NPCs in A Video Game *scratch head*

There are many people in the country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane.

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Wednesday 💪 Workout

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a pioneer of the German democratic movement, understood that the success of a political ambition rests on the health and physical strength of its proponents. So I schedule a number of exercise videos for Wednesdays that hopefully encourage all of us to do exercises as we watch them and get inspirations for the following days. I will not watch them in advance and I don’t pretend that one guy knows his stuff better than the next.

Wednesday 💪 Workout

 

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a pioneer of the German democratic movement, understood that the success of a political ambition rests on the health and physical strength of its proponents. So I schedule a number of exercise videos for Wednesdays that hopefully encourage all of us to do exercises as we watch them and get inspirations for the following days. I will not watch them in advance and I don’t pretend that one guy knows his stuff better than the next.

Trump Derangement Syndrom Isn’t a Phase

Wednesday 💪 Workout

 

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a pioneer of the German democratic movement, understood that the success of a political ambition rests on the health and physical strength of its proponents. So I schedule a number of exercise videos for Wednesdays that hopefully encourage all of us to do exercises as we watch them and get inspirations for the following days. I will not watch them in advance and I don’t pretend that one guy knows his stuff better than the next.

Toon: The Dinesh D’Souza Shawshank Redemption

I just realize how much dirt we heard during the Clinton campaign. The scandal about the Innocence of Muslim filmmaker, his imprisonment and Benghazi cover-up was forgotten. D’Souza was given a five-year prison sentence (on probation) for a campaign finance violation after making the documentary “Hillary’s America”. Does anybody remember Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund scheme? That one was big. No legal consequences for her. I’m still baffled how anybody with a modem could vote for her.

 

A Thought on my Political Thought Development

This is a bit off-the-cuff. Blogging has a strange effect on one’s psyche. I have realised that I started my now dead twitter account and later this blog when I was frustrated about the repetition everywhere. I felt like screaming. And yet the news have already worn me down. I followed Pamela Geller’s blog for a while and at some point just decided that I heard all the crime stories and understand the scope.

Yesterday, the murderer of a Jewish girl called Susanna Feldman was identified.  She was raped and tortured for hours before her brutal death. A witness could tell a lot of details to the police, including the location of the corpse and yet it took weeks to find the suspect. He fled the country with his entire greater family after they claimed asylum for years. Suddenly, the family was safer in Iraq than in Germany. I don’t do a proper post on her and her details because …. don’t we know the scope and scale already?

So when I started this blog I was already over it, over the details. I was frustrated of what was not said, about the dull repetition even on the conservative side. An example: Dave Rubin and others make a huge fuss over the separation of Islam, the idea, from Muslims, the people. A good person blames Islam and not the people. I don’t care about the blame. I care about solutions and I believe that “Islam” has not fucked and killed Susanna Feldman and other girls. Muslims did.

But Ben, you cannot say that ALL Muslims….The repetitive nonsense from the left is ringing in my ears. Firstly, I can say whatever the hell I want. Even if I said ALL Muslims, the aggression that is targeted against conservatives is beyond pale. Just correct me where I’m wrong. Thanks. Secondly, stop to misrepresent my views! Today I had a glimpse again at the comment section of ZEIT online under the hotel reservation issue. You look for humanity, but you see only unfiltered hatred and what is more they REALLY believe that everybody who disagrees with them wants to commit a genocide.

My head explodes when I think of conservatives who only complain that they are “insulted” with the “Nazi” name calling. The issue is not that you can and should take insults on the chin or that you politely ask the left to stop it. The issue is that they REALLY believe it. How in the world can we convince these kill-the-Hitler-baby-freaks that we are not Hitler? There is literally nothing that can happen to conservatives that would lead to some sort of compassion in these people. Only some demographics and only if they really stay put are worthy of their clemency.

