Youāre in for a rude awakening if you think your rapprochement of liberal āhearts and mindsā or whatever the fuck it is that youāre looking to accomplish will ever be possible.
Read some European post-war history. Ask the North Irish ā both sides and yes that was a settler-colonial/apartheid situation. The examples are literally endless.
OTOH, point me to a single instance where Idpol has brought peace.
Why donāt you read some US history, I implore you to, then visit some of the nonwhite neighborhoods in major German cities and you will see how relevant it is for us today.
You mean immigrant neigbourhoods and I grew up in one, thank you. WTF is ānonwhiteā even supposed to mean have you ever seen a Turk or Syrian. The principal systemic problem immigrants face is coming from low socio-economic status combined with our lack of social mobility, in places right-out enforced by the education system, which also affects Kevin. Reform of education is typically blocked by BildungsbĆ¼rger.
And I see you ignored my question: When has Idpol ever brought peace?
And before you mention it: No, the east didnāt suddenly turn Nazi. The west still has a larger proportion of people with closed right-extremist world-view, while the east still has a larger proportion of socialists. Whatās happening is feelings of betrayal and people being fed up with voting for politicians who caused the issues they, as in the common man, have. Weāre lacking over 1m social housing units, rent is becoming more and more unaffordable while the SPD opposes expropriating landlords, the CSU is talking about sanctioning 0.045% of welfare recipients (āTotalverweigererā), 99.99% of which should probably be judged incapable of work and fall under SGB XII, and btw social darwinism is a form of group-focussed enmity. The greens rather bankrupt house owners than do the right thing, both when it comes to politics and technology, and give municipalities money to set up district heating. Yes, the AfD programme is turbo-neoliberal and against the interest of their voters ā and the voters tend to know that. Itās the same kind of phenomenon that made Argentinians vote Milei into power: Itās bad, but at least not the established bad and itās a boot up the arse of the established parties. I do have a fuckton of issues with Wagah Zarenknecht but expect her to soak up the vast majority of those AfD votes.
How fucking long have I heard āYou can care about two things at the same timeā, referring to āYes we can have gay marriage and care about social housingā. The same parties then did the former, and thatās good and proper, but failed at the latter, while calling themselves the creme de la creme of leftists. Thatās performativism. Iām sure a gazillion of gay homeless couples are glad that they now can be gay married homeless couples. The country needs a specific focus on the latter kind of matters. Fix that shit and youāll find that a lot of other problems suddenly vanish because they were never causes, they were symptoms. āX is important to me and everyone and needs to be addressed but you arenāt so Iām going to block Yā is politics as usual, you canāt blue sky idealist yourself around that: If you want to fix Y get X fixed.
I grew up in Turkey. I have seen plenty of Turks, also Kurds also Arabs. Which is how I also know what itās like to be a religious minority, what itās like to have the police hound you for it or just the weirdness of sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb. Which is how experienced the importance of the community of people like oneself, a concept that often gets misrepresented in the so-called āidentity politicsā which therefore should be opposed, but that doesnāt make it less real. And if you think there is not a similar acceptable/non-acceptable split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines in our society then your dreaming. I completely ignored your question because this is not idpol. This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
I donāt know why youād think I would say that the east has āsuddenlyā turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything weāre talking about. I guess you think Iām just doing āperformativeā leftism to ingratiate myself to minorities or something. I donāt know. Iām not, I just care about clear language that doesnāt hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because thatās how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters. The rationale that āif we all have the same opportunities, then how come the people with a non-standard german background are so much more dependent on social welfareā needs to be rooted out at the beginning of āwe all have the same opportunitiesā because we donāt.
Edit: Sorry Iām gonna add a bigger paragraph after posting about the whole white/non-white thing. I use these racist terms to describe how our racist society groups people according to their appearance and not as a scientific term where you can decide if someone is white or not, the fact that this is not possible is the precise contradiction that racists use to garner support from people they will oppress later. Whether someone is white or not, or āreallyā German or not, is very fluid and dependent on the situation. An ethnically Turkish person can pass as white and not be pulled from traffic into a routine check but they would probably be treated as non-white if during a traffic stop the cop learned their name. The way people treat a Jewish person might change after people find out that they are a Jew. They didnāt suddenly switch from white to nonwhite in a material way, those categories donāt really exist, but the way they are viewed and accordingly how they are treated did.
This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
Now I donāt know about how things are where you are but over here itās more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian. Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying āThis is all about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā is precisely idpol: You reduce the complexity of societal relations to create a normative in- and out-group, ascribing to it an imaginary internal coherence that makes you kin to the Grey Wolves. Remember Cem Ćzdemir complaining about discrimination against Swabians? Thatās the Germany weāre living in. It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your ānon-whiteā radar?) and before long people wonāt blink at Cemās surname same as they donāt blink at āde MaiziĆØreā. Also immigrant background, refugee even: His family came to Germany in the 17th century when France prosecuted Huguenots. Another good example of just how little specifically appearance matters is Philipp Rƶsler.
