the other day I was telling this abused immigrant I know that there's a direct line between

1) Nazis trying to genocide any stain on the purity of Aryan blood, trying to biologically erase Poland, for example;
2) modern Germans constant erasure of their ethnocentrism in Erinnerungskultur (for example, the fact that most Jews killed by Germans were not just Jews, they were Polish Jews or Czech or Slovak Jews, the fact that people were *deported* into concentration camps, as in, they were immigrants, the fact that they still call Oświęcim "Auschwitz", the fact that Polish or Yiddish or Slovak where not languages you could use at Nurenberg, the fact that after years of complaint the memorial to Polish victims in Berlin continues to be a temporary rock even as the Bundestag just dedicated millions to make a new memorial to (German) victims of Communism, etc. etc.)
3) the refusal to engage with anti-Slavic xenophobia, "I don't see race"-style, barely a century down the line of literal genocide, along with the official government position of "reparations are finished and racism is over" towards Poland,
4) 1 in 4 Germans currently lining up to vote for the NSDAP,
5) current German chancellor doubling down on how immigrants have ruined the Stadtbild, immigrants are coming for your daughters, and the only good immigrants are the ones with C1 German,

and,

6) the way German groups will keep you at arm's length constantly if you're a foreigner, the way leftist groups will shout "hoch die internationäle solidarität" but never have participation for you if you don't speak C1 German, the way mysteriously the whisper network always erect walls that put on the side of ostracism people of colour, Muslims, immigrants, the highly neurodiverse, the way the plenum will dismiss your people's lived experience then pay attention to the same exact thing when it's said by some USA youtuber, the way anarchists from Poland or Belarus get banned from Berlin events because "you support the war in Ukraine", the self-serving way German antifa sided with Israel mid-genocide, the way any way of speaking or emotional expression or relationship style that isn't German is never considered to be a cultural difference or valid way of being but always a malicious lack of consideration, a disturbance, a violence; and

7) the way that liberal and leftist Germans will keep their xenophobia always under the line of plausible deniability, it's not because you're an *immigrant* that the clerk was like that she was just grumpy, it's not because you're an immigrant if only you didn't smile so uncomfortably, etc., until you are a nervous wretch questioning reality and feeling like something less than everyone else, some sort of underhuman,

these are *the same thing*. liberal/leftist Germans are also vulnerable to the same thing. there's a direct continuation between Nazis and the plenum ostracism, and the line continues to way back before the Nazis, too. at some point you have to stop expecting that Germans will be open-minded because they *claim* internätionale solidarität, and prepare yourself to be excluded due to any minor difference.

@j12i showed me this from Ai Weiei, "What I Wish I had Know About Germany Earlier":

»When a society uses linguistic difference or cultural misunderstanding as excuses for exclusion, it has crossed into a more insidious form of racism. This is not a political opinion — it is an attitude, a stain in blood, passed down like genes.«
hyperallergic.com/1050197/what…

What I Wish I Had Known About Germany Earlier

A German newspaper commissioned an article from me but then refused to publish it.

^{Ai Weiwei (Hyperallergic)}