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Baraka_Guru · 10-17-2010, 02:04 PM

Well, the problem is that this isn't an inherently German problem. It's a problem with any state with a strong sense of nationalism. I think roachboy's OP is a good foundation to explaining this phenomenon, and it happens elsewhere.

Take Japan for instance:

Quote:

A black sun rises in a declining Japan
MARK MacKINNON
The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

Until recently, it was the likes of Mitsuhiro Kimura that worried Japan's political mainstream. The leader of the far-right Issuikai movement, he counted Saddam Hussein and French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen among his allies, and created friction with Japan's neighbours by loudly denying the country's Second World War crimes.

But now Mr. Kimura is among those concerned about a new breed of extremists, who are capitalizing on the bruised pride and swelling anger in Japan with a brand of politics that makes even a friend of the former Iraqi dictator uncomfortable. As this country staggers through a second decade of economic stagnation, and suffers the indignation of being eclipsed by historic rival China, there's a common refrain coming from the growing ranks of this country's young and angry: Japan must stand up for itself - and that foreigners are to blame for the country's ills.

Take the past week alone. Infuriated by a perceived Japanese climbdown in a dispute with China over an island chain that both nations claim, right-wingers tossed smoke bombs at the Chinese consulates in the cities of Fukuoka and Nagasaki. Another man was arrested with a knife in his bag outside the Tokyo residence of Prime Minister Naoto Kan. On Friday, a motorcade of 60 cars organized by a right-wing group briefly surrounded a bus carrying Chinese tourists in Fukuoka, prompting Beijing to issue a warning to its citizens about the dangers of visiting Japan.

No one was hurt in any of the incidents. But they highlight a tide of rising nationalism that is just one of the new social ills afflicting a country that 20 years ago was the richest and most stable on the planet. Two consecutive "lost decades" and a dearth of political leadership - five prime ministers in the past four years - have unmoored Japan.

[...]

With unemployment at a historic high of over 5 per cent - a number that understates the problem since many Japanese have given up looking for work altogether - the newly homeless now fill the country's parks and Internet cafés. Twenty-three per cent of Tokyo schoolchildren will rely on government aid for things such as school supplies this year. Depression stalks the country and 26,500 people committed suicide in 2009, the highest rate in the world. If the Great Recession is over, it doesn't feel like the recovery has started yet in Japan.

As in Europe 80 years ago, blame for the country's troubles has fallen on foreigners. The No. 1 target is ethnic Koreans who live in Japan (Zaitokukai is the Japanese acronym for the group's unwieldy formal title, Citizens' Group That Will Not Forgive Special Privileges for Koreans in Japan), followed by the Chinese. A liberalized immigration system, which pundits across the spectrum agree is desperately needed to help deal with a rapidly aging population, is considered too sensitive to touch for any politician concerned about keeping his job in the next election.

"There are of course some similarities with the fascist and Nazi movements. Those who join Zaitokukai are the jobless and the underemployed, those on the periphery of the established society. They're disheartened, and they have a lot of frustration," said Gemki Fujii, a right-wing intellectual and author. However, he said that Zaitokukai is doomed to remain a fringe group because few Japanese admire the group's abrasive tactics.

But the xenophobia that Zaitokukai helps spread via the Internet and its street demonstrations appears to be taking hold in Japan, which has a long tradition of isolating itself from the world. Racist comments about the country's ethnic Korean and Chinese citizens are startlingly common, while other foreigners - including some long-term residents of Japan - say they also feel increasingly unwelcome, and complain of police harassment and rules that prevent non-Japanese from renting homes or gaining professional tenure.

While many of Japan's neighbours - including China and both North and South Korea - say Tokyo still needs to do more to atone for its wartime misdeeds, academics say the country is moving in the opposite direction.

"There's been a re-emergence of a right-wing, nationalistic discourse and reinterpretation of history," said Koichi Nakano, an associate professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. "Go into a Tokyo bookstore and you're bound to run into piles of books that would not be acceptable in Western society - Holocaust denials and the such. If it were Germany, there would be a big scandal in the international community. But because it's Japan and [the books are] in Japanese, it makes it kind of invisible."

[...]

A black sun rises in a declining Japan - The Globe and Mail

Essentially the patterns are there for you to see in any nation state when things turn sour. People like to look for scapegoats. The easiest scapegoats are those who exist outside of the mainstream: the abject, the poor, foreigners, basically anyone viewed as outside the "norm"---the norm being what is desirable, or what is considered "real" according to the nationalistic mindset: a "real" German, or a "real" American for instance.

When things turn really bad, people turn against ruling powers. Of course, it's in the best interests of ruling powers to ensure that doesn't happen, and so they deflect the issue elsewhere. Sometimes they deflect it to where the real problem is, which is often a systemic thing, either the economic system or the social/political system, but these things are difficult to manage or change. The alternative to that is focusing on what people are (or can be) convinced is the problem: and now we're back to the easiest scapegoats.