“Germany must remain an anchor of stability in Europe,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after his coalition finally passed a budget and headed out for summer recess.
It’s unclear exactly how the coalition erased a roughly 25 billion euro funding gap. They didn’t take the trouble to provide a detailed explanation. [1]
Finance Minister Christian Lindner might have been busy doing other things as he posted a picture of himself toting a Stinger missile during a recent military exercise. [2]
Finanzminister und Major d. R. @c_lindner war gestern mal wieder zur Turbo-Wehrübung bei der #Bundeswehr, genauer gesagt bei der Flugabwehr (@Team_Luftwaffe) in Todendorf. Auf Instagram postete er ein Bild davon: Stinger auf der Schulter, Rolex am Handgelenk. pic.twitter.com/HVBWBrmzs7
— Matthias Gebauer (@gebauerspon) July 12, 2024
Parts of the budget are leaking out however, and it is being reported that the historically unpopular traffic light coalition of the Greens, Social Democratic Party, and Free Democratic Party cut aid to Ukraine and its contribution to the EU, as well as moved some defense purchases off the 2025 budget, but they will have to be accounted for in future budgets by the next government.
Anyone paying attention knows that Scholz is out of mind to invoke the term “stability” for the state of Germany at the moment. Let’s consider the following:
- He leads the most unpopular government in modern German history. Three quarters of the population are dissatisfied. According to a survey conducted July 1-3, zero percent of Germans said they were “fully satisfied” with the ruling coalition’s work. Even accounting for the margin of error, that’s suboptimal.
- The three parties in the ruling coalition are together polling at around only 30 percent, and they were embarrassed in the June European elections. Scholz’s own party, the once-proud Social Democrats, came in at less than 14 percent in the European elections. That is the party’s worst result in a national election since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949.
- Washington and Berlin just announced that they’re deploying long-range U.S. missiles that could reach Russia (including SM-6, Tomahawk, and at some point probably hypersonic weapons) on German territory from 2026 for the first time since the Cold War in a move that will almost certainly make the country less secure.
- The Russians are everywhere. The recent news that Russia planned to kill the CEO of arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, comes on the heels of the Russians allegedly behind a fire at a metal factory, espionage on Ukrainian targets in Germany, the murder of a Chechen in Berlin, payments to spread Kremlin propaganda, and all types of “information warfare.”
- The German economy has been stagnant for seven years running, which I suppose is a form of stability.
- Meanwhile, the government in Berlin is cutting social spending, German industry “has taken a permanent hit,” real wages have dropped back to 2016 levels, and the government is investing 12.4 billion euros in the stock market in a new “Generation Capital Foundation” as part of a scheme to continue financing pensions. Stability.
- And still no one can figure out who destroyed those Nord Stream pipelines.
Despite Scholz’s stability reassurances, more upheaval is likely in a few months’ time.
“The Big Worry”
If the freak out over a few political parties who favor repairing ties with Russia and who performed well in the European Parliament elections is already at a 10, expect it to be turned up to an 11 should they continue their rise in the polls ahead of September state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia.
The EU vote clearly sent a loud message about voter dissatisfaction. The upcoming state elections could present challenges for German support for Project Ukraine by heaping more pressure on the country’s ruling coalition that is already on life support.
Some background on the two parties threatening to upset the apple cart: Sahra Wagenknecht’s old-school left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) focuses on working class issues, ignores identity politics, and opposes the US-led new Cold War.
The other party is of course the ethno-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD). It wants to reclaim German sovereignty from the EU and NATO and make nice with Russia since that is in German interests. While the party has attracted widespread working class support, detractors like BSW argue it is no friend of the people, but instead favors a different flavor of oligarchs – German rather than global. What really propelled the AfD into prominence is its outspoken opposition to the dramatic increase in immigrants to Germany in recent years.
Remarkable chart, within just a decade net migration into Germany has been 6 Million people. That’s more or less Berlin and Munich combined. Is it sustainable? pic.twitter.com/s8JZAZ8dVx
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) June 27, 2024
We can see the effect on the electorate:
There is also evidence that a sizable chunk of AfD support is a way to give a raised middle finger to the current political establishment, which is at record-low approval ratings.
The three states that will be heading to the polls are all former East German states, largely working class with some of the bigger employers in industries like the auto sector, machinery production, and metalworking. The states are on the poorer end when looking at German states:
Source: Statista
Brandenburg (6.1 percent), Thuringia (6.3 percent), and Saxony (6.6 percent) are all a little over the national average unemployment rate of 6 percent.
The fact the elections are taking place in eastern Germany is a boon for the AfD and, to a lesser extent, BSW. We can see how well the AfD performed there in the European elections (blue is the AfD while black is the Christian Democratic Union):
According to Manès Weisskircher who researches social movements, political parties, democracy, and the far right at the Institute of Political Science, TU Dresden, AfD’s support in the East can be primarily traced to three factors:
- The neoliberal ‘great transformation,’ which has massively changed the eastern German economy and continues to lead to emigration and anxiety over personal economic prospects.
- An ongoing sense of marginalization among East Germans who feel they have never been fully integrated since reunification and resent liberal immigration policies in this context.
- Deep dissatisfaction with the functioning of the political system and doubt in political participation.
Voters in the East also had other political parties abandon them, such as The Left (Die Linke), which has completely collapsed after abandoning nearly all of its former working class platform in favor of identity politics in an attempt to appear “ready to govern.” Much like the Greens, The Left increasingly stands for neoliberal, pro-war and anti-Russia policies. Former Left voters increasingly switched to the AfD in response.
Wagenknecht abandoned The Left and formed her own party at the beginning of this year. And the essentially one-woman party is already rivaling Scholz’s 150-year-old SPD for support. In the European elections BSW got almost 13 percent in Saxony, 13.8 percent in Brandenburg and 15 percent in Thuringia. BSW still has a ways to go to catch the AfD, however, but if polling is any indication, there is a good chance that following the September elections, the political establishment in these states will likely face a choice: try to align with BSW to maintain the firewall against the AfD or bring the AfD into government.
