Thursday, October 21, 2010

Return of the Führer?

Kind of a follow up here to my previous post here. Another result of that poll I mentioned at the end of the last post was that 13% of German citizens would welcome a "Führer" or someone to rule the country with a strong hand. Now while this may not be a huge percent of the population in Germany I still think that it is a shocking statistic.
German citizens aren't the only ones shifting to the far right though the whole of Europe is. It is happening in Austria, Holland, and even the notoriously open and liberal Sweden. Far right parties running on anti-Islamic platforms are gaining significant influence and even power. The main platform for a growing party in Holland is to ban the Qur'an and the practice of Islam as a whole from the Low Countries.
Does anyone else fear that this extremism and Islamophobia will make the jump westward to the US? Is it already here? Or is this just a passing phase as people or turning to whatever the can to feel safer in their lives? For me, I think it might be mostly the last one as the current state of the world just have people scared and looking to new and more extreme governments to make the feel safe. But what do you think?

1 comment:

Michael Miyahira said...

Honetsly I can't blame them at this point. Adolf Hitler has been credited with bringing Germany out of a horrendous recession that gripped the nation and most of the industrialized world at the time. He was also known to rally support for his actions and the Nazi party quite well through his multiple speeches given throughout Germany. Although the economy was brought back up by militarization, it nonetheless proved extremely effective in rebuilding their economy. I also think that Germans would like to see a strong leader who they can trust to lead them toward a more prosperous time. I've noticed that during times of hardship, many people tend to lean toward more extremist paths of action than during times of great prosperity, much like the United States in the 1950's. What's also interesting is that 20.3% of Germany's population is over 65, so there is a likelyhood that the 13% mentioned have lived in Germany at the time of Adolf Hitler. I don't think that people want a government that horrendously murders Jewish people, but just a government they know they can trust to work well with someone strong to lead the nation likewise into a strong economic state of being.