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Strictly speaking you're right. But no one on the right is going to say 'Well, technically...' when they're hardly known for adherence to fact themselves.
This is not a scholarly debate, this is about people being forced into penury - which in itself will make a return to hard fascism more likely across Europe.
Making a rhetorical point which might make some people stop and think about what's happening, instead of accepting it as an economic inevitability hardly seems excessive in the circumstances.
Of course it might be labelled shrill and unserious.
But anything the left says and does is already shrill and unserious by definition. So why should we care about rhetorical propriety when no one else in the debate does?
Making a rhetorical point which might make some people stop and think
The point is that (as talos says above) this one is for the historically literate. Most people have never heard of Gleichschaltung.
If you're addressing the historically literate, Gleichschaltung is not the right term to use; if you're addressing the general public, Gleichschaltung is not the right term to use. And this is not "scholarly debate".
Though the thread has moved far from this by now, I think the development of the thread is proof enough that using Gleichschaltung is unproductive.
(On the other hand I find Niemöller moment apt, as Niemöllers quote has been and continues to be used in many situations unrelated to actual nazists.) Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
As an example, the Swedish Pirate Party has mostly used references to former DDR when doing examples of oppressive surveilliance. That I think is wise as former DDR is in Sweden mainly known for its oppressive surveilliance while for example Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, though examples of oppressive surveilliance, are more known for other things, like mass murders and wars.
So back to the topic here, it might have been more useful to use Merkel expects other countries to fall in line, to form lines as straight as in the 1st of May parades of her youth in DDR if one wants to evoke a picture of oppressive commands from Germany. It is not very catchy (I had to come up with an example right now) and I have no idea of what Merkel did under communism, but it is still more precise and uas a more well known image then Gleichschaltung. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
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