eugyppius, my German brother from another mother, your recent comments about the preventative measures you've taken, and continue to take daily, to mitigate the risk of persecution by your government for thoughtcrime have left me with a such a feeling of sadness for you. How far has the West fallen when men of good will live in some degree of fear that the oppressive hammer of government will come down on them? The Continent has long forgotten where rights come from, and at this point seems incapable of even identifying our shared natural rights, much less protecting them. I wish you nothing but the best, and I am grateful for all your work in resisting creeping tyranny in the West.
I feel the same way. Such horrible irony that the current govt applies censorship and coercion to achieve their ends. History suggests parties and societies who choose that path end poorly
It is ironic that you mention 'the Continent' as it was continental philosophy that has brought so much doom. Eight years ago when my then high schooler 'schooled/shamed' me for not knowing about German romanticism, Hegel, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse, etc. I was gobsmacked wondering what in the world these men had to do with the US. I am no longer gobsmacked. Throw in Freud's stuff on sex and shift it to race and you get CRT. Kafka was way ahead of his time.
We all have to get comfortable saying the truth, all the time. And the truth is, Germany is being run by neo-aristocrats who are essentially a dictatorship.
One thing common to all the nations of the West is that the number of folks who are just sick to the teeth of 50+ years of political Progressivism has finally reached critical mass. Sick to the teeth of all the race-guilt-tripping, gender-bending, virtue-signalling nonsense that the university-'educated' middle classes have been sheep-dipped in.
I thank Eugyppius for this succinct summary of the German version.
".....the nonsense the university-'educated'-middle classes have been sheep-dipped in"....... it couldn't have been expressed in any better way. And that is happening all over the Western World. Indoctrination - planned a long time ago - and it will not stop unless we start a new education system.
Thanks, I will go into your topics later, they sound very interesting. Just now... I wonder if the 'Re-education of the Germans by the "Allies" after 1945' was such a sounding success that the 'educators' did not want to stop and extended their 'successful education system' further. And I wonder how many of those 're-educated Germans' are the ones who want to run the German country now.
Much as I wish it were otherwise, I don’t foresee a good result for Germany, based on my previous readings from Eugyppius. I fear Germany is lost and there is no German version of Trump-DOGE with enough political force, momentum to rescue it from itself.
Allow me to apologise for one of our top MPs, who after the report of the latest stabbing (Syrian "refugee" who attacked a Spanish tourist in Germany, apparently the Syrian thought he was attacking a Jew) took to X and implied that the attacks of the latest weeks have been orchestrated by AfD, and that the AfD are pawns for a "foreign power".
When a Swedish MP from the ruling party uses the phrase "foreign power", they mean Russia.
He has been roundly mocked and demands are being made he resigns his seat, or failing that is kicked out of his party (the Moderates, the party making up our government).
So apologies for that "stolpskott" making an even bigger ass than usual of himself.
Here's to hoping the election goes off without cheating or unpleasantness.
Swedish MPs in general, and of his age in the specific (60ish) don't really "get" social media, or that a single quip can resonate globally. Add to that, that many MPs and Swedish politicians in general reason and react as if it's still the 1970s, and it can be anything from him believing it for real, to him trying to pander to people who don't consume other media than state/regime media, to him actually wanting to have a real argument about false flag operations and such.
I'd lay odds though that it is he not realising what he actually claimed, and how extreme a statement from someone in his position it is. Case in point, just some five-six years ago a female Green Party MP called the Mediterranean "the new Auschwitz" and couldn't for the live of her understand why people were upset.
Blinkered, naïve and hubristic I think would be the best description.
Something to know about BSW that may be of interest to readers of this blog is that they are one of two parties (the other being AfD) who try to appeal to Covid sceptics. They may not be quite as staunch on the issue as the AfD but you need to understand that for the latter it was the instinct to be against anything that the established parties supported. Some AfD politicians even called for a lockdown in March 2020, calling Merkel too hesitant, but that flipped of course. Even if there was a strategic element to it, I'm nonetheless thankful for the AfD having done an excellent job as the only notable political opposition during the Covid years. BSW, on the other hand, is a spin-off of the Left. The Left sometimes had some critical words for how lockdowns disproportionately affect their clientele, but their solution was never really less totalitarian containment policies, they just wanted to throw more money at the disaffected.
Sahra Wagenknecht did not object to the first lockdown and I don't know exactly when she changed her mind, but I'd say she deserves credit for waking up to the madness at some point. She spoke out against vaccine mandates and her party (which she effectively controls) calls for an amnesty for people who had been fined for breaking Covid rules, and for a parliamentary commission to investigate everything that had been done wrong. One of their European parliamentaries is Friedrich Pürner, a prominent critic of the Covid measures. However, Pürner has since left the party due to internal quarrels. Unrelated to this (afaik), BSW has entered in coalitions with the parties responsible for lockdowns and mandates in Thuringia and Brandenburg. In Brandenburg and in Saxony they re-elected governors who ruled throughout the pandemic and are thus personally responsible for all the human rights violations we remember.
Of course, Covid is (finally) not everything that matters and for most people, it doesn't really affect their decision. Unbelievably, that was already the case 3.5 years ago... AfD was the only major party against Covid mandates back then, but they didn't really make it a focus of their campaign. But if I was a one-issue voter, I'd either choose AfD or BSW. While the latter may be seen as a bit less reliable, that's connected to them also being open for coalitions. AfD can afford to be 100% contrarian because no one wants to touch them anyway. Anyone who votes for CDU, CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP or the Left should know they are voting for the same people who fined you for not covering your face and breath through a piece of plastic for years, for the same parties that wanted to force an experimental vaccine into your body if you wanted to keep your job, for the same parties that declared the following activities "nonessential" parts of life: visiting friends and family (at least more than one at a time), going for a walk whenever you feel, buying and selling anything other than food and other government-regulated "essential" supplies, most sports,... the list is not exhaustive.
Yes I agree that the events of 2020-2021 were truly alarming, in terms of authoritarianism, surveillance and censorship and must not be allowed to be forgotten.
Sadly the collective amnesia is staggering. Lockdowns and vaccines were barely mentioned by the Uniparties during the British elections last year, despite 'Covid' and all that went with it being obviously the most significant event of the previous electoral cycle.
These events weren't at all mentioned in the Spanish elections 2 years ago either and shockingly my home country might be the only one where the same government that implemented lockdown measures is *still* in power.
