The parliament of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt on Oct. 14 adopted a resolution calling for an end to military and financial aid to Ukraine and the lifting of economic sanctions against Russia.

Saxony-Anhalt Gov. Sven Schulze of the Christian Democratic Union criticized the initiative. He noted that the resolution did not mention Russian aggression, even though Russia shells Ukrainian cities daily. Schulze said the AfD and BSW wanted to deprive Ukraine of the ability to defend itself. The state government will decide how to proceed after further discussion.

Get your shit together Germany.

  • tardigradeEnglish
    371·
    9 days ago

    The far-right (and far-left) in Europe stands very close to dictatorial regimes like Russia and China, but this decision is meaningless as someone already said. The decision for Ukraine support is made in the German federal government, not in the states.

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      216·
      9 days ago

      The message it sends is not, Germany is drowning in cowards.

      I really don’t see a realistic leftwing association with russia though, of course they exist but russia is violently incompatible with most modern leftist movements what does Putin care about human rights or democratic freedoms?

      Putin is just another dictator thug, nothing is leftwing about him, he is like every other powerful rightwing conservative in every single aspect that matters.

      • Melchior@feddit.orgEnglish
        113·
        9 days ago

        I really don’t see a realistic leftwing association with russia though, of course they exist but russia is violently incompatible with most modern leftist movements what does Putin care about human rights or democratic freedoms?

        BSW also voted for it and they used to be part of the left Linke. In ideology they basically want the GDR back in a lot of ways. Not the ideal Communism, but what the GDR actually was. As in a dictatorship with a strong social welfare system, hard government intervention in the economy. The foreign policy is hardcore pacifist. As in no weapons to Ukraine and anybody else. They also run against refugees.

        You find this a lot in the former Easter Block. There is a huge demand for a feeling of safety. Melanchon in France also seems to run on a similar platform.

        • kossa@feddit.orgEnglish
          4·
          9 days ago

          huge demand

          Yeah, barely even clearing the 5% threshold is “huge demand”. Like, when they even can’t cut it in a failed state like Sachsen-Anhalt, the threat of BSW is de facto nonexistant. It can’t work anyway, like trying to have slightly progressive economy politics and hard right societal politics is a contradiction which can’t be really solved.

          • Jiral@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            9 days ago

            It adds to the Russian block though. So you can add those 5% to whatever the AfD has, on any matters Russia cares about.

      • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        8 days ago

        This is not the mesage here at all. The message is that some would rather be buddies with Russia (i.e. at least the parties who voted for this). It is the opposite of ‘not standing up’. It’s switching sides.

      • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.orgEnglish
        4·
        9 days ago

        I really don’t see a realistic leftwing association with russia though, of course they exist but russia is violently incompatible with most modern leftist movements what does Putin care about human rights or democratic freedoms?

        Somewhat true, but…

        When looking for associations with Putin, why would you look on the left?

      • tardigradeEnglish
        313·
        9 days ago

        russia is violently incompatible with most modern leftist movements what does Putin care about human rights or democratic freedoms?

        At the extreme ends, the left and the right are the same. There’s also not much different between Nazis and the Chinese Communist, although the latter claims to be leftist.

        • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          94·
          9 days ago

          At the extreme ends, the left and the right are the same.

          No Tardigrade they are not, stop repeating things that are not facts as if they are facts.

          The idea of “Horseshoe Theory” has been floating around in the English language since at least the 1980s, if not earlier, with ebbs and flows in popularity. As the Wikipedia page (at least the English one) is relatively sparse on the historical origins and background of this idea, perhaps its worth a brief overview of the historical timeline.

          Following his expulsion from the NSDAP in July 1930, Otto Strasser, the younger brother of Nazi party stalwart, Gregor, formed the Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutionärer Nationalsozialisten (KGRNS) Revolutionary National Socialist Combat Comradeship) as an anti-parliamentary “external opposition” fringe Nazi combat group. Later, in the hopes of merging with some other fringe sects, the Tat-Kreis (circle around the magazine Die Tat) and the Wehrwolf (right-wing nationalist Freikorps group), the KGRNS changed its name to the Schwarze Front (Black Front). In reality the Black Front never really amounted to more than a heterogenous collection of cranks and oddballs. The Wehrwolf group, already in numerical decline did not join the proposed merger and ultimately disappeared into the SA.

