New Law in Germany ?

[Larry C]

No reply? No Problem , No Violins and No Piccolo

[slados28]

The German Government is quite sensitive to the horrors that their previous government imposed on so many. They do not look at these artifacts as collectable pieces of history. They are a symbol of a past Germany will always have to live with. I certainly can understand the sensitivity expecially with a growing far right movement in the European Union over the overflow om immigrants they have taken in.

I don't think anyone disregards the validity of this justified sensitivity but the point here would be that this particular countermeasure appears wholly misguided (perhaps even deliberately so), not that they should disregard or do not have the right to combat eventual right-wing extremism.

I live in a country that was occupied by Nazi Germany all those years ago and everyone here, of a certain age, has a story to tell. Still, here it's mostly those that wish to either erase/censor this certain part of history or simply choose to retain a simplified and willfully ignorant attitude towards ww2 for political reasons that would ever consider condoning such arbitrary Orwellian legislation aiming to punish those seeking out, studying and preserving pieces of history.
Legislation like this should worry everyone that care for freedom in western society, at least as a part of the sum total of illiberal legislation and political policy rolled out by western politicians over the last decade or so. I really do not see legislating or censoring the way in which people choose to interact with the past as a good thing, at all... be it in Germany or anywhere else. It rather smacks of the very same totalitarianism they purport to be targeting.

The issue here seems to be that instead of dealing with the perpetrators, or even the underlying sociopolitical issues, they throw out symbolic legislation that will have no bearing on the actual issue and help further scapegoat a legitimate hobby and the industry that supports it.
Furthermore, I don't see Nazi sympathizers or "national socialists" as being aware of or even interested in history... to the contrary... it seems to me that it's the exact opposite that defines these cretins. "Their" market (if any) appears to be that of the gaudy reproductions bearing all kinds of Nazi symbols (but even these things have a legitimate place in historic reenactment or as placeholders in collections).
And neo-Nazism certainly does not thrive due to the collecting of period artifacts, anyone claiming this must be willfully ignorant of what is currently causing this relative increase in activity on the far right here in Europe --- that said, where I live their numbers are currently only 1/10th of what they were in the nineties... and they are still just as much a pariah today as they were back then.

To your point about us having to "keep the reality alive for future generations"--- well, agreed... but that's exactly what legislation like this will help prevent and I guess that's exactly what people are reacting to here. Yes, Germany will always have to live with this part of their past but useless symbolic politics like this makes it obvious that they're instead trying their best to obfuscate and divert from the real issues. Never justifiable.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I don't think anyone disregards the validity of this justified sensitivity but the point here would be that this particular countermeasure appears wholly misguided (perhaps even deliberately so), not that they should disregard or do not have the right to combat eventual right-wing extremism.

I live in a country that was occupied by Nazi Germany all those years ago and everyone here, of a certain age, has a story to tell. Still, here it's mostly those that wish to either erase/censor this certain part of history or simply choose to retain a simplified and willfully ignorant attitude towards ww2 for political reasons that would ever consider condoning such arbitrary Orwellian legislation aiming to punish those seeking out, studying and preserving pieces of history.
Legislation like this should worry everyone that care for freedom in western society, at least as a part of the sum total of illiberal legislation and political policy rolled out by western politicians over the last decade or so. I really do not see legislating or censoring the way in which people choose to interact with the past as a good thing, at all... be it in Germany or anywhere else. It rather smacks of the very same totalitarianism they purport to be targeting.

The issue here seems to be that instead of dealing with the perpetrators, or even the underlying sociopolitical issues, they throw out symbolic legislation that will have no bearing on the actual issue and help further scapegoat a legitimate hobby and the industry that supports it.
Furthermore, I don't see Nazi sympathizers or "national socialists" as being aware of or even interested in history... to the contrary... it seems to me that it's the exact opposite that defines these cretins. "Their" market (if any) appears to be that of the gaudy reproductions bearing all kinds of Nazi symbols (but even these things have a legitimate place in historic reenactment or as placeholders in collections).
And neo-Nazism certainly does not thrive due to the collecting of period artifacts, anyone claiming this must be willfully ignorant of what is currently causing this relative increase in activity on the far right here in Europe --- that said, where I live their numbers are currently only 1/10th of what they were in the nineties... and they are still just as much a pariah today as they were back then.

To your point about us having to "keep the reality alive for future generations"--- well, agreed... but that's exactly what legislation like this will help prevent and I guess that's exactly what people are reacting to here. Yes, Germany will always have to live with this part of their past but useless symbolic politics like this makes it obvious that they're instead trying their best to obfuscate and divert from the real issues. Never justifiable.