I just wrote a long answer but accidentally closed it. So excuse me as this one will be short and less prosaic.
1. We just reelected the same coalition responsible for the first lockdowns in Germany. The incumbent government has been just as bad. France is still ruled by the same dickhead. You're not alone.
2. Spain shocked me. Lockdown was bad enough in Germany but I was thankful every day that I wasn't in Spain. The most common justification I heard from Spanish friends was that you needed an ultra-strict lockdown especially because you're such a social people in normal times who hug and kiss each other. Is that how most people think? To be fair, I've heard the same argument in Germany many times, i.e. "Sweden doesn't need a lockdown because they know to follow rules, we are nasty kids who deserve punishment". I think I don't need to elaborate how this is wrong on so many levels.
3. Are there any initiatives or individuals who stood up against lockdown in Spain? I googled it many times and all I found were maybe a handful of small local protests of a few hundred people at most or some more or less critical op-ed. I understand Spanish and used for many combinations using terms like confinamiento, mascarilla etc. but found close to nothing.
This isn't '21 anymore, when pharma shills could get away with this sort of statement - the receipts are in, big time.
But, even prior to roll-out, anyone with half a brain should've known these mRNA abominations will harm or kill people in more ways than there are stars in the sky. Why?
1 - Basic math - inserting 40,000,000,000,000 (Moderna) (12 trillion Pfizer) non-human genetic coding molecules into around 50 million muscle cells and expecting them to stay there is criminal lunacy.
2 - We only have approx. 4 trillion nucleated cells in our whole body. This means, theoretically, every single one could be 'infected' (x10) by a foreign genetic code, for a highly toxic pathogen, ie the spike protein.
3 - The, especially adaptive, immune system will attack and destroy any cells presenting foreign proteins, by design.
3- In other words, they are bioweapons; what could go wrong?
I was watching some German YouTube last night and after watching an AfD member (with an accompanying cameraman) show up at an anti-AfD protest and ask questions of the protesters, it occurred to me that in what is arguably the most advanced country in the world, people had simply either become disconnected from reality or were bored to tears.
I can't help but think that if Germany was facing an existential threat, all but one or two of these parties would disappear overnight and the only remaining ones would be those organized against the threat and those who either didn't feel threatened or supported it outright.
Funny how ignorant Americans can only think "NAZIS!!!" as a reference when you read something about Germany. Never mind that the communists controlled half of Germany for generations and their Stasi spied on everyone, and that Marxists today are flooding the country with immigrants, thanks to your Hollywood masters brainwashing people for hours every day. No, "Nazi" is still what you refer to. Just like your socialist teachers and media have told you. How obedient.
I know. I was just thinking of instances where the leadership bailed and left the populace holding the bag. So many other instances. But with Germany, we always go to nazi.
I didn’t intend it as a personal insult, but you’re insulting me. Just saying…
Old loyalties die hard, but when they do they are gone forever. My father-in-law, now in his eighties was a life long democrat voter based on his working class background. He voted for Clinton and Obama simply because they were the democrats, and you can't vote for republicans. There were many older voters like my father-in-law. These are what I term as "reflexive" or "knee jerk" voters.
Then Trump came along. Since 2016 I do not believe my father-in-law has voted for a single democrat. There has been a lot of that going on in the U.S. Don't be surprised if AfD do better than expected tomorrow.
Good luck tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the post-election post.
My now deceased father was kind of the same way… He was a lifelong Democrat, but after Clinton…(slick Willy) He just stopped voting… we would have discussions/arguments over why my taxes would go up every time a Democrat would get into office… 😡 He would never have an answer… He would just keep on saying the old mantra, “but the Democrats are for the common people…” 🙄🙄🙄 sigh…
Hopefully AfD will do better than expected… 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
The leftists only survive because of mass immigration, let's not forget that. Otherwise the Right in Germany as in every other Western country would win every election. In the U.S. the vast majority of Whites, and the majority of Whites in almost every single state, vote for the GOP, while the majority of non-Whites in every state vote for the Democrats. Same in Germany and everywhere else.
Just worth keeping in mind. Eugyppius' discussion above doesn't say anything about immigrant voters. Then again, he can be prosecuted if he formulates things the wrong way.
Unfortunately, I know many people that are still this way. They will vote democrat until the day they die. They typically read the New York Times, are older than 60 and watch the mainstream media.
I live near a defunct paper mill town in North Maine, carved out of the wilderness in 1897.
Unionized voters have voted Democrat since then until they lost everything they had, the jobs, the mills, the 130 MW hydro system, and half the population.
A very helpful pocket guide to the German political spectrum. What troubles me is that none of them - not even AfD - seem to understand that they need to free up the economy, political expression, and dump the green climate zero nonsense immediately - rebuild nuclear for the long run and even coal for the short run.
Sweden's former PM Carl Bildt (1991-1994) has for years been a key player for the globalist propaganda organisation European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), which has been funded by USAID, to further policies such as open borders, mass migration and so on.
Swedish X-users have tried to make the White House aware of this, in light of Bildt's very acerbic criticisms of Trump. Bildt is also the Chairman of the MEII - Middle East Investment Initiative, which also receives money from USAID. In fact, fully 90% of MEII's budget comes from USAID.
Bildt was by the by nicknamed "the chickenhawk" in the Asange-leaks long ago.
There are still many medical institutes who write about "persons who are pregnant," "person with a penis," "person assigned female at birth," etc, but Trump banning the use of this talk in official papers is a great change in the right direction.
Rotsa ruck; hope they opened new accounts. Those supporting any human use of ivermectin whatsoever, even for onchocersiasis or scabies, remain suspended.
I conjecture that the primary reason this zoo-like political ecosystem exists is the proportional representation system, and in particular with a relatively small hurdle to qualify for the Bundestag. I further conjecture that unification greatly exacerbated the balkanization that you describe.
One consequence of the balkanization is the necessity of the formation of the cartel you describe. One consequence of this system is that it leads to government by least common denominator. Furthermore, cartels cannot tolerate outside competition. Hence the wars on the AfD and free speech.
The UK has a similar Uniparty (Conservatives, Labour and LibDem with Greens and SNP also part of it in many respects) yet we have a first past the opost system of allocating MPs so I do not think your idea works.
