Election craziness.

[sister_luck]

No, I'm not talking about the States though I expect that things will get more heated before "super-duper-Tuesday".

This is homegrown. There are elections soon in some of the German states and somehow youth crime has become the big issue with an emphasis on crime committed by young men with an immigrant background. Of course, the whole debate is just a tad beyond borderline racist - politicians are walking a fine line so they can't be accused of blatant racism but there's lots of scaremongering going on with shouts of "Just send them all home".

The campaigns and statements are becoming increasingly silly. Now we've got a politician calling for a special punishment as Volksverhetzung for anyone who calls a German Scheiß-Deutscher, i.e. "you fucking German". I doubt that this guy is a lawyer and it's again just a populist pandering to the masses.

So, what about Scheiß-Türke or Scheiß-Ausländer which is by far the more common and the original insult?

edited because of spelling mistake in a German(!) word

Comments

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

We've got "Kutmarrokaantjes" (youth delinquents of Maroccon decent). Some years back the editor of a Flemish left-wing newspaper got heaps of critique for using the term too lightly.

Oh and "kut" is a not-so-nice word for the female sexual organ.

(Considering the nature of swear words I find it interesting we do use the Dutch equivalent of "Scheiß" in compound* words like these, but have a clear preference for anything related to male ("kloot") and female sexual organs.

*I hope I used this word correctly. It's what the dictionary suggested...

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Germans tend to be very anal about their swearwords with Scheiß(e) and Arsch(loch) among the most popular.

What gets me though is that the serious problem of youth violence is getting reduced to these populist soundbites. There's no real debate just accusations that a) all the leftists are being too soft and that b) the right wing folks are trying to exploit the problem by reinforcing stereotypes.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

It's the same over here. There has been a debate going on whether or not to install youth prisons. But in the end it all got pushed to the background because of problems between the communities.

Ad every debate, whether it's youth violence or taxes: they all end up being cheap slogans during election time.

Well I'm off to bed now. I might say something more comprehensive later. Right now I feel like one of those superficial people who wants the government to have opinions so she doesn't need to have any.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

We actually do have prisons for young people but often the time between the crime and the trial is way too long etc. and then I believe that when someone does something that merits prison in most cases there were lots of opportunities before that to prevent this from happening.

I wonder whether we'll get something similar to ASBOs though this hasn't really entered the debate yet.