I donāt know why youād think I would say that the east has āsuddenlyā turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything weāre talking about.
It relates to the ārace relations are getting worse in the USā observation, I was preempting a ābut here, tooā rebuttal. The very lack of idpol is what allows figures like Zarenknecht to make a dent, because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity, the electorate is still able to recognise that policies will address causes, and thereby solve problems that āWe need to segregate hairstyles harderā canāt dream to achieve. You still havenāt answered how idpol ever brought about peace, btw.
I just care about clear language that doesnāt hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because thatās how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesnāt become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
And no AfD voters arenāt labour-aristocracy youāre confusing them with the SPD ā remember how long they kept those coal subsidies alive? The SPD is the political arm of the big powerful unions, foremost IG Metall.
Studies show that class-wise AfD voters are predominantly precariat, as I already said: People the established left doesnāt care about, even actively agitates against (āSozialschmarotzerā). Maybe youād know all that shit if you actually engaged critically with politics in this country instead of looking to the US of all places. Die Linke, at least in the east, on state level, where theyāre relevant, is also labour-aristocracy and in practice firmly Socdem. Mabye a smidge on the left of the SPD but not by much: They donāt oppose expropriating landlords, but they also would not propose it. Basically SPD without the Seeheimer Kreis.
Now I donāt know about how things are where you are but over here itās more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian.
So the fact that some people make Kumpir-jokes (arguably actually idpol) is supposed to assure me that there is no anti-turkish racism? I have family members whose business gets harassed by cops for no other reason than them being turkish. Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg. They arenāt as integrated as italians who by the way Iāve also witnessed being "other"ed on one occasion so clearly even they arenāt on-par with the non-immigrants in Germany.
Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying āThis is all about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā is precisely idpol
Well Iām not. Iām talking about the cops double and triple checking turkish businesses in an unnecessarily disruptive manner for no reason other than them being suspicous of their turkishness. Donāt tell me that it isnāt āall about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā because it most assuredly is.
makes you kin to the Grey Wolves
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldnāt know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your ānon-whiteā radar?)
I can only assume that you wrote this (and the rest of that paragraph) before I edited in my last paragraph in the comment above yours, so Iāll reiterate it here. Iām not the one ascribing white/non-white to people, Iām talking about groups of people that are racistly viewed as such and the effects such a view on people has. So e.g. an italian who might be too brown and gets clocked as ānon-whiteā might experience discrimination in which case I would be talking about ādiscrimination against a non-white personā. People that are regularly discriminated against in such a way might group together to lobby for equal rights, create safe spaces where they can just be and form a community centered around the racist prescription they were given. Such groups, spaces and communities will then get under attack by the racists and therefore need special protection. That isnāt idpol. It is a vital strategy to form solidarity among people that experience discrimination others donāt. Something others cannot relate to, canāt see the full extent of damage caused and therefore canāt be as helpful in solving. Itās not about āsegregating hairstylesā, itās about listening to oppressed people and what they say they need in order to protect themselves and their community. Iām not saying they canāt be wrong, but I am saying people that donāt experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together. Liberals then tried to ātarget audiencesā by how they were grouped together creating idpol. By a similar logic I could claim that rainbow capitalism or pinkwashing is caused by the LGBTQ community coming together, thatās absurd and frankly puts the blame for racism on the people fighting it. The people importing idpol are the german right-wingers repeating the absurd lies of the US right-wing, not people that speak against racist discrimination.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesnāt become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
You donāt know what I talk about in regards to german politics because youāre replying to me in a thread kicked off about a comment I made about US politics! But Iāll be damned if I shut up about the racist barriers of entry non-white germans face in higher education.
Youāre right about the AfD voters not being labor aristocracy, that was imprecise (therefore wrong). What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop āleechingā off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties donāt live up to it. I think that is how the BSW is going to make a dent, it hasnāt disappointed yet.
But at the heart of this āX people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systemsā is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy) and the reality that people which can be grouped together by some trait depend more on welfare then necessarily implies that these people are innately more dependent on it. Coupled with the lie that there isnāt enough wealth for everyone and you have an effective way to get the precariat in arms against them. Maybe calling them a precariat aristocracy would be better but where the labor aristocrats already get payed more, they simply get promised more so I donāt know (precariat to-be-aristocracy? Iām just making shit up now). This isnāt the only strategy liberals use to agitate obviously but itās a major and effective one.
