4 ms·

What is it about German culture that makes authoritarianism so popular?

by SoftTalker 11mo ago

__turbobrew__ 11mo ago
Germans love rules and hate those who don’t (source: scolded by several Germans while travelling there)
- qwertox 11mo ago
  Why don't you share what you did to get scolded by several Germans and I will explain to you why.
  - __turbobrew__ 11mo ago
    1. While waiting to be seated at a bistro, I grabbed a menu off a table to see what they had for food. Waiter who was ignoring me saw that and instantly scolded me in front of the entire restaurant saying that is their job. 2. An alpine train was coming by and I was doing the fist pump in the air to get them to honk the horn. A random stranger said that my actions were unwelcome and that trains are serious business. 3. When on bikes I did a skid stop to make my wife laugh, a random stranger said I shouldn’t do that. 4. At the airport, I had to pour out water before going through the security checkpoint. There was no bin to pour out water so I just poured it out in the garbage. A random stranger got quite upset and said the water does not go in the garbage. Not to mention all of the very unfriendly interactions I had with locals. Honestly will probably never go back, people are so much more friendly and laid back elsewhere which is more my style.
    - ffsm8 11mo ago
      As a German myself, that list is surprising. The only one I could imagine is 4., because the bins generally aren't watertight, so you're essentially spilling water on the floor which will make a mess for everyone. And there are always places to pour the water it's just usually at the entrance of the terminal ... Which is obviously dumb, cuz nobody is going to go back to them after they've already queued to get in. But 1-3? You must've really gotten unlucky... 1 I could only imagine in expensive restaurants, 2. I am seriously surprised by, because while the person manning the train would almost always ignore you, so would everyone else - no matter what kind of gesture you do. And 3... While I cannot fathom doing that on purpose myself, I'm extremely surprised anyone would bother interacting with anyone about that? Definitely doesn't reflect my experience living here for roughly 40 yrs
    - mickelsen 11mo ago
      Yup, they love their rules and procedures. And it's funny, because the first thought they have if you get fined (say you didn't include the impressum in your personal website, or nosy neighbor found you mowing the lawn on sunday), it's that you must have done something wrong, not that the law is unfair. It’s a Rechtsstaat with hardcore legal-positivist brain. Rules aren’t guidelines, intent doesn’t matter, context doesn’t matter, fun definitely doesn’t matter.
      - __turbobrew__ 11mo ago
        > Rules aren’t guidelines I think that is the biggest disconnect for me. To me rules are guidelines and I will break them when they do not make sense. Following the rules just because they are the rules doesn’t fit my style, although I live in a place when population density is very low so I understand that people bending the rules here has less of a consequence than bending the rules in densely populated areas.
        seec 11mo ago
        Exactly. There are some “rules” that are perfectly valid, like “don't kill anyone,” but those make perfect sense and don't need much debate. Plenty of rules are actually retarded and sometimes harmful if you follow them blindly. This is precisely how they got Nazism, and they like to pretend that it was only the bad guy Hitler's fault and a few other people's. If you know Germans well enough, it becomes pretty clear that a large part of the population was actually responsible in a small but meaningfull way. I had a German exchange partner who refused to use the crosswalk unless the traffic light was absolutely green, even if there was absolutely no car or traffic around. That's just beyond stupid, and mindlessly following rules like that is how you get tyranny…
        cindyllm 11mo ago
        [dead]
        qwertox 11mo ago
        For you the rationale is "even if there was absolutely no car or traffic around". For most Germans the rationale is "even if there was no car or traffic around, and no child could see me doing this", where the latter part is the most important one. If you do it with friends and nobody is around, no problem. I often cross the street over a pedestrian crossing when the pedestrian light is on red and there are no children around, and I got scolded (very rarely, like less than 1%) but I don't care because it just might have been an unhappy or intolerant person, but that's definitely not the rule that people scold you for this. I don't think this is a German problem. I'm pretty sure if I'd do that in France it would have the same effect (maybe not in Paris). In regards to your Nazi-comment: Of course we are aware of that it takes the majority of people to enable a slipping into Naziism, which is why we are so strict about it: No signs nor expressions used in that period are allowed to be used today, an Americans even scold us for caring about not "forgetting" what had happened (because we don't allow the signs or expressions, "freedom of speech"). So you saying "they like to pretend that it was only the bad guy Hitler's fault" indicates that you have no clue about how most Germans are. From the 4 points he mentioned, the only one which would piss me off would be the last one, where he decides to spill the water in the trash bin. Who does that? What do they think when they do this? Why not just ask the security person where he can dispose it? But the other 3, I can't explain why they scolded him; it's not normal.
    - sunaookami 11mo ago
      As a German myself, the list is unsurprising and I'm terrible sorry that happened. Germany is indeed a very cold, unwelcoming country sadly.
Cpoll 11mo ago
