I worked previously at the Lebiniz institute in Dresden. If you haven’t been, it’s one of the most beautiful cities in Europe (esp. at night).
East Germany is still suffering from the economic damage of the cold war. The political challenge of funneling money from the west to the east is the same dynamic in the US that didn’t support the losers of globalization.
This had led to the rise of the far right et al.
Fun trivia: Early in Putin’s career, he was a spy in Dresden trying to learn about technology development.
One thing I want to clarify about the rise of the far-right in East Germany is that a lot of people with far-right views moved from the West to the East, too. It's not just people from the East suffering economic hardship turning right, it's also an influx of "foreigners" (read: Western Germans) making it worse.
Here are two short documentaries about two separate instances of this (German):
Germans are bringing this up every time Saxony is mentioned in a conversation, it has become a commonplace joke, saxony==nazis. I believe it's unfair. Dresden is not only a beautiful city, it has great people. Far right exists, but they're still a minority even in the rural parts of Saxony. So it is a bad idea to associate the rest of society with them.
I have been to the city multiple times on business trips, and witnessed the PEGIDA demos, and the counter-demos. The latter were bigger, and, obviously, more fun to witness as a foreigner.
Another episode: I was walking to my stay through Dresden at night, i crossed on red. A yound girl in police uniform addressed me in English and asked me to please wait for green next time. It was late, the streets empty, she was half my size, unarmed and out of duty. She was probably not even a real officer, rather an Azubi. I'was big, bearded, tactical style clothing, obviously foreign. I was shocked.
Blue is the party AfD, which is under surveillance by our (historically, rightwing extremism ignorant) inland intelligence agency,... for their extreme right, anti-constitutional and antisemitic views.
Many places there are basically a "no-go area" for PoC. Not even Leipzig and Dresden are really safe. The police continuously makes headlines for right wind sympathies/connections. Btw. it's one of the least culturally diverse places in Germany.
Oh it's also a hot spot for antivax folks and their numbers are insane.
look, i know the numbers, it's a big issue, I'm not saying it isn't. But blaming all Saxons an associating them with the far right is similar to blaming people of being criminals based on their ethnic background.
it will result in a growth of the far right in Saxony, because people who are not far right will either move away, or end up in a far right bubble because everyone else is bashing them
And East Germans, you might not know this, but a lot of Western Germans are teasing Eastern Germans that they pay for this, when in general there is a tax for all citizens. In general this kind of support is needed, and with positive results, see Bavaria, which had no industry until recently. Or big factories that were relocated after WWII like Audi from Zwickau (Saxony) to Ingolstadt (Bavaria).
What exactly are the characteristics of the 'far right' in Germany?
The reason I ask is that I have had European friends tell me that Bernie Sanders would be considered as a right-leaning centrist in their country. So clearly the frames of reference are different...
Straight anti-semitism, holocaust denial, NWO conspiracy theorists, neonazi hooligans, violence, militias, murder, right-wing terrorism (far bigger than left-wing activities, including the RAF). Saxony has places considered "no-go" areas for PoC.
It's just your left isn't very leftist. Baseline solidarity and collectivism is different here (foundation for universal health dates back to 1845), and we didn't have the "red scare" oppression and persecution time you got - our "leftist" and leftist structures are older and established, not a moral panic. Btw. you also see that in our hacking scene, which is predominantly leftist/anarchist leaning (tough for state recruiting, as capable folks are generally not patriotic enough for that shitty pay). The biggest hacking conference in Europe, the CCC congress, is a little leftist, self-organized utopia, and very different from events like defcon. Some nazi web structures preemptively go offline around that time, as congress always gets a very good, unregulated uplink deal and spontaneous synchronization of efforts and enemies in extensive bring-your-own-servers networks. The event is strictly non-commercial - no sponsors, no ads, no company booths - and completely run by volunteers, for several decades now :) https://media.ccc.de/v/all_creatures_welcome
They hate foreigners and some of them (especially in the east) like to beat them up. They are by no means something like anarcho-capitalists that are called far right because the mainstream is leftist.
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https://www.ft.com/content/75841b94-196e-466f-ad1b-72d3809c3...
The region has been burnt by politicians’ fading interest before. While Taiwan was shoring up the semiconductor sector with nine-figure subsidies at the turn of the century, European support for the capital intensive industry remained modest.
As recently as 2009, Dresden-based memory chipmaker Qimonda — one of the world’s largest — filed for bankruptcy after struggling to compete with Asian rivals despite appeals to the European Commission for support.
