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https://aeon.co/essays/germany-became-a-tolerant-nation-only-by-painful-small-steps>
"After 12 years of fascism, six years of war, and the concentrated genocidal
killing of the Holocaust, nationalism should have been thoroughly discredited.
Yet it was not. For decades, nationalist frames of mind continued to hold. They
prevailed on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain and predominated in the
Global North as well as in the developing world of the Global South. Even in
the Federal Republic of Germany, the turn away from ‘the cage called
Fatherland’ – as Keetenheuve, the main character in Wolfgang Koeppen’s novel
The Hothouse (1953), called his depressingly nationalistic West Germany –
didn’t commence immediately.
When the turn did begin, however, Keetenheuve’s country would set out on a
remarkable journey – not one racing down the highway to cosmopolitanism, but
rather a slow one that required a series of small steps leading to the gradual
creation of a more pacific, diverse and historically honest nation – a better
Germany."
Via Doug Senko.
There are other countries that still urgently need to follow the same path.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