Here’s a look at current polling in the states:
Those polls are causing blood pressures to rise in Berlin, Brussels, and Washington. SEMAFOR recently summed up the thinking in those locales with a piece titled “The Big Worry.”
In it they try to explain what’s wrong with the voters that they would vote for the AfD or someone like the “pro-Kremlin” Wagenknecht. Naturally, major fault lies with the Russians according to serious people:
The European Parliament election results showed a stark divide between former East and West Germany, with nearly every constituency in the former Eastern bloc going to the far-right AfD, prompting one economist to comment, “Who said that Germany reunified?” An academic from Saxony told The German Review newsletter that despite their support for Russia-friendly parties, “east Germans don’t like Russia. Instead, they learned during the Cold War that it’s better not to provoke the Kremlin.” Analysts had warned of Russian influence campaigns during the European elections to boost support for far-right parties. In eastern Germany, though, support for the AfD’s stance on Russia and migration has become so entrenched that “there is no influence necessary,” political scientist Hans Vorländer told Semafor.
The Senator piece highlights another trend among the entrenched establishment, which is to equate left and right (in this case, BSW and the AfD) as two sides of the same coin:
Jan Rovny, a political sciences professor at Sciences Po, told Semafor. The far left projects a misplaced nostalgia onto Russia as the “carrier of some kind of Soviet heritage,” he argued, while the right see Putin as an emblem of “Christian, traditional, masculinist Europe.” Strikingly, rather than warring against each other, nationalists today view themselves as providing a united bulwark in the face of a perceived common enemy, Rovny said.
It of course has nothing to do with economic realities of German energy policy or the question of whether it’s wise for Germany to wholly submit to being a military outpost for the US with long range weapons pointed at Moscow (and Russian hypersonic missiles pointed at Berlin). SEMAFOR concludes, “The far left and far right wave different colored flags, but are ultimately similar.”
But they’re really not. At all.
Just a few examples:
- BSW proposes a fairer tax system that benefits the working class, such as the demand for an excess profits tax in the industrial sector. The AfD wants to slash taxes across the board, including those that are progressive and serve to redistribute wealth, such as the inheritance tax
- BSW believes in global warming and wants to continue to take climate action but work to soften the economic blow to the working class. The AfD rejects climate science. In its EU election manifesto, it says that the “claim of a threat through human-made climate change” is “CO2 hysterics,” and it would do away with climate laws that reduce prosperity and freedoms.
- BSW wants to strengthen the social safety net. The AfD stresses the limits of the state’s role.
It’s easy to see why lazy analyses lump left and right together. On the issues that really matter to the Atlanticists that infest the bureaucratic and media offices (unquestioning support for Brussels economic policy and for NATO-led war against Russia) the AfD and BSW do hold similar positions. Both are for an end to sanctions on Russia and to weapon deliveries to Ukraine, and getting out from under the thumb of Washington. The fact the parties are vastly different on economic policies for working class voters hardly registers as important. Maybe the Atlanticists have been so busy for so long trying to equate WWII-era Nazism and communism, it all just comes naturally.
Regardless, what’s clear in these analyses and ongoing lack of any government response to voter concerns is the belief that it is the voters who must change. Who must stop being so backwards, so stupid, and desirous of things they cannot have.
Asked after his party’s embarrassing results in the European elections if he would like to comment on his humiliating defeat Chancellor Scholz said nothing about hearing the concerns of the voters and promising to address those concerns. He simply replied with a defiant “nope.”
And that pretty much sums up where Germany is at the moment. The democratic system has partially broken down as voters make demands and the elected leaders simply say no. Scholz’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock was more forthcoming in her infamous 2022 comments:
Speaking of Baerbock, she might have taken the satirical cake when she recently took herself out of the running for chancellor next year. The reason? She said the world needs “more diplomacy, not less,” which might sound odd coming from someone notorious for their lack of diplomacy but fits in perfectly with the current government.
Unsurprisingly voters are looking for alternatives.
AfD Prepares to Break Through the Firewall
What else can they throw at the AfD at this point – aside from a complete ban on the party, which could throw Germany into chaos? That possibility remains on the table, and the recent use of a reported 200 masked police officers to raid the office and home of the rightwing Compact Magazine publisher is not a great sign.
The AfD is routinely pilloried in the media. The Nazi comparisons have been repeated endlessly, often for good reason as AfD members just can’t help themselves from admiring the Third Reich such as AfD’s top European Parliament election candidate, Maximilian Krah, who had to step back from campaigning in May after saying that not all Nazi SS members were criminals. There are plenty of other examples, as well.
The party is already under state surveillance.
Spy and corruption cases involving AfD members broke ahead of the European vote.
Despite all that, the party ended up scoring its best nationwide result so far in June, coming second on 15.9% in the European Parliament election.Their next mission is to start breaking down the firewall in Germany that aims to keep the party out of any governments.
“The firewall has already disappeared more or less on a communal level,” Joerg Urban, head of the AfD in Saxony, told Reuters. “The state level is the next step.”
Originally more of an anti-EU party and refuge for neo-Nazis, the AfD has been able to ride the wave of backlash against government policies that have been disastrous for working people – from the war in Ukraine and a losing sanction war to disastrous energy policies that hit poorer people the hardest to a large increase in immigration at the same time standards of living decline. It is now widely seen by its supporters as a party that will “save” German culture and return the country to fondly remembered days – whether 10 years ago or 85.
Yet the mainstream parties in Germany lack credibility when criticizing the AfD’s ethno nationalism when they also support genocide in Palestine policies, which could include a swift increase in deportations, and are simultaneously taking a much harder line against immigrants in an effort to thwart to the AfD’s rise. Earlier this year the Bundestag passed the Repatriation Improvement Act, which increases the amount of time the state can detain someone before deporting them from 10 to 28 days. It also gives the state more powers to enter homes, makes the suspicion of certain criminal offenses enough to deport people, and criminalizes certain activities by aid workers who assist asylum seekers, punishable with up to ten years in prison.