Eugyppius, thanks for this trenchant summary on the eve of these historic elections. It is very well done, however there is one part of this analysis that to me still seems underdetermined and/or opaque. It is this:
"After the last elections in 2021, Die Linke appeared to be in its death throes, and when Sahra Wagenknecht (their most prominent politician) abandoned them to found her own Linke offshoot (the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, see just below), many including myself thought that Die Linke were done for. Not so! Thanks to a social media blitz masterminded by the abrasive Heidi Reichinnek and a tactical return to nuts-and-bolts socialist themes like affordable housing, Die Linke are surging in the polls and will perhaps come in as high 8% tomorrow."
I don't quite get how a mere "social media blitz" is sufficient to catapult Die Linke from "done for" to "as high as 8%". If that was really all it took to create a surge in the polls, why didn't they try this already? And if it is just an ad campaign without substance, why is anyone falling for it? I suspect something else is going on here, and I smell treachery afoot.
If this were American politics, we would suspect that these were push-polls designed to Astroturf Die Linke into being an election spoiler, with the setup for an eventual steal from the AfD. It's a standard Leftist playbook tactic that they tried to run (unsuccessfully) against Trump in 2024 and (successfully) in 2020. The movement itself is as artificial as it gets; the real question is who is behind it.
If polling is to be believed, Die Linke surge seems to be concentrated in the youngest voting demographics – consistent with the social media theory and with a correction away from their uninspiring flirtations with culture war and identity politics-style themes. It's at least historically conceivable, as Die Linke used to be a 8-9% party under Merkel. If we add their current 7-8% to say half of BSW at 4-5% (BSW has a lot of former Linke voters, but also at least as many non-Linke converts), then we're at 10-11%, a little high but not crazy. This is not to say there couldn't be funny business going on as well ofc.
I'm also baffled at the sudden surge. However, I think it is a combination of three factors.
1) Die Linke is the only major party that doesn't try to appeal to AfD voters. The Greens also wouldn't want to, but they had to make some compromises in the coalition. Whether you believe them or not, but every other party is now trying to act tough on immigration safe Die Linke. The median voter is certainly much less likely to carry a "refugees welcome" sign than 10 years ago, but there is a substantial minority who are against stricter immigration policies and they can't really vote for another party.
2) Related to this is that they focus on social issues other parties neglect. I personally find the whole election campaign rather frustrating because while I understand that immigration is an issue that deserves attention, there are so many other areas of politics where all governments of the past years failed just as badly. Education, healthcare, infrastructure,.... everything has been in constant decline for decades now and all we talk about is closing our borders? By not picking up the overall anti-immigration trend, Die Linke can campaign with higher pensions, better healthcare etc. Of course they have no plan how to fund all that, but it's great at least someone talks about such important topics.
3) Die Linke has two of the most charismatic polticians at the moment. Heidi Reichinnek is their new shooting star and whether you like her or not, she is a force of nature! I watched the Bundestag session where the firewall got its first cracks (AfD and CDU voting together) and all other parties expressed their disagreement, but no one with the energy of Reichinnek. Whether you agree with her or not, but she seems authentically passionate and also seems quite sharp in interviews. The other main candidate, Jan van Aken, does a good job too, but is much more calm and boring. But Gregor Gysi also campaigns a lot and he is certainly one of the most popular politicians across the political spectrum. He's 77 and should have retired already but volunteered to save his party (alongside two other well-known elders who don't have quite his outreach). Like him or not, but he's rhetorically gifted and has a sense of humour most German politicians (most Germans?) are lacking. I can see why content with Reichinnek (passionate young woman) and Gysi (witty old gentleman) would trend on social media.
A "social media blitz" eh? That was enough to get an election annulled in Romania recently. Surely the cry must go up - "Russian interference"? Or do we once again have to accept that when the Left does it, it's different. Because reasons.
Thanks so much for this. I'm basically using only your analysis to try and figure out the German coalition betting market on Kalshi (US version of Polymarket). If I place a bet there on this & win I'll use the winnings to upgrade to a paid Eugyppius subscription. Wish me luck!
You should expect some blowback to this analysis, along the lines that the CDGFSPUniparty (gosh, it's a bit LGBTQABCXYZ in its diversity) is under the control of some faceless and nameless globalist puppetmaster insisting on mor migro, mor islam, mor tax, mor surveilance, mor ayslum, mor speechpolice, etc, the Brandmauer the perfect device to ensure this dystopian future. Given that a number of other European countries (NL, IT, possibly AT, almost FR, intermittently PL) have managed to at least show signs of breaking out of the Uniparty globalist agenda, what is special about Germany? And are we just one election cycle away from the same?
I've been wondering if there are strong regional cultural differences--beyond the contrasts between traditionally Catholic/Protestant delineations--that persist in what has been for a couple of centuries now a forced-together political entity called for awhile now "Germany."
We in the US have been able to hang together through a lot of powerful stressors because there's always been an "American" identity that anyone can become part of. That's been under relentless attack here since the '60s and now we're starting to snap back though there are always plenty of loud voices on left and right alike fail to understand what "American" is.
Is Germany a place uneasily welded together even more than the obviousness of East/West?
> Is Germany a place uneasily welded together even more than the obviousness of East/West?
My observation is that Germans have been utterly browbeaten to never have *any* positive sense of being German. I don't know that it's "uneasily welded together" so much as "not welded, but rather soldered together". The very concept of a German Identity is anathema to many (most?) Germans, and the bonds are intended to be weak and easily severed.
But I wonder what a "German identity" actually means, culturally.
For example I was astonished not too long ago to learn how many dialects of Dutch exist between the Netherlands and Belgium. When you have a different way of saying the same thing then you have a difference in local culture too. Your natural identity is more village/region based no matter what citizenship any particular era conveys upon you.
So between High German and Low German there must be a million additional dialects of German too, each reflective of a micro-culture and a way of thinking about things.
When I'm outside the US I'm just indelibly American. But in the US I'm indelibly a Noo Yawkuh though I finally made what I hope shall have been my final escape 13 years ago. It's the unfiltered beating heart of who I am.
Is such a way of thinking and of being perceived the same for Germans when they move from one to another between all the various localities in Germany?
I'm also an ex-Noo-Yawkuh, but I've been in Germany for a long time now. I'd say the Bavarians and East Germans are pretty proud and have a culture under themselves. But generally, it seems to me that Germany as a country hates itself. And there's a sort of expected way to behave here, and if you don't behave that way, you're an asshole.
What I can never unsee nor forgive was how a Good German lives in everyone, everywhere, and how many people really thrive with the permission to let theirs out.