Then there is all this gas lighting. There is no German word for it, but the elites do it all the time. It is impossible to even agree on a fact. Everything must be denied, twists and turns. ‘There is no Islamisation’, ‘there was no opening the border in 2015’, ‘There is not one Islam’, ‘gender is only a social construct’, ‘freedom of speech is respected, but …’ and so on. It is daft. What definition of “Islamisation” can you have and still deny it? Did nothing happen in 2015 that people might mean when they use the word Grenzoeffnung (opening the border)?

But here I ask questions and this is why the situation is not that bad in America. In America there are these counter-speech niches on radio and FOX news. There are even book publishers who dare something. That’s why people hear questions. Even a hardcore liberal in America will not deny that there was a significant event in 2015 or that more Muslims and therefore an increasing Islamic influence can be seen in Germany. What person do you have to be not to see these things?

The weirdest thing of it all is the majority. There is no silent majority in favor of the right. There is a hysterical, socialist, loud majority on the left, some of them call themselves conservatives without asking for one single conservative policy. And it surprises me because I know this country, but I never thought that almost all my relatives and friends were that crazy. I used to identify as a left-winger, but it used to be okay when I did not toe the party line in every single aspect. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a soldier. I remember in kindergarten that I was asked a second choice and I said, ‘war reporter’ (little did I know about these creeps). There was never ever a time when I was anti-military even though I considered myself a pacifist who wanted our soldiers only to engage in defence for an immediate attack. There was never a time when I was anti-Israel. I called myself a German patriot, sang the (actually terrible) anthem, showed national colors with pride whenever I could, long before there was a conservative party worth its name. And then, for decades, it was accepted. It was mocked, frowned upon, but accepted. I was completely into feminism despite the fact that I perfectly felt at home with my masculinity. There was a feminism that was not reduced to gaga men-hating. It was a position among many to take. And when I took it, it was not even a popular position. I knew NO man besides myself who identified as a feminist. Now, everybody must be one or will be “unmasked” as a “Nazi.”

I was an atheist. Like all atheists I was obsessed with the worldly powers of the churches (and they are too big). I thought Christianity was too much represented in the public sphere. I did not even ask for a better visibility for Judaism. I believed in the propaganda that religion comes in a unity and with its abolition almost all problems go. Now, I’m Jewish, the churches are a refugee-welcome racket and the pope is a weather god who fights against climate change. It took less than a decade until the “eternal” believes were eradicated. My rational atheism and their evil Christianity were washed away. I don’t know much about Jesus, but hell I know, he wouldn’t have let all these Muslims in. It’s ludicrous.

And, of course, with blogging you start shedding taboos at some point. Why not say “Muslims”? Why specify to the minutia who is meant when? Strange enough, all “they are all individuals you must not paint with a broad brush” goes immediately out of the door when the discussion turns to groups the left does not like. Then it’s Americans, Israelis, the Polish, Catholics….not “some”, not “the radical”, not “the extreme”, just “the.” It’s “the” Americans who are jingoistic weapon-crazy morons. Just “the.” So maybe “the” Muslims should get THEIR act together, shouldn’t they?

So as I blog along I see me transform along the way. The most absurd part of my road was that I felt the off-putting urge to talk about masculinity and violence. I noticed that I was not the only one. It has biological reasons. We are animals. Birds feel when an earthquake is coming and so do my balls. The birds have a better sense for timing.

Fight or Flight?

 

Coincidentally Rebecca Hargreaves and German Blogger luisman raised a similar question today. Do we retreat? Should we retreat? Should we hold the ground and fight? How should we fight? And what would you sacrifice? All of these questions deserve a book on their own.

Luisman begins his article by giving a number of historical examples of when a new group moved in areas mostly peacefully, demanded better treatment and at the height of their power turned against the previously prevailing group. The description does not fit all examples but it represents the gist of it. At least this is what I see as the gist of it. Luisman gathered from the examples that the old group was too “liberal” and allowed its subversion. I see that again and again and I have my doubts whether we get any further when we just vaguely speak about “too much freedom”. When it comes to the West, I think of the groups that gave great freedoms to their opponents and were punished for it, and I see the religious groups, the patriots and the libertarians. But their fault was not too much liberalism (here: pro-freedom), it was a lack of focus.