And it must be countered by clear language that doesnāt flatten the labor class into a single homogenous entity in a way Bobby Reichs tweet does. This goes for the US and for us.
Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg.
Hamburg is a police state itās very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a ādanger zoneā? That wasnāt about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by āpeople wearing St. Pauli scarfsā.
Iām not saying they canāt be wrong, but I am saying people that donāt experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk. By considering your groupsā issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, youāre othering yourself. Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality itās about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or ālow-classā native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing. The solution is not to preach āoh liberal landlord, youāre being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenantās incomesā as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, weāre lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where thereās too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then theyād be willing to interview everyone ā and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. Itās not just immigrants that donāt fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
makes you kin to the Grey Wolves
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldnāt know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
Just because you donāt want to deport or do worse to people doesnāt mean that the in-outgroup psychology isnāt the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. Itās also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk, and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together.
Ah, there we have it. āAfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazisā. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as youāre denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didnāt suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didnāt suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop āleechingā off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties donāt live up to it.
I donāt think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, itās always āthose lazy buggers simply donāt want to workā. āPoverty is a choiceā etc, etc. Social darwinism.
But at the heart of this āX people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systemsā is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy)
Add āorganic potato but parents live off Hartz IVā to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. āBildungsferne Schichtenā, as the euphemism goes. Then, ask yourself the following: Daughter of an Iranian Doctor of medicine. Is she going to study, or is she going to work at a supermarket? The career paths of children of Turkish Gastarbeiter arenāt that exceptional when you compare them not to the German average, but that of German Hauptschule graduates: None of their parents ever had a university degree (largely farmers from Anatolia), which meant Hauptschule, at best Realschule. A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because theyāre Turks but because their parents didnāt study.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. Itās going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesnāt sound like āoh great another way for them to ignore usā. Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity, if OTOH you try to fix particular interests you risk getting lumped up with the exact people that try to avoid fixing core issues, and resistance will be stiff. This isnāt some new insight itās political strategy 101. The quickest way to address Y is indeed to focus on addressing X, and do Y as soon as thereās enough trust that X is being taken care of.
You keep projecting what you think Iām advocating for when all Iāve so far revealed is that Iām advocating for clear language that doesnāt flatten reality but acknowledges the different struggles people face, including racist ones. Why do you think that would stop short of a person born into poverty or to one born to parents who didnt have the privilege of a higher education and therefore canāt pass on what they havenāt learned? You keep talking about this in ways that reveal that for you other peoples struggle is an abstract thought exercise, which is why I advised caution when telling others how to safeguard against or combat racism.
Hamburg is a police state itās very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a ādanger zoneā? That wasnāt about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by āpeople wearing St. Pauli scarfsā.
Believe me I know.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk.
Obviously they do.
By considering your groupsā issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, youāre othering yourself.
No, I was othered unprompted. By Turks. They arenāt āmy groupā any less than the āeast germansā. A comrade is a comrade, a racist isnāt.
Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality itās about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or ālow-classā native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing.
Not entirely. The prejudice Kevin faces is different from the one Jihad faces. That doesnāt make Kevins struggle less real. I donāt understand why you keep thinking I want to diminish someones struggle when Iāve repeatedly called for language that doesnāt hide injustices. Iāve helped both a āKevinā and a āJihadā try to find apartments while needing rent relief. One was presumed to have snuck into this country and probably dangerous and the other was ājustā presumed to be lazy. It both sucks, but one of them had it harder. And we arenāt going to be addressing any of it if we canāt talk about how or why the systems is the way it is.
The solution is not to preach āoh liberal landlord, youāre being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenantās incomesā as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, weāre lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where thereās too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then theyād be willing to interview everyone ā and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. Itās not just immigrants that donāt fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
Complete projection. I donāt know where this is coming from.
Just because you donāt want to deport or do worse to people doesnāt mean that the in-outgroup psychology isnāt the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. Itās also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk
More evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you. The grey wolves kill people like me. The fact that you persist after I told you it was hurtful because you are so sure in your (wrong) assumption for why that might be tells me that you donāt know what youāre talking about. Which makes it less hurtful, so at least thereās that, but itās a bad sign about how I think of you because I would like to think of you as a comrade. So why persist in something I told you to be hurtful?
and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
How about instead to those closest to drowning? What do you propose we do about the people that arenāt close to drowning but steal the vests from under the people that are?
Ah, there we have it. āAfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazisā. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as youāre denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didnāt suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didnāt suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
Even more evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you, when Iām talking about āthe racistsā Iām not talking about some abstract demographic, I am thinking of real people. I can visualize their faces. I wasnāt talking about āAfD voters and therefore the eastā and the fact that your first response always seems to be ābut wonāt you think of the people voting AfDā is making me increasingly wary of you. I was working under the assumption that this ābridging the divideā thing is a pet project that youāre overly invested in but Iām increasingly running low on good faith to offer you especially since I donāt seem to get any in return.