And all those upper-middle-class "elite" NY and CA women who didn't even have the courage to say "Fuck no, my little child is not going to eat lunch outside on concrete in 31F weather because you vicious idiots are afraid of a virus when every single one of us has seen, and experienced, at least once or twice in our lifetimes, the miserableness of a severe bout of flu and not one of us ever, anywhere, has previously ever work a mask."
Right, but in Germany, it's *always* "the postwar years". In the same way that American schoolkids are taught of late that there are a thousand genders, German schoolkids have been taught that being German is to be uniquely evil, since 1946. Which is bad for any sort of national identity. Sure, you're right that various parts of Germany think of themselves the way Americans think of Texans or New Yorkers or Californians or Floridans. But where any of those people might also think of themselves as "Americans" with some measure of pride, Germans, in my experience, will feel *bad* about being German.
I think I may have misunderstood where you were going with your initial comment though. You're absolutely right that Germany -- or the entire "pan-Germanic peoples" have a thousand different dialects and regional differences. That's just an artifact of two thousand years of cultural evolution in roughly the same place, joining and being broken up into various kingdoms, principalities, city-states, villages, and so forth, in a far more slow moving and gradient based level of dispersion. That's why there are all of those Germanic named towns west of the Rhine, with French named towns east of them, and why Switzerland is the odd mishmash of German, French, and Italian cultures that it is, while also being something completely unique. It's why so much of Europe tends to more flow from one region to the next, where in America, we have fairly hard divisions. We moved in *fast*, and set our little fiefdoms up quickly, and defined ourselves accordingly, but also as part of something larger.
As someone else mentions, "Germany" as an idea, even if only about 150 years old. Even "France" for all we think of it as this long running thing, for having had fights with England for a long time, is a far more "liquid" thing than "America" is. I mean, there's a chunk of France called "Brittany", and a chunk of it the French call "Alsace" and the Germans call "Alsatia". Even England's most well known ethnic group are the "Anglo-Saxons", or in German... "Sachsens".
So yeah, you're absolutely right that in addition to the German people having been *intentionally* left with a weak national identity, they also have one that's far less well hammered together than the Americans just sort of naturally.
Yes, I do think you misunderstood. I want to understand what it means, on the basic level of relatedness between people who may be considered to speak a common language if that's the standard official version everyone is taught in school but may have meaningful cultural differences more interesting than traditionally Catholic and Protestant areas.
Funny you should mention Brittany. Them Bretons were a lot friendlier than the Parisians were to the American and British backpacking sort. Real warm and welcoming and not in the least snotty.
> Yes, I do think you misunderstood. I want to understand what it means, on the basic level of relatedness between people who may be considered to speak a common language if that's the standard official version everyone is taught in school but may have meaningful cultural differences more interesting than traditionally Catholic and Protestant areas.
Fair enough, that happens to me sometimes, even when I'm trying real hard.
As for your larger question, well, I don't know the German people *that* well to be able to say. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that compared to the baseline of Americans, who mostly all chose to be here (Natives and Blacks notwithstanding) Germans are just sort of Germans by default, some *other* group of aristocracy or oligarchy having simply *decided* that they were a single nation. There is probably a higher concentration of characteristics that can be described as "German" inside the borders of Germany than without, particularly after so many ethnic Germans got forcibly relocated out of France, Poland, and Czech in the post-WWII years, and so to some extent they have with each other a larger grouping of shared culture, compared to the surrounding countries. But I don't know if a random person from Munich feels the same sort of kinship with someone from Berlin as I do with someone from Boston. And that's saying something, since even as Americans, I don't feel like I have a lot in common with someone from Boston, as a Burqueno. :D
I suppose at the very least, I can say that as Americans, there are certain values I feel we at least *should* share, for what that's worth.
What did Mozart consider himself to be? Goethe? I would guess the answer might be a man of Salzburg and a man of Frankfurt (or of the region).
Each of them was born into modern-enough times to be relevant to what I want to understand.
And this is basic to the struggle that Americans and Europeans have in trying to make any sense of one another's way of thinking about themselves and the world.
eugyppius, my German brother from another mother, your recent comments about the preventative measures you've taken, and continue to take daily, to mitigate the risk of persecution by your government for thoughtcrime have left me with a such a feeling of sadness for you. How far has the West fallen when men of good will live in some degree of fear that the oppressive hammer of government will come down on them? The Continent has long forgotten where rights come from, and at this point seems incapable of even identifying our shared natural rights, much less protecting them. I wish you nothing but the best, and I am grateful for all your work in resisting creeping tyranny in the West.
When exposing a crime is treated like committing a crime, you may then know you are ruled by CRIMINALS
Yes. I watch and wonder how long he will be allowed to speak
I feel the same way. Such horrible irony that the current govt applies censorship and coercion to achieve their ends. History suggests parties and societies who choose that path end poorly
It is ironic that you mention 'the Continent' as it was continental philosophy that has brought so much doom. Eight years ago when my then high schooler 'schooled/shamed' me for not knowing about German romanticism, Hegel, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse, etc. I was gobsmacked wondering what in the world these men had to do with the US. I am no longer gobsmacked. Throw in Freud's stuff on sex and shift it to race and you get CRT. Kafka was way ahead of his time.
Vance was right!
Not only was he right but I think his speech will resonate with Germans enough to make a difference this election.
Imagine hearing that speech then watching several Islamists knifing citizens to death across Germany. Suddenly it all clicks.
I wouldn't hold your breath!
We all have to get comfortable saying the truth, all the time. And the truth is, Germany is being run by neo-aristocrats who are essentially a dictatorship.
Cultural Marxists are not aristocrats. The word aristocrat comes from the European history they hate.
They only hate it due to envy, which is why the system they engender looks exactly like aristocracy in practice. Hence my comment.
And extremely well to do one's as they talk down to the lower classes.
No self awareness in liberal bubble land eh?
'eugyppius, my German brother from another mother'
And father, presumably.
Where can I see these comments, are they on X?
“Many readers – especially many American, Canadian and British friends – have expressed bewilderment at Germany’s party system.”
… ‘Have no worries, you are not alone: Germany’s party system does not understand itself either.’
One thing common to all the nations of the West is that the number of folks who are just sick to the teeth of 50+ years of political Progressivism has finally reached critical mass. Sick to the teeth of all the race-guilt-tripping, gender-bending, virtue-signalling nonsense that the university-'educated' middle classes have been sheep-dipped in.
I thank Eugyppius for this succinct summary of the German version.
