Also just because there seems to be a misunderstanding here let me say that Iām not USian, Iām german.
My gods thatās even worse. Why, then, are you that steeped in reductionist, racialised, US analysis? Activists and theorists over there donāt see the water theyāre swimming in, donāt realise how their unwillingness and/or incapacity to think outside of that framework perpetuates it. It allows people to stay depoliticised by engaging in performativism, segregating hair styles becomes more important than material fucking conditions. Idpol is the worst thing that happened to the left since Stalin and the exact opposite of what you should be steeped in, and thatās rapprochement. Which is exactly where I tried to carefully lead you.
OK excuse me you talk about material āfuckingā conditions and ignore or relativize the colonial history of the Hegemon. Youāre in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal āhearts and mindsā or whatever the fuck it is that youāre looking to accomplish will ever be possible. I urge you so much more to read that exact book Iām pushing if only to see how the white communists and socialists and unionists kept fucking things up and kept playing into the racist divide with these kind of civility politics that youāre pushing, while ignoring the native american or black american comrade. Because its these divides that are currently being amped up right here in Germany, the second most subservient country to the Hegemon.
Youāre in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal āhearts and mindsā or whatever the fuck it is that youāre looking to accomplish will ever be possible.
Read some European post-war history. Ask the North Irish ā both sides and yes that was a settler-colonial/apartheid situation. The examples are literally endless.
OTOH, point me to a single instance where Idpol has brought peace.
Why donāt you read some US history, I implore you to, then visit some of the nonwhite neighborhoods in major German cities and you will see how relevant it is for us today.
You mean immigrant neigbourhoods and I grew up in one, thank you. WTF is ānonwhiteā even supposed to mean have you ever seen a Turk or Syrian. The principal systemic problem immigrants face is coming from low socio-economic status combined with our lack of social mobility, in places right-out enforced by the education system, which also affects Kevin. Reform of education is typically blocked by BildungsbĆ¼rger.
And I see you ignored my question: When has Idpol ever brought peace?
And before you mention it: No, the east didnāt suddenly turn Nazi. The west still has a larger proportion of people with closed right-extremist world-view, while the east still has a larger proportion of socialists. Whatās happening is feelings of betrayal and people being fed up with voting for politicians who caused the issues they, as in the common man, have. Weāre lacking over 1m social housing units, rent is becoming more and more unaffordable while the SPD opposes expropriating landlords, the CSU is talking about sanctioning 0.045% of welfare recipients (āTotalverweigererā), 99.99% of which should probably be judged incapable of work and fall under SGB XII, and btw social darwinism is a form of group-focussed enmity. The greens rather bankrupt house owners than do the right thing, both when it comes to politics and technology, and give municipalities money to set up district heating. Yes, the AfD programme is turbo-neoliberal and against the interest of their voters ā and the voters tend to know that. Itās the same kind of phenomenon that made Argentinians vote Milei into power: Itās bad, but at least not the established bad and itās a boot up the arse of the established parties. I do have a fuckton of issues with Wagah Zarenknecht but expect her to soak up the vast majority of those AfD votes.
How fucking long have I heard āYou can care about two things at the same timeā, referring to āYes we can have gay marriage and care about social housingā. The same parties then did the former, and thatās good and proper, but failed at the latter, while calling themselves the creme de la creme of leftists. Thatās performativism. Iām sure a gazillion of gay homeless couples are glad that they now can be gay married homeless couples. The country needs a specific focus on the latter kind of matters. Fix that shit and youāll find that a lot of other problems suddenly vanish because they were never causes, they were symptoms. āX is important to me and everyone and needs to be addressed but you arenāt so Iām going to block Yā is politics as usual, you canāt blue sky idealist yourself around that: If you want to fix Y get X fixed.
