Germany needs a Tom Homan. Your analysis borders on the comedic and terrifying. Defending democracy by spying on and banning candidates, Stasi would be proud.
The Tolkien justification is grimly hilarious. Nobody on the right can *stand* "Rings of Power", for a variety of reasons, while Tolkien himself absolutely *loathed* Hitler, whom he accused of betraying and sullying everything good about German heritage.
Thanks for posting that link - recommend anyone seeing this to go read the article, as it contains Tolkien's reply to the German publisher. It's a real lesson in English at the top-tier, and leaves no doubt as to what Tokien thought about national socialism and its racialist ideas.
It's a good reason to ignore anything he ever says again on any question of literature or drama. Then again, having no taste whatsoever is no bar to being an effective holder of public office, as amply demonstrated by the current head of state of the USA.
IYH OK this made me laugh hilarious "The whole thing is what a Stasi surveillance report would like, if the Stasi were too lazy to actually spy on people and spent all their time googling instead."
While these stunts are effective in their short term goals, to remove someone from the ballot paper, they are not free. The establishment is burning through its social capital. Those closest to the establishment tend to be much more inside the bubble so miss many of the social cues they are destroying. While elites ultimately control nations, they cannot really blatantly go against the wishes of many of the electorate. They must at least play the game.
This is happening all across the West. They seem to be delusional and unable to even pretend to be democratic any more. Can't be long before we see some circulation of the elites in Germany.
here we have plenty of smart, wise candidates like Kamala Harris to chose from. no stasi, and all criminals here stand trial, even if they are former presidents!
Well, at least the Republican ones do. The last Democrat I remember actually standing trial for his crimes was the Senator from NJ who took gold-bar bribes from Egypt and stuffed them in the pockets of the clothes in his closet.
Many in Europe may have to seek sanctuary there if current political trends continue.
Germany seems to be the leading elite in its direct attack on competing political candidates and movements. In Britain our self regarding elites are well ahead in censorship, two tier justice and persecution of anyone making unwelcome remarks.
As the invader-hordes grow in number and power, their fake loyalty to the traitors letting them in vanes and withers away and their true intentions become clear.
What will the elites do then?
Try to recruit from the indigenous population, as the elites by then will be desperate for protection and loyal hencmen and guards.
Might be far more entertaining to not leave but to prepare to overthrow the regime by getting in on the ground-level once they become so desperate they start recruiting political umnetionables and deplorables, thinking we will safeguard them.
If this come to pass (odds being slim, obviously) then it will be a pleasure to offer them a choice:
First into the breach against the invaders, or first against the wall. Their pick: either is a win/win for the people of the nation.
“…fight for a cause greater than themselves: their homeland, the survival of their culture, a just order, the defence against a global threat.” Yes, obviously a terrifying prospect for some. (I hope I didn’t use those quotation marks anti-constitutionally.)
wait, I thought they were marginalized because they were in Western countries. Now they are marginalized in their home countries and escape to the West so that they aren't? You all need to try and keep the story straight for once.
"As particularly suspect, they single out a piece Paul wrote in 2022, in which he praised the Amazon series Rings of Power..."
Praised Rings of Power? Praised? For what, woke-raping the legacy of Tolkien's works?
Anyway, Paul's poor taste in Tolkien-adaptations aside, this is eerily reminiscent of how the Socialist Democrat party of Sweden reacted when the Sweden Democrats gained their first seat in a local election over 20 years ago: they publicly opined that if people vote for the wrong party, then the law must be changed so people can't vote for the wrong party.
And the excuse was the same: to protect democracy.
Am I guessing correctly that this will get overturned on appeal/via constitutional judges, but that by then it will be too late for Paul's candidacy? Which probably is the real point of this Soviet-style travesty.
The opponents of AfD should take a moment to contemplate the lessons of the Niebelungenlied, and how the coveted precious and the desire and need to possess it will corrupt you completely.
Is there no legal concept of interim relief? So that Paul can get an interim injunction or other judgment that allows him to participate in the election?
okay, I have done more research on legal remedies. he can file for what is basically an emergency injunction with the responsible administrative court. it's conceivable it would be granted, not least because Paul is currently an elected member of the Landtag, there's no question he's eligible to stand for election. going against him, is the fact that it is apparently extremely rare for the courts to grant such remedies in the context of elections. probably what will happen, is he'll have to file a standard post-election complaint with the administrative court, and then there is indeed some chance that they order a repeat of the election with Paul on the ballot.