It’s an open question as to whether the backlash against the increase in immigration to Germany would be such an issue if it wasn’t coming at a time of budget cuts and sinking standard of living. Regardless, the path chosen by the current government, as well as the one favored by the AfD, is to punish immigrants rather than try to improve living standards.
Will Anyone Truly Represent the Working Class?
Scholz’s coalition hovers around the 10 percent mark across much of Eastern Germany. If he is presiding over the final nail in the coffin of the SPD after a half century of decline accelerated by abandoning the working class, Wagenknecht is working to take the place it (and Die Linke) once occupied.
The problem is, it turns out she’s in more of a battle with the AfD. [3] Scholz’s party suddenly has no real base of which to speak. Just above 18 percent of unionized Germans voted for the SPD in the European election compared to 18.5 for the AfD. Adam Tooze elaborates:
Germans who feel well off are twice as likely to vote Green or FDP than those feeling that they are doing badly. But the SPD too scores 36 percent better amongst Germans who judge themselves to be living well as opposed to those who feel hard-up. The parties whose support tilts the other way are in the opposition: Wagenknecht’s group and the AfD. Support for the AfD is two and a half times larger amongst Germans who judged themselves to be hard up than amongst those who consider themselves well off.
And as Tooze detailed in his detailed breakdown of Germany’s vote for the European Parliament, ‘the real opposition in German society and political preferences is not between the “old” labour movement and the AfD. The real juxtaposition is between the AfD and the Greens.’
The CDU might lead in the national polls and is likely to head the next government, but the Greens and the AfD best represent the ideological forces pitted against one another in Germany. One is a globalist, neoliberal, bourgeoisie, pro-war, pro-NATO party that favors immigration. The other is sovereignist, ethno-nationalist, favors a more national oligarchy, has increasing support of the working class (despite a lack of policy proposals that would benefit workers), and is not opposed to war but insists it be in German interests not Washington.
BSW is trying to crash that party. The September votes in three eastern states could provide a major boost.
As we can see, the German electorate is in a state of flux, driven by the upheaval in the country and the deep dissatisfaction with the ruling coalition. There isn’t a neat way to explain the migration of voters aside from possibly anger. Recent polling shows that 87 percent of AfD voters think the current government should be sent a reprimand; 71 percent of Wagenknecht voters agreed. And both parties are picking up voters from other parties regardless of ideology:
Wagenknecht’s supporters rank peace and the war in Ukraine as their primary concern, and she continues to hammer home her opposition to the conflict, as well as the recent decision to deploy long range US missiles in Germany. Their second biggest concern is immigration. Wagenknecht, born in East Germany to German and Iranian parents, doesn’t want to limit immigration for ethno nationalist reasons like the AfD, but her position can be summed up by her response to a question regarding the issue here:
We don’t think a neoliberal immigration regime, where everybody can in effect go anywhere and then must somehow try to fit in and survive, is a good idea. We need to welcome people who want to work and live in our country and we should learn to do so. But this shouldn’t result in disrupting the lives of those who already live here, and it shouldn’t overstrain collective resources, for which people have worked and paid taxes. Otherwise, the rise of nativist right-wing politics will be inevitable. In fact, the AfD in its present form is largely a legacy of Angela Merkel. In Germany we have a dramatic housing shortage, especially for people with low incomes, and the quality of education in public schools has become appalling in places. Our capacity to give immigrants a chance of equal participation in our economy and society is not endless.
The problem for Wagenknecht remains that Germans rate immigration as their top issue and most trust the AfD. And this brings us to the center of Germany’s democratic breakdown. It would have been hard for the current and past governments to have done a better job promoting the AfD if it had tried.
The rapid influx of millions of immigrants coupled with a stagnating economy, unaffordable housing, and cuts in social services is a recipe for disaster. And so we now have the AfD, which received its seed money from a reclusive billionaire descendant of prominent Nazis, poised to win state elections despite numerous comments by party officials showing at best a lack of understanding about Nazi crimes and at worst an admiration for them while they also argue that Muslims and others are “incompatible” with German culture.
The assist isn’t just from Berlin, either. Voters might be left to wonder what’s so wrong with the AfD when the “responsible” political center in Brussels and Washington backs Nazis in Ukraine, rehabilitates Nazis, enacts mass censorship and other crackdowns, supports genocide, and generally drags us kicking and screaming into their neoliberal fascist vision of the future. And make no doubt about it, should the AfD gradually learn to toe the NATO and EU line, it would no doubt be welcomed with open arms into the halls of power regardless of any admiration for the SS.
Is it worth casting a vote for the AfD, despite its considerable baggage, because the party favors returning sovereignty to Germany, which could help bring about the demise of the EU and NATO? The problem with that rationale is the BSW option, which offers the same opposition to Project Ukraine and NATO as the AfD without any of the fondness for Nazis and a better platform for the working class, so maybe that answers the question.
More broadly, the easy way to defeat a party like the AfD is to give voters material benefits that improve their quality of life; instead we have the opposite happening, and to add insult to injury, voters are insulted as racists for seeking alternatives while their standard of living declines and the “center” plugs its ears and insists on “stability.”
Notes
[1]The coalition has been fighting over the 2025 budget following last fall’s rebuke by the constitutional court, placing strict limits on releasing the country’s debt brake. That rule, intended to force governments to balance the federal budget, was introduced under Angela Merkel during the euro crisis and restricts deficit spending to a minimum, except under “extraordinary” circumstances, such as a natural disaster or war. The court apparently did not believe that the war against Russia is as extraordinary as politicians and the press make it out to be.
[2] Lindner’s celebration of military hardware is part of an ominous trend. CDU leader and Germany’s likely future chancellor Friedrich Merz donned a G-suit and hopped into a Eurofighter last month.