I grew up in Turkey. I have seen plenty of Turks, also Kurds also Arabs. Which is how I also know what itās like to be a religious minority, what itās like to have the police hound you for it or just the weirdness of sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb. Which is how experienced the importance of the community of people like oneself, a concept that often gets misrepresented in the so-called āidentity politicsā which therefore should be opposed, but that doesnāt make it less real. And if you think there is not a similar acceptable/non-acceptable split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines in our society then your dreaming. I completely ignored your question because this is not idpol. This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
I donāt know why youād think I would say that the east has āsuddenlyā turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything weāre talking about. I guess you think Iām just doing āperformativeā leftism to ingratiate myself to minorities or something. I donāt know. Iām not, I just care about clear language that doesnāt hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because thatās how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters. The rationale that āif we all have the same opportunities, then how come the people with a non-standard german background are so much more dependent on social welfareā needs to be rooted out at the beginning of āwe all have the same opportunitiesā because we donāt.
Edit: Sorry Iām gonna add a bigger paragraph after posting about the whole white/non-white thing. I use these racist terms to describe how our racist society groups people according to their appearance and not as a scientific term where you can decide if someone is white or not, the fact that this is not possible is the precise contradiction that racists use to garner support from people they will oppress later. Whether someone is white or not, or āreallyā German or not, is very fluid and dependent on the situation. An ethnically Turkish person can pass as white and not be pulled from traffic into a routine check but they would probably be treated as non-white if during a traffic stop the cop learned their name. The way people treat a Jewish person might change after people find out that they are a Jew. They didnāt suddenly switch from white to nonwhite in a material way, those categories donāt really exist, but the way they are viewed and accordingly how they are treated did.
This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
Now I donāt know about how things are where you are but over here itās more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian. Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying āThis is all about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā is precisely idpol: You reduce the complexity of societal relations to create a normative in- and out-group, ascribing to it an imaginary internal coherence that makes you kin to the Grey Wolves. Remember Cem Ćzdemir complaining about discrimination against Swabians? Thatās the Germany weāre living in. It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your ānon-whiteā radar?) and before long people wonāt blink at Cemās surname same as they donāt blink at āde MaiziĆØreā. Also immigrant background, refugee even: His family came to Germany in the 17th century when France prosecuted Huguenots. Another good example of just how little specifically appearance matters is Philipp Rƶsler.
I donāt know why youād think I would say that the east has āsuddenlyā turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything weāre talking about.
It relates to the ārace relations are getting worse in the USā observation, I was preempting a ābut here, tooā rebuttal. The very lack of idpol is what allows figures like Zarenknecht to make a dent, because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity, the electorate is still able to recognise that policies will address causes, and thereby solve problems that āWe need to segregate hairstyles harderā canāt dream to achieve. You still havenāt answered how idpol ever brought about peace, btw.
I just care about clear language that doesnāt hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because thatās how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesnāt become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
And no AfD voters arenāt labour-aristocracy youāre confusing them with the SPD ā remember how long they kept those coal subsidies alive? The SPD is the political arm of the big powerful unions, foremost IG Metall.
Studies show that class-wise AfD voters are predominantly precariat, as I already said: People the established left doesnāt care about, even actively agitates against (āSozialschmarotzerā). Maybe youād know all that shit if you actually engaged critically with politics in this country instead of looking to the US of all places. Die Linke, at least in the east, on state level, where theyāre relevant, is also labour-aristocracy and in practice firmly Socdem. Mabye a smidge on the left of the SPD but not by much: They donāt oppose expropriating landlords, but they also would not propose it. Basically SPD without the Seeheimer Kreis.
Now I donāt know about how things are where you are but over here itās more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian.
So the fact that some people make Kumpir-jokes (arguably actually idpol) is supposed to assure me that there is no anti-turkish racism? I have family members whose business gets harassed by cops for no other reason than them being turkish. Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg. They arenāt as integrated as italians who by the way Iāve also witnessed being "other"ed on one occasion so clearly even they arenāt on-par with the non-immigrants in Germany.
Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying āThis is all about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā is precisely idpol
Well Iām not. Iām talking about the cops double and triple checking turkish businesses in an unnecessarily disruptive manner for no reason other than them being suspicous of their turkishness. Donāt tell me that it isnāt āall about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā because it most assuredly is.
makes you kin to the Grey Wolves
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldnāt know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your ānon-whiteā radar?)
