Chancellor of the Fourth Reich

It seems like this passed in Poland without much notice, and I didn't write about it in August, somehow it escaped my attention, even though it's a matter that personally concerns me greatly.

In early August, Björn Höcke, the leader of the parliamentary group of the AfD in Thuringia in Eastern Germany, an important figure not only in the AfD but in the entire New Right movement, gave an interview to the public television channel MDR Fernsehen (a public broadcaster in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony), as he does every summer.

What he said is all the more significant the higher the AfD's approval ratings are, and if the current trend doesn't change, he will be the AfD's candidate for chancellor in at least two years. The main topic of the conversation was education and its problems. In addition to what is obvious, immigrants, the AfD politician considered children with disabilities and neuroatypical children as problems. He also labeled inclusive education and integrated schools as an "ideological project."

Höcke has interesting views on education in general. According to him, students should learn to write beautifully with a fountain pen instead of using a computer. This, along with the likely elimination of integrated schools and the removal of immigrant children from schools, is intended to "transform children and youth into skilled future workers" and "increase their productivity," which, according to the politician, is the goal of education. The commodification of humans begins in elementary school.

Björn Höcke, by profession a teacher (sic!) and the son of a teacher in a school for the blind, is also an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier. He has creatively followed in his father's footsteps and represents the most radical and conspiracy-minded wing of the AfD. An eccentric figure, even by AfD standards, which led the German anti-vaxxers and other fringe movements.

He's a fan of Gustave Le Bon's "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" and Adolf Hitler, an adherent of Norse mythology, with Thor's hammer around his neck.

In response to the politician's words about ending inclusion, 19 associations, including Caritas for Persons with Disabilities, the Protestant Association for Participation, and the Central Welfare Office for Jews in Germany, bought a full-page advertisement in "Welt am Sonntag" titled "This is more than an alarm signal."

This concerns all of us.

This is more than a warning sign. When AfD politician Björn Höcke calls for an end to inclusion and thus the active exclusion of disabled individuals, it is neither accidental nor a slip-up. AfD has repeatedly called for the disenfranchisement or expulsion of those who do not fit into the ethnic nationalist worldview.

Anyone who thinks and speaks in this way questions human dignity as an individual, the universality of human rights, and thus the foundations of our democratic society. The devaluation and exclusion of disabled people have long been part of the AfD's agenda, just as the devaluation and exclusion of people based on their origin, faith, or self-identified gender identity.

We will not allow ideologies of unequal worth among people, reminiscent of the darkest chapters of German history, to continue spreading. We call on civil society to collectively and decisively oppose the danger that such a program poses to the cohesion of our society.

This concerns all of us.

We are all facing a challenge.

Warning signs cannot be ignored.

And this issue really struck a chord with me. Being mentally ill practically since childhood, I should have had a diagnosis, therapy, and probably attended an inclusive (or sociotherapeutic) school by the age of 8. A very close person to me has a daughter on the autism spectrum. So, for me, these statements are personal, and anyone who makes them is my personal adversary.

But it's not about me and my feelings; it's about something much more important than me and all those AfD guys (and their friends from the Confederation).

Such differences, illnesses, and disorders are a measure of our humanity. Margaret Mead once showed her students a femur bone of an early human and said that it marks the beginning of civilization. I would say it's the beginning of humanity.

A broken and healed femur bone meant that someone cared for the person who broke their leg. They carried them or helped them walk, gathered food for them... These are the most significant achievements of civilization and a measure of our humanity. It's how we treat the weaker, the sick, those who were fortunate or unfortunate in the genetic lottery, or those who made a few wrong decisions in life and are now at the bottom.

I feel a sense of community with such individuals because, due to my illness, my life, to put it mildly, has not been a success. I've been on the brink of homelessness a few times, most recently less than a year before leaving Poland. The amount of alcohol and other drugs I consumed would qualify me for the title of a general in the army of drunks, putting Himilsbach to shame. There's also a bit of a sense of community known as humanity, about which poet John Donne wrote, "No man is an island," and which Jesus taught, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me," and Buddha, "May I be a doctor and medicine for those in need, a nurse for the sick, until everyone is well."

By refusing to participate in this community, for example through ableism, classism, and contempt for those lower in the social hierarchy, we deprive ourselves of our humanity. And we reject the greatest achievements of human civilization, of which the femur bone of early humans was a harbinger.

Achievements like universal education and healthcare, labor laws and minimum wage, social safety nets, child benefits (called Kindergeld in Germany), and the Deutschland-Ticket. But also places like Schanzenpark in my beloved Hamburg, full of people from different cultures and continents, whose harmonious coexistence is only disrupted by the police, who have recently been cracking down on weed dealers. This is somewhat ironic because there's already a draft proposal for the partial legalization of marijuana. And it's a bit anti-social because it's better for people from all these cultures to smoke weed together and chill out than to get into fights under the influence of legal alcohol.

And the fact that we can all be together in one place and have a good time and spend time together is also a great achievement of civilization. On this topic, I recommend the excellent (although, especially towards the end, at times nauseatingly propagandistic) book by Steven Pinker, "The Better Angels of Our Nature."

And people like Björn Höcke want to roll back these civilizational achievements. They would like to turn Schanzenpark into a battleground of racial strife and eliminate the weaker, maladjusted, insufficiently Aryan individuals. Right now, they're targeting schools. But their predecessors used Zyklon B for this. If we give them a chance, they will do the same.

For me, as I mentioned before, this is a personal matter. Accessible and publicly funded psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care, programs that include non-normative individuals, is not an ideology but a matter of survival.

I try to avoid or stay away from politics here. For various reasons. Although there are issues when it's not quite possible, such as when it comes to workers' rights in the gastronomy sector or food safety. And publishing in Nowy Obywatel is a kind of political declaration. Here, the important question arises: what does it mean to be political? Is the humanity that people like Höcke want to erase a political matter? When you live in Germany, these questions take on a new dimension. And somehow, the final scene in the movie "Mephisto" keeps replaying in my mind. And whether in today's world, one can only be a chef. And the idea that not condemning is equivalent to condoning.

And it's important to remember that with such views, he is the leader of the parliamentary group of the AfD in Thuringia, a likely prime minister of Thuringia in a year, and at the very least, a candidate for chancellor from the AfD in two years. So, he is not just some isolated fanatic but represents views that are widespread within the AfD.

And in recent news, Björn Höcke has been charged for using the phrase "Everything for Germany" (Alles für Deutschland) in his speech, which is a banned slogan associated with the SA in Germany.

This serves as a reminder that the struggle against such ideologies and individuals is ongoing, and it requires vigilance and action from those who value inclusivity, diversity, and the fundamental principles of humanity.

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