Thought #399: BMW's Hypocrisy: PR Stunts Instead of Real Principles
BMW recently refused to provide an official company car to the newly elected AfD state parliament president, Rausch. On the surface, that sounds like a positive headline: a major corporation seemingly taking a clear stance against far-right extremism. But if you look closer, it's mostly corporate PR.
My wife is from Volgograd—the former Stalingrad. As a Millennial, she is another generation removed from WWII, but as a native of Volgograd, she remains deeply connected to her city's history. In 2017—five years before war criminal Putin's brutal war of aggression against Ukraine—we visited her hometown. We went to Mamayev Kurgan, the planetarium, and the Battle of Stalingrad Museum.
In the museum, there was an old WWII BMW motorcycle with a sidecar. What shocked me at the time was that it bore the exact same BMW logo as my BMW GS 70 bike back then. I thought to myself:
What the f, BMW didn't even bother to change its logo after WWII.
The corporation grew through fascism, supplied the Wehrmacht, and made massive profits off the war.
The Quandt family—still the primary shareholders and multi-billionaires in Germany today—were among the biggest profiteers of the Nazi era and WWII.
BMW refusing to give the AfD an official car today looks nice in the news. But if the AfD takes power in two years, BMW and the Quandt family will likely bow down to them again. Because in the end, for this corporation, it's only ever about money and profit—nothing else.
