I moved here from America last year because they have tuition free college, and I'm honestly impressed with how stupid and evil this country is. Like I truly believe there is less revolutionary potential here than in America. Say what you will about America, but there is a general social attitude that does not put up with these bullshit opinions being publicly voiced.
Overall, Germany has some cool stuff going on, but they're also quite stupid and clueless.
The whole thing is just even more woven into the cultural DNA because not only is it a symbol of freedom and independence like in America or something, the car in cultural memory has basically rebuilt the country itself after for some unknown reason everything got destroyed. It was shit, but then everyone got a VW Bug and then it was pretty good so obviously that was due to the car and not say, the giant-ass marshall plan or widespread exploitation of guest workers.
This befalls even a large part of leftists and doubly so when it comes to cycling activism vs car centric development. Instead of calling them no good rule breakers who don't pay taxes you just generalize them of all being dentists on 10.000 € roadbikes who want to take the parking away from the poor and disenfranchised.
I got to disagree there. We are all very much aware of what fucked the country and almost everyone sees it as an absolutely good thing that happened.
It is really more the freedom angle of things. The car culture is in essence a weaker version of the bike culture. It combines being able to go everywhere with the absolutely accurate stereotype of germans travelling.
In America you can go from one shitty state to the next after hours of driving, here you can visit a new country every day if you decide to just travel. That is also very much part of every side of german politics. "Mit dem Moped nach Madrid" is a punk song for example, sharing exactly that sentiment.
I mean, 9,8/10 germans would tell you that the defeat of the nazis was a good thing, sure. In the general, countrywide sense.
But then ask a those 9,8/10 germans what their (great-)grandparents did in the war and you'd find a Nazi germany that's nearly completely made up of radio operators, nurses and farmers. The latter part is the one that doesn't get talked about and that is a problem. I'm not going to claim the rise of fascism would've been fought with thousands of individual, unorganized actors, but it does remove the part where this wasn't some problem of the external nazis coming in to force Grandpa Johann to be in the Wehrmacht and much more a lot of people being fully on board with it. It converts this from an interal problem to an external threat and you can still see the debate happening along these lines.
And this is after the 68-Movement where younger people started questioning things a bit more. This was pretty much after the Wirtschaftswunder, where the Schlusstrichdebatte still was a massive movement. The part where there were still Nazis everywhere doesn't get talked about, it's germanys rebound from the war and then everything was happily ever after.
I don't think so, at least not in any actual sense of the word. Germany is way too dense for this type of freedom to be applicable other than a distant dream, ask anybody who drives a lot whether they like it and they'll tell you it sucks ass except for those few parts on a country road when there's not many people around and doubly so everywhere out of germany (barring Switzerland). And that just doesn't happen often. I mean, the american drive of freedom thing is a myth, but at least it's theoretically possible.
Man I like Madsen, I'd really struggle to describe them as Punk.
It was a punk cover of Madsens song I was thinking off. Madsen itself is not punk, you are right there.
And yes, it is of course more a dream than reality. Driving is shit imo and I was more generally talking about traveling outside of germany.
In my friend group we had the plan of making a roadtrip to Croatia for example, which got scrapped thanks to covid.
And its definitely a trend that otherwise poorer people spend much of their money on cars to sometimes just drive around aimlessly. I'd say that is more sad than anything.
Oh, and my Grandparents were rather young during the Nazi era. One of them helped to operate trains, the other learned to become a pilot apparently. He was 15 at the time though and died when I was 6. Both had undoubtedly been Nazis.
I don't mean to be an asshole, hell I hope it comes to be once Covid is "over", but that just doesn't seem indicative of a wider trend. Yeah sure, many people dream about that one roadtrip. Most of them don't do it because they realize driving sucks ass.
I'm gonna hard disagree on that one. I don't mean to accuse of anything, but that's a fairly racially charged, if common, myth here. Again, this is at the intersection of german racism and carbrain. Most of the source of this one seems to me seeing young non-PoC in fancy cars and instead of realizing any of them could actually be succesfull enough to have (not own) a nice car, the assumption is they're poor people with shit priorities.
This isn't to say there isn't a lot of people spending money they don't exactly have on fancy cars, but that's something that befalls pretty much every group in germany.
Just to be clear, I wasn't accusing you or your family of being ignorant of this past, just that it's a very widespread phenomenon.
Poc are not generally seen as poor in germany. That is more an american stereotype than anything. I was more talking about my co-workers and relatives putting a lot of value in their cars. There was one I carpooled with, that drove a really new and expensive Mercedes to his low paying job every day, or the one that just wanted to drive around for an hour after our shift was over. Other people I know got old Mercedes models for the same reasons.
This is all of course only my personal experience, but judging by how common it seems to be around me, I can assume these stereotypes are more or less accurate.
Race discussions are much less ofva thing here than in america, and the very real discrimination against refugees is not intersecting with the carbrain.
Sorry, what?
But this is what I was talking about. I know a lot of people who spend money they don't have on their car for prestige reasons instead of using a more sensible car (nevermind even other options) but that's something that's not limited to any specific group of people. Maybe except those who have fuck-you money.