Post #38719 by Lambo on the Berkshire Hathaway board

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https://www.progresspond.com/2025/02/16/day-26-peo...

Day 26: People Discover That American Fascists Like German Fascists
Despite my agreement with the overall sentiment behind Lee Hockstader’s latest column in the Washington Post, reading it made me spitting mad. The first thing that angered me was the headline (What’s behind Vance’s stunning decision to embrace Germany’s AfD?), which I acknowledge is probably not Hockstader’s choice.

This is a reference to our vice-president, J.D. Vance, who decided to eschew meeting with mainstream contenders for Germany’s chancellorship in the upcoming elections and instead sat down with Alice Weidel, the leader of the Neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. What I find frustrating is that anybody would find this decision “stunning.” The truth is, it’s about as surprising as the fact that this was printed in the January 16, 1937 edition of the New York Times.

Premier Benito Mussolini and Colonel General Hermann Goering spent the greater part of the morning together inspecting the Fascist Academy of Physical’Culture and met again for a short while in the afternoon before the reception given by the city of Rome in honor of the German visitors.

Hermann Göring was effectively the vice-president of Nazi Germany. In 1937, it made perfect sense that he would visit with other fascist leaders in Europe, whether they were then in power or not. The Times’ fawning non-critical coverage of this meeting should probably resonate with the modern reader.

There’s no indication that these keen, supple, and agile swordsman might be on the verge of launching a global conflagration that will cost 70-85 million people their lives.

In any case, fascists like and make common cause with other fascists. This is the case now, and it the case in 2016. In December of that year, I noted that far-right Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache traveled to Trump Tower after the election to meet with Michael Flynn who was tapped to be the National Security Advisor in the first Trump administration. Stache’s Freedom Party had recently signed a “working agreement” with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party.

Thanks to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials, Flynn didn’t last long as National Security Advisor. But the connections remained.

In May 2019, I wrote The Disturbing Connections Between Trump, Putin and Austrian Neo-Nazis about how Stache, who by that time was the vice-chancellor of Austria, had been busted on a 2017 video tape negotiating favorable contracts with agents posing as Russians in return for electoral assistance for his fascist party.

The Austrian Freedom Party is very similar to Germany’s AfD party. It’s no secret that either of them are in league with Russia. It’s no secret that they are fascist. And it’s not remotely surprising to anyone who has been paying attention that Trump’s Republican Party has been transformed into the American version of this global political movement.

Elon Musk was the first to enthusiastically endorse the AfD in the upcoming German elections. Vice-President Vance is just continuing this budding alliance. Keep in mind that Vance also berated our allies on this trip during “a high-level security gathering that had been focusing on the invasion of Ukraine and the threat Russia poses to Europe and the rest of the world.”

And Vance has been completely consistent, in 2023, 2024, and now that Ukraine should cede territory for peace. It’s an argument echoed in Germany by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, much to the consternation of the few pro-Ukraine Republicans that still exist in Congress. Even if Ukraine must eventually give up on gaining back all its lost territory, it’s unhelpful to have the Americans conceding as much before Putin has conceded anything. But when you realize America and Russia are now both allied with the AfD and the Austrian Freedom Party against the Western Alliance, none of this is surprising or “shocking.”

This is why I only refer to the second Trump administration as “the fascist regime.”

The second thing that infuriated me about Hockstader’s column is that he wrote this:

[Vance] might have done more lasting damage by his interference in the internal politics of a major ally — in this case nine days before German elections, in which Weidel is the AfD candidate for chancellor. By meeting with her — and none of the mainstream German candidates, including incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz — Vance shattered a taboo that he would consider outrageous if the tables were turned. Imagine Germany’s No. 2 elected official swanning around with a leftist presidential candidate — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say, who is hardly as radical the AfD — on the eve of U.S. elections in 2028.

Not only is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not as radical as the Neo-Nazi AfD, she isn’t even radical for a Democrat. More than that, she isn’t a third party candidate or a member of some upstart fringe party that is suddenly gaining a lot of mainstream support. It would, or should, offend no one if the vice-chancellor of a foreign country meets with Ocasio-Cortez. Hockstader has no justification for comparing Ocasio-Cortez to a Neo-Nazi leader, and the soft caveat that she’s “hardly as radical,” does nothing to mitigate the insult here.

The comparison also undermines the point Hockstader is trying to make. What Vance did is much more like if a foreign leader came to America and rather than visiting with Speaker Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries, instead chose to meet with David Duke. And it’s even more serious than that, because Duke is not currently running for office, let alone doing quite well in the polls. I am actually furious that this comparison made it past the editors and AOC deserves a profuse apology.

Despite these shortcomings, Hockstader is right about this:

That Vance took up the cause of the AfD, a party polling at around 20 percent which many Germans regard as beyond the pale, is heedless of history and contemptuous of the transatlantic alliance. In doing so, he managed to transform Europe’s old stereotype of the Ugly American into something more grotesque: the Malicious American…

…Unlike some other hard-right parties in Europe, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, the AfD has made no attempt to rebrand itself as a mainstream movement within the traditional parameters of postwar German politics. With all the AfD’s neo-Nazi eruptions, there have been no apologies, no contrition, no retreats. Those eruptions including Weidel’s own recent rallies, where she has basked in chants of “Alice für Deutschland,” a homophonic play on the banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland.”

…By meeting with Weidel, and thereby lending the AfD a measure of legitimacy it could not previously have imagined, Vance broadcast the message that Trump’s United States will pay any soft-power price, and bear any reputational burden, to promote its most cherished goal: namely, ridding Western countries of immigration’s scourge.

His analysis is that Vance embraces Germany’s AfD because of their shared white nationalist goal of stopping non-white immigration at all costs. So, he does actually understand their common race-based fascist goals. America has fallen.

Things will get worse until the fascist regime is defeated.

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His analysis is that Vance embraces Germany’s AfD because of their shared white nationalist goal of stopping non-white immigration at all costs. So, he does actually understand their common race-based fascist goals. America has fallen.

Trump is racist by extension, but we already knew that. And all MAGAdom is racist by extension unless they stand up now and repudiate this move by Vance. Yes, that means you - BHM, Dope, LM, and Jedi - so repudiate Trump and Vance or at least insist you're not racist and tell us you need time to assess what just transpired. I'll be generous and give you till the end of February. And explain why the term fascist doesn't apply to you, or it will apply to you. Let us know if you don't endorse this move - otherwise you have endorsed it and I need to see you differently.

There's no LOLz.

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There's no LOLz.

Please employ the accepted right wing spelling: LULZ.

And remember, it’s Gulf of America

Deviation from correct spelling and terminology will result in loss of White House press pass privileges.

(Cue some nonsense about liberal censorship on facebook)

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