I can only assume that you wrote this (and the rest of that paragraph) before I edited in my last paragraph in the comment above yours, so Iāll reiterate it here. Iām not the one ascribing white/non-white to people, Iām talking about groups of people that are racistly viewed as such and the effects such a view on people has. So e.g. an italian who might be too brown and gets clocked as ānon-whiteā might experience discrimination in which case I would be talking about ādiscrimination against a non-white personā. People that are regularly discriminated against in such a way might group together to lobby for equal rights, create safe spaces where they can just be and form a community centered around the racist prescription they were given. Such groups, spaces and communities will then get under attack by the racists and therefore need special protection. That isnāt idpol. It is a vital strategy to form solidarity among people that experience discrimination others donāt. Something others cannot relate to, canāt see the full extent of damage caused and therefore canāt be as helpful in solving. Itās not about āsegregating hairstylesā, itās about listening to oppressed people and what they say they need in order to protect themselves and their community. Iām not saying they canāt be wrong, but I am saying people that donāt experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together. Liberals then tried to ātarget audiencesā by how they were grouped together creating idpol. By a similar logic I could claim that rainbow capitalism or pinkwashing is caused by the LGBTQ community coming together, thatās absurd and frankly puts the blame for racism on the people fighting it. The people importing idpol are the german right-wingers repeating the absurd lies of the US right-wing, not people that speak against racist discrimination.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesnāt become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
You donāt know what I talk about in regards to german politics because youāre replying to me in a thread kicked off about a comment I made about US politics! But Iāll be damned if I shut up about the racist barriers of entry non-white germans face in higher education.
Youāre right about the AfD voters not being labor aristocracy, that was imprecise (therefore wrong). What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop āleechingā off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties donāt live up to it. I think that is how the BSW is going to make a dent, it hasnāt disappointed yet.
But at the heart of this āX people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systemsā is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy) and the reality that people which can be grouped together by some trait depend more on welfare then necessarily implies that these people are innately more dependent on it. Coupled with the lie that there isnāt enough wealth for everyone and you have an effective way to get the precariat in arms against them. Maybe calling them a precariat aristocracy would be better but where the labor aristocrats already get payed more, they simply get promised more so I donāt know (precariat to-be-aristocracy? Iām just making shit up now). This isnāt the only strategy liberals use to agitate obviously but itās a major and effective one.
And it must be countered by clear language that doesnāt flatten the labor class into a single homogenous entity in a way Bobby Reichs tweet does. This goes for the US and for us.
Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg.
Hamburg is a police state itās very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a ādanger zoneā? That wasnāt about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by āpeople wearing St. Pauli scarfsā.
Iām not saying they canāt be wrong, but I am saying people that donāt experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk. By considering your groupsā issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, youāre othering yourself. Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality itās about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or ālow-classā native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing. The solution is not to preach āoh liberal landlord, youāre being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenantās incomesā as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, weāre lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where thereās too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then theyād be willing to interview everyone ā and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. Itās not just immigrants that donāt fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
makes you kin to the Grey Wolves
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldnāt know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
Just because you donāt want to deport or do worse to people doesnāt mean that the in-outgroup psychology isnāt the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. Itās also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk, and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together.
Ah, there we have it. āAfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazisā. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as youāre denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didnāt suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didnāt suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop āleechingā off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties donāt live up to it.
I donāt think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, itās always āthose lazy buggers simply donāt want to workā. āPoverty is a choiceā etc, etc. Social darwinism.
But at the heart of this āX people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systemsā is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy)
Add āorganic potato but parents live off Hartz IVā to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. āBildungsferne Schichtenā, as the euphemism goes. Then, ask yourself the following: Daughter of an Iranian Doctor of medicine. Is she going to study, or is she going to work at a supermarket? The career paths of children of Turkish Gastarbeiter arenāt that exceptional when you compare them not to the German average, but that of German Hauptschule graduates: None of their parents ever had a university degree (largely farmers from Anatolia), which meant Hauptschule, at best Realschule. A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because theyāre Turks but because their parents didnāt study.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. Itās going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesnāt sound like āoh great another way for them to ignore usā. Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity, if OTOH you try to fix particular interests you risk getting lumped up with the exact people that try to avoid fixing core issues, and resistance will be stiff. This isnāt some new insight itās political strategy 101. The quickest way to address Y is indeed to focus on addressing X, and do Y as soon as thereās enough trust that X is being taken care of.