“Qimonda wasn’t saved, [carmaker] Opel was saved,” said Frank Bösenberg, managing director of Silicon Saxony’s representative body, which lobbies on behalf of 370 institutions. “Whose belts are standing still right now due to the lack of semiconductors?” he said, referring to Opel’s production lines.
yes, the ft does that. i guess it’s against their t&c to just copy their articles and they want to make that clear. they do have share button that allows a number of clicks without needing a subscription.
Yeah, it always does this if you are an FT subscriber when copying/pasting their articles.
This can be extremely annoying as a screenreader user. While FT is an extremely accessible newspaper, it can sometimes be more convenient to just copy/paste the article into a screenreader software.
I don't know whether there are any real complementarities between chipmaking and operating systems r&d being geographically close (doubtful) but in case there are, I vaguely understand Dresden is a bit of a hub for the latter due to TU Dresden and Genode Labs.
Not really. The US companies have some bad reputation regarding work culture ( no holidays, expectation to be available after hours).
There are a lot of European companies.
Hence my question: what in this current "Silicon Generic Location" plan is the strategy to get the investors required for such a company to be founded?
None. They have no plan. That's honestly the answer. They don't want to make the challenging cultural and social mindset change required to produce a genuine competitor to Silicon Valley. In fact I would guess that they most likely don't even have the most basic idea of what is different about the Silicon Valley.
Was Silicon Valley a deliberate government led initiative (beyond partnership and funding)? I'm sceptical of these "Silicon X" top-down projects which don't seem to have a great history (cf eg Silicon Roundabout);
I would have thought that while government input and infrastructure help is useful, attempts at driving something at a high level in imitation of something else misses the point of low-level evolutionary growth, invention and originality.
It's just a buzz word, calling something silicon valley doesn't make it so, there we agree :) At the same time the world sure is bigger than a city/university and there's tech hubs everywhere. Not having a hub for semi-conductors in Europe and Us seems foolish.
> I'm sceptical of these "Silicon X" top-down projects which don't seem to have a great history (cf eg Silicon Roundabout);
I don't know how much the government helped with this, but the UK has one of the largest software industries in the world, right after the US and China. It's hard to argue it hasn't worked, even if were unclear as to what "it" is
Right now covid in Saxony is so bad that they’ve closed hotels to non business travelers. It doesn’t bode well for Saxony as a tech hub when their residents won’t get vaccinated.
Recently a friend moved from India to Dresden to work for a company in the "silicon" ecosystem. For some reason his name on the postal box where he and family lives temporarily, was tore off multiple times. Missed a few urgent letters.
You know how it is in Germany, if you miss a letter from the Government office.
Side question, as it puzzled me as a foreigner in Czech Republic, which apparently has the same rules.
Why on Earth is it a requirement to have your name on the postal box (or the mailman won’t put it in)? You are registered to the flat number, this information exists with all possible level of fidelity.
I don't think so. The Czech population registry works with addresses, but does not contain the exact apartment you live in. In case of blocks of flats, there might be ~ 100 apartments with the same address.
It is different if you are the owner. The land registry does contain finer ownership data up to the level of the apartment.
But as a renting person, while your contract will contain the apartment number, the authorities won't be registering that. You may actually go completely officially unregistered for years if you never visit the town hall and ask for a registration. It is not a hard requirement to get registered as a renter.
But post will be delivered to you nonetheless if your post box is labeled with your name and someone knows your address.
Thank you for clarifying. As a foreigner, I was never allowed to rent without registering, so it slipped my mind that indeed for citizens it may be the case. Nevertheless it’s a security issue like OP mentioned, someone can change a letter or change their name to yours for a day on the sticker and get your mail.
because there are no flat numbers in Germany as far as i know, the house has a number as in randomstreet XY and then it goes by name on the bell and postal box. Your best strategy would be to derail your mail to a Postfach at the postal office and get your packages delivered to Packingstations of the delivery-service of your choice.
Hopefully the exposure to foreign professionals will lead to a decrease in xenophobia. So I think it's the other way around. It's not that there are fewer foreigners there because of right wing politics, but the right wing politics are flourishing because there are fewer foreigners (add to that the economic after-effects of the GDR that are still lingering more than 30 years later).
I'm sure you have some sources for your bold claims. Also, I think you may have gotten the point of my comment wrong. The comment I replied to made it sound like it's a bad idea to build in the saxony area because of racism, which is a wrong way to think about this, because this will only let the problem persist. Of course, this will only work if law enforcement will punish right wing violence.
That number does notably not include non-violent attacks like threats, derogatory comments or slurs, as well as the ever-present discrimination against non-Germans.