This is egregious. the most anti-constitutional thing you can do is bar someone from running for office because it violates so many people’s rights. It violate’s Paul’s right to voice what he thinks are the concerns in his district and it violate’s the constituents rights from voting for a candidate that they think suitably represents their issues.
if the courts sign off on this – the chances are not high, but they're not zero either – the door is open to just shut out AfD candidates period. this might happen all across the West, not in the East though. could also backfire in comedic ways, like the constitutional court overturns the strategy eventually and they have to redo a bunch of elections everywhere. it's nuts. we're at the limits of the system here, and they're willing to break it.
"Watergate" was a scandal, but what we experienced here with Clinton and Obama is a nothing burger. Seriously, the left is the party of lying, killing babies and old ppl, murdering opponents, spying, debanking and more lying.
Nixon only lost one state in the election and no POTUS has won a larger percentage of the popular vote since....thank goodness "they saved our democracy", right?
I don't think so, AfD is stronger in Ludwigshafen than you might think (well above 20% I think), but not strong enough to win a mayor's position. They are, however, stronger than SPD there, and the SPD masterminded this little stunt.
It is utterly astonishing that an unelected bureaucrat with a horse in the race can unilaterally ban another horse so close to the start of the race that the stewards don't have time to overturn said bureaucrat's decision. It is the stuff of fake democracies, the sort of which littered Eastern Europe within living memory.
the LfV literally writing up reports on the political reliability of potential election candidates is one of the most DDR-esque things i've ever seen. reading that whole document was surreal experience.
I guess we can take some limited solace in that (so far) you have to be candidate for mayor of a third-level town before this happens. In the DDR it happened to anyone who wanted to go to medical or law school, or just spend a weekend in the west. And their family.
At least so far no one has been refused an exit visa from the BRD because of political unreliability.
tfw you discover the state has all these legal competences you never noticed before and they can just forbid you from crossing internal Schengen-zone borders for really no reason at all.
Here in Arizona, the Secretary of State runs the election process.
When the Secretary of State runs for Governor, the political gymnastics are entertaining to behold.
Our current governor was our previous SoS. Her campaign involved fleeing from any reporter she didn't personally approve of, to take refuge in the women's room (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=katie+hobbs+flees+rest+room). She ran against a strong MAGA former media anchorwoman known to the entire state, and... won. Miracles still do happen in the desert.
How surprising, the person who was responsible for counting the votes, won the election. Stalin would be so surprised!. And she conveniently disrupted the voting in the hard right areas on election day as well. Our elections here in Arizona are a joke after that election. Trump must have won by a half million actual votes in order to officially win this state in 2024.
Whenever I contemplate the state of elections in AZ compared to NM... I realize that AZ was simply closer to CA, so of course they perverted the elections there sooner.
No, but his presence or not on the ballot will flip the outcome from one cartel party to the other. Also, his coming in a likely close second will have embarrassed all of them. Look at the affiliations to determine the likely outcome with and without, and also refer to Eugyppius' previous posts on the long-term intentions of the far-left wing of the party cartel. This is actually a curious short-term own-goal.
Hey, I know of an American political party that would just LOVE kicking its opponents off the ballot; and just like the German political establishment, they won't have any trouble finding pious-sounding reasons to do so. Which reminds me: when Hitler came to power, didn't he outlaw all other parties too? Hmmm ... “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
It's not because they haven't tried. After the phony felony trials of Trump, Democrats in several blue states tried to get him kicked off the presidential ballot as a felon. Fortunately for all of us, every such attempt was stymied by a court decision ruling that "not being a felon" is nowhere in the constitutional list of requirements for the president.
And all these years I didn't realize I was a traitor to the Yiddishkeit of my ppl because I hungered for a mate like Beorn.
edit: PS: In case you never knew we New Yorkers saw Wagner and raised him--https://arts.columbia.edu/news/der-ring-gott-farblonjet-mfa-directing-thesis-delivers-wild-wagner-send
"the sitting mayor of Ludwigshafen, Jutta Steinruck (a former Social Democrat) wrote an email on 18 July to the state Interior Ministry of her concern that “Paul is not loyal to the constitution.” ... Exactly a week later, the Ludwigshafen election committee, which is chaired by Steinruck herself, formally excluded Paul from the election on the basis of his anti-constitutional tendencies."
I once read that the Eskimos had 47 different words for snow. Is there any German equivalent at all for the English phrase "due process?"
As you'll see from the condensed list of principles for the Rättsstat (Swedish, we use the same basic system as does Germany), most of the EU-nations have left most of it behind if we compare the 1980s/1990s to present day.
We have left Rule of Law and are moving into a state of Rule by Law.
