Current Affairs German far right in the former East Germany

[davek]

Any system that imprisons people in their own country is, by defintion, backward. Any system that divides a great city in two and walls in people against their will is, by definition, backward.

Everything else is choreography.

...and yet we have Ostalgie?

 

[davek]

It's just as well I am doing nothing of the sort, then. My other half is East German. Some of her relatives were party people, in the political sense. Most East Germans are fantastic, but a minority are very comfortable with totalitarianism.

You'd have fit in really well, there.

I think I would have.

Great athletics team too.

 

[davek]

Dave, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Thank you for clarifying that for me. I thought we could have a discussion about the GDR and its politics seeing as my family actually lived behind the wall, but when you are rewriting history now and sanitising that dictatorship, well, then there's no point.

You know that you can be too close sometimes to see the reality of something. Not being able to see the wood from the trees.

There's a reassessment about the East German state and its history - and from people who viewed it from the inside. While they might not be uncritical of some of the pettiness of that state, there's a realisation that it also had many things going for it - especially now that they realise the west was not the answer for them.

If someone is talking from a position of ignorance here it's you, as you seem to have closed yourself off from that debate and in particular the reconsideration and repositioning of the GDR that's now become well established.

 

[COYBL25]

Correct me if I’m wrong.

The way I’m reading this, is that someone who lives in Germany, has family members who lived in the old East Germany and worked for the communist government at the time, knows less about the current situation there, than a poster who’s never set foot in the place and gets most his info from the Morning Star ?

Is that right ?

 

[davek]

Correct me if I’m wrong.

The way I’m reading this, is that someone who lives in Germany, has family members who lived in the old East Germany and worked for the communist government at the time, knows less about the current situation there, than a poster who’s never set foot in the place and gets most his info from the Morning Star ?

Is that right ?

Because you use a car does that make you an expert on the internal combustion engine? His proximity to the former GDR doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Lots of political scientists and historians - some having lived in the GDR - have presented a much more nuanced and considered view of that state which questions the validity of seeing it as socially backward and politically and economically moribund.

@Drico is, IMO, arguing from an emotional POV not a rational one based on a more rigorous understanding of the unfolding facts concerning the GDR.

 

[catcherintherye]

Oh dear.

"Pragmatically it was probably necessary".

I hope you are also critical of Stalin for the scores of millions he butchered as well? Or was that "necessary" too?

This thread has been an eye-opener. I mean, I think that there was plenty about the GDR that deserves celebrating - not least my better half - and plenty about the West that deserves condemnation. But I hadn't realised people were so relaxed about totalitarianism in some of its guises. I find some views here pretty offensive, to be honest, so I'll not add to the fire.

Have a good evening, All. I'll go back to the football, I think. As ugly as it is, it's not quite rolling in the mud as much as this thread.

Do you think the Soviet Union or the UK were able to fight Hitler in 1938?