Calling it "German authoritarianism" risks thinking it's a localized phenomenon or special case. But it seems more like a regression to the global mean. Most of these expansions are things that have been on the front page of HN, but in reference to the US: cell tower queries, facial recognition, license plate harvesting, long detention periods without being charged, etc.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  >Calling it "German authoritarianism" risks thinking it's a localized phenomenon or special case. It very much is though. Plenty of other countries in EU like France or Romania for example but probably many more, don't have even remotely as many authoritarian and invasive BS laws as Germany does. But the worst part is that Germans have gaslit themselves to think that their authoritarian laws are there "for their own protection". They don't even realize they have a problem, until they move and live abroad and learn you can run a country without your government have so many surveillance and speech control powers over what you can do or say in public about their leaders.
  - bondarchuk 11mo ago
    Just some data to give a little bit of context, however flawed or reductive it may be.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices#List_of_scores_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices#List_o...
    - jack_tripper 11mo ago
      I don't really care what some arbitrary number on Wikipedia tells me about the freedom of a country I know quite well, as long as I am unable to insult my political leaders on the internet for their fuckups or say that 'Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide', without police later knocking on my door to arrest me for "hate speech" or "far right extremism", I consider the freedom score of that country to be ZERO. This is mostly a UK, Germany and Austria exclusive issue in the EU-zone and not an EU widespread issue quite yet, but boy they sure are trying to get everyone at that same level. Any scientist will tell you to not to look at the end data, but to look at the formula used to calculate the result and the way in which the data for the study was gathered. That's what's most important. Depending on what your formula and data is, you can get to any arbitrary result you want, which is how scientists also had studies in the 1950s saying that smoking was good for your health.
jack_tripper 11mo ago
German history and culture was always about following rules and following a strong figure of authority, whether that be someone with a toothbrush moustache or someone making diamond hands.
- CoastalCoder 11mo ago
  > someone making diamond hands. To what is this referring? I got the Hitler reference, but not this one.
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    When you google "German politician diamond hands" you get the answer: Angela Merkel
MomsAVoxell 11mo ago
In my opinion its: Village life. Germany is a state of small villages/towns/cities/city-states, interconnected with fairly productive lines of communication - but it is very easy to live ones entire life in a German village and never leave. At village scales, authoritarianism is given more credence by the individual because ones life boundaries are reduced to the immediate environment, which is not really sustainable without structured hierarchy. Incidentally, this is also a factor in why American’s adopt authoritarianism so rapidly as well - spending 3 hours of ones life in a bubble, on the freeway, commuting, is extremely damaging to ones psyche. Road-rage and neighbor hatred abound in such circumstances. The solution to authoritarianism is travel beyond ones bounds. The roots of totalitarian-authoritarianism grow deeply in the desire to be free of the ‘filth of others’ - once you expand your horizons to embrace that ‘filth of others’, through travel and cultural interaction, that ‘filth of others’ becomes ‘the flavor of others’ instead. This is easily demonstrated: talk to a German who has never left their home town/talk to a German who regularly visits vastly different parts of the world. You will see the authoritarian in the former, but the libertarian in the latter.
- MichaelZuo 11mo ago
  This seems a bit incoherent, there must be a real reason for them to start thinking the “filth of others” has some basis in reality… It couldn’t have arisen just randomly or on a lark.
  - MomsAVoxell 11mo ago
    The “filth of others” can be described in as many ways as a human might use to justify their elevation of one tribe over the degradation of another. Look at it critically - whenever you encounter a totalitarian-authoritarian personality bloviating about “those people over there” (others), its usually based on the totalitarian mechanism of ‘avoiding affinity with attributes considered unsavoury’ (filth). This concept has other applications. If you have two villages, separated perhaps by a near-insurmountable mountain or lake, or if one of those villages raises cows while the other raises goats - this is usually the basis of the formation of a new dialect, accent, or indeed entirely new language. However, when civilization occurs and those two villages merge into a broader community, that language changes to become a unity. This is observable at an individual level, too. Any unacknowledged or under-recognized similarities/identities/differences between two or more entities will inevitably be used to justify segregation of those entities. The solution, as always, is to identify similarities/identities/differences in a cohesive manner - this is anathema to the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, who is usually pretty stubborn about enforcing, in totality, those under-acknowledged facets.
mikkupikku 11mo ago
Have you ever noticed how often Germans online like to say "That's not how we do it in Germany..." "We don't do that in Germany..." "In Germany we..." ? Germans seem to have a cultural thing going on where they think the way they do things is the most logical and correct way, and think they're doing everybody else a favor by telling them how things are meant to be done. In fairness, so do Americans. But, for instance, I never hear this shit from the French.
- seec 11mo ago
  Yes, Germans have a nasty superiority complex, and that's really not funny at times.
- UntappedShelf21 11mo ago
  The America of Europe in this way.