          Otto Strasser’s political differences with Hitler were on the economic side — Strasser wanted a more explicitly anti-capitalist national socialism (although actual specifics beyond rhetoric were vague at best) — and in the international relations or geopolitical sphere, looked toward a rapprochement with the USSR to form an anti-Western “Eurasian” alliance (following the ideas of Moeller van den Bruck).

          …

          However Mohler was no neutral scholar, his thesis and book were as much a political project for the refounding of a radical neo-nazi project (Mohler remained an unrepentant Nazi until his death in 2003). Mohler became one of the founding theorists of the post war “New Right” and both influenced and was influenced by his French Kamarad, Alain de Benoist, theoretician of “la Nouvelle Droite”. Mohler’s rescuing of the Schwarze Front from the dustbin of historical trivia, also retrieved the Hufeisenschema, which became the basis of de Benoist’s “nether left nor right” concept of “metapolitics” of the radical periphery against the conservative centre.

          https://eidgenossen.medium.com/the-nazi-origins-of-horseshoe-theory-5d9aa0ee277c

          I think that the centre-right and centre-left parties that have traded power over the last half century have set the table for a situation in which it’s going to be one kind of radicalism or another. I’m not “both sides-ing” it. I’m not saying “Oh, we’re twinsies! We’re the same! Horseshoe theory!” No—I believe that only a robust left that is actually offering tangible improvements to people’s lives and taking on elite power in a real way has any chance of standing up to this right.

          Since I’ve been on tour, I get questions like, “What should we do about the conspiracy theorists? Do we need more fact-checkers? Do we need more content moderators? Do we de-platform them?” I don’t think we can fact-check our way out of it. But when I heard Shawn Fain, the new president of the United Auto Workers, pounding the table about the greedy bosses not sharing their record profits with working people and leading this very innovative strike action, I thought, “You know, he’s probably doing more to counter this conspiracy culture then an army of fact-checkers, because he’s showing what actual left populism looks like.” When you have that in the public domain, this Poilievre nonsense looks like the counterfeit that it is.

          Naomi Klein

          https://breachmedia.ca/naomi-klein-steve-bannon-maga-doppelganger-populism-2/

          If you only view politics as a game of elementary school cliques, you might say that the left and the right are meeting again. The left says Roosevelt got it wrong with the New Deal (because he left out so many people). The right says FDR was wrong for doing the New Deal in the first place. Therefore, the left and the right agree, right?

          Obviously wrong. Obviously. Again, the important thing is why the left and the right think the New Deal deserves criticism. The important thing is what the left and the right want. The left wants universal liberation. The right wants us all in economic chains. They do not agree.

          https://doctorow.medium.com/incomplete-vs-overshoot-ac7c838a3c0a

          But the thing about political theories is they’re developed and refined by lots of people over time, all of whom have their own ideologies and biases. These are often reflected in the models they make.

          This is true of the horseshoe theory. UK psychologist Hans Eysenck was an early pioneer of the theory in the 1950s, but was also a staunch anticommunist. He deliberately developed the horseshoe idea to conflate communism and Nazism. He painted centrists as “tender-minded” (a term with no clear meaning, but meant to signify the moral goodness of the centre) compared with the “tough-minded” left and right.

          In the 1970s, French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye took up the mantle, claiming the left and right were equally totalitarian. This was aimed at condemning rival French philosophers, especially Jacques Derrida.

          Others define the left and right as holding “collectivist” and “individualist” values, respectively.

          But in making these assumptions, most of which aren’t clear to the casual observer, theorists bake in their own beliefs. This undermines how useful (or otherwise) these models are.

          https://www.miragenews.com/horseshoe-theory-debunked-far-left-and-far-1309878/

          https://theconversation.com/horseshoe-theory-is-nonsense-the-far-right-and-far-left-have-little-in-common-77588

          • tardigradeEnglish
            43·
            9 days ago

            Nazi thought has even found its way into Chinese academia as, for example, shown in a good analysis on The Nazi Scholar Inspiring China’s Intelligentsia - (October 2026),

            … In Chinese universities … over the past 20 years, … a German writer has helped to shape China’s ideological development. Improbably, he was an anti-Communist scholar and polemicist, a man who became known, and notorious, worldwide as Hitler’s “crown jurist.” His name is Carl Schmitt … both Chinese and Western followers of the country’s politics have noted the rise of “Schmitt fever” among Chinese intellectuals …

