{"id":88554,"date":"2024-04-20T05:00:50","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T09:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=88554"},"modified":"2024-12-20T13:49:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T18:49:10","slug":"how-much-of-your-language-do-you-have-to-destroy-to-avoid-the-taint-of-historical-fascist-usage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/04\/20\/how-much-of-your-language-do-you-have-to-destroy-to-avoid-the-taint-of-historical-fascist-usage\/","title":{"rendered":"How much of your language do you have to destroy to avoid the taint of historical fascist usage?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For understandable reasons, German governments since the end of World War 2 have been twitchy about any symbols, songs, words and phrases that were used by Hitler’s various fascist organizations … to the point of making many things illegal. eugyppius<\/a> outlines one particular case where the use of a simple German phrase by an AfD politician has landed him in court, facing a possible three-year prison sentence even though he denies that he knew the phrase had such connotations:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, the leader of the Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em> faction in the Thuringian state parliament, Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke, appeared before the district court in Halle for the first day of his long-awaited speech trial<\/a>. He stands accused of having used a forbidden Nazi slogan favoured by the Sturmabteilung<\/em><\/a> at a political rally in Merseburg on 29 May 2021. H\u00f6cke pleads that he used the three-word phrase in a moment of spontaneous elaboration at the end of his speech, without knowing its National Socialist associations. Out of an abundance of caution, I won’t quote the phrase here, even in translation, but I’ll provide it in context below; it begins with the words “Everything for” (“Alles f\u00fcr<\/em>“) and concludes with the name of the Federal Republic. As slogans go, it is so seemingly banal that before the trial many Germans would have been surprised to know it had any Nazi associations at all.<\/p>\n

For the moment, not much has happened. H\u00f6cke’s lawyers filed a variety of requests, among them that the Federal Constitutional Court answer a question surrounding the court’s jurisdiction. In consequence, it’s unclear whether the trial will continue as scheduled next week or whether it will have to be substantially delayed. The state prosecutor’s position is that H\u00f6cke’s background as a history teacher makes his claims of ignorance implausible. The prosecutors’ office have also added an additional charge for H\u00f6cke’s defiance at a rally in Gera last December<\/a>, where he shouted the first two words of the slogan at the crowd, and invited them to supply the last one. I fear that this was a grave mistake, because as we will see, the original case against H\u00f6cke is laughably weak.<\/p>\n

If found guilty, H\u00f6cke could be fined or sentenced to prison for up to three years. It is also conceivable that his right to vote and run for office could be suspended. Whatever you think of H\u00f6cke or his politics, the political dimensions of this trial are undeniable, as it is occurring mere months ahead of the Thuringian state elections, and as Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em> commands a solid plurality of polling numbers in that state.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

That H\u00f6cke deliberately used the SA<\/em> slogan as a subtle enticement to the extreme right is more than doubtful; that he also did so in hopes that he would be prosecuted and profit politically from his victimisation is so ridiculous, I can’t imagine that even Hillje really believes this. This obnoxious thesis nevertheless recurs whenever the German press report on the harassment of AfD politicians; it is somehow their fault, because they are held to benefit from it.<\/p>\n

Der Spiegel<\/em>, always a source of unintentional amusement, ran a headline today mocking H\u00f6cke as a “history teacher with no knowledge of history<\/a>“. “He claims not to know it was an SA<\/em> slogan”, they report, “but there are doubts about this”. Alas, the very same news magazine last September accidentally used the forbidden phrase to headline an approving article on Olaf Scholz’s proposed “Germany Pact”<\/a>. They rapidly changed the headline, appending this brief and embarrassing correction to the bottom:<\/p>\n