".....the nonsense the university-'educated'-middle classes have been sheep-dipped in"....... it couldn't have been expressed in any better way. And that is happening all over the Western World. Indoctrination - planned a long time ago - and it will not stop unless we start a new education system.
Thank you. I think you'd find this an interesting read on that subject: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Thanks, I will go into your topics later, they sound very interesting. Just now... I wonder if the 'Re-education of the Germans by the "Allies" after 1945' was such a sounding success that the 'educators' did not want to stop and extended their 'successful education system' further. And I wonder how many of those 're-educated Germans' are the ones who want to run the German country now.
Germany's party system is a Scheiße show. Fingers crossed for a good result tomorrow. AfD and eugyppius lights in the darkness.
Much as I wish it were otherwise, I don’t foresee a good result for Germany, based on my previous readings from Eugyppius. I fear Germany is lost and there is no German version of Trump-DOGE with enough political force, momentum to rescue it from itself.
Semi-on topic:
Allow me to apologise for one of our top MPs, who after the report of the latest stabbing (Syrian "refugee" who attacked a Spanish tourist in Germany, apparently the Syrian thought he was attacking a Jew) took to X and implied that the attacks of the latest weeks have been orchestrated by AfD, and that the AfD are pawns for a "foreign power".
When a Swedish MP from the ruling party uses the phrase "foreign power", they mean Russia.
He has been roundly mocked and demands are being made he resigns his seat, or failing that is kicked out of his party (the Moderates, the party making up our government).
So apologies for that "stolpskott" making an even bigger ass than usual of himself.
Here's to hoping the election goes off without cheating or unpleasantness.
Did the MP actually believe this or was it only for political effect?
Very difficult to say with any certainty:
Swedish MPs in general, and of his age in the specific (60ish) don't really "get" social media, or that a single quip can resonate globally. Add to that, that many MPs and Swedish politicians in general reason and react as if it's still the 1970s, and it can be anything from him believing it for real, to him trying to pander to people who don't consume other media than state/regime media, to him actually wanting to have a real argument about false flag operations and such.
I'd lay odds though that it is he not realising what he actually claimed, and how extreme a statement from someone in his position it is. Case in point, just some five-six years ago a female Green Party MP called the Mediterranean "the new Auschwitz" and couldn't for the live of her understand why people were upset.
Blinkered, naïve and hubristic I think would be the best description.
It must be agonizing, Eugyppius. You have made a difference. Good luck tomorrow.
Something to know about BSW that may be of interest to readers of this blog is that they are one of two parties (the other being AfD) who try to appeal to Covid sceptics. They may not be quite as staunch on the issue as the AfD but you need to understand that for the latter it was the instinct to be against anything that the established parties supported. Some AfD politicians even called for a lockdown in March 2020, calling Merkel too hesitant, but that flipped of course. Even if there was a strategic element to it, I'm nonetheless thankful for the AfD having done an excellent job as the only notable political opposition during the Covid years. BSW, on the other hand, is a spin-off of the Left. The Left sometimes had some critical words for how lockdowns disproportionately affect their clientele, but their solution was never really less totalitarian containment policies, they just wanted to throw more money at the disaffected.
Sahra Wagenknecht did not object to the first lockdown and I don't know exactly when she changed her mind, but I'd say she deserves credit for waking up to the madness at some point. She spoke out against vaccine mandates and her party (which she effectively controls) calls for an amnesty for people who had been fined for breaking Covid rules, and for a parliamentary commission to investigate everything that had been done wrong. One of their European parliamentaries is Friedrich Pürner, a prominent critic of the Covid measures. However, Pürner has since left the party due to internal quarrels. Unrelated to this (afaik), BSW has entered in coalitions with the parties responsible for lockdowns and mandates in Thuringia and Brandenburg. In Brandenburg and in Saxony they re-elected governors who ruled throughout the pandemic and are thus personally responsible for all the human rights violations we remember.
Of course, Covid is (finally) not everything that matters and for most people, it doesn't really affect their decision. Unbelievably, that was already the case 3.5 years ago... AfD was the only major party against Covid mandates back then, but they didn't really make it a focus of their campaign. But if I was a one-issue voter, I'd either choose AfD or BSW. While the latter may be seen as a bit less reliable, that's connected to them also being open for coalitions. AfD can afford to be 100% contrarian because no one wants to touch them anyway. Anyone who votes for CDU, CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP or the Left should know they are voting for the same people who fined you for not covering your face and breath through a piece of plastic for years, for the same parties that wanted to force an experimental vaccine into your body if you wanted to keep your job, for the same parties that declared the following activities "nonessential" parts of life: visiting friends and family (at least more than one at a time), going for a walk whenever you feel, buying and selling anything other than food and other government-regulated "essential" supplies, most sports,... the list is not exhaustive.
Yes I agree that the events of 2020-2021 were truly alarming, in terms of authoritarianism, surveillance and censorship and must not be allowed to be forgotten.
Sadly the collective amnesia is staggering. Lockdowns and vaccines were barely mentioned by the Uniparties during the British elections last year, despite 'Covid' and all that went with it being obviously the most significant event of the previous electoral cycle.
These events weren't at all mentioned in the Spanish elections 2 years ago either and shockingly my home country might be the only one where the same government that implemented lockdown measures is *still* in power.
I just wrote a long answer but accidentally closed it. So excuse me as this one will be short and less prosaic.
1. We just reelected the same coalition responsible for the first lockdowns in Germany. The incumbent government has been just as bad. France is still ruled by the same dickhead. You're not alone.
2. Spain shocked me. Lockdown was bad enough in Germany but I was thankful every day that I wasn't in Spain. The most common justification I heard from Spanish friends was that you needed an ultra-strict lockdown especially because you're such a social people in normal times who hug and kiss each other. Is that how most people think? To be fair, I've heard the same argument in Germany many times, i.e. "Sweden doesn't need a lockdown because they know to follow rules, we are nasty kids who deserve punishment". I think I don't need to elaborate how this is wrong on so many levels.
3. Are there any initiatives or individuals who stood up against lockdown in Spain? I googled it many times and all I found were maybe a handful of small local protests of a few hundred people at most or some more or less critical op-ed. I understand Spanish and used for many combinations using terms like confinamiento, mascarilla etc. but found close to nothing.
Many millions more are going to be killed, and billions are seriously harmed or sterilised. NOT going away.
I didn't get vaccinated, but to say that it kills people or sterilizes them is that kind of Infowars talk that is just an embarrassment for the Right.