[3] The working class divided between an ethno nationalist party and a genuine populist one is not a bad outcome for the Davos crowd at the end of the day as CDU head and former Blackrock Germany executive Friedrich Merz is the odds-on favorite to become the next chancellor.
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Excellent work.
This from Frederick the Great, “The aggressor is the one who forces his opponent to take up arms.”
More Germans, as well as the rest of us should realize how dangerous our rulers have become.
This quote was, however, spoken by German AfD politician Christina Baum at the Bundestag in opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO while asserting Russia is not responsible for the Ukraine war.
It was also mentioned during a recent fascinating interview at Neutrality Studies with German journalist dissident Patrik Baab- well worth a listen.
Elites are KILLING Europe For THIS Reason | Journalist Patrik Baab
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4pdFI3iUlIY&pp=ygUlbmV1dHJhbGl0eSBzdHVkaWVzIGhlcm1hbiB3cml0ZXIgYmFhcA==
Yes, “Excellent work.”
Didn´t know Baab spoke on Neutrality Studies!
The timing with the US election 2 months later is interesting, to put it mildly.
Especially in the light of manipulations by the state authorities that will be attempted in both countries during autumn.
The assumption is that depending on the election outcome the old parties, SPD, might try to “discredit” BSW´s independence and credibility which is this party´s heart and soul by coalescing. Or integrate AfD, which will be CDU´s plan. Which is more to AfD´s liking. (Since that´s where AfD originated). Anticipating/preparing for a major 2025 victory. Which will make things even worse. FDP like always switching sides.
Or to quote the article:
“And make no doubt about it, should the AfD gradually learn to toe the NATO and EU line, it would no doubt be welcomed with open arms into the halls of power regardless of any admiration for the SS.” (see for that Macron/Le Pen).
re: immigration:
I stated during a public panel of BSW (being audience not BSW myself) in spring that immigration will be the biggest long-term problem for a leftist cause of the party.
You cannot solve the issues of exploitation and war caused by us overseas by holding back people through various levels of violence.
Concentration camps in Algeria and Morocco? Nice.
Frontex letting people die in the Mediterranean. Cool.
Shooting them at Greek borders. Great.
Being exterminated in their own home countries, like Sudan (1,5 M escaping, 6 M forced to stay). Brilliant.
The interior cannot be considered without the exterior.
And this will always cause friction. It already has, concerning the possible electorate of BSW in relation to former THE LEFT members not switching sides eventually. This is a real impediment for a major German new left force.
Issue#2: Climate.
Both problems could be easily tackled with the billions contained in heritage tax and the billions thrown out of the window for NATO and Ukraine. Which SPD and CDU are well aware of. “Austerity” is their life-saver.
p.s. what would the US be without immigration?
Put those immigrant kids into schools. Expand the educational and academic system big time. Put money on the table for decent labour. Unionize. Do an FDR-program which integrates everyone and you´ll reap humans best in 20 years.
(What do you think children of Bosnians who lived in German refugee camps since the 1990s do today? Live in Bosnia? Nope. they speak perfect German and live their lives like everyone else. Isolating yourself is the beginning of the end. Of course BSW has to tread very carefully. And so far they have managed it in an excellent way. You see they are professionals regarding the hostile media environment. I feared worse.)
I can understand the tectonic shift among the parties and the appeal of the left and right.
What I find bizarre is the submissive acceptance by Scholz of the Nord Stream damage. Even if Scholz thought that the evidence was not conclusive to prove who did it, I find it far more bizarre that he did not quickly repair the damage which Germany could have done within a few months after the explosion. Germany basically traded its sovereignty for nothing in return from the US.
Moreover, Biden spoke at the NATO summit; its 75th anniversary. He could have just as easily spoken about the 80th anniversary of the US military occupation of Europe. The US has military bases in every major European country except France. How long does it take for people to realize the US is no longer your friend?
Lastly, on immigration you have a tolerant and pragmatic view that I agree with. However, when waves of immigrants arrive, say from Syria, because of the illegal US war to overthrow the Assad government, I think we should not be surprised that many German citizens are outraged.
Sooner or later Europeans must realize that Ukraine is not the only European country that the US is willing to sacrifice in order to remain as the global hegemon.
I am perfectly aware of people being outraged over immigration and I understand it, unlike others who carry the same colours as I do. (I have immigrant background with parents who have turned against immigration after living nearly 50 years in Germany originally facing racism themselves. That´s life not some bogus Netflix makeshift bullshit.)
But as a Marxist one must contend with ugly realities. Both ways and find short-term solutions and plan long-term too.
The immigration issue is highly misconceived.
e.g. USA:
Just look at the RNC coverage – what educated “liberal” folks would concede that it was in fact Bill Clinton who started the wall? And that it was carried on by every POTUS since. Or that immigration will apparently create economic growth worth $7trillion in the next decade. While crime has gone down by nearly 50%.
NS2:
#1 Scholz knows what happened. He was confronted with this problem already under Trump. We know since June from internal documents that the German government and then Minister Scholz in 2019 offered Trump 1billion in LNG purchase for letting NS2 live in return. Trump´s Secretary Mnuchin (who is a crook too, btw) turned the offer down, naturally, with a “That´s crap” which I would have done too. Which shows you how naive and helpless the Germans were already then.
#2 From WaPo´s David Ignatius we know that Merkel and Biden in the spring of 2021 agreed:
Biden gave Germany a pass on NS2 unless RU would attack in which case they AGREED NS2 would be stopped.
That they actually made sure that NS2 would stay literally “dead” doesn´t change anything about the preceding history – there was an ongoing US-German cabale over NS2. And Germany lacking any meaningful allies outside NATO and being totally unprepared just followed orders.
Repare NS2? Good idea. However I assume something else would have come up. So many possibilities…
In the summer of 2022 Habeck destroyed those two senior officials in his own ministry who were responsible for the RU-natural gas desk and had done the high level dealings with Gazprom.