What is it about German culture that makes authoritarianism so popular?

__turbobrew__ 11mo ago

Germans love rules and hate those who don’t (source: scolded by several Germans while travelling there)

qwertox 11mo ago
Why don't you share what you did to get scolded by several Germans and I will explain to you why.
- __turbobrew__ 11mo ago
  1. While waiting to be seated at a bistro, I grabbed a menu off a table to see what they had for food. Waiter who was ignoring me saw that and instantly scolded me in front of the entire restaurant saying that is their job. 2. An alpine train was coming by and I was doing the fist pump in the air to get them to honk the horn. A random stranger said that my actions were unwelcome and that trains are serious business. 3. When on bikes I did a skid stop to make my wife laugh, a random stranger said I shouldn’t do that. 4. At the airport, I had to pour out water before going through the security checkpoint. There was no bin to pour out water so I just poured it out in the garbage. A random stranger got quite upset and said the water does not go in the garbage. Not to mention all of the very unfriendly interactions I had with locals. Honestly will probably never go back, people are so much more friendly and laid back elsewhere which is more my style.
  - ffsm8 11mo ago
    As a German myself, that list is surprising. The only one I could imagine is 4., because the bins generally aren't watertight, so you're essentially spilling water on the floor which will make a mess for everyone. And there are always places to pour the water it's just usually at the entrance of the terminal ... Which is obviously dumb, cuz nobody is going to go back to them after they've already queued to get in. But 1-3? You must've really gotten unlucky... 1 I could only imagine in expensive restaurants, 2. I am seriously surprised by, because while the person manning the train would almost always ignore you, so would everyone else - no matter what kind of gesture you do. And 3... While I cannot fathom doing that on purpose myself, I'm extremely surprised anyone would bother interacting with anyone about that? Definitely doesn't reflect my experience living here for roughly 40 yrs
  - mickelsen 11mo ago
    Yup, they love their rules and procedures. And it's funny, because the first thought they have if you get fined (say you didn't include the impressum in your personal website, or nosy neighbor found you mowing the lawn on sunday), it's that you must have done something wrong, not that the law is unfair. It’s a Rechtsstaat with hardcore legal-positivist brain. Rules aren’t guidelines, intent doesn’t matter, context doesn’t matter, fun definitely doesn’t matter.
    - __turbobrew__ 11mo ago
      > Rules aren’t guidelines I think that is the biggest disconnect for me. To me rules are guidelines and I will break them when they do not make sense. Following the rules just because they are the rules doesn’t fit my style, although I live in a place when population density is very low so I understand that people bending the rules here has less of a consequence than bending the rules in densely populated areas.
      - seec 11mo ago
        Exactly. There are some “rules” that are perfectly valid, like “don't kill anyone,” but those make perfect sense and don't need much debate. Plenty of rules are actually retarded and sometimes harmful if you follow them blindly. This is precisely how they got Nazism, and they like to pretend that it was only the bad guy Hitler's fault and a few other people's. If you know Germans well enough, it becomes pretty clear that a large part of the population was actually responsible in a small but meaningfull way. I had a German exchange partner who refused to use the crosswalk unless the traffic light was absolutely green, even if there was absolutely no car or traffic around. That's just beyond stupid, and mindlessly following rules like that is how you get tyranny…
        cindyllm 11mo ago
        [dead]
        qwertox 11mo ago
        For you the rationale is "even if there was absolutely no car or traffic around". For most Germans the rationale is "even if there was no car or traffic around, and no child could see me doing this", where the latter part is the most important one. If you do it with friends and nobody is around, no problem. I often cross the street over a pedestrian crossing when the pedestrian light is on red and there are no children around, and I got scolded (very rarely, like less than 1%) but I don't care because it just might have been an unhappy or intolerant person, but that's definitely not the rule that people scold you for this. I don't think this is a German problem. I'm pretty sure if I'd do that in France it would have the same effect (maybe not in Paris). In regards to your Nazi-comment: Of course we are aware of that it takes the majority of people to enable a slipping into Naziism, which is why we are so strict about it: No signs nor expressions used in that period are allowed to be used today, an Americans even scold us for caring about not "forgetting" what had happened (because we don't allow the signs or expressions, "freedom of speech"). So you saying "they like to pretend that it was only the bad guy Hitler's fault" indicates that you have no clue about how most Germans are. From the 4 points he mentioned, the only one which would piss me off would be the last one, where he decides to spill the water in the trash bin. Who does that? What do they think when they do this? Why not just ask the security person where he can dispose it? But the other 3, I can't explain why they scolded him; it's not normal.
  - sunaookami 11mo ago
    As a German myself, the list is unsurprising and I'm terrible sorry that happened. Germany is indeed a very cold, unwelcoming country sadly.