To be sure Iām not against ābridging the divideā or dismissive of people in the east, especially since they got capitalism working against them double-time when compared to the west. I donāt think of them as AfD voting nazis. But you have to understand that for me to call someone who did vote AfD a comrade, they have to earn my trust first because they probably need to unlearn some racist shit or at the very least learn materialist thinking.
I donāt think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, itās always āthose lazy buggers simply donāt want to workā. āPoverty is a choiceā etc, etc. Social darwinism.
Right, immigrants was used as a stand-in for really anyone requiring welfare. Itās just that the media focus really is on the immigrants at the moment. But again I am well aware that there are other marginalised groups.
Add āorganic potato but parents live off Hartz IVā to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. āBildungsferne Schichtenā, as the euphemism goes.
They were never off the list. I do not understand why you think they would be.
A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because theyāre Turks but because their parents didnāt study.
Thatās an untrue simplification. Turkish people are racistly discriminated against even in school. If their parents didnāt have a good education obviously getting Abitur will be even harder, same as for any other person, but they might face additional hurdles or just different hurdles than others. Same for disabled people, they will face bigger hurdles than their able-bodied friends with the same background. Same for girls getting into STEM, their gender probably will cause the barrier for them to be even higher than for boys with a similar non-academic household. Naming the reasons for why some people face different obstacles isnāt idpol, itās materialist.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. Itās going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesnāt sound like āoh great another way for them to ignore usā.
Kevin always had my solidarity, but I expect to have his. Itās not unconditional. Also it doesnāt need to be budgeted? What a weird way of thinking about it.
Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity,
True, which is why Iām advocating for precise language to name concerns so that we get to those with the most first. Because time and again once the majority got theirs the minority was left behind. The people whose only motivation is that their concerns get addressed will lose any motivation once they are. Tit for tat is not solidarity and will never achieve justice.
Why do you think that would stop short of a person born into poverty or to one born to parents who didnt have the privilege of a higher education and therefore canāt pass on what they havenāt learned?
Because you kept emphasising one thing while not acknowledging the other, or misread it, like the āthe precariat gets promised more welfareā stuff. I was acknowledging all kinds of racial stuff from the very start, arguing about cause vs. symptom and the order in which things are best addressed so that things get done as fast as possible.
The grey wolves kill people like me.
And Nazis kill people like me. Fascists gotta fascist, no surprises there. If you ever spotted any psychological pattern of mine that matches what Nazis do Iād fucking want you to tell me.
How about instead to those closest to drowning?
You first have to get those clinging to them, dragging them down, off their back, or both will drown. Chances are you donāt even need a second vest non-swimmers tend to choose good swimmers to cling to, but you need special water martial arts training to get yourself out of that kind of situation. I know such things I have DLRG Bronze (seriously yes I have but at this point the metaphor might be at the breaking point).
What do you propose we do about the people that arenāt close to drowning but steal the vests from under the people that are?
Oh, the rich. Easy: We eat them. Youāre the Turk, you come up with a recipe. Anything as long as it involves expropriated chilli.
Same for girls getting into STEM, their gender probably will cause the barrier for them to be even higher than for boys with a similar non-academic household.
Eh Mathematics is pretty much 50/50, engineering is heavily male-dominated, but then you have e.g. biology which is female-dominated. Weāre at a stage where you have to drill down by subject and some of it will probably never vanish (ask Lego, they tried). And speaking of: Thereās grade discrimination against boys and we donāt have nearly enough male teachers.
Generally speaking thereās lots of differences between the states when it comes to primary and secondary education. The eastern states are actually quite good when it comes to having at least remotely sane systems (the more different than Bavaria the better, more or less) but then theyāre (exception Berlin) also the ones with the fewest people with immigrant backgrounds. Back in my days SH hadnāt yet abolished the Realschule and let me tell you Gymnasiasts are awful in comparison. You can try as you want if you tell kids theyāre better or worse at a young age what you get is classism and if you justify one type of discrimination, you implicitly justify, and cause, all: Itās way easier to learn looking down on a new group of people than it is to learn looking down the first time around.
Because time and again once the majority got theirs the minority was left behind.
How in the everloving fuck has the majority ever gotten theirs. I mean short of the labour aristocracy ā which btw has a quite significant Turkish component, IG Metall and everything, you donāt need Abitur to work at VW. If you count by type of employment relation the precariat is about 30% of the workforce. Thirty, not even counting the unemployed. Even more are worried that theyāll land there, about 12.5% never knew anything else and donāt expect better, either. The rest of the majority pays all the taxes while the rich donāt even begin to pay their fair share (or the wealth gap wouldnāt increase steadily).