You're kidding, right?
This isn't '21 anymore, when pharma shills could get away with this sort of statement - the receipts are in, big time.
But, even prior to roll-out, anyone with half a brain should've known these mRNA abominations will harm or kill people in more ways than there are stars in the sky. Why?
1 - Basic math - inserting 40,000,000,000,000 (Moderna) (12 trillion Pfizer) non-human genetic coding molecules into around 50 million muscle cells and expecting them to stay there is criminal lunacy.
2 - We only have approx. 4 trillion nucleated cells in our whole body. This means, theoretically, every single one could be 'infected' (x10) by a foreign genetic code, for a highly toxic pathogen, ie the spike protein.
3 - The, especially adaptive, immune system will attack and destroy any cells presenting foreign proteins, by design.
3- In other words, they are bioweapons; what could go wrong?
https://evolutionaryhealthplan.info/#_Ref83404023
Just the fact that we don't know the after effects is a signal that KarlM Alias may be right.
It pains me greatly that people keep voting for the same old same old. How can anything ever change?
Eugyppius,
Thank you for this explanation.
I was watching some German YouTube last night and after watching an AfD member (with an accompanying cameraman) show up at an anti-AfD protest and ask questions of the protesters, it occurred to me that in what is arguably the most advanced country in the world, people had simply either become disconnected from reality or were bored to tears.
I can't help but think that if Germany was facing an existential threat, all but one or two of these parties would disappear overnight and the only remaining ones would be those organized against the threat and those who either didn't feel threatened or supported it outright.
Yep. Like the nazi elite before them, they will run and let the common people face the consequences
Funny how ignorant Americans can only think "NAZIS!!!" as a reference when you read something about Germany. Never mind that the communists controlled half of Germany for generations and their Stasi spied on everyone, and that Marxists today are flooding the country with immigrants, thanks to your Hollywood masters brainwashing people for hours every day. No, "Nazi" is still what you refer to. Just like your socialist teachers and media have told you. How obedient.
You need to interact with a higher IQ of American.
I know. I was just thinking of instances where the leadership bailed and left the populace holding the bag. So many other instances. But with Germany, we always go to nazi.
I didn’t intend it as a personal insult, but you’re insulting me. Just saying…
Old loyalties die hard, but when they do they are gone forever. My father-in-law, now in his eighties was a life long democrat voter based on his working class background. He voted for Clinton and Obama simply because they were the democrats, and you can't vote for republicans. There were many older voters like my father-in-law. These are what I term as "reflexive" or "knee jerk" voters.
Then Trump came along. Since 2016 I do not believe my father-in-law has voted for a single democrat. There has been a lot of that going on in the U.S. Don't be surprised if AfD do better than expected tomorrow.
Good luck tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the post-election post.
My now deceased father was kind of the same way… He was a lifelong Democrat, but after Clinton…(slick Willy) He just stopped voting… we would have discussions/arguments over why my taxes would go up every time a Democrat would get into office… 😡 He would never have an answer… He would just keep on saying the old mantra, “but the Democrats are for the common people…” 🙄🙄🙄 sigh…
Hopefully AfD will do better than expected… 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
The leftists only survive because of mass immigration, let's not forget that. Otherwise the Right in Germany as in every other Western country would win every election. In the U.S. the vast majority of Whites, and the majority of Whites in almost every single state, vote for the GOP, while the majority of non-Whites in every state vote for the Democrats. Same in Germany and everywhere else.
Just worth keeping in mind. Eugyppius' discussion above doesn't say anything about immigrant voters. Then again, he can be prosecuted if he formulates things the wrong way.
Unfortunately, I know many people that are still this way. They will vote democrat until the day they die. They typically read the New York Times, are older than 60 and watch the mainstream media.
I live near a defunct paper mill town in North Maine, carved out of the wilderness in 1897.
Unionized voters have voted Democrat since then until they lost everything they had, the jobs, the mills, the 130 MW hydro system, and half the population.
Yet, they still vote dem.
“Barring economic catastrophe, the Greens enjoy a hard floor of 8-10% of the German electorate.”
Habeck: “if economic catastrophe is what it takes, then hold my beer, watch this…”
(Great post!)
I love how they scream and yell that Elon is threatening their democracy.
Elon just says..."hold my rocket fuel".
They’re doing a damn fine job without his help.
A very helpful pocket guide to the German political spectrum. What troubles me is that none of them - not even AfD - seem to understand that they need to free up the economy, political expression, and dump the green climate zero nonsense immediately - rebuild nuclear for the long run and even coal for the short run.
With the exeption of coal plants (they'd take russian gas for it) these are all positions of the afd
The rise of AfD didn't create the Lefts hate; it just revealed it.
Pretty sure some of these EU leaders are going to get caught up in the DOGE Dragnet.
Hell we'll even loan you a few of our best brawlers, like Kash and Stephen Miller.
Which is fine by me. I hope they like cock for breakfast. Cuz that's where they're going if Kash Patel finds dirt.
Anyone who fails a lie detector tests should go into a 72-hour straightjacked, one-on- one, counseling session conducted by Stephen Miller.
If they fail the interrogation then put them in charge of a winter-only burger stand in Greenland
That's already happening.
Sweden's former PM Carl Bildt (1991-1994) has for years been a key player for the globalist propaganda organisation European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), which has been funded by USAID, to further policies such as open borders, mass migration and so on.
Swedish X-users have tried to make the White House aware of this, in light of Bildt's very acerbic criticisms of Trump. Bildt is also the Chairman of the MEII - Middle East Investment Initiative, which also receives money from USAID. In fact, fully 90% of MEII's budget comes from USAID.
Bildt was by the by nicknamed "the chickenhawk" in the Asange-leaks long ago.
Our elites are total imbeciles.
Earlier this week RFK had to change back the definition of these basic biological terms to what they were when we rose on two feet in the savannahs:
Girl is a minor human female.
Man is an adult human male.
Boy is a minor human male.
Mother is a female parent.
Father is a male parent
And they're screaming bloody murder about it.
Here, they are doing the opposite. A pregnant woman is not to be referred to as such in official material, at the maternity ward.
"Birthing person" is the politically correct term now.
And same as in the USA, it is liberal middle class women driving all of it.
AWFULs. "Affluent White Female Urban Liberals".
My favorite is that they scream "gender wage gap" when they can't even tell you what gender someone is!
So, "Knocked-up" is no longer acceptable?
