> I think what is interesting is that while PDS's nationalism has roots in
> the "socialist fatherland" conceptions referred to in the article,
> Lafontaine's racist populism is a Western German phenomenon.
Lafontaine is a racist? Where? When? Cite evidence, please, not texts which claim that because X party official spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally in Berlin, that official is objectively anti-Semitic.
> I don't know quite enough about the post-war history of West Germany to
> comment with any authority, but I think Lafontaine's cultural nationalism
> indicates a new quality in the politics of resentment in the face of the
> neo-liberal onslaught.
Eh? Postwar German politics has always been heavily nationalistic. I lived in Germany for two years (1994-96). Back then, it was a deeply conservative and at times xenophobic culture, and especially harsh for women, though with a much livelier political culture than the US. Like Japan, Germany didn't fully industrialize until the mid-20th century, so it has lingering traces of an agrarian, semi-feudal past. Still, 10% of Germany's population is foreign, and more immigrants come every year, so something has changed for the better, somewhere.
-- DRR