They fiercly opposed Habeck when he entered the ministry. Eventually he brought in internal secret intelligence and denounced them as Moscow agents. Which of course turned out to be untrue and a biiiig lie. Surprise. Everybody knew. Media went silent over this HUGE scandal after 2 weeks. Never happened.
But that´s how the GREENS deal in politics in the shadows. And Scholz is aware of that. Chancellory carries you only so far.
Sry for being so wordy but it´s difficult for me to not be upset over all this, after 2,5 years. Especially in the face of my social environment where many are beyond any description.
Just this WE I drove past Berlin-Charlottenburg´s town hall. They still have 2 huge flags hanging in front of the facade: ISRAEL & UKRAINE. Even after the ICJ ruling last week. Lucky I didn´t cause a car-crash.
Excellent article but a few quibbles:
1. The remark of Maximilian Krah – not all Waffen SS members were criminal – is construed as exonerating the Waffen SS. In the latter part of the war the Waffen SS was mostly recruited among either ethnic Germans or German friendly nationalities. FORCEFULLY RECRUITED. I´ve known such a man well and he didn´t even speak German without an accent. Himmler wanted to establish the SS as a service rivaling the Wehrmacht and as he couldn´t recruit in Germany he recruited in occupied territory. What he said what nothing but a trueism. Maximilian Krah has famously called operation Barbarossa (the attempt to subjugate the Soviet Union) a “Vernichtungskrieg”. War of extinction. He was challenged to it by AFD historian Stefan Scheil and they had a long discussion. I wanted to post a link but Youtube censored the discussion.
I believe the framing of the AFD as Nazis is largely BS. Much worse I find it when the acting foreign minister of Germany Baerbock says in an offhand remark “that already her grandfather had battled the Russians on the Seelow heights”. The Seelow heights being where the Wehrmacht made a last stance before Berlin. That is so disgusting on so many levels…
2. Especially in the East there is a part of AFD (or even a majority) whose ideas of economic policies are very close to Wagenknecht. Their main proponent is a man called Benedict Kaiser. Have a look here: https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/afd-ostdeutschland-umfragewerte-westdeutschland-landtagswahlen/seite-2
3. Wagenknecht is in danger of being coopted by the system. That happened to “die Linke” and it looks like to happen again. I believe she will enter into government with the conservatives (CDU) in East Germany. All to preserve the firewall against the AFD. It would be huge mistake…
Benedict Kaiser edited a book entitled Marx von rechts (Marx from the right), published by Antois-Verlag, which also published the German translation of Jean Raspail’s Le Camp des Saints, or Armin Mohler’s (a Swiss who deserted from the army and joined the SS in Germany) correspondence with Ernst Jünger, whose private secretary he was. Incidentally, Anatois was also the name of a periodical that Jünger co-published in the 1960s).
In Marx von rechts, Kaiser calls for a “left-wing politics with right-wing people / linke Politik mit rechten Menschen” and refers to Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and his idea of a socialisme fasciste (the title of a 1934 essay by him), who first supported Jacques Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français and then collaborated with the Nazis (unlike Doriot, who was killed by the Allies in Germany – he had landed in Sigmaringen in the meantime – Drieu chose suicide).
Logically, Kaiser sees a central point of reference in the concept of the industrial reserve army, because “this topos (can) take on a new meaning in times of mass immigration of low-skilled ‘superfluous’ workers to Western Europe” (dieser Topos (kann) in den Zeiten der Masseneinwanderung gering qualifizierter ‚Überflüssiger‘ nach Westeuropa eine neue Bedeutung erlangen) by replacing the subject of the working class with the subject of the nation state, because Kaiser wants to re-establish the primacy of the political, as Ulyanov or Gramsci wanted, to whom Marx von rechts co-author Alain de Benoist has already dedicated a book: Pour un “gramscisme de droite”.
The National Bolshevism of yesterday (“Ernst Niekisch was also authentically anti-capitalist and right-wing at the same time / Authentisch antikapitalistisch und rechts zugleich war auch Ernst Niekisch”, Kaiser) is experiencing a sad revival, and anyone who wants to know how trusting it looks:
https://antaios.de/autoren/benedikt-kaiser/
p.s. small correction: Benedict Kaiser publishes regularly with Antois-Verlag, but Marx von rechts was published by Jungeuropa-Verlag, where, alongside fascist classics such as Robert Brasillach and Drieu also authors such as Mykola Kravchenko, Guillaume Faye and the German translation of Pour un “gramscisme de droite” – Kulturrevolution von rechts: Gramsci und die Nouvelle Droite get published.
p.p.s. where Alain de Benoist is, Ernst Jünger should not be missing:
https://counter-currents.com/product/ernst-junger/
and speaking of Maximilian Krah (who’s nickname is Schampus-Max [Champagne-Max] und who was a wealth-manager for the Society of Saint Pius X):
“Today I had a good exchange with …”
https://www.facebook.com/krahmax/posts/heute-hatte-ich-einen-guten-austausch-mit-steve-bannon-in-washington-dc/523414065851987/
The entire Western Mis-Leadership class has lost it’s mind. My Father a Trump supporter sent me and my family an email regarding Vance, who does in some ways even if only in baby steps represents a revolutionary way of conducting policy in that he is at least partly reality based.
My response to my Republican father sisters and brother in laws was something like “The entire Western leadership class now openly and proudly supports genocide, Nazis, eternal war(s), total bans on any negotiation or talking to opposition, mass slaughter and civilians and everyone in general. And our governments ruthlessly suppress any and all who attempt to protest these policies. We are led by obvious metal defects and I just watched one of them Nancy Pelosi on MSM tell us Putin and his entire army force families to watch them rape their children, and that delusional claim not only received no push back from the brain dead CNN host, but complete agreement and validation ending with “that is why me must fight facism for democracy” or something like that.
Can anyone understand why Biden is still in office? Thought this would have been taken care of long ago. What needs to be done? Send a “cleaner” to the White House as the Saudis did with Jamal Khashoggi or as depicted in the famous French movie “La Femme Nikita”?
