[mschuster91]

In Germany, unlike every other European country (maybe except the Polish, not sure if they're doing the same with Auschwitz?), we have every generation of school children visit a Nazi Konzentrationslager once - precisely to avoid forgetting how bad it was, by showing the actual, undeniable evidence. And on top of that the Nazi dictatorship is usually an entire year's worth of history lessons in schools.

Despite the far-right being on the rise as well as everywhere in Europe, they still have a harder time here, which I think is mostly due to these two education policies.

[Maken]

I do not think it's working. The AfD was the second most voted party for the European parliament, despite their candidate literally defending the SS a few weeks prior.

[mschuster91]

European elections are usually used to deliver a "Denkzettel" to the currently governing party, it's the same across Europe as these elections are (wrongly) seen as consequenceless.

Federally, the AfD is around 15-18% [1], which is still way too high in my opinion, but they're far from any chance to gain relevant influence on politics. Statewide is a different beast, sadly in Eastern Germany (the equivalent of the "flyover states" in the US) they're almost at the 33% required to block major legislation [2]. I'm honestly not sure how to combat that any more, outside of a (well deserved, given e.g Höcke directly using banned NS slogans) ban on the party.

[1] https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/

[2] https://dawum.de/Sachsen/

[racional]

I'm honestly not sure how to combat that any more, outside of a ban on the party.

Perhaps by getting rid of these haughty, and one simply has to say: typisch-Wessi notions of the new Länder as being "flyover territory". Which is part of what drives people to vote for AfD in the first place. As if the former West Germany doesn't have its own stereotypically maligned areas as well.

[bartekpacia]

Yes, in Poland we do the same (mandatory visit to Auschwitz)

[codesnik]

I wonder, how it is usually spinned? I'm asking as Russian and I see direct evidence of how people who grew up in the constant narrative "fascism is awful, that war was important, our grandparents are heroes" also, it seems, consumed it in easy/stupid form of "fascism is something that those weird germans do, they attacked us, and we won, so we can't be fascists ever".

[garaetjjte]

No, it isn't. I think it's rather weird tourist attraction to pick for a trip.

[literallycancer]

I'm pretty sure there are places in Europe where the AfD equivalent doesn't get 15%.

Trip to a holocaust museum is nice and all, but it probably fails at making people understand the problem. They'll kind of nod that yeah, Nazis were bad but then happily go and blame others for their bad decisions and vote for populists with easy solutions.

Somehow half of Germany thinks Russia is OK, because they "saved Europe", hammer and sickle symbols are still not treated the same as swastikas and, of course, the main outcome of the kind of education you mention is that Germany is basically freeloading wrt defense and very unwilling to do the only reasonable thing, i.e. help prevent another genocide as it unfolds in Europe.

Hopefully something has changed in the last 2 years, but the preceding decade, spending over 100 million euros daily on Russian natural gas is hard to undo. And that's with pre-war historical minimum prices. Since you all didn't get the memo that you need to stop buying Russian stuff until NS2 got blown up, the flow of money for natural gas from Germany to Russia in 2022 and 2023 is likely several times the pre-war annual number.

And then you have people saying shit like "we have spent enough on Ukraine" or "Ukrainian refugees are coming because of our social safety net", not even from AfD politicians (I think some CDU idiot, lol). Yeah sure, but you gave 100x the money to Russia, who of course spent it on weapons because they don't give two fucks about their own people.

Being sorry about things from the last century, while failing completely to judge the situation in the present doesn't really help. Not to mention Poland still didn't get the war reparations for WW2 last I checked. They probably don't want to shake the boat too much and just hope Germany will at least stop being useless.