My gods thatās even worse. Why, then, are you that steeped in reductionist, racialised, US analysis? Activists and theorists over there donāt see the water theyāre swimming in, donāt realise how their unwillingness and/or incapacity to think outside of that framework perpetuates it. It allows people to stay depoliticised by engaging in performativism, segregating hair styles becomes more important than material fucking conditions. Idpol is the worst thing that happened to the left since Stalin and the exact opposite of what you should be steeped in, and thatās rapprochement. Which is exactly where I tried to carefully lead you.
Side note do watch Reservation Dogs.
OK excuse me you talk about material āfuckingā conditions and ignore or relativize the colonial history of the Hegemon. Youāre in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal āhearts and mindsā or whatever the fuck it is that youāre looking to accomplish will ever be possible. I urge you so much more to read that exact book Iām pushing if only to see how the white communists and socialists and unionists kept fucking things up and kept playing into the racist divide with these kind of civility politics that youāre pushing, while ignoring the native american or black american comrade. Because its these divides that are currently being amped up right here in Germany, the second most subservient country to the Hegemon.
Read some European post-war history. Ask the North Irish ā both sides and yes that was a settler-colonial/apartheid situation. The examples are literally endless.
OTOH, point me to a single instance where Idpol has brought peace.
Why donāt you read some US history, I implore you to, then visit some of the nonwhite neighborhoods in major German cities and you will see how relevant it is for us today.
You mean immigrant neigbourhoods and I grew up in one, thank you. WTF is ānonwhiteā even supposed to mean have you ever seen a Turk or Syrian. The principal systemic problem immigrants face is coming from low socio-economic status combined with our lack of social mobility, in places right-out enforced by the education system, which also affects Kevin. Reform of education is typically blocked by BildungsbĆ¼rger.
And I see you ignored my question: When has Idpol ever brought peace?
And before you mention it: No, the east didnāt suddenly turn Nazi. The west still has a larger proportion of people with closed right-extremist world-view, while the east still has a larger proportion of socialists. Whatās happening is feelings of betrayal and people being fed up with voting for politicians who caused the issues they, as in the common man, have. Weāre lacking over 1m social housing units, rent is becoming more and more unaffordable while the SPD opposes expropriating landlords, the CSU is talking about sanctioning 0.045% of welfare recipients (āTotalverweigererā), 99.99% of which should probably be judged incapable of work and fall under SGB XII, and btw social darwinism is a form of group-focussed enmity. The greens rather bankrupt house owners than do the right thing, both when it comes to politics and technology, and give municipalities money to set up district heating. Yes, the AfD programme is turbo-neoliberal and against the interest of their voters ā and the voters tend to know that. Itās the same kind of phenomenon that made Argentinians vote Milei into power: Itās bad, but at least not the established bad and itās a boot up the arse of the established parties. I do have a fuckton of issues with Wagah Zarenknecht but expect her to soak up the vast majority of those AfD votes.
How fucking long have I heard āYou can care about two things at the same timeā, referring to āYes we can have gay marriage and care about social housingā. The same parties then did the former, and thatās good and proper, but failed at the latter, while calling themselves the creme de la creme of leftists. Thatās performativism. Iām sure a gazillion of gay homeless couples are glad that they now can be gay married homeless couples. The country needs a specific focus on the latter kind of matters. Fix that shit and youāll find that a lot of other problems suddenly vanish because they were never causes, they were symptoms. āX is important to me and everyone and needs to be addressed but you arenāt so Iām going to block Yā is politics as usual, you canāt blue sky idealist yourself around that: If you want to fix Y get X fixed.
