Blog : Philosémitisme

David P. Goldman @ Tablet:

?When does a Jew have the opportunity to appear in a room full of Nazis, neo-Nazis, crypto-Nazis and para-Nazis'? said the German-Jewish writer Henryk Broder, speaking in Germany's Bundestag to the parliamentary caucus of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) on Jan. 19. ?Many of you may never have seen a living Jew in the flesh, and are waiting for the room to fill up with the stink of garlic and sulphur' Broder told his audience, confronting the AfD's members of parliament in the best tradition of Jewish irony and setting in relief Germany's great political dilemma: Is it possible to speak of a German national revival without apologizing for the unspeakable crimes of German nationalism in the past' [?]

Broder excoriated the sort of political correctness that equates ?climate change denial' with Holocaust denial,? but added that he favored some politically correct restrictions: ?You don't put your feet on the table, you don't burp during dinner, and you don't call the 12 worst years of Germany history ?a speck of bird dung.?? This referred to a remark by AfD Vice Chairman Alexander Gauland that the Hitler period was only a speck of bird dung in the great sweep of German history, and he said it to Gauland's face.

It was in the interest of fair play that he accepted the invitation, Broder explained. The AfD began as a Euroskeptic party critical of Europe's common currency, but shifted to an anti-immigration platform after Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to accept 2 million Muslim migrants into Germany in 2015 and 2016. That was not an uncontroversial decision and the AfD's pivot to opposing immigration gained the party a substantial following. Merkel's mentor Helmut Kohl, the great Cold War chancellor who guided the country to reunification, bitterly opposed her migration policy. The AfD became important only because Germany's center-right party excluded opposition to a social policy that threatened to change the character of German society.

Merkel has put German Jews in a dilemma. After street attacks by young Muslims, the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned Jews not to walk in public with a kippah. Chancellor Merkel deplored the attacks, but her migration policy made them inevitable. Consequently, a small group of German Jews joined the AfD, arguing that the greatest threat of anti-Semitism comes overwhelmingly from Muslim migrants and their supporters on the left.

This in my view is too simple. I have talked extensively with a number of prominent AfD leaders and while they are not anti-Semites, they continue to tolerate louts like Alexander Gauland, who minimize the singular evil of the Nazi extermination campaign.

That is why I have supported Angela Merkel against the AfD, to the consternation of many of my conservative friends. The AfD continues to tolerate leaders like Björn Höcke, who called the national Holocaust Memorial in Berlin ?a disgrace.? But Germany needs a party such as the AfD should have been, and might yet become, a party more like the old Christian Democratic Union of Helmut Kohl, able to assert Germany's national interests today without temporizing about its terrible past. There are decent men and women in the AfD struggling with these issues. They have not yet succeeded.

The failure of the AfD to purge itself of the stink of the German past has cost it dearly. At the national level, it crested at 18 percent support last year, falling back to about 14 percent today. To a great extent it is a regional party, with strong support in the economically depressed provinces of the former East Germany and much lower support in the prosperous West.
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Le discours de Broder en anglais "Shalom everyone" et en allemand

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