I acknowledge that thereās room for different valuations here and we could play oppression Olympics all night long, but telling the precariat āyouāll have to waitā isnāt going to work. You can describe everything very accurately all day long people wonāt listen, the percentage of people who got fucked over since the 90s is too high to be ignored. Also risking them being stirrup holders for Nazis is just not worth it.
Read some European post-war history. Ask the North Irish ā both sides and yes that was a settler-colonial/apartheid situation. The examples are literally endless.
OTOH, point me to a single instance where Idpol has brought peace.
Why donāt you read some US history, I implore you to, then visit some of the nonwhite neighborhoods in major German cities and you will see how relevant it is for us today.
You mean immigrant neigbourhoods and I grew up in one, thank you. WTF is ānonwhiteā even supposed to mean have you ever seen a Turk or Syrian. The principal systemic problem immigrants face is coming from low socio-economic status combined with our lack of social mobility, in places right-out enforced by the education system, which also affects Kevin. Reform of education is typically blocked by BildungsbĆ¼rger.
And I see you ignored my question: When has Idpol ever brought peace?
And before you mention it: No, the east didnāt suddenly turn Nazi. The west still has a larger proportion of people with closed right-extremist world-view, while the east still has a larger proportion of socialists. Whatās happening is feelings of betrayal and people being fed up with voting for politicians who caused the issues they, as in the common man, have. Weāre lacking over 1m social housing units, rent is becoming more and more unaffordable while the SPD opposes expropriating landlords, the CSU is talking about sanctioning 0.045% of welfare recipients (āTotalverweigererā), 99.99% of which should probably be judged incapable of work and fall under SGB XII, and btw social darwinism is a form of group-focussed enmity. The greens rather bankrupt house owners than do the right thing, both when it comes to politics and technology, and give municipalities money to set up district heating. Yes, the AfD programme is turbo-neoliberal and against the interest of their voters ā and the voters tend to know that. Itās the same kind of phenomenon that made Argentinians vote Milei into power: Itās bad, but at least not the established bad and itās a boot up the arse of the established parties. I do have a fuckton of issues with Wagah Zarenknecht but expect her to soak up the vast majority of those AfD votes.
How fucking long have I heard āYou can care about two things at the same timeā, referring to āYes we can have gay marriage and care about social housingā. The same parties then did the former, and thatās good and proper, but failed at the latter, while calling themselves the creme de la creme of leftists. Thatās performativism. Iām sure a gazillion of gay homeless couples are glad that they now can be gay married homeless couples. The country needs a specific focus on the latter kind of matters. Fix that shit and youāll find that a lot of other problems suddenly vanish because they were never causes, they were symptoms. āX is important to me and everyone and needs to be addressed but you arenāt so Iām going to block Yā is politics as usual, you canāt blue sky idealist yourself around that: If you want to fix Y get X fixed.
I grew up in Turkey. I have seen plenty of Turks, also Kurds also Arabs. Which is how I also know what itās like to be a religious minority, what itās like to have the police hound you for it or just the weirdness of sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb. Which is how experienced the importance of the community of people like oneself, a concept that often gets misrepresented in the so-called āidentity politicsā which therefore should be opposed, but that doesnāt make it less real. And if you think there is not a similar acceptable/non-acceptable split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines in our society then your dreaming. I completely ignored your question because this is not idpol. This is about acknowledging the material effects ones cultural, ethnic or religious background and appearance has on ones life, to which the history of how we, and for the US how they, got here is vitally important.
I donāt know why youād think I would say that the east has āsuddenlyā turned nazi. That just came out of nowhere and I have no idea how the rest of your comment relates to anything weāre talking about. I guess you think Iām just doing āperformativeā leftism to ingratiate myself to minorities or something. I donāt know. Iām not, I just care about clear language that doesnāt hide the privilege some laborers have over others, because thatās how you fight the labor-aristocracy of the AfD voters. The rationale that āif we all have the same opportunities, then how come the people with a non-standard german background are so much more dependent on social welfareā needs to be rooted out at the beginning of āwe all have the same opportunitiesā because we donāt.
Edit: Sorry Iām gonna add a bigger paragraph after posting about the whole white/non-white thing. I use these racist terms to describe how our racist society groups people according to their appearance and not as a scientific term where you can decide if someone is white or not, the fact that this is not possible is the precise contradiction that racists use to garner support from people they will oppress later. Whether someone is white or not, or āreallyā German or not, is very fluid and dependent on the situation. An ethnically Turkish person can pass as white and not be pulled from traffic into a routine check but they would probably be treated as non-white if during a traffic stop the cop learned their name. The way people treat a Jewish person might change after people find out that they are a Jew. They didnāt suddenly switch from white to nonwhite in a material way, those categories donāt really exist, but the way they are viewed and accordingly how they are treated did.
