Monday, August 22, 2022

German Official Trashes Cost Of Living Protesters As "Enemies Of The State"

Oddly enough that sentiment echoes the Yandex chatbot Alice: 

Russian Chatbot Goes Off The Rails, Endorses Stalin, Says "Enemies of the people must be shot" etc

And is a first rate reason to reprise "An Excellent Definition Of Fascism":

....this handy definition via Debate.org:

Contrary to popular belief, fascism can be most accurately defined as the political belief that the state is more important than the individual. This belief is what allowed fascists to justify pursuing "racial purification" of humanity. They considered the individual rights of those they killed as less important than the greater good that they fervently believed would come to humanity through the supremacy of a certain race. Essentially, fascism focussed on community, rather than the individual, which is undoubtedly a hallmark of the left wing.

If interested, see, for example: "Hitler's Handouts: Inside the Nazis' welfare state" and "It wasn’t just hate. Fascism offered robust social welfare".

And the headline story via ZeroHedge, August 18:

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A top German official has trashed people who may be planning to protest against energy blackouts as “enemies of the state” and “extremists” who want to overthrow the government.

The interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Herbert Reul (CDU), says that anti-mandatory vaxx and anti-lockdown demonstrators have found a new cause – the energy crisis.

In an interview with German news outlet NT, Reul revealed that German security services were keeping an eye on “extremists” who plan to infiltrate the protests and stage violence, with the unrest being planned via the Telegram messenger app, which German authorities have previously tried to ban.

“You can already tell from those who are out there,” said Reul. “The protesters no longer talk about coronavirus or vaccination. But they are now misusing people’s worries and fears in other fields. (…) It’s almost something like new enemies of the state that are establishing themselves.”

Despite the very real threat of potential blackouts, power grid failures and gas shortages, Reul claimed such issues were feeding “conspiracy theory narratives.”

However, it’s no “conspiracy theory” that Germans across the country have been panic buying stoves, firewood and electric heaters as the government tells them thermostats will be limited to 19C in public buildings and that sports arenas and exhibition halls will be used as ‘warm up spaces’ this winter to help freezing citizens who are unable to afford skyrocketing energy bills.

As Remix News reports, blaming right-wing conspiracy theorists for a crisis caused by Germany’s sanctions on Russia and is suicidal dependence on green energy is pretty rich.

“Reul, like the country’s federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, is attempting to tie right-wing ideology and protests against Covid-19 policies to any potential protests in the winter.”....

....MUCH MORE

The next step will be to accuse people of "Giving aid and comfort to the enemy".
Except Germany is not at war. They aren't even acting, as the Americans are, like they are sort of at war: 

Europe’s powers gave Ukraine no new military pledges in July, data shows
Europe’s military support for Ukraine has been decreasing since April, according to data from the Kiel Institute.