There is a difference between “necessary” and “appealing to the sort of dumbass who likes to talk about how tough he is.”

As to tactics: It clearly get’s news coverage and if we really are looking at the work of Anarchist groups then they’re not going to mind if the left ends up with egg on it’s face.

In America, the term is pointed at white people although usually urban renewal brings mixed neighborhoods and not ethnic enclaves.

Some affordable housing requirements should help renters from getting ousted and some home owners stay in their homes, but people investing in housing stock, paying more taxes, and working to improve city govt and schools should be a blessing for many cities. Instead it is treated like a surge by folks that I have to guess, want to live in dilapidated old wrecks.

oh wait…

While I agree with your overall point, I feel I must point out a slight inconsistency in your comparison. The rich, quite simply, have more options than the poor. The rich have the ability to get the poor around them removed “legally.” And, unlike the poor stuck in less affluent neighborhoods, the rich have the resources to move to any neighborhood they want to, assuming the less affluent neighbors don’t start burning their property.

Doesn’t exactly justify it, I know; I’m just sayin…

Overall I’m not really in favor of this whole thing (not sure I’m really against it, either).

Yeah I happen to know one or two, but if their luxurious car got burned because they displayed and parked it in poor neighborhoods, I wouldn’t want to know them.

So what you’re saying is that people with money shouldn’t socialize with poor people? That sounds kind of elitist from here.

“I used the German term “Stallgeruch” , which literally translates at “stable smell”. But what it means is “to have the right pedigree” or “belonging to a certain social group”. It also implies that *not* having the same “stable smell” will cause problems, up to total rejection.

Is there a catchy English term for this? I couldn’t find one.”

That’s an interesting word. It makes me think of the phrase “from the wrong side of the tracks,” which has similar failings to the other suggestion of “not one of us.” Both phrases seem too limited, though — “wrong side” implies a binary us vs. them situation while “one of us” focuses on the individual group from which the subject is being excluded.

Stallgeruch seems to imply a sort dislocation within a set of many options. That is, the subject isn’t being excluded from a specific group, instead the observation is being made that something is out of place and that’s going to cause problems.

The lack of an English word or catchy phrase to describe this exact idea is probably due to cultural differences between places where English and German are spoken. It seems revealing about the way people express views on class structure, although maybe it’s not a very shocking revelation. For instance, I would expect that the Japanese would have at least one word or phrase to describe this exact idea. That the English language lacks this particular turn of phrase isn’t actually all that surprising.

Thinking about this word also left me considering the difference between how words in German or Japanese are seemingly “constructed” as opposed to the way words are “coined” in English. Right now we’d have to describe this whole idea in order to convey the thought in English. Eventually, though, someone might put a sort of title over the long description and people might start using that title rather than the whole description. The word doesn’t isn’t inherently derived from the meaning, the meaning is assigned to the word.

@17 benher:

“The Germans have a word for everything.”

According to Bablefish, it’s “alles.”

Even in middle-class suburbia where I live, many people built their houses with parking space for one care only in mind, yet very often own two.

As a result, many have to park at the sidewalk. Plus, even if they had garages for their cars, they wouldn’t have garages for visiting friends.

Yeah that kind of sounds elitist and stupid, but it’s not what I said…

@Peterbruells:

Ok now I get the streber thing, though I still don’t think it has anything to do with what happens in Berlin right now ;). But seriously, public transport is not an inconvenience!

this is not envy. the “ticks” or “zecken” as we call those people in german fear to lose their quarters by “gentrification”. i really hate this word. in german you may call it “yuppisierung” which i hate even more. that’s why i call this process “entzeckung” or “de-tickification” in english.

the problem is that the homeowners invest their money into their own buildings, renovating them to get more rent. but the ticks don’t want that cuz they fear to lose their homes. so they burn big cars of people which moved to already renovated buildings in their quarters. how stupid! a little too late, i’d say. and with no effect at all. cuz the big cars are usually well-insured. instead of using their brains and do protesting at the right time they turn themselves into criminals.

i really think about buying a “the tick” costume to go on nightly vigilante missions here in berlin catching red-handed arsonists ;)

You said it though: The method employed doesn’t really work. And better grass-root tactics before would not work, either, because of the envy I mentioned: In that climate, there is a kind of neighborhood spirit, but one that absolutelly requires people of have the right Stallgeruch – god forbid someone betters themselves. Envy kicks in, new cars get scratched. That’s why the home-grown upstarts go away, leaving the underachievers (and not necessarily all underachievers by choice, I’ll give you that) *both* at home and open to gentrification. Because they won’t gentrificate themselves.

And yes, they turn themselves into criminals, but as long as they burn Mercedes and Porsche, they get positive feedback from the lower middle class people, who are live comfortable with their income, but have a both a bad conscience and a feeling that they should earn more.

However, I reply mostly because of the Streber. You mixed up the causality: People get termed “Streber” because they are diligent and get good grades. The kind who calls other “Streber” are usually those who’d like the good grades, but not the work associated with it. Interestingly, the kind who doesn’t have to work a lot to get a good grade, who get by by their intelligence, are usually not called Streber, and very seldom need to put down those who work for their grades, either.

Anyway, in that milieu some people don’t really give a rat’s a* about the public image. They are either in denial, thinking that the average German will actually rise (which he won’t, he’ll just be slightly sympathetic as long as only really expensive cars get hit) or think that they actually have a functional society of their own, forgetting that a necessary MRI scan or liver transplant – which they will get, if they need it – can only be paid because the seemingly dull majority pays their taxes and public health insurance on time.

1) Before the reform, income tax would go to the state in which the income was earned. Afterwards it went to the state the person lived in. Nowadays that’s for many high-income employees what’s roughly equal to “suburbia”, which in the case of the city-state, lies usually in other states.

Is there a catchy English term for this? I couldn’t find one.

I have been engaging in similar (but not identical) activities.