Being German, unfortunately the answer to that is yes, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s because the media and politicians have been courting right wing ideologies over the past 20 years to an extent that things have become normalized that should have never been normalized, e.g. framing asylum seekers as „migrants“ and adopting dehumanizing language against them, which has led to us having AFD polling at 20% and CDU at 30%.

CDU has recently collaborated with the right wing extremist AFD to push through a proposal for an anti-migration bill that violates our constitution. There has been an uproar but CDU and AFD actually polled higher after this. Our country is in deep trouble and we’re moving into a very scary direction.

I have been active for a long time and the amount of censorship has escalated. We always had issues with being denied rooms, being canceled, being silenced, I could never issue my pro-Palestine views without fear of being fired. But the least I could do was going to protests peacefully and wearing a kuffiyeh in school without being disciplined. Now I am honestly afraid to go to protests because of all the police brutality and children are being disciplined for wearing kuffiyes or football Trikots.

This is the first step into authoritarianism. And maybe you say it’s nonsense now but at the speed we’re heading into fascism in Germany it’s only a matter of time until other groups can take their turn. What if CDU takes an even harder stance on abortion, criminalizes LGBTQ people? Now if your kid is LGTBQ or your daughter needs an abortion, good luck.

The amount of repression these protesters are facing should scare all of us, no matter if we’re actively involved in protesting against this genocide enabled by our own government or not.

I‘m from Germany so had no idea about Kurt Vonnegut, just read through his biography and work and I think that’s the kind of story I had in mind. Definitely gonna read some of his work, seems highly relevant still nowadays.

Astroturfers losing their jobs to AI. I imagine some poor guy coming home after a long day of warmongering and promoting nuclear energy, hanging up his coat: „honey, I’m home“. And the wife has prepared a beautiful dinner, it could be a wonderful day. „How was work today?“, the wife asks. And the guy has to tell her how he lost his job to the evil twin brother of ChatGPT because corporate has done the math and they realized that a bot can replace possibly hundreds of humans. It’s a tragedy really, how is the guy going to pay for his mortgage? How’s he gonna feed his family? I think astroturfers should unionize to combat this kind of automation. It creates harm to society.

Thank you for your suggestion kind stranger take my gold sir edit this blew up thank you for the award