Hmm. I think my full support for this statement depends a little on what exactly you are referring to with “any former nazi” and “the public life”.

who is suggesting you should love your fatherland? Not I. I’m suggesting you can feel free to love Goethe and Bach (and your wife as well, if you have one).

You’re right that the DDR, by playing the ‘We are the good Germans, communists who were victimised by the nazis’ card, avoided taking the long cold hard look at itself that the BRD was, on the whole, pretty good about taking. On the plus side of the DDR ledger, though, they didn’t let nearly as many former nazis achieve positions of power and prominence as the BRD did. For example, I’m not aware of any nazi party members who became head of government in the DDR; the BRD, alas, cannot claim the same. (Of course, it’s a scandal that either the BRD or DDR allowed any former nazis at all to play any role whatever in the public life of the nation.)

just read the article. Great. I think much of the blatant bollocks going on in Germany these days is directly related to – The World Cup. I was in Paris in 1998 and the French were so cool about the cup. Why can’t we?

I’m not sure I see your poinht. My own point is this: if you’re a German, you get to be proud (and rightly so) of Bach and Goethe and Mann and the postwar Wirtschaftswunder and Der Spiegel standing up to that fat corrupt undemocratic bully Franz Josef Strauss, etc. etc. etc.; but you don’t get to pretend that the darker side of your nation’s history didn’t happen.

Pray, why can’t it be allowed to happen? Emotional blackmail is not very nice either.

While I agree all that “you gypsies, you commies, you faggots, you jews” rhetoric is despicable, “We are great, we rock, we rule” is not. There is a subtle but valid difference in the sentiments involved, despite there being a clear causal connection between them.

History of Nazism, as is generally taught, is filled with so much emphases, justifiably, abosulutely, no doubt, on how rape and murder were perpetrated in so inhuman a manner, that all the good things accomplished also becomes shamefull. A pity, actually.

Much more worrying that nowadays mainly the anglophone countries are activating their own forms of fascism and sick xenophobia, while subverting democracy and the rule of law.

“die Symbole würden “nicht im Sinne nationalsozialistischen Gedankenguts” verwendet. Es sei aber Absicht des Gesetzgebers, dass “Kennzeichen ehemaliger nationalsozialistischer Organisationen aus dem Bild des politischen Lebens (…) grundsätzlich verbannt werden”.”
(the symbols are” not used in agreement with the nazi ideology”. But the intention of the legislator has been “to the ban symbols of nazi organisations as a matter of principle from political life”).

To me, I’m earning my life in advertsing, not law, this approach makes sense. It also asks for more and better creativity. Smashing symbols is still s m a s h i n g something and rather fascist.