Exactly. Middle class women.
It’s amazing to me how much of this is driven by women themselves.
They're their own worst enemy.
I hate to say this, but it's true:
Women have done themselves no favors when they started putting careers above raising children.
Seems obvious to me given how screwed up kids are these days.
There are still many medical institutes who write about "persons who are pregnant," "person with a penis," "person assigned female at birth," etc, but Trump banning the use of this talk in official papers is a great change in the right direction.
I have to ask.
Who were "They"?
"They/Them" has a new pronoun "was/were"
Seems like slightly different flavour looking at the exit polls.What comprising will be done?
I'm pretty sure the White House is fully aware of Bildt's activities and interests since he's been a longstanding member of the Bilderbergers.
Rotsa ruck; hope they opened new accounts. Those supporting any human use of ivermectin whatsoever, even for onchocersiasis or scabies, remain suspended.
Spot on as usual Ryan.
I conjecture that the primary reason this zoo-like political ecosystem exists is the proportional representation system, and in particular with a relatively small hurdle to qualify for the Bundestag. I further conjecture that unification greatly exacerbated the balkanization that you describe.
One consequence of the balkanization is the necessity of the formation of the cartel you describe. One consequence of this system is that it leads to government by least common denominator. Furthermore, cartels cannot tolerate outside competition. Hence the wars on the AfD and free speech.
The UK has a similar Uniparty (Conservatives, Labour and LibDem with Greens and SNP also part of it in many respects) yet we have a first past the opost system of allocating MPs so I do not think your idea works.
Eugyppius, thanks for this trenchant summary on the eve of these historic elections. It is very well done, however there is one part of this analysis that to me still seems underdetermined and/or opaque. It is this:
"After the last elections in 2021, Die Linke appeared to be in its death throes, and when Sahra Wagenknecht (their most prominent politician) abandoned them to found her own Linke offshoot (the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, see just below), many including myself thought that Die Linke were done for. Not so! Thanks to a social media blitz masterminded by the abrasive Heidi Reichinnek and a tactical return to nuts-and-bolts socialist themes like affordable housing, Die Linke are surging in the polls and will perhaps come in as high 8% tomorrow."
I don't quite get how a mere "social media blitz" is sufficient to catapult Die Linke from "done for" to "as high as 8%". If that was really all it took to create a surge in the polls, why didn't they try this already? And if it is just an ad campaign without substance, why is anyone falling for it? I suspect something else is going on here, and I smell treachery afoot.
If this were American politics, we would suspect that these were push-polls designed to Astroturf Die Linke into being an election spoiler, with the setup for an eventual steal from the AfD. It's a standard Leftist playbook tactic that they tried to run (unsuccessfully) against Trump in 2024 and (successfully) in 2020. The movement itself is as artificial as it gets; the real question is who is behind it.
If polling is to be believed, Die Linke surge seems to be concentrated in the youngest voting demographics – consistent with the social media theory and with a correction away from their uninspiring flirtations with culture war and identity politics-style themes. It's at least historically conceivable, as Die Linke used to be a 8-9% party under Merkel. If we add their current 7-8% to say half of BSW at 4-5% (BSW has a lot of former Linke voters, but also at least as many non-Linke converts), then we're at 10-11%, a little high but not crazy. This is not to say there couldn't be funny business going on as well ofc.
My moronic explanation is the Anti-Right protests led to some uninformed voters reflexively planning to vote for the Left ;)
I'm also baffled at the sudden surge. However, I think it is a combination of three factors.
1) Die Linke is the only major party that doesn't try to appeal to AfD voters. The Greens also wouldn't want to, but they had to make some compromises in the coalition. Whether you believe them or not, but every other party is now trying to act tough on immigration safe Die Linke. The median voter is certainly much less likely to carry a "refugees welcome" sign than 10 years ago, but there is a substantial minority who are against stricter immigration policies and they can't really vote for another party.
2) Related to this is that they focus on social issues other parties neglect. I personally find the whole election campaign rather frustrating because while I understand that immigration is an issue that deserves attention, there are so many other areas of politics where all governments of the past years failed just as badly. Education, healthcare, infrastructure,.... everything has been in constant decline for decades now and all we talk about is closing our borders? By not picking up the overall anti-immigration trend, Die Linke can campaign with higher pensions, better healthcare etc. Of course they have no plan how to fund all that, but it's great at least someone talks about such important topics.
3) Die Linke has two of the most charismatic polticians at the moment. Heidi Reichinnek is their new shooting star and whether you like her or not, she is a force of nature! I watched the Bundestag session where the firewall got its first cracks (AfD and CDU voting together) and all other parties expressed their disagreement, but no one with the energy of Reichinnek. Whether you agree with her or not, but she seems authentically passionate and also seems quite sharp in interviews. The other main candidate, Jan van Aken, does a good job too, but is much more calm and boring. But Gregor Gysi also campaigns a lot and he is certainly one of the most popular politicians across the political spectrum. He's 77 and should have retired already but volunteered to save his party (alongside two other well-known elders who don't have quite his outreach). Like him or not, but he's rhetorically gifted and has a sense of humour most German politicians (most Germans?) are lacking. I can see why content with Reichinnek (passionate young woman) and Gysi (witty old gentleman) would trend on social media.
A "social media blitz" eh? That was enough to get an election annulled in Romania recently. Surely the cry must go up - "Russian interference"? Or do we once again have to accept that when the Left does it, it's different. Because reasons.
I wonder if Putin giggles a little bit every time someone somewhere in the West says "Russian influence".
Thanks so much for this. I'm basically using only your analysis to try and figure out the German coalition betting market on Kalshi (US version of Polymarket). If I place a bet there on this & win I'll use the winnings to upgrade to a paid Eugyppius subscription. Wish me luck!
Great explanation! What a mess. Good luck to the AfD.
Danny Huckabee
You should expect some blowback to this analysis, along the lines that the CDGFSPUniparty (gosh, it's a bit LGBTQABCXYZ in its diversity) is under the control of some faceless and nameless globalist puppetmaster insisting on mor migro, mor islam, mor tax, mor surveilance, mor ayslum, mor speechpolice, etc, the Brandmauer the perfect device to ensure this dystopian future. Given that a number of other European countries (NL, IT, possibly AT, almost FR, intermittently PL) have managed to at least show signs of breaking out of the Uniparty globalist agenda, what is special about Germany? And are we just one election cycle away from the same?