I grew up in Turkey. I have seen plenty of Turks, also Kurds also Arabs. Which is how I also know what itās like to be a religious minority, what itās like to have the police hound you for it or just the weirdness of sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb. Which is how experienced the importance of the community of people like oneself, a concept that often gets misrepresented in the so-called āidentity politicsā which therefore should be opposed, but that doesnāt make it less real. And if you think there is not a similar acceptable/non-acceptable split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines in our society then your dreaming. I completely ignored your question because this is not idpol. This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
I donāt know why youād think I would say that the east has āsuddenlyā turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything weāre talking about. I guess you think Iām just doing āperformativeā leftism to ingratiate myself to minorities or something. I donāt know. Iām not, I just care about clear language that doesnāt hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because thatās how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters. The rationale that āif we all have the same opportunities, then how come the people with a non-standard german background are so much more dependent on social welfareā needs to be rooted out at the beginning of āwe all have the same opportunitiesā because we donāt.
Edit: Sorry Iām gonna add a bigger paragraph after posting about the whole white/non-white thing. I use these racist terms to describe how our racist society groups people according to their appearance and not as a scientific term where you can decide if someone is white or not, the fact that this is not possible is the precise contradiction that racists use to garner support from people they will oppress later. Whether someone is white or not, or āreallyā German or not, is very fluid and dependent on the situation. An ethnically Turkish person can pass as white and not be pulled from traffic into a routine check but they would probably be treated as non-white if during a traffic stop the cop learned their name. The way people treat a Jewish person might change after people find out that they are a Jew. They didnāt suddenly switch from white to nonwhite in a material way, those categories donāt really exist, but the way they are viewed and accordingly how they are treated did.
Now I donāt know about how things are where you are but over here itās more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian. Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying āThis is all about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā is precisely idpol: You reduce the complexity of societal relations to create a normative in- and out-group, ascribing to it an imaginary internal coherence that makes you kin to the Grey Wolves. Remember Cem Ćzdemir complaining about discrimination against Swabians? Thatās the Germany weāre living in. It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your ānon-whiteā radar?) and before long people wonāt blink at Cemās surname same as they donāt blink at āde MaiziĆØreā. Also immigrant background, refugee even: His family came to Germany in the 17th century when France prosecuted Huguenots. Another good example of just how little specifically appearance matters is Philipp Rƶsler.
It relates to the ārace relations are getting worse in the USā observation, I was preempting a ābut here, tooā rebuttal. The very lack of idpol is what allows figures like Zarenknecht to make a dent, because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity, the electorate is still able to recognise that policies will address causes, and thereby solve problems that āWe need to segregate hairstyles harderā canāt dream to achieve. You still havenāt answered how idpol ever brought about peace, btw.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesnāt become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
And no AfD voters arenāt labour-aristocracy youāre confusing them with the SPD ā remember how long they kept those coal subsidies alive? The SPD is the political arm of the big powerful unions, foremost IG Metall.
Studies show that class-wise AfD voters are predominantly precariat, as I already said: People the established left doesnāt care about, even actively agitates against (āSozialschmarotzerā). Maybe youād know all that shit if you actually engaged critically with politics in this country instead of looking to the US of all places. Die Linke, at least in the east, on state level, where theyāre relevant, is also labour-aristocracy and in practice firmly Socdem. Mabye a smidge on the left of the SPD but not by much: They donāt oppose expropriating landlords, but they also would not propose it. Basically SPD without the Seeheimer Kreis.
So the fact that some people make Kumpir-jokes (arguably actually idpol) is supposed to assure me that there is no anti-turkish racism? I have family members whose business gets harassed by cops for no other reason than them being turkish. Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg. They arenāt as integrated as italians who by the way Iāve also witnessed being "other"ed on one occasion so clearly even they arenāt on-par with the non-immigrants in Germany.
Well Iām not. Iām talking about the cops double and triple checking turkish businesses in an unnecessarily disruptive manner for no reason other than them being suspicous of their turkishness. Donāt tell me that it isnāt āall about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā because it most assuredly is.