While my Republican family understands some things, unfortunately their understanding goes like this on most issues – “my taxes are going up and Newsom is ruining California because all our money is going to Ukraine.”
Just change Newsom and/or Ukraine for every issue, and you understand a lot of Republican thought process.
“The united sates has one party, the property party with two right wings, republican and democrat.”
Gore Vidal
In Sweden the Sweden Democrats is the AfD of Sweden. They have clear roots in the Nazi-movements, skinhead as well as saloon Nazis. They have put on a suit and tie and let the hair grow and received some respectability in this sense.
They are now in the government. Of course, they voted for NATO-membership in spite of having been against membership and as a consequence they also voted for the surrender-agreement DCA with the USA effectively surrending sovereignity of military bases in Sweden. That is some action from a party calling themselves ”Sweden Democrats”. It has nothing to do with the best of Sweden, only using immigrants as a cause for the immiseration of the country.
Now in government they are also fanatical slashers of taxes for rich and worsening the conditions for poors. I.e., they are exactly like all the other parties in the country.
I expect AfD to be exactly the same.
I might need to start with a correction here:
Sverige Demokraterna are not in the Swedish government:
https://www.regeringen.se/artiklar/2022/11/regeringens-politiska-prioriteringar/
Then on to the political situation. Different parties have different priorities, they compromise their lesser priorities for their higher priorities.
Sverige Demokraternas priority is to reduce immigration, they’ll not compromise much on that. Secondary priority might be the general welfare of the Swedish population.
Social Demokraterna in Sweden has two guiding principles:
1. Be ideologically pure
2. Have power (used to be a top priority)
The principle of being ideologically pure prohibits them from ever co-operating with Sverige Demokraterna. This leads to Social Democrats not pushing through legislation they believe is good for many because they’d rather stay ideologically pure than work with Sverige Demokraterna. It also means that they’d rather let legislation they believe to be bad to come through rather than working with Sverige Demokraterna.
The only possible way that Svergie Demokraterna can get their policies implemented is to work with the ones willing to work with them – that would be the traditional upperclass (so called right) parties which currently are in government. Those parties have as priority to do what is good for the upper middle class and therefore they can without much problems agree to some (but not all) policies to curb immigration as long as they get to cut social welfare net etc etc
The Swedish Social Democrats is currently a quite useless political party as they’d rather stay ideologically pure while bad things happen than face reality and do what is needed to improve conditions for the general population.
Their excuse now, and has been their excuse for quite some time, is that since they don’t have parliamentary majority on their own they can do nothing. I expect them to continue to sit on the sidelines complaining about reality rather than work in the reality. Quite a comfortable situation to be in. They do nothing and blame the population of Sweden for not voting on them.
The parties for the upper class is currently mostly getting what they want in Sweden, one explanation might be the existence of populist parties and another explanation might be that the so called left in Sweden prioritise being ideologically pure over anything and everything else.
Maybe AfD will find themselves in a similar situation. Work with the upperclass political parties or get none of their policies implemented. If so then less than ideal but something can be better than nothing.
Thanks for the correction and the complementary comments. Their participation in the Tidöavtalet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tid%C3%B6_Agreement and their influence on the general development downwards makes me sometimes think that they are in the government.
In any case, Sweden Democrats do present immigration, not flawed/absent wealth redistribution, as the root of all evil for the working class.
Social Democrats of Sweden signed up to the neoliberal program shortly after the CIA had Olof Palme killed and lost voter support. They have also their fair share of party members making loads of money through privatization, e.g., Iljia Batljan whose scam is to buy municipal real estate for a song and a dance and then rent it back to the municipality for usury prices. The Social Democrats are ideologically purely sticking to this policy. They gladly let the other parties cut the taxes and enjoy their politically nepotist fortunes. Then whine a little bit publicly that the other parties are doing this but never ever putting forward any motions to improve peoples’ lives. A far cry from the Social Democrats that at times enjoyed 45% of the voters thanks to the party actually improving lives for ordinary Swedes.
In Europe as in the US, the establishment would rather jump in bed with natzees than allow a real left alternative to take hold.
Back to the slogan going round in France during the 1930s: “Plutôt Hitler que le Front Populaire” — “Rather Hitler than the Popular Front” (it sounds better in French because it rhymes).
These days the Euro establishment’s fascism is rather better camouflaged. But press them hard enough and its ugly face quickly throws off the liberal mask.
Important correction, I think: this is what liberalism does – accomodate factions in order to squash any outbreaks of democracy. The British liberals did it in 1832 by co-opting the radicals to support the electoral Reform Act. The German liberals did it in 1932 by giving way to Hitler. Liberalism wears many masks, but its essence is constant.
I thought it was „Better Hitler than Blum“
Wasn‘t Mitterand a member of Croix de Feu ?
The establishment has been running that same tired game (under more modern terminology for political groups) for around 100 years now.
So there’s long way to go before anybody can claim any type of real “wokeness.”
Nazees are the flop side of the capitalism coin, with liberalism as the flip side. Bad cop vs good cop, but both cops nevertheless…
Not the German variety which was specific and focussed in a country where the Communist Party was strong.
1) Red in flag to attract KPD and SPD voters
2) Black in flag to attract Nationalists and Royalists
3) Race Struggle to replace Class Struggle
4) Jews as epitome of Capitalism
Jews as epitome of Boldhevism
Only in (4) did you get flip sides united in one identity
In fact that stance was mainstream common sense in Germany for a long time – until Krah said it. A lot of men were pressured into the SS and a lot of young men that had been exposed to six years of indoctrination joined as volunteers – for example Günther Grass, later Nobel Prize winner for literature. It was legal consensus as well that there had to be proven individual guilt, that merely being a member of SS does not automatically make one a criminal.
And over all, I’d say that the AfD in it’s whole is no more ‘far right’ then CDU/CSU had been in the days of F.J. Strauss and A. Dregger.