What a great well-researched and smartly presented article about timely threats to honest thinking. Sure, a hand gesture can be interpreted in sooo many ways and like the famous Biblical interpretations, folks forget that there were DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. Hence, the WP of a human hand's fingers contorted to make a far fetched contrived English expression are not the same words of the German or other languages. In fact, to me, I like to think that if you see a WP, like in an Escher painting, it means White Pussycat or some such fun concept....
> As particularly suspect, they single out a piece Paul wrote in 2022 on the Amazon series Rings of Power, where he wrote that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy “reflects a conservative mindset” because its protagonists “fight for a cause greater than themselves: their homeland, the survival of their culture, a just order, the defence against a global threat.” Being the wrong kind of Tolkien fan is enough to get you stripped of your passive electoral rights in current-day Germany.
I mean.... LOTR is basically British anti-German propaganda. You know the orcs are supposed to be Germans, right? In a funny way, it kind of makes sense that someone who likes LOTR would be a threat to Germany.
Germany needs a Tom Homan. Your analysis borders on the comedic and terrifying. Defending democracy by spying on and banning candidates, Stasi would be proud.
Stalin would be proud; so would Adolph, Mao, Benito, Che, that stupid judge in Brazil, and America’s democrat party.
Steven Miller would be glad to advise .
The Tolkien justification is grimly hilarious. Nobody on the right can *stand* "Rings of Power", for a variety of reasons, while Tolkien himself absolutely *loathed* Hitler, whom he accused of betraying and sullying everything good about German heritage.
https://lithub.com/on-the-time-j-r-r-tolkien-refused-to-work-with-nazi-leaning-publishers/
Thanks for posting that link - recommend anyone seeing this to go read the article, as it contains Tolkien's reply to the German publisher. It's a real lesson in English at the top-tier, and leaves no doubt as to what Tokien thought about national socialism and its racialist ideas.
Liking Rings of Power is a as good a reason to stop him from running for office as any...
It's a good reason to ignore anything he ever says again on any question of literature or drama. Then again, having no taste whatsoever is no bar to being an effective holder of public office, as amply demonstrated by the current head of state of the USA.
That's a remarkably glorious reply.
Man, I wonder what it was like to have actual Nazis to struggle against, as opposed to the faux ones which pop up whenever anyone opposes the left...
IYH OK this made me laugh hilarious "The whole thing is what a Stasi surveillance report would like, if the Stasi were too lazy to actually spy on people and spent all their time googling instead."
So the man freely admits that he mentioned a “story of great men and women who do what must be done because they want to remain true to their values"?
Such a monster must be kept out of office at all costs. Well done, Ludwigshafen!
While these stunts are effective in their short term goals, to remove someone from the ballot paper, they are not free. The establishment is burning through its social capital. Those closest to the establishment tend to be much more inside the bubble so miss many of the social cues they are destroying. While elites ultimately control nations, they cannot really blatantly go against the wishes of many of the electorate. They must at least play the game.
This is happening all across the West. They seem to be delusional and unable to even pretend to be democratic any more. Can't be long before we see some circulation of the elites in Germany.
the blowback is going to be rough, but they can't see it
Come to the US, Eugyppius!
here we have plenty of smart, wise candidates like Kamala Harris to chose from. no stasi, and all criminals here stand trial, even if they are former presidents!
Well, at least the Republican ones do. The last Democrat I remember actually standing trial for his crimes was the Senator from NJ who took gold-bar bribes from Egypt and stuffed them in the pockets of the clothes in his closet.
https://nypost.com/2024/07/16/us-news/sen-bob-menendez-convicted-of-sprawling-gold-bar-bribery-scheme/
LOLOL I did not know that. Thanks for the laughs.
yesss. Menendez is such a cheesey guy. It was not much in the news. You had to search to find that information.
Many in Europe may have to seek sanctuary there if current political trends continue.
Germany seems to be the leading elite in its direct attack on competing political candidates and movements. In Britain our self regarding elites are well ahead in censorship, two tier justice and persecution of anyone making unwelcome remarks.
Or:
As the invader-hordes grow in number and power, their fake loyalty to the traitors letting them in vanes and withers away and their true intentions become clear.
What will the elites do then?
Try to recruit from the indigenous population, as the elites by then will be desperate for protection and loyal hencmen and guards.
Might be far more entertaining to not leave but to prepare to overthrow the regime by getting in on the ground-level once they become so desperate they start recruiting political umnetionables and deplorables, thinking we will safeguard them.
If this come to pass (odds being slim, obviously) then it will be a pleasure to offer them a choice:
First into the breach against the invaders, or first against the wall. Their pick: either is a win/win for the people of the nation.
the elites will move to Switzerland or such
Davos, in particular.
