I think that if you look at what has changed over these last few years, shall we say since 2015 in Europe (it started a bit earlier in the USA) is that these paradigms are changing and have changed.

The far right parties of the 80s and 90s often got elected on some fluke and disintegrated soon after, in part because the constant pressure fro the press, from ANTIFAS and other forms of harrassment broke the people who were not used to that or expecting it.

Today that is different, or at least is starting to be different. I think, as far as Europe is concerned, it all started in France when right-wing intellectuals started making their presence felt. It was supported by social media, youtube etc, and it was supporetd by the one-sided and blatant bias of the old media that more or less drove people to go onto the internet to find out what the arguments of the other side were. Thus far right parties today typically have far higher numbers of website visist than the old parties. There still isn't a proper right wing media, just Breitbart and that sort of stuff, but I believe given time it will evolve.

The left sees all this of course, and is fighting a reargaurd action, trying to hold onto market share in the media, seeing that their monopoly on being able to interpret and judge what is happening is faltering. And this is why a lot of these confrontations have turned so ugly. Some of them still think they can prevent change and turn the clock back. Others are beginning to accept that in future there will be more diversity in politics. And they themslves taught uis that diversity is strength. Now they must either live by it or take back their words.

In the 80s/90s things were more centered. Listen to Bill Clinton's (Democrat) speech on illegal immigration. Can you imagine a Democrat or any Liberal saying that today? That would be labeled "alt-right hate speech" immediately. The Left have simply gone too far and overplayed their hand, and "normal" people see that and are voting for Right-wing parties now to bring things back to the middle.

Well, they have a lot of loonies (in the AfD) even without selective reporting.

I liked the AfD of Bernd Lucke, before they started to suck up to Neo-Nazis.

I'm all for controlled migration and "tough on crime" - but you can do that without resorting to Nazi-insinuations and racist slogans or downright denying the Holocaust like a 15 year old teenager in his rebellious phase.

AfD-brass clearly think they can keep the brown bottom of the barrel under control and use them as a means to vacuum up most of the right/extremist vote while at the same time appealing to conservative voters no longer happy at CxU who wouldn't touch the Green party with a barge pole....

Funny you should mention France!
Le Pen is desperately trying to change the image of the National Front, change the name, rebrand it as more main stream and no longer anti-euro Link

Changing times after Trump and Brexit!!
Soon they will be pro-EU

Well, after the press have done their selective picking and distortion it obviously looks as if they have moire loonies. Does this really surprise you?

Plenty of oddballs in the SPD for example who deny the Armenian Holcuast or think the Khmer Rouge was a force for the good. But the press doesn't tend to focus on that very much.

I wonder why.

As I said: the AfD has a lot of people who were formerly SPD.

The loonies have to come from somewhere ;-)

What ever happened to all the 'refugees welcome' wankers?

String of knife attacks further fuels debate over refugees and violence

Fake news!
From your link "there are currently no comprehensive statistics on knife crime, making it difficult to make accurate statements about the severity of the increase in stabbings."

Also from my link:

With police statistics showing that refugees and asylum seekers are significantly over-represented in violent crime statistics, the political mood has been raw for some time

Yes, and as i said, when the loonies were still in the SPD, the press just looked the other way for the most part.

Thus proving that it's not what they say that is the problem in the eyes of the press but the party they are in.

And in the meantime, the old German crooner, Heino, who was popular in the 1960s thereabouts, and somehow managed to become hated by the left and intellectuals, and normally only makes it to the news when somebody realizes he isn't dead yet, has managed to hit the news by singing something that goes to the tune of the Dutch National Anthem. that the press seems to think is nazi-era but actually goes back to the Napoleonic wars.

http://www.dw.com/en/the-nazi-era-so...ino/a-43107292

Another provocation. Another over-reaction.

And when the dust settles it was all nothing.

But it shows that some people's nerves are on edge.

Let's put it this way - those songs were glorified by Hitler and SS. So for the large public, not only the press, they're strongly associated with that era. We already know that perception is everything. The fact that they are actually written in 1814 is not even relevant anymore. They'll have to educate the public before making these songs not controversial anymore.
On the one hand - they seem pretty war mongering, I don't know if a reciclying would make sense. On the other hand - for goodness sake, give Menschen a bit more credit than imagining they'll grab the torches and the pitchforks upon hearing some old fashioned lieds....plllleeease.
I agree it's probably much ado about nothing...

A lot of popular and folk songs are pretty war mongerous. Even many children's songs and rhymes get repeated without people actually thinking what they mean. Occasionally people tinker around with the words to try and Bowdlerize them. At some point the new version gets dated too so somebody has to tinker a bit more and the whole thing gets increasingly garbled over time and finally the lyrics don't mean anything at all and sound like something by James Joyce and the lyrics don't even match the tune and some people will say this is precisely what folk music is all about.

But outrage is cheaper than education. So that's what the press do.

Yeah..It would be comical if it weren't ridiculous imo. Lots of totally delusional creeps and shitheads around the world get away with much more uglier, ed-up hate stuff. Either political or religious. And they make a big deal out of some insignificant life fact. Or about him singing his hit Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss in South Africa...it only shows how people know their priorities....
But anyway this is Germany and maybe for some reason they're extra-careful with these things, not our business.

NZZ has a good article (in German), basically about why the German-led EU is being so tough on EE but ignoring what's happening in Spain.

https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/an-den-os...gen-ld.1374551

Doing nothing is all that German politics was ever good at.

That is certainly not going to change the next couple of years.

That's a good sign for Germany. Politicians shouldn't do much if things work..

Police hunt Iraqi asylum seeker over rape-murder of teenage girl

Police have detained a 35-year-old asylum seeker with Turkish citizenship on the suspicion that he was involved in the brutal crime. The other suspect, a 20-year-old from Iraqi, is believed to have fled back to his home country with his entire family. According, to Die Welt, the family used two different sets of identity papers to return home via Istanbul airport.

Danke Merkel.

War mongering you say?

So is much of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood. Or Shakespeare, or ancient Greek drama for that matter.

But as you say. people are smart enought to understand, and don't grab their pitchforks because of a movie or a song or some verse in diactric pentameters.

Well, not quite all people... but the Germans should be OK. Lots of lessons have been learned, I guess..."Those that live by the sword will die by the sword" ;-)