Now I donāt know about how things are where you are but over here itās more suspicious to be Catholic or, heaven help, Freikirchlich, than Muslim. Turks give other Turks shit for being Bavarian. Yes, going ahead in such a situation and saying āThis is all about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā is precisely idpol: You reduce the complexity of societal relations to create a normative in- and out-group, ascribing to it an imaginary internal coherence that makes you kin to the Grey Wolves. Remember Cem Ćzdemir complaining about discrimination against Swabians? Thatās the Germany weāre living in. It always takes a while for a population to settle but Turks are now at a status Italians achieved quite quickly (do those even register on your ānon-whiteā radar?) and before long people wonāt blink at Cemās surname same as they donāt blink at āde MaiziĆØreā. Also immigrant background, refugee even: His family came to Germany in the 17th century when France prosecuted Huguenots. Another good example of just how little specifically appearance matters is Philipp Rƶsler.
It relates to the ārace relations are getting worse in the USā observation, I was preempting a ābut here, tooā rebuttal. The very lack of idpol is what allows figures like Zarenknecht to make a dent, because the material conditions arenāt buried under layers and layers of idpol-generated enmity, the electorate is still able to recognise that policies will address causes, and thereby solve problems that āWe need to segregate hairstyles harderā canāt dream to achieve. You still havenāt answered how idpol ever brought about peace, btw.
Then talk about the education system, why the son of a baker generally doesnāt become an engineer even though he has the talent and smarts. Next to capital ownership education is the primary, because inherited, class divide in Germany.
And no AfD voters arenāt labour-aristocracy youāre confusing them with the SPD ā remember how long they kept those coal subsidies alive? The SPD is the political arm of the big powerful unions, foremost IG Metall.
Studies show that class-wise AfD voters are predominantly precariat, as I already said: People the established left doesnāt care about, even actively agitates against (āSozialschmarotzerā). Maybe youād know all that shit if you actually engaged critically with politics in this country instead of looking to the US of all places. Die Linke, at least in the east, on state level, where theyāre relevant, is also labour-aristocracy and in practice firmly Socdem. Mabye a smidge on the left of the SPD but not by much: They donāt oppose expropriating landlords, but they also would not propose it. Basically SPD without the Seeheimer Kreis.
So the fact that some people make Kumpir-jokes (arguably actually idpol) is supposed to assure me that there is no anti-turkish racism? I have family members whose business gets harassed by cops for no other reason than them being turkish. Their business is in a very non-white neighborhood in the supposedly oh so leftist Hamburg. They arenāt as integrated as italians who by the way Iāve also witnessed being "other"ed on one occasion so clearly even they arenāt on-par with the non-immigrants in Germany.
Well Iām not. Iām talking about the cops double and triple checking turkish businesses in an unnecessarily disruptive manner for no reason other than them being suspicous of their turkishness. Donāt tell me that it isnāt āall about peopleās ancestors being from Turkeyā because it most assuredly is.
That was really hurtful for reasons you couldnāt know. But please be mindful of bad-jacketing even by association.
I can only assume that you wrote this (and the rest of that paragraph) before I edited in my last paragraph in the comment above yours, so Iāll reiterate it here. Iām not the one ascribing white/non-white to people, Iām talking about groups of people that are racistly viewed as such and the effects such a view on people has. So e.g. an italian who might be too brown and gets clocked as ānon-whiteā might experience discrimination in which case I would be talking about ādiscrimination against a non-white personā. People that are regularly discriminated against in such a way might group together to lobby for equal rights, create safe spaces where they can just be and form a community centered around the racist prescription they were given. Such groups, spaces and communities will then get under attack by the racists and therefore need special protection. That isnāt idpol. It is a vital strategy to form solidarity among people that experience discrimination others donāt. Something others cannot relate to, canāt see the full extent of damage caused and therefore canāt be as helpful in solving. Itās not about āsegregating hairstylesā, itās about listening to oppressed people and what they say they need in order to protect themselves and their community. Iām not saying they canāt be wrong, but I am saying people that donāt experience what they do, should be real careful about judging whether they are.
You got this the wrong way around. The racist enmity is what caused people to band together. Liberals then tried to ātarget audiencesā by how they were grouped together creating idpol. By a similar logic I could claim that rainbow capitalism or pinkwashing is caused by the LGBTQ community coming together, thatās absurd and frankly puts the blame for racism on the people fighting it. The people importing idpol are the german right-wingers repeating the absurd lies of the US right-wing, not people that speak against racist discrimination.