            Schmitt began to attract notable Chinese intellectual attention in the late 1980s, in the context of growing interest in so-called neoauthoritarianism—a contemporary form of governance that combines centralized political control with selective use of market-oriented reforms. In 1987, politics and law professor Dong Fanyu cited Schmitt to support the [Chinese Communist] party’s assertion of authority in the face of ambiguities in the PRC constitution. Whereas constitutional preambles may have little or no legal relevance in interpreting constitutions in liberal democracies, Dong, citing Schmitt, argued that China’s preamble, which characterized the country’s legal system as an outgrowth of national liberation by the party, reflected a pre-legal existential act of founding that gives the document legitimacy. The larger message was that the party, as the fount of law, stood above it …

            In sum, the writings of Carl Schmitt play an important legitimizing role for the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] along many dimensions … [Schmitt’s] insistence that liberal proceduralism, checks and balances, and guarantees of individual rights fuel disunity and threaten national security justifies CCP supremacy and imposition of a Han-majoritarian national identity. His contention that sovereignty resides in the person or body that can declare “exceptions” to the law—where the law is incomplete, or an obstacle to national security—justifies presidential and party rule. His support for a market economy guided by the visible hand of the state serves as an endorsement of its model of state capitalism. His rejection of the notion of “universal law” justifies the CCP’s dismissal of charges of human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet …

            Another article from 2021 finds growing parallels between Xi Jinping’s China and Hitler’s Germany, citing the developments in Hong Kong as an example asking,

            South Africa’s former apartheid regime sparked a sustained and effective global boycott. Where is today’s “boycott China” movement to counter this 21st Century appeasement?

            These are just two examples. There is much more.

            • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
              1·
              8 days ago

              South Africa’s former apartheid regime sparked a sustained and effective global boycott. Where is today’s “boycott China” movement to counter this 21st Century appeasement?

              …what? the? hell?

              That justification is logical in the way your pens and junk drawer thrown carelessly on the floor creates a coherent progression of logic.

              • tardigradeEnglish
                22·
                9 days ago

                It’s hilarious how you pick one sentence only to respond in a weirdly offensive way while ignoring everything else.

                You may like it or not, but Nazi thought has openly found its way into the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Just read the analysis. It’s quoting Chinese scholars, and you’ll easily find more evidence than that.

                • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
                  11·
                  8 days ago

                  I didn’t say governments that are ostensibly leftwing cannot fall into fascism, so can centrist and rightwing governments, rightwing governments being by far and away the most likely.

                  However fascism is inherently rightwing in a way you can never truly pin on leftism no matter how hard you try to “both sides” this.

                  Liberal imperialism and fascist imperialism are both murderous criminal enterprises which have and, in the former case, continue to wreak death and destruction on untold millions. It is of cold comfort for an Iraqi orphan to be told that their parents’ killers weren’t “fascists.” Nevertheless, we need to recognize that liberal imperialism and its fascist counterpart operate differently and are vulnerable in different ways.

                  While both Bush and Obama unquestionably committed atrocities while they stood at the helm of the most powerful capitalist state the world has yet seen, they were not fascists. George W. Bush would be better condemned as a liberal imperialist, one whose speeches were inundated with now-clichéd liberal shibboleths like “liberty” and “freedom.” Admittedly, calling Bush a “liberal imperialist” rather than a fascist lacks a certain punch. But labeling Bush and Obama as fascists doesn’t work because fascism is not only explicitly and emphatically anti-communist, but anti-liberal as well.

                  In the 20th century, fascism only became a powerful force when liberalism failed.

                  …

                  Rejecting both liberalism and socialism, fascism is a set of radical, revolutionary ideologies and political movements of the extreme right that place the nation, however defined, above all other possibilities of human experience and social organization.

                  https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/06/what-is-fascism-and-why-the-definition-matters

                  • tardigradeEnglish
                    23·
                    9 days ago

                    You are making generalizations without providing evidence. Nazi thought has found its way into Chinese academia as shown in analyses of which one I have posted. Chinese academia is explicitly referring to Nazi thought - that is not ’ most likely’, but rather a simple fact. Chinese scholars are referring to this former member and ‘political philosopher’ of the German Nazis.