Europe

Mmmh I don't know if that Tim Cushing has any grasp on what was actually going down. The Andy Grote case though is factually right though, he is indeed 1 Pimmel.

The comment on " February 18, 2025 at 11:53 am" is full on the money though.

I’m going to have to step in here….

I was born and raised in Germany, to a US Army officer and a German lady. At 12 years of age, the family was posted to the US, where Dad retired due to medical problems.

So I know how Germans think. And yes, it’s been a long time since I physically visited my home country, but I still have several friends and a bit of family there. (And thanks to Al Gore, I now have an internet to keep up with them.) But here’s the crux of what’s going on, and it slides a bit sideways toward Elmo, as you’ll see. Bear with me, it gets a bit long here.

In short, the so-called ‘Alt-Right’ has been growing for the last three decades, and perhaps a bit longer. Ever since Trump 1.0, Europe, and Germany in particular, has been getting agitated from with by the same assholes as show up here – mean-spirited and highly dysfunctional assholes masquerading as adults, who want nothing more than for society to let them act like reprehensible assholes. (These are the very people that Elmo can manipulate with ease.)

So now let’s dig a bit behind the 2018 law, shall we? Without going to the internet, what would you guess is the average of the average lawmaker in Germany? Time’s up, here’s the answer: A majority of them are direct 1st or 2nd generation descendants of survivors of World War II. They have been inculcated since birth to know that the war took place, that millions of loved ones were killed, and that in the end, it was all pointless.

That’s the reasoning behind such laws, now lets look at the so-called ‘victim’s of the Lower Saxony “goose-steppers”, to paraphrase the intent of both this article and the 60 minutes interview.

Who do you suppose are the people suffering a 6:00am door-knock? Hint: it ain’t the adult children and grandchildren of those survivors I mentioned above. They’re the great-grandkids, and I’d take a bet that more than a few of them were not born in Germany, they’re either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants or refugees from somewhere outside of the EU.

These are the impressionable ones that, upon learning a different language, they undoubtedly also learned some of the local political beliefs from various sources, both formal and informal.

Yes, there are cross-overs in both age groups, lawmakers and lawbreakers alike. But this is the general outlook.

tl;dr:

The last bet you’ll ever want to place is betting that the general populace of Germany wants another Hitler. They remember what the US did to them, and they certainly know what the US is capable of doing now. And while Trump 2.0 will likely not say anything about Germany’s laws being overbearing, you can bet that the world as a whole will keep a focused eye on what’s happening on this front.

Also, techdirt? Where every anonymous commentator is marked as a coward? I don't think its a credible "news" portal.