Germany, the land of “never again,” has once again become complicit in genocide. While the world watches Gaza burn under relentless bombardment, while hospitals are flattened and children pulled from rubble, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD)—the so-called moral center of postwar German democracy—has exported weapons, criminalized protests, and suppressed Palestinian voices in the name of “historical responsibility.” But this responsibility has nothing to do with justice. It is not about preventing genocide, but preserving comfort—not about truth, but performance.
The SPD, ruling during this genocide, wears the face of antifascism while practicing the very logic of a fascist empire. And it is not alone. It is sustained by a voting bloc of mostly white, over-60 Germans who have made peace with the past by abandoning the present. This generation, who once claimed to carry the burden of memory, now vote to keep in power those who facilitate another genocide—this time in Palestine. Their antifascism ends at the borders of Europe and the limits of whiteness. Their votes do not oppose fascism; they uphold it, masked in moral nostalgia.
Germany’s postwar memory culture taught its citizens to say “Nie wieder”—never again. But it failed to teach them to recognize “again” when it comes in different colors, languages, and geographies. The guilt complex became a shield. The history of the Holocaust was reduced to a ritual, a hollowed-out ethics that teaches people how to remember, but not how to act. It is a culture of memory without conscience, and it is weaponized now to silence solidarity, criminalize speech, and justify murder in Palestine under the banner of Israeli security.
What’s worse is that this is not an accidental failure. It is systemic. It is designed. The SPD is not a party of peace, but a historic betrayer of revolution. It was the Social Democrats who murdered Rosa Luxemburg. It was the Social Democrats who helped crush the German working-class revolution. And it is the Social Democrats today who silence voices for Palestinian liberation, label Jewish anti-Zionists as extremists, and make laws to strip citizenship from those who stand with the oppressed. They do this while preaching antifascism—a carefully curated antifascism that excludes colonial history, ignores imperialism, and treats any deviation from pro-Israel orthodoxy as radicalism or hate.
The “Antifa” legacy that Germany exports and celebrates is not resistance—it is simulation. The so-called “Anti-Deutsche,” born out of post-unification confusion and Cold War guilt, turned resistance into performance. They wave rainbow flags and Israeli flags together, shout against AfD while demanding more weapons for Zionist forces, and they exclude Palestinian voices from every public square in the name of tolerance. This is not a perversion of antifascism. It is its colonization. As Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, the system fakes its own opposition. And the pigs walk on two legs.
The voters—particularly the over-60 bloc—are not innocent here. Their votes are not neutral. When they re-elect the SPD, they are voting not for progress, but for a stable illusion. They vote for pensions, for continuity, for the familiar face of Olaf Scholz who assures them that everything is under control. That “never again” is being upheld. That Germany is morally clean. They are not responsible before history, as they love to claim—they are responsible now. And they choose silence. They choose comfort. They choose to look away from Gaza, away from Frontex camps, away from the criminalization of refugees in Tunisia and North Africa. In return, they receive security—an empire’s dividend for quiet compliance.
This same generation swallowed the Ukraine war narrative whole: that Russia is the new fascist threat, that NATO is the peacekeeper, that arming one side of a bloody conflict while suppressing dissent at home is moral. They were sold another story, and they bought it. Meanwhile, the minerals of Ukraine—22 out of 34 critical to modern technology—are already on the table for Western extraction, another battlefield dressed up as liberation.
Germany’s real role in the world today is imperial. It is colonial. It is violently enforced not only in Gaza, but in refugee deals with Tunisia, in deportations, in military deployments masked as humanitarian aid. The SPD has played this game better than anyone: keep the left hostage with identity politics, suppress any real revolutionary critique, and preserve the arms industry, trade surplus, and international clout—all under the slogan of progressivism.
And let us speak clearly: the working class of Germany has not escaped this betrayal. On the contrary—they have largely embraced it. Many in the working class drift toward AfD, seduced by its nationalism, its xenophobia, its empty promises of restoring dignity and economic clarity. Others remain loyal to SPD or the Greens, because they still believe the lie—that German society has changed. But it has not. It has adapted. The fascism that ruled once by uniform and torchlight now rules by law, by silence, by moral blackmail.
The lesson is clear: German society was never de-fascistized. It was rebranded.
The ghosts of Namibia, the ghosts of Auschwitz, and the fresh graves in Gaza all share one common thread: a society that refuses to dismantle its privileges, and instead weaponizes its history to preserve them.
And so what comes next?
The myth is cracking. Young Germans—many children of immigrants—are waking up. Global voices are refusing silence. Palestinians continue to resist, in the face of overwhelming violence. And the old order is afraid. That’s why they pass new laws. That’s why they ban protests. That’s why they double down on “historical responsibility” every time they commit a new crime.
The path forward must be uncompromising. No more illusions of a moral center. No more excuses made for older generations who vote away justice. No more alliances with those who silence the oppressed. The real left—revolutionary, anti-colonial, internationalist—must reclaim antifascism from the state, and name the violence for what it is.
Fascism is not only what Germany remembers.
It is what Germany still is—unless it is torn down.
