That Neonazi dispute? Plot twist it, we are a Munich school.

This is a drawing which was handed to my daughter's class. It shows a huge tree, representing the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany), rooted  in fascism, an ordinary German citizen and a judge of the Constitutional Court. The subject matter is the on-and-off going discussion on whether the NPD should be forbidden because, as some believe, it is a threat to democracy.

Unfortunately, based on the underlying logic in this drawing the students can only come to one conclusion, no matter if they are pro or contra a party ban. The conclusion will always be wrong!

Besides, the drawing, probably unintended, implies that Germans have fascism in their DNA (soil). That can hardly have been the intention of the Bavarian Ministry of Culture (yep, that's quite a mouthful).

The drawing is just a clipping of a scene that leaves aside the most basic and likewise most important question: how did the swastika root grow so sturdy? How did the seed out of which this root developed get there? Seeds are transported by wind force or scattered by bird droppings, which then raises the question how did that tree that managed to grow and produce seeds come to life?

In other words if you are seriously interested as a teacher, and it can be safely assumed that this drawing is part of the accepted curriculum of Bavarian (only Munich?) schools, then you must first dive back into history. Looks a little this is not really wanted by the Bavarian gurus for education.

Any endeavor to explain and understand something about the rise of fascism must start with:

• The defeat of Germany in WW1.
• The Versailles Treaty and the stipulated huge and crippling reparations.
• An explanation on what is money is absolutely critical, because only in understanding the function of money can you understand the rise of fascism.
• The Weimar inflation. The story of the destruction of the German mark during the hyper-inflation of Weimar Germany.
• The depletion of the gold holdings of the state.
• Discussion of Adam Fergusson's 1975 classic 'When Money Dies'.
• The US Great Depression. Stock market crash. This seriously affected Germany's economy and unemployment.
• And of course, read FA Hayek.

Former Prime Minister Henry Lloyd George, writing in 1932, remarked that words like "catastrophe," "ruin," and "devastation" were not enough to describe the situation, given the common usage into which such words had fallen. Looting, vandalism, theft, the rise in prostitution, famine, disease, the consumption of dogs; people robbed of their clothes on the street — all were routine events of the "bourgeois" social quotidien. The constant threat of civil war loomed, as did neighboring Bolshevism. Bavaria had to declare martial law.

"what broke the germans was the constant taking of the soft political option when it came to matters of money"  <--- Sound Familiar?  Look out folks.

 "the point of no return therefor, was not a financial one, but a moral one" "germans learned that their traditional repository for wealth had disappeared, and thus the only mechanism for determining the value of an item was its immediate necessity"

 "mans values became animal values"

 "a prositute in the family was more valuable than a baby, a kilo of potatoes worth more than a grand piano, clothing more essential than democracy, food more needed than freedom"