I lived in Hamburg for 2yrs in the mid 2010's and there's a non insignificant number who are very pissy about the longterm consequences of the Nazi's. They like to say things like "That was my grandparents" or "My grandparents weren't Nazi's" and then say Americans are the only racists in the world.
is always maddening, because it's like "yes of course america is a hideously racist country in so many ways but at least some of us are aware of it, unlike everybody in [country x]"
Yeah I don’t like to give America too much credit but there is way more willingness to discuss this stuff than most other places. Particularly in like academic or political spaces.
hard to explain, perhaps, but your american weirdo racist going on about 'woke' probably has a more sophisticated understanding of the issues than your supposedly 'high level' european feigning interest in 'decolonization'
They understand quite precisely that all this "woke stuff" directly threatens their way of life, that is, being horrible racists. Which, as you say, is in some ways preferable to people who say "I am not a racist and yet this woke stuff feels threatening to me for reasons I can't pin down."
Islamophobia is so huge and vast and all pervasive that addressing it would be systemically catastrophic. Like one of those old ruins where it's basically only being held together by the ivy.
Do you remember when the most senior Muslim member of the Tory party said in an interview that David Cameron had been radicalised by Gove, and everyone in the press who had been rending their garments over Corbyn's antisemitism problem suddenly lost the ability to read.
It's honestly difficult to explain it to people from elsewhere who haven't seen it for themselves. And wilder to explain to Brits "you know this is really weird right?"
yah it's hard to explain you don't mean this, just glaringly obvious things or smaller things that leak out on twitter from the dumber ones that make clear what they are doing
