#Germany is the "world champion in remembrance," celebrated for its post-#Holocaust policies of ensuring that every German never forgot what had been done in their names, and in holding themselves and future generations accountable for the Nazis' crimes.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/19/stolpersteine/#truth-and-reconciliation
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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This wasn't how they did it in Germany. Nazi symbols and historical revisionism were banned (even the Berlin production of "The Producers" had to be performed without swastikas). The criminals were tried and executed. Every student learned what had been done.
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Cory Doctorow
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But Germany's storied reformation was always oversold.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/04/germ-a04.html
Neofascists in Germany had fat bankrolls, thanks to generous, secret donations from some of the country's wealthiest billionaires:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/billionaire-backing-may-have-helped-launch-afd-a-1241029.html
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Golden Age: A Billionaire Backer and the Murky Finances of the AfD
Melanie Amann (DER SPIEGEL)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages
Today, the far right is surging around Europe, with the rot spreading from Hungary and Poland to Italy and France. In an interview with *#Jacobin*'s #DavidBroder, #TommasoSpeccher a researcher based in Berlin, explores the failure of Germany's storied memory:
https://jacobin.com/2023/07/germany-nazism-holocaust-federal-republic-memory-culture/
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Why Germany Struggled to Reckon With the Nazi Past
jacobin.comCory Doctorow
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You may know that many queer people who were sent to Nazi concentration camps were immediately re-imprisoned after the camps were liberated.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://time.com/5953047/lgbtq-holocaust-stories/
But while there's been some recent historical grappling with this jaw-dropping injustice, there's been far less attention given to the plight of the communists, labor organizers, social democrats and other leftists whom the Nazis imprisoned and murdered. These political prisoners (and their survivors) struggled mightily to get the reparations they were due.
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Why It Took Decades for LGBTQ Stories to Be Included in Holocaust History
Andrea Carlo (Time)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
This is part of a wider pattern. The business-leaders who abetted the Reich through their firms - Siemens, BMW, Hugo Boss, IG Farben, Volkswagon - were largely spared any punishment for their role in the the Holocaust.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
Meanwhile, historians grappling with the war through the "#Historikerstreit" drew invidious comparisons between communism and fascism, equating the two ideologies and tacitly excusing the torture and killing of political prisoners (this tale is still told today - in America! My kid's AP history course made this exact point last year).
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Cory Doctorow
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The impunity for business leaders who collaborated with the Nazis on exploiting slave labor is hard to believe.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben
So Farben built #Monowitz, its own, private-sector concentration camp. IG Farben purchased 25,000 slaves from the Reich, among them as many children as possible (the Reich charged less for child slaves).
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Few of us know about Monowitz today, but in the last years of the war, it shocked the world.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.scribd.com/document/517797736/The-Crime-and-Punishment-of-I-G-Farben
Borkin's book was a bestseller, which enraged America's business lobby.
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The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben
ScribdCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
When we speak of Germany's denazification effort, it's as a German program, but of course that's not right. Denazification was initiated, designed and overseen by the war's winners - in West Germany, that was the USA.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
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German and later American aerospace engineer and space architect
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/premature-antifascist-and-proudly-so/
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A "Premature Antifascist" -- And Proudly So | The Nation
The NationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
Anticommunism hamstrung denazification. There was no question that German elites and its largest businesses were complicit in Nazi crimes - not mere suppliers, but active collaborators.
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Cory Doctorow
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The requirement for a denazification program that didn't condemn capitalism meant that there would always be holes in Germany's truth and reconciliation process.
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Cory Doctorow
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While those spared included many rank-and-file order-followers, it also included many of the Reich's most notorious criminals.
