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And it’s here again. The story is quite simple. People’s deputy Šimon Heller (yes, he is the one who uttered the unforgettable wisdom “beef is beef and chicken is chicken” on the topic of gay unions, haha) proposed Berndt Posselt, the longtime frontman of the Sudeten German expatriate association (Czech: “landsmanšaft”), for the state award.
Of course, it is not certain that Mr. Posselt will receive the metal from President Pavel in October, I would rather guess that he will not, even though the president also praised Posselt’s contribution to calming Czech-German relations during his visit to Bavaria last year.
However, in Czech patriotic circles, after Heller’s proposal, the usual consternation broke out, gradually turning into proposals for general mobilization. He faints as usual when he hears the connection “Sudeten Germans” https://twitter.com/ZahradilJan/status/1787005534484197404 from the ODS. But this time SPD chairman Tomio Okamura took the main role for himself: “Mr. Posselt and his organization are the gravediggers of the German Nazis, they falsely rewrite history and strive for the return of property in the Czech Republic that was rightfully confiscated as elsewhere in Europe on the basis of the Postupim agreement,” said Okamura List of Messages.
Yes, it could be handled easily and just ignore Tomio Okamura. However, this situation is so spicy that it is appropriate to add something to it. Yes, there are indeed individuals in Czech politics who – to use their dictionary – agree with the mental “burial Nazis falsely rewriting history”. And one of them is Tomio Okamura personally.
His SPD sits in the same faction of the European Parliament as Germany’s AfD – Alternative for Germany. And Okamura makes no secret of his personal friendship with one of their leaders, Bundestag member Petr Bystronie, a man who does not like to accept excessively large banknotes from Russian vaults.
AfD, according to surveys today the second strongest German party, which is also being monitored by the German secret service for a long time due to its extremist tendencies, has long been demanding the cancellation of the Beneš decrees, which is now essentially a dead topic even for most “Sudeten German politicians”, including Posselt. What about Okamura, who last dramatically promised us last November that the SPD would never allow the Beneš decrees to be broken?
However, the ride of Okamura’s German friends through history is far from over. Last year, when asked why she was not celebrating the victory over Nazism, AfD co-chair Alice Weidel replied succinctly: “I didn’t want to celebrate the defeat of my own country.”
And Erika Steinbach, head of the party think tank Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung, added: “The Allies did not want to liberate Germany, but rather to defeat it. And they did it thoroughly, in violation of all international law.”
Well If Tomio Okamura was willing to answer some of the unpleasant questions, we would probably learn something about the fact that the SPD obviously does not agree with this point of view, please, the SPD has always been anti-fascist, yes, you lying scum of the News List, but we we won’t even ask because there’s no point.
In reality, Tomio Okamura doesn’t really think anything, he doesn’t believe in anything, he just willingly slaps whatever his populist-xenophobic instinct tells him at any time.
The recent congress of Okamur’s SPD was honored with a visit, respectively a greeting from the former Czech presidents Miloš Zeman and Václav Klaus – two politicians who based several of their election campaigns on the Sudeten German card and Beneš’s decrees. Yes, it is the same Václav Klaus, who declared himself a fan of the AfD in 2016 and last supported the party at a pre-election event last year.
Tomio Okamura has great teachers.
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