Just so you understand, this witch hunt is exactly what they did to Donald Trump with “America First,” which was the name of an antisemitic and pro-Hitler organization run by aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s.
It’s just a good slogan and it’s very simple. “America First.” The fact that someone who was supposedly evil used it shouldn’t really mean anything.
“Everything for Germany” is the same thing. It sounds good in German. It’s a good, solid sentence.
And that’s all it was – a sentence. AfD has not actually used this as an official slogan. He just said it at rallies.
A regional court in the eastern German city of Halle on Monday sentenced Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Björn Höcke to a fine for repeated his use of a Nazi-era phrase.
The court ruled that Höcke, 52, must pay 130 daily rates of €130 ($140) each — totaling €16,900.
Prosecutors alleged that Höcke had been testing the boundaries when he uttered the first two words of the slogan “Everything for Germany” and goaded the crowd to complete it.
The saying was a slogan of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA), or stormtroopers, who played a major role when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came to power in 1933.
…
Höcke had argued in his first trial that he was not aware the SA had used the phrase, which did not convince the judges.
In the latest case, the prosecution said Höcke’s second use was “in certain knowledge” of the slogan’s provenance, given that he was already in legal trouble for using it by the time of his 2023 appearance in Gera.
Höcke contested that he had not expected the crowd to finish the slogan.
But in his ruling on Monday, Judge Jan Stengel said a video of the speech, in the Thüringian city of Gera, showed Höcke displaying “no reticent reaction — rather miming approval” as the crowd completed the phrase.
DW spoke to Höcke during the AfD’s party conference at the weekend about his first conviction, with the second verdict looming, and he argued that the phrase was a common one often used since 1945 by an array of public figures.
“I voiced an everyday sentence that has been documented in the German language since the 16th century,” he said, arguing that the “real scandal” was that “only I face a legal conviction for it.”
“I’m a dissident, not a criminal,” he concluded.
Yeah, but isn’t it really the same thing?
I mean, if we’re being honest – what country allows dissidents? Why would any country allow dissidents? It’s not logical. The only difference between a dissident and a revolutionary is a gun. There’s no reason any country would allow a dissident any more than it would allow a violent revolutionary.
The difference is, democracy is a system which literally explicitly says that they do allow dissidents. And then people are like “wait, you’re treating me like I’m a criminal, but I’m just a dissident – you said that was allowed.” But it’s like, come on bro. We’re all adults here. Come on. No country has ever allowed dissidents, and no country ever will.
It’s sort of like if a stripper told you she can’t give you a handjob in exchange for a Benjamin Franklin note in the private dance room because “it’s against the rules.” It’s like, come on. Come on. We’re all adults here. We know those are not real rules.
Everyone wants to talk about Alexi Navalny. He was an actual criminal, but assuming he was just imprisoned because he was against Putin – show me the democracy country that allows dissidents. There isn’t one.
In May, Höcke — leader of the AfD in the German state of Thüringia — was fined €13,000 by the same court for the original offense of using the phrase at an event in Merseburg in May 2021.
His words were deemed to break Germany’s law against using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations. Judges agreed with the prosecutors’ argument that, as a former history teacher, Höcke was aware of the origin of the phrase.
It’s not the origin of the phrase.
But here’s the thing.
Let me tell you about the thing.
Why can’t he just run as a Nazi, with a swastika, doing the hand sign?
If it is so evil and everyone hates it, why not just let him do it?
Because Hitler put those shoes in a pile?
It doesn’t make any sense.
A lot more people died under communism than died in Nazi camps, even if you believe that goofy shit about the fake shower room insecticide chambers.
And hey, guess what?
Communists still run a candidate in Russian elections.
Putin gets 88% of the vote, because people like Putinism better than communism.
But listen: these German government people are constantly trying to convince everyone that AfD is secret Nazis, ostensibly as a way to discredit them and make people not want to vote for them. So, if we just do a bit of Socrates here, if calling people Nazis discredits them, wouldn’t the best thing be to just allow them to be Nazis, and discredit themselves?
This whole thing is ridiculous.
Frankly, I think it’s likely that a lot of the people in AfD, and a lot of the voters, are pro-Hitler. They are at least neutral on him. If you wouldn’t have had this bullshit about “the Holocaust,” and Hitler just would have lost the war and then Germany would have been treated like a normal country that had lost a war instead of being accused of being the most evil country ever in all of history, views on Hitler would not necessarily be totally positive – if only because he lost the war, feelings would be mixed. At this point, it’s so long ago, a lot of people would probably have a pretty neutral view.
“You know, he had some good ideas, did a lot of great things for the country, but he screwed up that war, and maybe some of the personality cult stuff was a little cheesy.”
Instead, this wild, cartoonish image they’ve created of Hitler makes people – such as myself, for example – believe he was the greatest man ever in history.
(Note: For the record, I do think he was one of the single most important men in history, mostly because he really nailed that Jew issue. My opinion of him is not actually based on the fact that he’s painted as the most evil man in history. I am simply talking about what the average person would think. You might compare him to Napoleon, if it wasn’t for the “evil” propaganda. Napoleon was cool and so on, but it wasn’t really a good idea to invade Russia.)