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Cory Doctorow
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Not every Nazi was pensioned off - many continued to serve in the post-war West German government. Even as #WillyBrandt was demonstrating historic remorse for Germany's crimes, his foreign ministry was riddled with ex-Nazi bureaucrats who'd served in Hitler's foreign ministry.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.willy-brandt-biography.com/historical-sources/videos/speech-uno-new-york-1973/
But recollections of Brandt's speech are seldom accompanied by historian Götz Aly's observation that Brandt couldn't have given that speech in Germany without serious blowback from the country's still numerous and emboldened antisemites (Brandt donated his Nobel prize money to restore Venice's Scuola Grande Tedesca synagogue, but ensured that this was kept secret until after his death).
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Speech of Chancellor Brandt before the United Nations in New York, 26 September 1973 - Willy Brandt Biografie
Willy Brandt BiografieCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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And in East Germany, there was a different kind of incomplete rememberance.
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Cory Doctorow
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Neither is sufficient to prevent authoritarianism and repression, obviously.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/Europe%E2%80%99s%20two-faced%20authoritarian%20right%20FINAL_1.pdf
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/25-suspected-members-german-far-right-group-arrested-raids-prosecutors-office-2022-12-07/
In recent years, I've spent a *lot* of time thinking about denazification.
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Germany foils far-right plot to install Prince Heinrich XIII in coup
Miranda Murray (Reuters)Cory Doctorow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_S%C3%A1nchez#Domestic_policy
What do you do with the losers of a just war?
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Prime Minister of Spain since 2018
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/33
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification
But on the other hand, people who lose the war aren't going to dig a hole, climb in and pull the dirt down on top of themselves.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/34
And it's not clear that an explicit antifascism from the start would have patched the holes in German denazification.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Is there *any* hope for creating a durable, democratic, anti-authoritarian state out of a world run by the descendants of plunderers and killers?
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Cory Doctorow
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Like I say, this is something I've spent a *lot* of time thinking about - not just how we might get out of this mess, but how we'll *stay* out of it. As is my wont, I worked out my anxieties on the page. My next novel, *The Lost Cause*, comes out from #TorBooks and #HeadOfZeus in Nov:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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> This book looks like our future and feels like our present—it’s an unforgettable vision of what could be. Even a partly good future will require wicked political battles and steadfast solidarity among those fighting for a better world, and here I lived it along with Brooks, Ana Lucía, Phuong, and their comrades in the struggle. Along with the rush of adrenaline I felt a solid surge of hope. May it go like this.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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> The first great YIMBY novel, this chronicle of mutual aid is politically perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful even amidst the smoke. Forget the Silicon Valley bros--these are the California techsters we need rebuilding our world, one solar panel and prefab insulated wall at a time.
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Cory Doctorow
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I believe we can win this war and secure a habitable planet for all of us - hell, I believe we can build a world of comfort and abundance out of its ashes, far better than this one:
https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-75-resilience-abundance-decentralization
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Metafoundry 75: Resilience, Abundance, Decentralization
TinyLetterCory Doctorow
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Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC
•Cory Doctorow
•Monika Barget
•In my world, #GND stands for "Gemeinsame Normdatei":
https://www.dnb.de/EN/Professionell/Standardisierung/GND/gnd_node.html
#linkeddata
Änn Euing 📜
•Will it also be released as one of your wonderful #audiobooks?
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Cory Doctorow
•Änn Euing 📜
•Julie Webgirl
•Red, white, and blue, stars and stripes, USA, spirit of America, flags, etc etc. Being patriotic was cool! It was branding on a whole new level. The Bicentennial in 1976 was a huge celebration. We all partied and it wasn't partisan. THAT opened the door.
1980. Money was cool. Wall Street was cool. They convinced us we could all be rich. We could spend borrowed money and nobody cared. We waltzed right through that door.
kat
•kat
•WeRemember
Mastodon hosted on weremember.socialSpitfire
•#noafd
Mike Loukides
•YellowPup
•Cory Doctorow
•How To Make the Least-Worst Mastodon Threads - Cory Doctorow - Medium
Cory Doctorow (Medium)YellowPup
•Mark
•#NeverAgain
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Rolf Steinort
•Mark
•Rolf Steinort
•hnapel
•Pictures for reference. (own work)
sollat
•https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/steps