GER politics thread

[Jimbuna]

The world is well on its way to going crazy.

[Rockstar]

I see reunification is going well


How Germany voted in the European Parliament election.

CDU in black
AfD in blue

[Skybird]

Grrr, I am living in one of those few green spots...


More, this city, Münster, is the one voting district in all Germany that has had the lowest turnout for the AfD, nationwide.



I could imagine that political things in Germany become very interesting over the course of this summer and early autumn. Several key issues to be decided in this horror government, and three state elections in the East. Stay tuned. Its not a given that this national government is still in office by the end of the year. Personally I would dispose it on the dark side of the moon and delete the coordinates from all records.

[Skybird]

A damn good man, whom I hold in high esteem both intellectually and as a person. His books “Le Declin” and “Was tun?” are excellent.

[mapuc]

.....while the Danes voted left.
Socialist people's party get 3 mandate
Socialist party get 3 mandate
Unity list get 1 mandate.

The right wing gets in total 4 mandates

The rest of the mandate is placed in the middle of the political compass.

In total 15 mandates was electable.

Markus

[Skybird]

https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-...h-der-eu-wahl/



A “firewall” against the strongest party in the East, a fragmentation of the party landscape in the West. Germany is becoming difficult to govern. This is a consequence of the monopoly that the SPD and Greens have secured for themselves.


It was not only EU Europe that voted on Sunday. There were also several local elections in Germany. In Brandenburg, for example. The AfD achieved by far the best result there. It is now the strongest party in almost all district councils on the Havel and Oder rivers. The CDU, SPD and co. will now have to govern past it if they want to maintain the “firewall”.

In Mainz, the green world is still in order. With 25.3 percent, it remains the strongest party there. However, this could still change because Rhineland-Palatinate's local election law is complicated and the entire count will continue throughout the week. The collapse of the SPD is already exciting. It has now achieved 18.7 percent in a city where it was the mayor without interruption after the war until last year.

The exciting thing about the result is that the traffic light coalition has lost its majority. It was once tested in Mainz and then introduced in Rhineland-Palatinate, where it became a model for Germany thanks to former FDP Secretary General Volker Wissing. The people of Mainz are therefore further along with the traffic light system than their party colleagues in the federal government - and even in Mainz, which is heavily influenced by academia, this constellation no longer has a majority.


Also exciting: ten different parties are currently represented in the Mainz city parliament. In Rainer Brüderle's city association, the FDP will now have to live with the fact that the traffic light will be supplemented by the Left Party or Volt. A party that is even greener than the Greens. The former FDP stronghold has already shrunk to just over 5 percent. With even more gaga and degrowth, things are unlikely to get any better.

Mainz is just a local example. The party landscape will continue to fragment. In recent months, a lot of attention has been paid to the fragmentation on the right. But now it is becoming clear that this is actually taking place on the left. The Werteunion (Union of Values) had not yet contested the EU elections and the Bündnis Deutschland (Alliance Germany) did not stand out. Unlike Volt and the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance.

Volt represents pure doctrine when it comes to migration, identity politics or climate and environmental protection. Something that the Greens can no longer do in government. For example, because the construction of wind turbines cannot be reconciled with species protection for birds. The Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, meanwhile, has so far been sold as an alternative to the Alternative for Germany. However, only a few AfD voters from the EU elections came to the BSW, while over a million voters from the Left and the SPD went to Wagenknecht. The alliance is therefore a left-wing party.


In view of the fragmentation of the left half of the party, the “firewall” is therefore becoming an important instrument for building power. It can hold loose alliances together. At least in the West. In order to defend “our democracy” (and our posts), parties such as the FDP in the Mainz example can defend a coalition that is expanded to include the Volt or the Left. This means accepting even more left-wing tralala projects - even more tax money that is missing elsewhere where it would be put to good use.

In the east, it will be easier with the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance. Above all because the Left is threatening to disappear even in the East. That would make it easier for the CDU to accept all-party coalitions with the Alliance, SPD and Greens. Because of the “firewall”. For “our democracy” in the justification, for "our posts" as a true motive.

That is a practical solution for now. It may last a year, five years at best. But even those five years are shaky. Because this all-party coalition would reinforce the reason why Germany is already difficult to govern: the power arithmetic resulting from the “firewall”. Because coalitions with the AfD are taboo, there is no government in Germany, with the exception of Bavaria, there is no longer a government in which the SPD and/or Greens are not represented.


No matter how much FDP and CDU voters reject woke and anti-business, ideological and irrational policies, they still get them in the end. This is precisely what leads to the formation and rise of new parties: Because more and more want an escape from this logic. If the CDU and FDP build support structures to maintain this logic, this flight will only become more massive in the coming years. And then we will really need other ways of forming governments.

[Rockstar]

Now I see many demonize the AfD as nazi this or nazi that but wasn’t it founded by two former CDU members Bernd Lucke and Alexander Gauland in opposition to Auntie Merkle’s response to the refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016?

Seems now to have grown to reflect characteristics associated with social conservatism and also encompasses nativist, populist and even left-wing elements within Germany.

From what I’ve read there’s been a lot of CDU voters who have shifted away from the CDU and moved towards the AfD.

