http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ukip-invites-far-right-german-11234666
Yes I know you're right
I see it in your fierce eyes
But me I've never thought straight
Since the day I had the first doubt
I see it in your fierce eyes
But me I've never thought straight
Since the day I had the first doubt
Yes I know you're right
And I'll back you to a point pal
But I'll never be constrained
By another man's ideas now
And I'll back you to a point pal
But I'll never be constrained
By another man's ideas now
I spent too long on this road
Looking for the answers
But Poverty and Failure
Aren't what I'm after
Looking for the answers
But Poverty and Failure
Aren't what I'm after
I painted "Fight" on factories
But they closed the factory down pal
I want to find out where the Heart's gone
Find out where the nerves gone
But they closed the factory down pal
I want to find out where the Heart's gone
Find out where the nerves gone
What do you do
When democracy fails you
What do you do
When the rest can't see its true?
When democracy fails you
What do you do
When the rest can't see its true?
Nazi word' revived by German AFD
The leader of
Germany's right-wing, anti-immigration AfD party has been criticised for
trying to give a positive spin to the Nazi-era word "voelkisch"
("people's" or "national").
Frauke Petry said it was wrong to equate "voelkisch" with "racist". It is simply the adjective for "Volk" ("People"), she told Welt am Sonntag. The Nazis used the term "voelkisch" to set Germans apart from Jews and others they labelled "racially inferior".
A Nazi daily propagandised that idea.
Voelkischer Beobachter ("People's Observer") was a vehicle for Nazi racist ideology. In 2009 controversial reprints of the Nazi daily were confiscated by the authorities when they appeared in a publication called Zeitungszeugen ("Newspaper Witnesses").
In the German newspaper interview on Sunday, Frauke Petry said "we should work to restore a positive connotation to this concept".
Her Alternative for Germany (AfD) is polling strongly, and for the first time beat Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) into third place in a regional election on 4 September, coming second in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The party got 7.8% in local council elections on Sunday in Lower Saxony, in Germany's north-west. That put it fourth, behind the CDU, SPD and Greens.
'Nazi concept'
The bedrock of AfD support is in the former communist east. Another key regional election will be held in Berlin on 18 September.Journalist Kai Biermann condemned Ms Petry's stance, writing in the daily Die Zeit (in German), with an article entitled "'Voelkisch' is not just any adjective".
"Voelkischer Beobachter was the strongest Nazi daily in terms of circulation, it was the Nazis' campaign sheet," he wrote.
"The term 'voelkisch' is a synonym for extreme nationalism and even for racism. To this day it is a symbol of Nazism and its ideology of eradicating and killing anything non-German," he said.
A leading MP in the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Niels Annen, tweeted that "this is no longer a joke: the AfD is openly wooing far-right nationalists - Petry wants to give the Nazis' central concept a positive connotation".
The German online dictionary Duden gives the following definition of "voelkisch":
- (National Socialist) (in the racist ideology of National Socialism) relating to a people/nation as supposedly a race; belonging to the people as a supposed race
- (archaic) national
I find this dialog around words interesting. In contemporary German we also find: Völkerfreundschaft
ReplyDeletef friendship between nations OR LITERALLY PEOPLES
AND Völkergemeinschaft - f community of nations - OR LITERALLY COMMUNITY OF PEOPLES. So Völk on its own as a stem word can mean ethnos or a people not just THE People - the meaning given in Völkische Beobachter - which can be seen as the Herrenvolk - Master race which of course meant to the NAZIs a particular concept of Germans of the Volksdeutsch. That term Völksdeutech is also no longer used in Germany being replaced with Deutscher Minderheit - German minority and refering to what in English we would call ethnic Germans who were not born and raised in Germany.
Volk is also found used today with Volkmusik and Volkskleider - Folk music and Folk clothing respectively. Just as we use the terms in English they have no nation state BUT only a peoples related aspect to them. So English folk music does not push forward an English Nationilist agenda.
In the German context there is debate between patriotism and nationalism. This is complicated by German history. Imagine all the countries of Europe uniting together to make a European nation - this is what Deutschland über Alles means - no nation-states squabbling for advantage over each other, but bound in a union.
I also see that many words are reclaimed once they have bad connotations from some. In German there is a case for saying just because the NAZIs used a word in a certain way does not mean that is te only way that word can be used and it can be recaptured and semantically shifted back to its original sense in the language. However, more powerful as an arguement is that the NAZIs have shifted the common meaning and so it is better to use a new word or formulation rather than to turn the tide of a powerful historical legacy.
My own fear is that by rehabilitating the use of the word we belittle and diminish the power of the words which allows future generations to downplay the seriousness of the use of those words in the past. In the case of the AfD - which should be contrasted with the similar named Deutsche Alternative - a now banned NAZI party - I feel the aim to recapture the word is not a positive move. It does seek to downplay and expain away the NAZIs as an abberation of one time rather than being founded on a particular poisonous ideology.