I've been wondering if there are strong regional cultural differences--beyond the contrasts between traditionally Catholic/Protestant delineations--that persist in what has been for a couple of centuries now a forced-together political entity called for awhile now "Germany."
We in the US have been able to hang together through a lot of powerful stressors because there's always been an "American" identity that anyone can become part of. That's been under relentless attack here since the '60s and now we're starting to snap back though there are always plenty of loud voices on left and right alike fail to understand what "American" is.
Is Germany a place uneasily welded together even more than the obviousness of East/West?
> Is Germany a place uneasily welded together even more than the obviousness of East/West?
My observation is that Germans have been utterly browbeaten to never have *any* positive sense of being German. I don't know that it's "uneasily welded together" so much as "not welded, but rather soldered together". The very concept of a German Identity is anathema to many (most?) Germans, and the bonds are intended to be weak and easily severed.
I understand that re the postwar years.
But I wonder what a "German identity" actually means, culturally.
For example I was astonished not too long ago to learn how many dialects of Dutch exist between the Netherlands and Belgium. When you have a different way of saying the same thing then you have a difference in local culture too. Your natural identity is more village/region based no matter what citizenship any particular era conveys upon you.
So between High German and Low German there must be a million additional dialects of German too, each reflective of a micro-culture and a way of thinking about things.
When I'm outside the US I'm just indelibly American. But in the US I'm indelibly a Noo Yawkuh though I finally made what I hope shall have been my final escape 13 years ago. It's the unfiltered beating heart of who I am.
Is such a way of thinking and of being perceived the same for Germans when they move from one to another between all the various localities in Germany?
I'm also an ex-Noo-Yawkuh, but I've been in Germany for a long time now. I'd say the Bavarians and East Germans are pretty proud and have a culture under themselves. But generally, it seems to me that Germany as a country hates itself. And there's a sort of expected way to behave here, and if you don't behave that way, you're an asshole.
Well, they should stop now.
What I can never unsee nor forgive was how a Good German lives in everyone, everywhere, and how many people really thrive with the permission to let theirs out.
And all those upper-middle-class "elite" NY and CA women who didn't even have the courage to say "Fuck no, my little child is not going to eat lunch outside on concrete in 31F weather because you vicious idiots are afraid of a virus when every single one of us has seen, and experienced, at least once or twice in our lifetimes, the miserableness of a severe bout of flu and not one of us ever, anywhere, has previously ever work a mask."
What we think of as Germany is only 150years old I think, forcefully cobbled together from a host of small states.
The USA as an entity is older but grew from a single point such that all parts while distinct all began as America
Completely opposite in germany.
Only have to go to a football game anywhere in Europe to see it, the regional division so apparent.
Here in North America we think we support our teams but that’s a pale facsimile compared to the insanity of sports ball in Europe.
That was my point.
Right, but in Germany, it's *always* "the postwar years". In the same way that American schoolkids are taught of late that there are a thousand genders, German schoolkids have been taught that being German is to be uniquely evil, since 1946. Which is bad for any sort of national identity. Sure, you're right that various parts of Germany think of themselves the way Americans think of Texans or New Yorkers or Californians or Floridans. But where any of those people might also think of themselves as "Americans" with some measure of pride, Germans, in my experience, will feel *bad* about being German.
I think I may have misunderstood where you were going with your initial comment though. You're absolutely right that Germany -- or the entire "pan-Germanic peoples" have a thousand different dialects and regional differences. That's just an artifact of two thousand years of cultural evolution in roughly the same place, joining and being broken up into various kingdoms, principalities, city-states, villages, and so forth, in a far more slow moving and gradient based level of dispersion. That's why there are all of those Germanic named towns west of the Rhine, with French named towns east of them, and why Switzerland is the odd mishmash of German, French, and Italian cultures that it is, while also being something completely unique. It's why so much of Europe tends to more flow from one region to the next, where in America, we have fairly hard divisions. We moved in *fast*, and set our little fiefdoms up quickly, and defined ourselves accordingly, but also as part of something larger.
As someone else mentions, "Germany" as an idea, even if only about 150 years old. Even "France" for all we think of it as this long running thing, for having had fights with England for a long time, is a far more "liquid" thing than "America" is. I mean, there's a chunk of France called "Brittany", and a chunk of it the French call "Alsace" and the Germans call "Alsatia". Even England's most well known ethnic group are the "Anglo-Saxons", or in German... "Sachsens".
So yeah, you're absolutely right that in addition to the German people having been *intentionally* left with a weak national identity, they also have one that's far less well hammered together than the Americans just sort of naturally.
Yes, I do think you misunderstood. I want to understand what it means, on the basic level of relatedness between people who may be considered to speak a common language if that's the standard official version everyone is taught in school but may have meaningful cultural differences more interesting than traditionally Catholic and Protestant areas.
Funny you should mention Brittany. Them Bretons were a lot friendlier than the Parisians were to the American and British backpacking sort. Real warm and welcoming and not in the least snotty.
> Yes, I do think you misunderstood. I want to understand what it means, on the basic level of relatedness between people who may be considered to speak a common language if that's the standard official version everyone is taught in school but may have meaningful cultural differences more interesting than traditionally Catholic and Protestant areas.
Fair enough, that happens to me sometimes, even when I'm trying real hard.
As for your larger question, well, I don't know the German people *that* well to be able to say. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that compared to the baseline of Americans, who mostly all chose to be here (Natives and Blacks notwithstanding) Germans are just sort of Germans by default, some *other* group of aristocracy or oligarchy having simply *decided* that they were a single nation. There is probably a higher concentration of characteristics that can be described as "German" inside the borders of Germany than without, particularly after so many ethnic Germans got forcibly relocated out of France, Poland, and Czech in the post-WWII years, and so to some extent they have with each other a larger grouping of shared culture, compared to the surrounding countries. But I don't know if a random person from Munich feels the same sort of kinship with someone from Berlin as I do with someone from Boston. And that's saying something, since even as Americans, I don't feel like I have a lot in common with someone from Boston, as a Burqueno. :D
I suppose at the very least, I can say that as Americans, there are certain values I feel we at least *should* share, for what that's worth.
Let me try to put my question more clearly.
What did Mozart consider himself to be? Goethe? I would guess the answer might be a man of Salzburg and a man of Frankfurt (or of the region).
Each of them was born into modern-enough times to be relevant to what I want to understand.
And this is basic to the struggle that Americans and Europeans have in trying to make any sense of one another's way of thinking about themselves and the world.