You donāt know what I talk about in regards to german politics because youāre replying to me in a thread kicked off about a comment I made about US politics! But Iāll be damned if I shut up about the racist barriers of entry non-white germans face in higher education.
Youāre right about the AfD voters not being labor aristocracy, that was imprecise (therefore wrong). What I meant was the implied promise of more welfare once the immigrants stop āleechingā off the welfare systems. This promise is, as you rightfully pointed out, something every major party in Germany promises in some phrasing or another and the precariat have noticed that the established parties donāt live up to it. I think that is how the BSW is going to make a dent, it hasnāt disappointed yet.
But at the heart of this āX people need to go because they only leech off the welfare systemsā is the lie that everyone has the same opportunities and possibilities regardless of origin (born here, refugee, turk, white, just pick a job and get busy) and the reality that people which can be grouped together by some trait depend more on welfare then necessarily implies that these people are innately more dependent on it. Coupled with the lie that there isnāt enough wealth for everyone and you have an effective way to get the precariat in arms against them. Maybe calling them a precariat aristocracy would be better but where the labor aristocrats already get payed more, they simply get promised more so I donāt know (precariat to-be-aristocracy? Iām just making shit up now). This isnāt the only strategy liberals use to agitate obviously but itās a major and effective one.
And it must be countered by clear language that doesnāt flatten the labor class into a single homogenous entity in a way Bobby Reichs tweet does. This goes for the US and for us.
Hamburg is a police state itās very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a ādanger zoneā? That wasnāt about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by āpeople wearing St. Pauli scarfsā.
Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk. By considering your groupsā issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, youāre othering yourself. Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality itās about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or ālow-classā native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing. The solution is not to preach āoh liberal landlord, youāre being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenantās incomesā as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, weāre lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where thereās too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then theyād be willing to interview everyone ā and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. Itās not just immigrants that donāt fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?
Just because you donāt want to deport or do worse to people doesnāt mean that the in-outgroup psychology isnāt the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. Itās also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk, and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.
Ah, there we have it. āAfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazisā. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as youāre denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didnāt suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didnāt suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.
I donāt think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, itās always āthose lazy buggers simply donāt want to workā. āPoverty is a choiceā etc, etc. Social darwinism.
Add āorganic potato but parents live off Hartz IVā to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. āBildungsferne Schichtenā, as the euphemism goes. Then, ask yourself the following: Daughter of an Iranian Doctor of medicine. Is she going to study, or is she going to work at a supermarket? The career paths of children of Turkish Gastarbeiter arenāt that exceptional when you compare them not to the German average, but that of German Hauptschule graduates: None of their parents ever had a university degree (largely farmers from Anatolia), which meant Hauptschule, at best Realschule. A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because theyāre Turks but because their parents didnāt study.
Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. Itās going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesnāt sound like āoh great another way for them to ignore usā. Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity, if OTOH you try to fix particular interests you risk getting lumped up with the exact people that try to avoid fixing core issues, and resistance will be stiff. This isnāt some new insight itās political strategy 101. The quickest way to address Y is indeed to focus on addressing X, and do Y as soon as thereās enough trust that X is being taken care of.
You keep projecting what you think Iām advocating for when all Iāve so far revealed is that Iām advocating for clear language that doesnāt flatten reality but acknowledges the different struggles people face, including racist ones. Why do you think that would stop short of a person born into poverty or to one born to parents who didnt have the privilege of a higher education and therefore canāt pass on what they havenāt learned? You keep talking about this in ways that reveal that for you other peoples struggle is an abstract thought exercise, which is why I advised caution when telling others how to safeguard against or combat racism.
Believe me I know.
Obviously they do.
No, I was othered unprompted. By Turks. They arenāt āmy groupā any less than the āeast germansā. A comrade is a comrade, a racist isnāt.
Not entirely. The prejudice Kevin faces is different from the one Jihad faces. That doesnāt make Kevins struggle less real. I donāt understand why you keep thinking I want to diminish someones struggle when Iāve repeatedly called for language that doesnāt hide injustices. Iāve helped both a āKevinā and a āJihadā try to find apartments while needing rent relief. One was presumed to have snuck into this country and probably dangerous and the other was ājustā presumed to be lazy. It both sucks, but one of them had it harder. And we arenāt going to be addressing any of it if we canāt talk about how or why the systems is the way it is.
Complete projection. I donāt know where this is coming from.
More evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you. The grey wolves kill people like me. The fact that you persist after I told you it was hurtful because you are so sure in your (wrong) assumption for why that might be tells me that you donāt know what youāre talking about. Which makes it less hurtful, so at least thereās that, but itās a bad sign about how I think of you because I would like to think of you as a comrade. So why persist in something I told you to be hurtful?
