Covidiots

I've shared many times with friends the notion that if I were a German I would be a member of the SPD, the German Socialist Party. It's the oldest political party in Germany. I was drawn to the socialists early on not just because I think at the top of the list of America's problems is the lack of a fair distribution of wealth (on both moral and practical political grounds) but because I so admired the person of Willi Brandt and wanted to be associated with men and women of his stature.

Willi Brandt went way beyond most resistors to Hitler. He actually emigrated to Norway and joined the anti-German forces fighting the Nazis, changing his name from the original Herbert Frahm to Willi Brandt to avoid detection by Nazi agents (he made the change official in 1948 after the war.) He, like Marlene Dietrich and others who actively fought the Nazis from abroad, made many enemies among people who thought resistance to Hitler was appropriate, but still felt that joining enemy forces was unworthy, if not actual treason. (Think Jane Fonda and the Vietnam War.) Despite that resistance from the right wing, Brandt was elected chancellor of Germany in 1969. He had also been mayor of Berlin for a time.

 
What clinched it for me as a fan of his was his "Kniefall" - the time he fell on his knees when laying a wreath at the memorial to the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1970. I remember watching it on television in Japan and being moved to tears. His comment on the act later was, "At the abyss of German history and under the weight of millions of murdered people, I did what people do when language fails." A Japanese leader, I understand, copied the act years later when recognizing Japan's incursion into Korea. He got the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring east and west together, always with strong opposition from the right. I love it that in America right-wingers would slap the label socialist on him, and miss the irony that this time they'd be right on.

The Socialist Party in Germany ran into some hard times recently before picking themselves up and winning the chancellorship again, with Olaf Scholz, in the last election, albeit in coalition with the Green Party (good show) and the libertarians (not so good show).

I have noted before, also, my admiration for Kevin Kühnert, the young guy who dropped out of college to head up the Young Socialists (Jusos). He's at the extreme left, opposed Scholz initially for being too far right, and advocates such things as not allowing people to own more than one house. He's now a member of the Bundestag for the district of Tempelhof/Schöneberg in Berlin. And here I show my bias. I like gay people who are smart and have an active social conscience. I love it that in the U.S. we didn't stop with Barney Frank, but have now even got a gay man in the president's cabinet. Germany's previous Health Minister was also a friend of Dorothy's.

But I'm getting carried away here. And being LGBT does not always signal a social conscience, alas - consider that Alice Weidel is one of the leaders of the AfD, for example. But I just wanted to endorse young Kevin in passing.

The two actual leaders (I don't know how they divide up the work) of the Socialist Party (it's actually not "socialist" but "democratic socialist" and even Kühnert calls himself a democratic socialist) are Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken. I really like these two politicians, as well.

Esken got into trouble last year for referring to the anti-vaxxers and Querdenkers opposed to masking and distancing as "Covidiots" on Twitter and the Berlin Attorney General's office reviewed the charges. They then dismissed them, arguing that as a German citizen she had a right to free speech.

My pro-German sympathies continue apace as long as these people are in charge.