[Skybird]

Yes, originally the AfD was founded by a professor for economics as an anti-Euro party, in protest to Merkel's blind and uncritiala EU policies. But Lucke was too naive to fight down the Nazis that also went into his party and formed a strong wing in it, and he then was more or less mobbed out. Over the years the "völkischer Flügel", the Neonazis, build their power and now are practically impossible to get rid off again, they are also propably the sarongest though maybe not the majority wing in the party. The AfD is not Nazi in totality, but has a very strong Nazi group. Not all supporters of it are Nazi, probably not even the majority, but the support by Nazis is prominent. And most of their voters possibly are not Nazi either, but a prominent share of voters is - or doe snot care, are driven by motives into the AfD thatmake them not caring for Nazis.



Like Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht (a strict Stalinst in capitalist disguise) the AfD are very pro-Russia and pro-Putin. Both accuse Zelenskyi and Ukriane to not allow the war to be settled peacefully. Putin's respinsibility they do not loose a word over.



The AfD was thrown out of the EU parliament group that unifies the irght wingers form franc,e Italy, Austria, Hungary. For them the AfD was too extremist in its positions, at least in the frank communication of these.



An out standign feature I see in the AfD is the lack of intellectually refined experts for anything. Their party leadership may be unscrupolous and eager to ground for ever more power for themselves, but they are, in my opinion, dumb like straw. The fact that they know how to act and ensnare their audience in order to win them over to their side is something they have in common with Trump, but no one will want to attribute an excess of general educational expertise and cultural education to Trump - and such descriptions would also be tantamount to a joke for the AfD's top staff. Much of their rhetorical aggressiveness in discussions and interviews derives directly from their poor educational background and lack of factual knowledge. It is an expression of intellectual clumsiness and helplessness, and narrow-minded ideological stolidity.


So, they are not completely and only Nazi but they have a strong Nazi influence/group amongst in their rows. Possible that this group sooner or later indeed will take over the party completely. They are notoriously engaged in internal fights for power.



In three of the five Eastenr federla states there will be elecitosn this year. Its possible that AfD wins all three of them.



The policy results ofn the traffic.-light coalition in the past ~3 years injected a steroid booster into the AfD's support basis. Red SPD and green Greens as well as their Merkelian copy, the former CDU , have notjhign but themseloves to point fingers at for the rise of the AfD. Its a Frankenstein creature that was called into life by Merkel and nursed and fostered by the Scholz govenrment of Red-Green.



Interesting is that they had lowered the age for voting to 16, SPD and Greens expected that the young wpould vote predominantly for them. The oppposiute was true: Most young ones ovted for the AfD and the CDU, (17% each), SPD and Greens got less than 9%, the other parties even much less. The young ones are not all going Nazi, you know. They just are not as dumb maybe as politicians think they are - they fear what Red-Green has done to their future chances. And they have all reason to.


Hilarious is how SPD and Greens react to the spanking they got. Scholz says they must now carry on and that he has no intention to call early elections. Interior minister Faeser (SPD) and their general secretary Kühnert offend voters not voting for them of being intellectually inapt to vote correctly and to apprecioaste the greta polciy they have attaqcked Geremay with in the oast three years. The greens give al, others tzhe guilt for their 40% loss. Its Putin, the war, the lockdown, the pandemic , the inflation, the not left-enough schools, the Nazis, hell knows what else - but its nto themsleves, tzheir polticy making if flawless and thery still imply they know all and evertyhign better, and people are unfair and not thankful enough.


What they all strictly avoid to conclude is that it is right their political work and their ideological goals and their tyranny of their loud minorities that forces the majority to submit to their minority-interest laws that has turned people against them and made them turn for the AfD - in despair, so to speak, in a last move of self-defence. Status in practically every political field over here has become much worse in recent years, and Red-Green, and also before: Merkel, are responsible for it.



Reality denial. I have no coubt that they will continue to do their best to boost the AfD. It will neither delcine back into meaninglessness, nor go anywhere else. It stays - and is becioming the new ordinary worker's party. The The SPD has actually abolished itself. And the CDU is just a cheap imitation that opportunistically copies red and green - it no longer stands for real value conservatism, but Merkelianism, which is opportunism and the strict ignorrance for any binding values that could get in the way in the grab for powers. Also, it needs to form coalitions with Red and Green, and so even if it wins, Germany is doomed to always get red-green policies.

[mapuc]

Fits better here in our GER politics thread than in our Ukraine thread



Markus

[Skybird]

"Words are there, but I have not seen any actions."


https://www-faz-net.translate.goog/a...en&_x_tr_hl=de

[Skybird]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/11/o...nos/index.html

What a shock then – and coming days after the 80th anniversary of D-Day — that many German first-timers threw their votes disproportionally behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In this election, 16% of 16 to 24-year-olds voted AfD — up 11 percentage points from five years ago. (To be sure, the majority of teens didn’t vote for the far right. But the increase in the number who did is nonetheless alarming.)

I would say its not a shock but a direct consequence of the failed and left-extremist policy-making of the past years.

With the CDU threatening to form coalitions with the Greens or the greener-than-Greens Volt party, or the SPD, voters have no choice left than to evade towards the outer rims of the political spectrum. We have block parties in Germany now, like in the GDR where they had parties who all obeyed to the SED, we have FDP, SPD and Greens and FDP - and they all do the same politics regarding EU, migration, economy, they all drive on the left side of always the same political roads - even the FDP and CDU.

No wonder that ever more voters get a political ATV, so to speak, and break off the agreed roads and highways and race into the crosscountry wilderness. Its the only way left to escape the established madness that has been declared the new normal.