It was a facade.

In the 90s after Germany became one big Germany again other European countries felt threatened. So Germany created the image of “memory culture” to claim it has adorned for its past and is not a threat anymore. However this was only superficial. At the same time there were the “baseball-bat years” in which skinhead Neonazis roamed especially in eastern Germany and beat up, lynched and sometimes murdered foreigners and leftists.

Fast forward to today. The mantra of “never again” as a result of the German history is only applied to a tokenized idea of Jewish life in the form of the state of Israel, rather than to apply it to all humans universally. So now that the token Israel is the source of grave crimes against humanity, instead of focusing on defending values, the token is defended. And anyone who is in the way of that token faces repressions, cynically targeting dissenting Jews in academia and culture disproportionately more than they are part of German society as a whole or part of academia and culture itself.

Finally the “memory culture” is perverted into abolishing German responsibility for Antisemitism and Racism and expanding Racism again Muslim people, or people perceived as Muslims based on their skin color. It is perverted into shifting the blame and created means of repression that will greatly help the fascists to establish their rule once again.

Germany has never pushed out far-right extremism. It put it onto a low burner, but it is deeply rooted in the German society and is blossoming again now, last but not least because people who proclaim to be progressive, such as the Greens and Social Democrats have deep seated right and reactionary convictions they now feel comfortable to show as the notion of “far”-right has been pushed further by the AfD fascists.