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldnāt know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
I can only assume that you wrote this (and the rest of that paragraph) before I edited in my last paragraph in the comment above yours, so Iāll reiterate it here. Iām not the one ascribing white/non-white to people, Iām talking about groups of people that are racistly viewed as such and the effects such a view on people has. So e.g. an italian who might be too brown and gets clocked as ānon-whiteā might experience discrimination in which case I would be talking about ādiscrimination against a non-white personā. People that are regularly discriminated against in such a way might group together to lobby for equal rights, create safe spaces where they can just be and form a community centered around the racist prescription they were given. Such groups, spaces and communities will then get under attack by the racists and therefore need special protection. That isnāt idpol. It is a vital strategy to form solidarity among people that experience discrimination others donāt. Something others cannot relate to, canāt see the full extent of damage caused and therefore canāt be as helpful in solving. Itās not about āsegregating hairstylesā, itās about listening to oppressed people and what they say they need in order to protect themselves and their community. Iām not saying they canāt be wrong, but I am saying people that donāt experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together. Liberals then tried to ātarget audiencesā by how they were grouped together creating idpol. By a similar logic I could claim that rainbow capitalism or pinkwashing is caused by the LGBTQ community coming together, thatās absurd and frankly puts the blame for racism on the people fighting it. The people importing idpol are the german right-wingers repeating the absurd lies of the US right-wing, not people that speak against racist discrimination.
You donāt know what I talk about in regards to german politics because youāre replying to me in a thread kicked off about a comment I made about US politics! But Iāll be damned if I shut up about the racist barriers of entry non-white germans face in higher education.
Youāre right about the AfD voters not being labor aristocracy, that was imprecise (therefore wrong). What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop āleechingā off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties donāt live up to it. I think that is how the BSW is going to make a dent, it hasnāt disappointed yet.
But at the heart of this āX people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systemsā is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy) and the reality that people which can be grouped together by some trait depend more on welfare then necessarily implies that these people are innately more dependent on it. Coupled with the lie that there isnāt enough wealth for everyone and you have an effective way to get the precariat in arms against them. Maybe calling them a precariat aristocracy would be better but where the labor aristocrats already get payed more, they simply get promised more so I donāt know (precariat to-be-aristocracy? Iām just making shit up now). This isnāt the only strategy liberals use to agitate obviously but itās a major and effective one.
And it must be countered by clear language that doesnāt flatten the labor class into a single homogenous entity in a way Bobby Reichs tweet does. This goes for the US and for us.
Hamburg is a police state itās very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a ādanger zoneā? That wasnāt about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by āpeople wearing St. Pauli scarfsā.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk. By considering your groupsā issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, youāre othering yourself. Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality itās about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or ālow-classā native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing. The solution is not to preach āoh liberal landlord, youāre being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenantās incomesā as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, weāre lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where thereās too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then theyād be willing to interview everyone ā and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. Itās not just immigrants that donāt fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
Just because you donāt want to deport or do worse to people doesnāt mean that the in-outgroup psychology isnāt the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. Itās also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk, and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
Ah, there we have it. āAfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazisā. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as youāre denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didnāt suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didnāt suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
I donāt think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, itās always āthose lazy buggers simply donāt want to workā. āPoverty is a choiceā etc, etc. Social darwinism.
Add āorganic potato but parents live off Hartz IVā to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. āBildungsferne Schichtenā, as the euphemism goes. Then, ask yourself the following: Daughter of an Iranian Doctor of medicine. Is she going to study, or is she going to work at a supermarket? The career paths of children of Turkish Gastarbeiter arenāt that exceptional when you compare them not to the German average, but that of German Hauptschule graduates: None of their parents ever had a university degree (largely farmers from Anatolia), which meant Hauptschule, at best Realschule. A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because theyāre Turks but because their parents didnāt study.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. Itās going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesnāt sound like āoh great another way for them to ignore usā. Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity, if OTOH you try to fix particular interests you risk getting lumped up with the exact people that try to avoid fixing core issues, and resistance will be stiff. This isnāt some new insight itās political strategy 101. The quickest way to address Y is indeed to focus on addressing X, and do Y as soon as thereās enough trust that X is being taken care of.
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