Cpoll 11mo ago

Calling it "German authoritarianism" risks thinking it's a localized phenomenon or special case. But it seems more like a regression to the global mean. Most of these expansions are things that have been on the front page of HN, but in reference to the US: cell tower queries, facial recognition, license plate harvesting, long detention periods without being charged, etc.

jack_tripper 11mo ago
>Calling it "German authoritarianism" risks thinking it's a localized phenomenon or special case. It very much is though. Plenty of other countries in EU like France or Romania for example but probably many more, don't have even remotely as many authoritarian and invasive BS laws as Germany does. But the worst part is that Germans have gaslit themselves to think that their authoritarian laws are there "for their own protection". They don't even realize they have a problem, until they move and live abroad and learn you can run a country without your government have so many surveillance and speech control powers over what you can do or say in public about their leaders.
- bondarchuk 11mo ago
  Just some data to give a little bit of context, however flawed or reductive it may be.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices#List_of_scores_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices#List_o...
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    I don't really care what some arbitrary number on Wikipedia tells me about the freedom of a country I know quite well, as long as I am unable to insult my political leaders on the internet for their fuckups or say that 'Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide', without police later knocking on my door to arrest me for "hate speech" or "far right extremism", I consider the freedom score of that country to be ZERO. This is mostly a UK, Germany and Austria exclusive issue in the EU-zone and not an EU widespread issue quite yet, but boy they sure are trying to get everyone at that same level. Any scientist will tell you to not to look at the end data, but to look at the formula used to calculate the result and the way in which the data for the study was gathered. That's what's most important. Depending on what your formula and data is, you can get to any arbitrary result you want, which is how scientists also had studies in the 1950s saying that smoking was good for your health.

jack_tripper 11mo ago

German history and culture was always about following rules and following a strong figure of authority, whether that be someone with a toothbrush moustache or someone making diamond hands.

CoastalCoder 11mo ago
> someone making diamond hands. To what is this referring? I got the Hitler reference, but not this one.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  When you google "German politician diamond hands" you get the answer: Angela Merkel

MomsAVoxell 11mo ago

In my opinion its: Village life. Germany is a state of small villages/towns/cities/city-states, interconnected with fairly productive lines of communication - but it is very easy to live ones entire life in a German village and never leave. At village scales, authoritarianism is given more credence by the individual because ones life boundaries are reduced to the immediate environment, which is not really sustainable without structured hierarchy. Incidentally, this is also a factor in why American’s adopt authoritarianism so rapidly as well - spending 3 hours of ones life in a bubble, on the freeway, commuting, is extremely damaging to ones psyche. Road-rage and neighbor hatred abound in such circumstances. The solution to authoritarianism is travel beyond ones bounds. The roots of totalitarian-authoritarianism grow deeply in the desire to be free of the ‘filth of others’ - once you expand your horizons to embrace that ‘filth of others’, through travel and cultural interaction, that ‘filth of others’ becomes ‘the flavor of others’ instead. This is easily demonstrated: talk to a German who has never left their home town/talk to a German who regularly visits vastly different parts of the world. You will see the authoritarian in the former, but the libertarian in the latter.

MichaelZuo 11mo ago
This seems a bit incoherent, there must be a real reason for them to start thinking the “filth of others” has some basis in reality… It couldn’t have arisen just randomly or on a lark.
- MomsAVoxell 11mo ago
  The “filth of others” can be described in as many ways as a human might use to justify their elevation of one tribe over the degradation of another. Look at it critically - whenever you encounter a totalitarian-authoritarian personality bloviating about “those people over there” (others), its usually based on the totalitarian mechanism of ‘avoiding affinity with attributes considered unsavoury’ (filth). This concept has other applications. If you have two villages, separated perhaps by a near-insurmountable mountain or lake, or if one of those villages raises cows while the other raises goats - this is usually the basis of the formation of a new dialect, accent, or indeed entirely new language. However, when civilization occurs and those two villages merge into a broader community, that language changes to become a unity. This is observable at an individual level, too. Any unacknowledged or under-recognized similarities/identities/differences between two or more entities will inevitably be used to justify segregation of those entities. The solution, as always, is to identify similarities/identities/differences in a cohesive manner - this is anathema to the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, who is usually pretty stubborn about enforcing, in totality, those under-acknowledged facets.

mikkupikku 11mo ago

Have you ever noticed how often Germans online like to say "That's not how we do it in Germany..." "We don't do that in Germany..." "In Germany we..." ? Germans seem to have a cultural thing going on where they think the way they do things is the most logical and correct way, and think they're doing everybody else a favor by telling them how things are meant to be done. In fairness, so do Americans. But, for instance, I never hear this shit from the French.

seec 11mo ago
Yes, Germans have a nasty superiority complex, and that's really not funny at times.
UntappedShelf21 11mo ago
The America of Europe in this way.