I take the churches as an example: All energy went into anti-gay fights and abortion control. Meanwhile no outrage, no protest, nothing could be rallied against all these people who claim Christians had burnt more witches than women available. There are folks who speak of millions of midwives. So the moral- and back-breaking smear machine had all the freedoms to go wild and lie unopposed. The churches as well as the other non-left groups failed to demand some level of honesty and organize rallies to do something about it.

I see the core of our Western civilisation in the repeated readjustments of priorities. From the ten commandments over the Magna Carta to the US constitution, the hallmarks of history were a reduction of the underwood of rules and ideas to the minimal consensus that we were willing to defend as a civilisation. It has become increasingly difficult to formulate such a consensus and particularly the left – but also some on the right – are too dumb to even understand the importance of agreeing on a minimal framework that everybody reads/knows, everybody understands, and everybody defends. Currently five German states demand that the constitution should be bloated to include LGBT love cuddle whatever. A constitution that is too crammed and therefore remains unread by the wider population is utterly worthless. It controls nobody.

Luisman writes that the new group causes the old groups to flee. Especially European cities have less and less indigenous population. The UK has the first Capital with a non-native majority. Other cities follow that model (e.g. Frankfurt/Main in Germany, famous for the big airport and the stock exchange). People either move to the countryside or to a place with less immigration, or at least less Muslim immigration. Rebecca Hargreaves is also moving out of Seattle to the countryside. I don’t disclose personal information about myself, but a part of a cowardly retreat is inevitable. I would say that it is not only reasonable for one’s own well-being, but it makes sense strategically. My obvious retreat is that I write under a pseudonym. My views expressed here, plus the ones I espouse in my daily affairs offline, amass to a level of “offense” that would result in a punishment strong enough to effectively silence me. So what good would be in more boldness?

Today it was announced that Siegmar Faust is no longer allowed to work as a guide in the stasi-prison-turned-memorial Hohenschönhausen. During the socialist dictatorship in East Germany he was locked up multiple times, at one instance for more than 400 days in an isolated cell, for exercising his freedom of speech which was guaranteed in the constitution of the regime. The mysterious article on ZEIT online says he has AfD-like views, but does not get specific. They also bemoan that he gave an interview to newspaper Berliner Zeitung in which he asked for clemency for red army faction terrorists Horst Mahler. The socialist is in prison for Holocaust denial. Faust has explicitely stated that he has no sympathies for Mr Mahler (and neither do I), but merely defending free speech is taken as evidence that one sympathises with the thought criminal at hand. By the way, Mahler is so indefensible that he shares the fate of all indefensible left-wing things: If it’s broken, then it’s yours (right-wing extremist).

German blogger Heimdallwarda recently asked if I consider leaving for Israel. The question haunts us all. More than half of French Jews plan to go. It will be very crowded and every home is “threatening the peace”. On the other hand many Jews stayed too long in Nazi Germany when there were options to flee. The situation is not nearly as bleak today. We should not only remember our history as victims that could have escaped, but should also take pride in our role as resistance warriors.

For me it is all a mix. My escape is into the pseudonym, the whispers. I choose to fight, and I choose the means of that fight both on a moral and a strategic basis, which I believe are tightly linked. Recently brilliant German blogger zweifelsfrau changed her fighting strategy from online activities to low-key offline strategies. And I assume that there is not just one way. Some use the internet to get information out, some march on the streets (usually ignored, sometimes derided by the media), some discuss their views with family, friends and even colleagues. Everybody has a different risk to take and everybody can absorb a different level of risk (children, financial/social standing etc.). This is not risk-free. Keep this in mind as you evaluate how far you can go.

Interview with Free Speech Icon Nadine Strossen