How about instead to those closest to drowning? What do you propose we do about the people that arenāt close to drowning but steal the vests from under the people that are?
Even more evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you, when Iām talking about āthe racistsā Iām not talking about some abstract demographic, I am thinking of real people. I can visualize their faces. I wasnāt talking about āAfD voters and therefore the eastā and the fact that your first response always seems to be ābut wonāt you think of the people voting AfDā is making me increasingly wary of you. I was working under the assumption that this ābridging the divideā thing is a pet project that youāre overly invested in but Iām increasingly running low on good faith to offer you especially since I donāt seem to get any in return.
To be sure Iām not against ābridging the divideā or dismissive of people in the east, especially since they got capitalism working against them double-time when compared to the west. I donāt think of them as AfD voting nazis. But you have to understand that for me to call someone who did vote AfD a comrade, they have to earn my trust first because they probably need to unlearn some racist shit or at the very least learn materialist thinking.
Right, immigrants was used as a stand-in for really anyone requiring welfare. Itās just that the media focus really is on the immigrants at the moment. But again I am well aware that there are other marginalised groups.
They were never off the list. I do not understand why you think they would be.
Thatās an untrue simplification. Turkish people are racistly discriminated against even in school. If their parents didnāt have a good education obviously getting Abitur will be even harder, same as for any other person, but they might face additional hurdles or just different hurdles than others. Same for disabled people, they will face bigger hurdles than their able-bodied friends with the same background. Same for girls getting into STEM, their gender probably will cause the barrier for them to be even higher than for boys with a similar non-academic household. Naming the reasons for why some people face different obstacles isnāt idpol, itās materialist.
Kevin always had my solidarity, but I expect to have his. Itās not unconditional. Also it doesnāt need to be budgeted? What a weird way of thinking about it.
True, which is why Iām advocating for precise language to name concerns so that we get to those with the most first. Because time and again once the majority got theirs the minority was left behind. The people whose only motivation is that their concerns get addressed will lose any motivation once they are. Tit for tat is not solidarity and will never achieve justice.
Because you kept emphasising one thing while not acknowledging the other, or misread it, like the āthe precariat gets promised more welfareā stuff. I was acknowledging all kinds of racial stuff from the very start, arguing about cause vs. symptom and the order in which things are best addressed so that things get done as fast as possible.
And Nazis kill people like me. Fascists gotta fascist, no surprises there. If you ever spotted any psychological pattern of mine that matches what Nazis do Iād fucking want you to tell me.
You first have to get those clinging to them, dragging them down, off their back, or both will drown. Chances are you donāt even need a second vest non-swimmers tend to choose good swimmers to cling to, but you need special water martial arts training to get yourself out of that kind of situation. I know such things I have DLRG Bronze (seriously yes I have but at this point the metaphor might be at the breaking point).
Oh, the rich. Easy: We eat them. Youāre the Turk, you come up with a recipe. Anything as long as it involves expropriated chilli.
Eh Mathematics is pretty much 50/50, engineering is heavily male-dominated, but then you have e.g. biology which is female-dominated. Weāre at a stage where you have to drill down by subject and some of it will probably never vanish (ask Lego, they tried). And speaking of: Thereās grade discrimination against boys and we donāt have nearly enough male teachers.
Generally speaking thereās lots of differences between the states when it comes to primary and secondary education. The eastern states are actually quite good when it comes to having at least remotely sane systems (the more different than Bavaria the better, more or less) but then theyāre (exception Berlin) also the ones with the fewest people with immigrant backgrounds. Back in my days SH hadnāt yet abolished the Realschule and let me tell you Gymnasiasts are awful in comparison. You can try as you want if you tell kids theyāre better or worse at a young age what you get is classism and if you justify one type of discrimination, you implicitly justify, and cause, all: Itās way easier to learn looking down on a new group of people than it is to learn looking down the first time around.
How in the everloving fuck has the majority ever gotten theirs. I mean short of the labour aristocracy ā which btw has a quite significant Turkish component, IG Metall and everything, you donāt need Abitur to work at VW. If you count by type of employment relation the precariat is about 30% of the workforce. Thirty, not even counting the unemployed. Even more are worried that theyāll land there, about 12.5% never knew anything else and donāt expect better, either. The rest of the majority pays all the taxes while the rich donāt even begin to pay their fair share (or the wealth gap wouldnāt increase steadily).
I acknowledge that thereās room for different valuations here and we could play oppression Olympics all night long, but telling the precariat āyouāll have to waitā isnāt going to work. You can describe everything very accurately all day long people wonāt listen, the percentage of people who got fucked over since the 90s is too high to be ignored. Also risking them being stirrup holders for Nazis is just not worth it.
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