Submitted to McSweeney's Internet Tendency on May 3, 2025 - Rejected
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A remarkable exchange played out on X on Friday as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the government of key ally Germany of “tyranny in disguise” for designating the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist entity.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/02/politics/marco-rubio-germany-foreign-ministry-spat
All right, I'll give up. Why should I fight it any longer? If even the USA is telling me that the current incarnation of Nazism is nothing to worry about, who am I to disagree? After all, the AfD members are proud to be called "right-wing extremists" because that is exactly what they are, and they don't see anything wrong with that.
I grew up in Germany in the '80s and '90s, and basically everything I loved was produced in the great US of A. Surely they must know what's best for me, right?
Sure, I assumed that the AfD was bad because they were doing what the Nazis did almost a hundred years ago, but if the US Secretary of State is telling me that I’m wrong and that the AfD is OK, then why not just go all in?
Clearly, I have to take Vice President Vance's word for it when he calls the anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic AfD "the most popular party in Germany," even though polls show that they are not.
I thought it was a good idea to let Star Trek influence my moral compass more than Mein Kampf, but now I’m confused. After all, the country whose freedom of the press currently ranks 57th is telling us not to increase surveillance on actual Nazis.
When the AfD came up, their main platform was opposing the currency I had used my entire adult life, as well as open borders. These were two things that allowed me to visit friends and family all over Europe without too much hassle. Ten years ago, when I pushed my firstborn in a stroller through our city center and heard those AfD slogans, I thought, "Well, that surely sounds wrong." Now, I realize that I was the one who was wrong.
Later, when I took my kids to peaceful rallies against the AfD, surrounded by thousands of like-minded people, I tried to explain to them that there was a time when some very bad people from our country did some very bad things and that we took to the streets today to prevent something like that from happening again. However, I was actually perpetrating “tyranny in disguise” because our friends from the country that gave us beloved things like SpongeBob, Frozen, and Ariana Grande think that it’s time to embrace a new generation of supervillains.
So I guess I’ll just fucking embrace it?
It’ll just be a bit strange explaining it to my friends: “Hey, guys, we’re racist now. Are the beers on Saturday still on?” And to my kids who were obviously indoctrinated by me and also (incorrectly) thought that voting for the Nazi party was kind of a dick move. What about my wife’s family who doesn’t live here in Nazi Germany and probably won't visit for the holidays anymore? It’s a trade-off that everyone’s favorite car salesman/space cowboy is willing to make, so who am I to object?
Does Amazon.com ship swastika flags internationally?