I read your essay with interest. I would say this: you don't have to convince us, as we collect militaria and most of us embrace civil and human rights without
any wrong headed nostalgia for totalitarianism or racial fantasies ending in mass murder.

Do send your essay to the relevant persons in the German state and parliament in their number. Or send it to the cognizant authorities in Brussels.

In the second instance, the wider world looks on us with shock and disgust as to our interests, and hardly awards us the honor you seem to think we accrue.
I am a professional historian, but when I say that I collect these things, people turn up their nose.

Thirdly, the proposed law in Germany seems to me, at least, as identical to that in Austria, which is awfully draconian, but there you are. These laws
and these policies are the product of a specific legal and political tradition which is Greek to many. Forgive me that I am ignorant about such laws in Norway,
as the one prominent aspect of public policy in your country which I do follow is collective defense in NATO and bi lateral military cooperation about which I shall say no more at all here.

Finally, I am a little less optimistic about the ranks of collectors than the poster above, and we live in a world of proliferating violence as well as highly successful efforts to cloak an extremist agenda in the bourgeois garb of respectability. The latter phenomenon is especially odious and deserves to be described as such.

A less educated public is more prone to the power of symbols and luxuriates in the cynical attempt by some to manipulate the many.
In the face of this entirely familiar phenomenon, there is a misunderstanding among lawmakers and those charged with public order of cause and effect as concerns symbols and ideas, but such a thing is merely a testament to generalized ignorance. I would say, generalized stupidity that lies well outside the ambit of this site and its topics.

As I say, kindly send your essay to the German Ministry of the Interior and to Herr Thomas de Maiziere. I am not sure that you may be happy with the result when you go south for a visit. The power of the state in Germany is under siege at the moment from many directions, and the sense of patience with all these things is quickly vanishing.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

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[UK Cousin]

The whole thing sounds like fascist ideology try to curb fascism.. "If we don't like it, we just ban it". Always a stepping stone to something larger.... JMO

[slados28]

Not sure about the "essay" part, it's more of a poorly constructed ramble presenting my thoughts on the issue. Not trying to really convince anyone, I really do not think that poorly of the people I'm familiar with on here. I was simply elucidating my own point of view on the subject by putting thought and own perspective into writing, and I freely admit to my word count often being a bit higher than frankly needed to get my opinion across... but be that as it may, here I probably go again...
Of course, I will not be sending anything to a government that seems to be this irrational and deceitful in their symbolic quest for something resembling political/ideological monogamy, be it consciously or not.

I do not think the rest of the world considers us, the collectors of a certain part of history, as "honourable" in any way. What I do believe, however, is that once explained and made familiar with the general motivations for people like us here on warrelics people generally seem to turn around and drop their possible initial apprehensive and/or defensive attitude--- this initial disdain appears often, again in my experience, to largely be the result of ignorance and a lack of knowledge about history in general.
My point, in this particular respect, was rather that those I have encountered not being able to act reasonably at all when faced with this kind of collecting are usually the ones blindly motivated by certain political ideologies or simply people willing to willfully conjure up a stereotypical view any time a swastika or other offensive symbol of history is observed, no matter the context. A refusal of rational thought, a simple case of observation and subsequent insertion of prejudice. It appears to ease the mind of some.

And as far as I can tell and have read, we are not in a particularly violent part of history but rather a period in which we are flooded with information due to the liberation of individual opinion by way of technology and social media... something that, in turn, creates an environment in which we are subjected to an increasing amount of hyperbolic elucidation of personal opinion and agenda, that again appears to paint the world in starker tones than is justified.
There is social and political upheaval, yes, and there is turmoil and current military conflict in the Middle-East, but I would argue there are other more important underlying reasons for these issues rather than the overly simplified left-right political dichotomy that governments like the German one appears obsessed with and apparently wishes to combat by way of legislation like the one discussed.

The German government is obviously free do exactly what they want when regulating Germany and in their attempts at policing the minds of the public, my problem is that they're in a unique position of power and influence within Europe as a whole and I will certainly not agree to or rationalize this madness seeping into the societies of other nations like my own.
This is not about arguing against a crackdown on neo-nazis, I'm certainly all for it, it's about Orwellian and/or draconian measures taken out of either desperation, stupidity or a sheer desire to deceive the public for political gain, something that will eventually be detrimental to the freedoms of all Europeans.

Sum total I definitely think we are faced with a very serious issue wherein actual issues are disregarded or deliberately obfuscated, a select few -isms on the rise being willfully ignored, while honest law abiding and rational thinking citizens are being scapegoated, stigmatized and legislated against for purely political purposes.
I can't help but wonder how scapegoating innocent people works toward combating extremism... not very beneficial to society or this specific cause, I'd wager.