and during the Holocaust.

This panel conversation will feature Dr. Anna Hájková, Associate Professor of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick; Dr. Katie Sutton, Associate Professor of German and Gender Studies, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at Australian National University; and Dr. Bodie A. Ashton, a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Universität Erfurt, with moderator Rabbi Marisa Elana James, Director of Social Justice Programming at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York.

"Where do you think my grandmother spent the Second World War?"

"Adam Broomberg, a prominent Jewish artist and Berlin-based photographer, asked this of the police after they grabbed him by the neck, threw him to the ground, beat him on the back then led him away in handcuffs."

(later in the article...)

"The justification for a pre-emptive ban on a child-friendly afternoon action to hold up watermelons, the fruit associated with Palestine, would almost be comedic if it weren’t quite so cynical—’antisemitic watermelons’. On Nakba Day itself, police vigilance was so extreme that police at one point stopped people from dancing the dabke on the basis that this traditional Palestinian dance potentially amounts to ‘political expression.’ All literature about BDS and any flyer containing the word ‘Nakba’ was seized."

Oh this! 

I learned to speak Chinese with a Dongbei accent because I used to live not far from the OP (which definitely gets me weird looks as a white lady originally from Kansas.) Native Mandarin speakers are often SO confused by my accent. But yes...Taiwanese speakers do sound really melodic and beautiful. And I sound like I’m angry shouting all the time. 

In Germany and Austria, the Swiss are well-known for speaking Scweizerdeutsch. For reasons unknown, they use diminutive forms of a ton of nouns. The result is that Swiss people speaking German sound like if you found a city in Appalachia where it was 100% normal to baby-talk to everyone, all the time.

On the flip side, no one can understand a goddamn thing coming out of a Viennese person's mouth.

The dialect variance within the German language is insane at times

This is not exactly a new thing tho - here have a video from 1973 about it:

Beautiful addition, thank you so much!!

cc: @petermorwood

Ah!

Twitter's faced this law before, and they had strong filters to block Nazi content in Germany. (It was part of how we knew damn well they had the tools to block or remove hate speech... because they did it in countries where it was illegal.)

See this, from 2012:

It looks like Elon's changes have included removing the anti-Nazi filters from Germany or their moderation team can no longer keep up with reports.

Or both. Both is also likely.

Anyway. The lawsuit is over activity for the last four months, so this isn't "some bits & pieces kept slipping through for the last many years, and we're finally annoyed enough to do something about it."

24 hours is... not a lot of time, since that includes weekends and the reports may be coming in well outside of US business hours.

But. In the past, Twitter managed them. Of course, operating on a skeleton-crew staff, they may not have 24/7 moderation coverage anymore. And Elon doesn't want content removed because someone thinks it's offensive.

My guess: Germany gets its ruling and Twitter refuses to pay up. They've been skipping a lot of payments recently.

And then he starts screaming when every advertiser with an office in Germany pulls their ads under threats from the German government. Oh, and German ISPs will then block Twitter entirely. (Which was the threat that got them to create the anti-Nazi filter in the first place - Twitter wasn't concerned about fines, but they didn't want to be blocked in a substantial portion of the EU.)