Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany?

Heeey.....why did it stop! :)

It was Norm's last time on the Letterman show as Letterman was retiring and Norm gets a little emotional after the Germany joke. Here's the entire episode:

Letterman was one of the very few people who knew Norm was very sick.

It was almost physically painful to rewatch this later, after Norm passed, and finally understanding the context.

Letterman, for all his faults, is one of the most decent people on late night tv - ever.

If you want to see Letterman himself get emotional, watch this episode when he brought on Warren Zevon who had terminal cancer.

Sad! He is abit hard to understand at first (for me that is)...but he is really witty...that's rare! :)

I didn't know that. I thought Norm told only his son and his one close friend.

Letterman was OK. Once he moved to CBS he lost something. The show he had on NBC after Carson was great. I was a devotee of it. Me and my buddies would talk about the show all the time.

A friend I met at chicken restaurant I worked as a teenager and I formed a band that we called Dave.

Norm is top 5 all time stand-ups. Did you know he was a huge fan of Russian literature?

Yep. I noticed the traces of Russian influence, when I realized I had heard some of his jokes before, but in Russian from old timers.

He was one smart cookie. That's what made his comedy so good.

He was also a religious person, which surprises a lot of people. One time, on some radio show, some chick made a pretty flat joke about how "Christians are dumb", and Norm eviscerated her.

He's a guy who had a gambling addiction, but also never drank or did any drugs. Also, pretty much asexual, out of respect for his kid. Full of contradictions...


Heh

The next elections in Germany, this time in Brandenburg. I wonder who will win, SPD or AfD. BB don't you dare elect fascists.

I would never!

I like Werteunion...even if they will probably dont make the parliament :(

Really? Do you regard the AFD as fascists?

No, but as far as I know this party is under surveillance by the secret services as a radical party and there are also court decisions that allow calling individual members of this party fascists. Also in Brandenburg.

How is that defined? Or does it mean "mean people I don't like!"?

Technically the definition of fascism that I learned long ago is private ownership of the means of production which, however, remain under government control. This is contrasted with capitalism (private ownership and control) and socialism (government ownership and control).

These are the judgments of German courts regarding individual AfD members that allow them to be publicly called fascists.

That's basically Socialism in most of its iterations, Workers' control of the means of production. With facism though, the governments are not in any sense by or for workers.

There's also a few other factors which identify fascism, something notoriously hard to define. Much is to do with their views on society, their distasteful opinions on ethnicity and extreme authoritarianism.


Which is certainly what they are. They don't even try to hide it.

My idea is that if you can't define it then it's not a useful term for political discussion.

About 95% of the time I stop listening when someone starts prattling about 'fascist X'.

Almost 10 years ago I completely disengaged from the idea of 'racism' and racist' since most of the time they seemed to be used in similar undefineable ways. Homophobic and transphobic aren't far behind.

Define it and we can talk about it. Can't define it then stop talking about it (except to find a definition).

Probably the term is no longer even needed since authoritarian and totalitarian already exist.

It can certainly be defined, however since there are different iterations of fascism in different environments and sice its barely a century old and evolving, there are differences in interpretation as there are with most political concepts.

Then what's your definition?

Was Franco a fascist? Stalin? Castro? Maduro? Idi Amin? Khomeini?

Political scientists define political terms.


He certainly used the term, and falangist too. Franco ticked most of the boxes.

Then they are slacking.....


I know someone who has studied the Spanish Civil War and Franco in depth (using Spanish sources of which there are far more than English).

They say he wasn't especially fascistic. He was a traditionalist strongman and hopeless on economics (autarky... it never works) but he didn't have the fascist... je ne sai quoi... he wasn't about creating an iron future as much as trying to recreate an imagined Spain that never existed....

I'd say if there's a non-circular definition of fascism it's related to a certain kind of naturalistic worldview in which there are predators and prey and the strong devour the weak. Most everything else comes out of that.

AfD (as much as I despise them) dont' seem fascistic... and they are the _only_ part in line with majority citizen opinion on migration. Take that away and they have nothing but the current German system is too dysfunctional for that.

That ticks a couple of boxes.

There was also extreme nationalism, irredentism, a view that women didn't belong in the workplace and of course his party had its roots in street fighting gangs, another few boxes to tick.

There were elements where falangism diverged from fascism, particularly in their strong support for the cooperative movement, however that regime was resolutely fascist.


There's something in that. A glorification of violence and primitivism.

In Brandenburg, the SPD won, the AfD is second. It will be interesting to see what kind of coalition they will form.

The Greens, the Left and the FDP are out.....so much for tactical voting to keep the SPD at the front....na ja....

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Why does the Brandenburg flag look like the polish flag? Even the eagle is similiar!



Flag of Poland:

The colours are the wrong way round and your eagle looks much more vicious than the Polish one.

Has Poland invaded Germany????? LOL!!!!

Vicious??? You think so?

I think the red/white has maybe something to do with the land....something which Poland and Germany share....and eagles anyhow.....a nice thought! :)

Sacreblue☹

it's sacrebleu not sacreblue

Of course it's a sort of euphemism...

Indeed. I came to the same conclusion. Most of the time it is used as a political/ideological slur by a totalitarian left that doesn't want to admit its fascist/socialist roots.
Their methods are political slurs, malicious lies, manipulation, censorship under the guise of hate speech, and creating artificial issues they make a big deal of while addressing real problems. Incompetent elites are trying to stay in power by all means necessary.
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Polish original colors are red /white /red. While an egelo regards of al myths is due to the Holy Roman Empire when Otto III and our first king (not duke) made a deal. Since then an Eagle become the coat of arms of the Piast dynasty and by extension Poland.

Caramba😒

Actually...... it's ¡Ay, caramba!

And you are absolutely right because it looks like the party that will decide who will govern in Brandenburg will be BSW, a party that did not exist a year ago. In fact, nothing is known about this party except that it does not want to help Ukraine, i.e. it is pro-russian.