That said, I’m not a friend of the AfD. Not at all.
Sadly for your thesis men like Telford Taylor at Nuremberg 1946 had Membership of SS as automatic Guilt by Association
It was guilt simply by virtue of membership then again it was unusual for Allied soldiers to take SS soldiers prisoner at all
Postwar Germany has Art 86 and 86a Criminal Code reserved for SS and its symbols
You vote SPD if your job or grant depends on expressing gratitude to the party in power in your region. The East is poorer because it alone paid reparations after 1945 as rail lines were taken to USSR and it survived on cheap energy from USSR which was sold for hard currency to West. East Germans made the IKEA goods Wessis bought and the garments sold in Kaufhof.
Where the East had good ideas like Polykliniken the West dismantled them before reinventing them as MVZ. Anything from East was „haram“ and anything from West was „halal“
Wessis are infused with US propaganda whereas Ossis can smell BS after decades of Margot Honecker. Greens are elected in certain W German cities but nowhere in East other than on Party List
Scholz like Lizz Truss was a Leftist against US Cruise Missiles in 1982 but both were rewired by DC
Germany commits suicide every 45 years
It is now 35 years since GDR and BRD but dust
It was 30 years for First Berlin Republic 1919-45 and just 48 years for Second Reich 1870-1918
Germany will probably split as it was going to in 1923 having overthrown the ducal states and created Freistaate in Bayern, Sachsen and Thüringen…….
The country is swirling the toilet bowl like U.K. and France
Thank you, Paul.
It’s great to see you back here.
Go along to get along is a deadly disease.
When the establishment is morally bankrupt, those who “go along to get along” are guilty of crimes, if only by their silence. Their stated motivation is to keep their job, status, etc. I suspect, based on my experience of humanity, that in NAZI Germany many people “went along to get along”.
For the working class people today, when all of the “establishment” is going along to get along, to whom do they turn?
“There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear….”.
They have to organize themselves. Use their unions or clubs to build up political momentum. It is much easier done in Europe and Germany than in the US duopoly.
Nice tweet!
Dog food manufacturers to dogs who won’t eat the dog food: “bad dog!” Or, as the article says,
“voters are insulted as racists for seeking alternatives while their standard of living declines”
Germany sounds like here where desperate framing has to be deployed to cover the failures of the ruling class. Following the Repub convention one of my neighbors stuck a pre printed sign in the ground saying “Dictatorship of Democracy: The Choice.” Or perhaps this is the new Democrat yard sign, soon to be seen everywhere. All those crocodile tears re the assassination attempt lasted about a week. Since Trump was already president for four years it’s unclear why “dictatorship” is seen as the inevitable result of another four years other than four more years of simmering hatred on the left has the pot boiling more vigorously.
Of course it’s the failure of democracy here and in Germany that is the problem and it is the fear by the ruling class–that the jig is about up–that produces the hatred. Historically middle and merchant classes tend to side with the rulers against the pitchfork wielders so the PMC are along for the ride. It’s almost as though the fear mongers want to provoke genuine fascism, not the imaginary kind, to justify themselves. Trump’s new mellower image (no doubt carefully calculated) must provoke them into even greater fury.
The people have failed Our Democracy ™. We must choose another (that won’t dare think it’s their democracy.)
Just before the Russian Empire went completely tits-up:
The failure of democracy…? Fuggetaboutit! More like two and a half centuries of half-baked Republicanism and nicely baked grifting. Oligarchic rule was cooked up by our merchant/farmer/slaveocracy “founding fathers” and it has been served cold to the populace ever since. Endless physical and economic expansion always provided an open window for the many who could not get with the menu. But, occasionally the greedy hysteria threatened to burn up the kitchen until something like the Civil War or the New Deal came along to turn the heat down. Now, the great unwashed, both domestic and foreign, are boiling and rapidly losing their taste for the crumbs of Empire, and…what was it Gramsci said?
“Dictatorship of Democracy: The Choice.”
As an old saying goes:
Definition of dictatorship: “shut the f**k up!”
Definition of democracy: “anything you say…”
Oops. that’s one of my typos. The sign said “Dictatorship or democracy,” not “of.” I may also need new glasses.
Are you sure that the sign did not read: “Dictatorship or Democracy: The Choice”.
(I can’t figure out what “Democracy of Dictatorship: The Choice” might be intended to mean.)
Danke, Mutti! /: /s
What did she, or so many in different countries over time think when injecting millions of foreigners, newcomers, refugees, opportunists, destabilizing agents, job seekers or all of the above? Populations have trouble assimilating big demographic changes over short spans. That impact and the repercussions must have been waved off in a simplifying assumption by the big neo-lib thinkers.
Thank you, Conor, for this informative piece. I enjoyed your work. Analysis of European politics is hard to find in the US.
It appears that the working class is held in disdain by the ruling class all across the west. I shouldn’t be surprised as they are the unclean. Maddow made a ‘joke’ the other day that while most good people of Virginia hold the idea of a wall at the Mexican border with contempt they would support building one at the border of West Virginia. The deplorables of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania Dutch, Scots and Irish, were encouraged to settle the western part of Virginia to protect their Piedmont betters from Indian raids. A disposable barrier for the enlightened. It seems the ruling class now wants to dispose entirely of the working class, but who will protect them from the ‘Indians’?
Batya Ungar-Sargon’s 2021 book Bad News – How the Woke Media is Undermining Democracy explores the concept of Hefker, a thing that has been abandoned and is no ones responsibility. She says the media has declared the working class hefker and no one would make a fuss if wages stagnated or the jobs were sent overseas. She says that the working class is still abandoned, waiting for anyone to claim, and she is right. Rhetoric from politicians of any party will not heal the damage that has been done to the majority of the world’s citizens.
I enjoy ALL your work – you are a great asset indeed to NC (maybe time to ask for a raise? :-)
Conor, Please let me add my praise and thanks for this excellent and thorough article.
Agreed. Great article Conor, thank you!
