Berlin Approves New Expansion of Police Surveillance Powers

What is it about German culture that makes authoritarianism so popular?

In my opinion its: Village life. Germany is a state of small villages/towns/cities/city-states, interconnected with fairly productive lines of communication - but it is very easy to live ones entire life in a German village and never leave.

At village scales, authoritarianism is given more credence by the individual because ones life boundaries are reduced to the immediate environment, which is not really sustainable without structured hierarchy.

Incidentally, this is also a factor in why American’s adopt authoritarianism so rapidly as well - spending 3 hours of ones life in a bubble, on the freeway, commuting, is extremely damaging to ones psyche. Road-rage and neighbor hatred abound in such circumstances.

The solution to authoritarianism is travel beyond ones bounds. The roots of totalitarian-authoritarianism grow deeply in the desire to be free of the ‘filth of others’ - once you expand your horizons to embrace that ‘filth of others’, through travel and cultural interaction, that ‘filth of others’ becomes ‘the flavor of others’ instead.

This is easily demonstrated: talk to a German who has never left their home town/talk to a German who regularly visits vastly different parts of the world. You will see the authoritarian in the former, but the libertarian in the latter.

This seems a bit incoherent, there must be a real reason for them to start thinking the “filth of others” has some basis in reality…

It couldn’t have arisen just randomly or on a lark.

The “filth of others” can be described in as many ways as a human might use to justify their elevation of one tribe over the degradation of another.

Look at it critically - whenever you encounter a totalitarian-authoritarian personality bloviating about “those people over there” (others), its usually based on the totalitarian mechanism of ‘avoiding affinity with attributes considered unsavoury’ (filth).

This concept has other applications. If you have two villages, separated perhaps by a near-insurmountable mountain or lake, or if one of those villages raises cows while the other raises goats - this is usually the basis of the formation of a new dialect, accent, or indeed entirely new language. However, when civilization occurs and those two villages merge into a broader community, that language changes to become a unity.

This is observable at an individual level, too. Any unacknowledged or under-recognized similarities/identities/differences between two or more entities will inevitably be used to justify segregation of those entities. The solution, as always, is to identify similarities/identities/differences in a cohesive manner - this is anathema to the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, who is usually pretty stubborn about enforcing, in totality, those under-acknowledged facets.

I don’t see how this addresses the issue of there being an underlying real reason?

Of course the reason then subsquently can be inflated, conflated, mixed together strangely, contorted, etc… I’m not doubting that.

The underlying reason is a lack of cultural fluidity, or in other words, an over-abundance of cultural rigidity, which manifests as a desire to be free of other cultures.

The most effective antidote to totalitarian-authoritarianism is a one-way ticket to somewhere distant.

German villages, as comfortable as they are, don’t really promote this antidote.