I agree – many, many thanks, Conor. Not only does this give me a good understanding of Germany today, but helps me see the historical roots from 100 yrs ago.
Thank you, commentariat for my continuing education. So many smart kids in this class.
“It would have been hard for the current and past governments to have done a better job promoting the AFD if it had tried.”
“The rapid influx of millions of immigrants coupled with a stagnating economy, unaffordable housing, and cuts in social services is a recipe for disaster.”
Substitute ‘Trump’ for ‘the AFD’ in the above quotes and it accurately describes the US today.
A really great post this. Of course it now leaves me with the question of how much of what Germany has turned into is a direct result of Mutti Merkel. Come to think of it, it was Merkel that gave Europe Ursula von der Leyen and all the ensuing consequences can be laid down on her doorstop. VdL was totally incompetent and corrupt at her job of defense Minister and yet Merkel retained her until she went on to Brussels. And when I think further, Merkel helped lay the foundations of the war in the Ukraine by allowing Russia to think that Minsk 2 was a genuine agreement and not just a plan to arm the Ukrainians. She now reminds me of Bill Clinton. At the time he was cool as a leader but in the years since we have learned how catastrophic he was for America, So maybe the same will also be true of Mutti.
“If the freak out over a few political parties who favor repairing ties with Russia and who performed well in the European Parliament elections is already at a 10, expect it to be turned up to an 11 should they continue their rise in the polls ahead of September state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia…”
I’ll bet they pass Spinal Tap dynamics and hit this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4eitySgB0&ab_channel=MarvelousMan/
Mad Max Fury Road – Flame Guitar
“The rapid influx of millions of immigrants coupled with a stagnating economy, unaffordable housing, and cuts in social services is a recipe for disaster.”
Manufactured scarcity is key for rentiers.
From the very first chart we can see the sheer diplomatic subtlety of nominating Kaya Kallas as The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Another Caligari set loose in the world. Surely a sign from Heaven of the imminence of Europe’s end times – or maybe just those of the EU and NATO? Sometimes it can be very difficult to infer God’s meaning but purpose of the European Council in making this nomination is capable of only one interpretation.
There is one more issue, nobody mentioned yet, which will boost the electoral chances of AFD in the upcoming state elections. The value of Euro currency is about to change. When ( not if ) Euro drops to the parity with USD, the costs of imports, including energy will bite the “not so well off” voters really hard and the ruling coalition will be powerless to change that. Scholtz does not have a printing press and he as well as Macron will get all the blame for the declining living standards in the Euro zone.
The East Germans have really valid complaints about their absorption; East and West did not reunify but rather West Germany stamped out anything in the East that was still standing. The East Germans came from a country designed for it’s citizens; fixed 05%-of-wage rents, free healthcare, free training, and the maximum wage disparity was three times. Yes, the highest-paid member of East German society received only three times the wage of the lowest-paid.
However when ‘reunification’ was made it was done on the sly, by deceit and without a proper mandate. West Germany propagandists flooded the East prior to the election, splashed out immense funds in political advertising the Easterners were unused to and misrepresented what would happen in a unification. As a result all the nationalised industries of the East were sold off in a fire sale to foreign investors. People who were accustomed to working in industries with an excess staff in case a surge capacity was required were suddenly under-paid, over-worked and had no say in what was happening.
The Easterners took it on the chin though and tried to change even though the Westerners adamantly refused to change in any way. The new Germany was West Germany rebadged.
The biggest problem is Germany is still heavily ideological regarding the former East Germany. Anyone raising the valid point that they had it better socially, materially and even politically is sneered at and told they have ‘Ostalgia’. Germans can never concede that East Germany may have had good qualities, it’s simply verboten.
I keep waiting for the de-unification movement.
“Mr. Putin, rebuild that wall!”
Having just returned from Germany after a 10-year absence, I can’t believe what happened to the train system. Seems that “on-time” is now a four-minute window around scheduled arrival and departure. How un-German. Had chosen my Train connections to Frankfurt with 15 minutes between trains and almost missed the connections.
I can remember when a two minute delay had the Germans looking at their watches in disdain.
Gorbachev offered Thatcher removal of wall if West Germany would carry costs (Thatcher Foundation Archives)
Stalin Notes 1952 offered a United Neutral Germany on the model Austria obtained in 1955 but U.S. blocked it for fear of losing its real estate
Sorry this was Paul Greenwood typing Gorbachev too quickly !
Actually United Neutral Germany was agreed on Yalta and Postdam conferences. But USA needed Germany to produce stuff, so that it would get dollars to buy US stuff, which led to separate currency in Western occupied zones of Germany and to a Soviet reaction today know as Berlin Blockade, with which Stalin tried to force US to return to the agreed upon policy regarding the post-war Germany and to the Westphalian system* to secure peace in Europe.
* largely destroyed by Woodrow Wilson with his “good vs evil” approach to post-WW1 arrangements.
Our autocratic quasidemocracy can’t really deal with any competition or nuances, can it? When all you have left is “values”, everything is either totally good or totally bad. No comparisons can be allowed, only absolutes.
Carl Zeiss Jena is the home of the Foundation Servus by Ernst Abbé which owns the name. It employed 64,000 in the Kombinat and had facilities manufacturing optics for Soviet tanks etc
Today 1800 work there. Most of facilities were demolished for shopping centres and the US- sponsored Carl Zeiss Oberkochen rules the roost from Baden-Württemberg but has to retain a token presence in Jena under terms of Foundation
Hard to believe it is already over 30 years since Benjamin Barber wrote ‘Jihad vs. McWorld’ – everything continues to play out on the fault lines he identified in that essay/book, with the Greens representing McWord in the above, and AfD representing Jihad.
The post-Nuremberg truth regime is breaking down, theatening the globalist project.
No one should be surpirsed that they will slime, smear, spy, arrest and assassinate anyone who threatens their power. They always have and always will so long as they have the power, which they have no intention of losing over something as trivial as an election.