“…fight for a cause greater than themselves: their homeland, the survival of their culture, a just order, the defence against a global threat.” Yes, obviously a terrifying prospect for some. (I hope I didn’t use those quotation marks anti-constitutionally.)
Your use of quotes here clearly displays a negation of the humanity of all marginalized people of color around the world.
the white minority group has colour too
wait, I thought they were marginalized because they were in Western countries. Now they are marginalized in their home countries and escape to the West so that they aren't? You all need to try and keep the story straight for once.
I don’t care about them.
"As particularly suspect, they single out a piece Paul wrote in 2022, in which he praised the Amazon series Rings of Power..."
Praised Rings of Power? Praised? For what, woke-raping the legacy of Tolkien's works?
Anyway, Paul's poor taste in Tolkien-adaptations aside, this is eerily reminiscent of how the Socialist Democrat party of Sweden reacted when the Sweden Democrats gained their first seat in a local election over 20 years ago: they publicly opined that if people vote for the wrong party, then the law must be changed so people can't vote for the wrong party.
And the excuse was the same: to protect democracy.
Am I guessing correctly that this will get overturned on appeal/via constitutional judges, but that by then it will be too late for Paul's candidacy? Which probably is the real point of this Soviet-style travesty.
The opponents of AfD should take a moment to contemplate the lessons of the Niebelungenlied, and how the coveted precious and the desire and need to possess it will corrupt you completely.
Ssssss.... precioussss....
it is my mistake (lol), see update
I'll let my comment remain un-edited; maybe somenone'll get a chuckle out of my internet-rage. ;)
So many Wormtongues, so little time.
Is there no legal concept of interim relief? So that Paul can get an interim injunction or other judgment that allows him to participate in the election?
there is, it's possible a court will intervene quickly. but I am not that optimistic here.
okay, I have done more research on legal remedies. he can file for what is basically an emergency injunction with the responsible administrative court. it's conceivable it would be granted, not least because Paul is currently an elected member of the Landtag, there's no question he's eligible to stand for election. going against him, is the fact that it is apparently extremely rare for the courts to grant such remedies in the context of elections. probably what will happen, is he'll have to file a standard post-election complaint with the administrative court, and then there is indeed some chance that they order a repeat of the election with Paul on the ballot.
This is egregious. the most anti-constitutional thing you can do is bar someone from running for office because it violates so many people’s rights. It violate’s Paul’s right to voice what he thinks are the concerns in his district and it violate’s the constituents rights from voting for a candidate that they think suitably represents their issues.
Great so he is assumed guilty until such time as proof of his innocence is no longer relevant. 🤦♂️
'then there is indeed some chance that they order a repeat of the election'
I'm thinking about the difference in cost between allowing him to run and then deciding whether to disqualify him, or running a whole new election.
As usual, they will probably go with the most profligate choice. Because it's only taxpayer money.
They're more likely to come up with a "legal" definition of "far right" in order to further exclude them.
Think of the power they would have if they do that. Talk about insidious.
if the courts sign off on this – the chances are not high, but they're not zero either – the door is open to just shut out AfD candidates period. this might happen all across the West, not in the East though. could also backfire in comedic ways, like the constitutional court overturns the strategy eventually and they have to redo a bunch of elections everywhere. it's nuts. we're at the limits of the system here, and they're willing to break it.
it happens here in the US.
"Watergate" was a scandal, but what we experienced here with Clinton and Obama is a nothing burger. Seriously, the left is the party of lying, killing babies and old ppl, murdering opponents, spying, debanking and more lying.
Watergate was a soft coup .
So was Russiagate .
Nixon was stabbed in the back .
Nixon only lost one state in the election and no POTUS has won a larger percentage of the popular vote since....thank goodness "they saved our democracy", right?
To keep the LotR-theme going, the anti-AfD types are like Old Man Willow in the Old Forest instead of thoughful Ents:
"We have decided ... that you are not democratic" (wet crushing-noises)
or Mordor-orcs:
"Lawfare's back on the menu!"
Is there a procedure for "WRITE-IN voting" in Ludwigshafen?
I know this is beside the point, but was he likely to win?
I don't think so, AfD is stronger in Ludwigshafen than you might think (well above 20% I think), but not strong enough to win a mayor's position. They are, however, stronger than SPD there, and the SPD masterminded this little stunt.
It is utterly astonishing that an unelected bureaucrat with a horse in the race can unilaterally ban another horse so close to the start of the race that the stewards don't have time to overturn said bureaucrat's decision. It is the stuff of fake democracies, the sort of which littered Eastern Europe within living memory.
the LfV literally writing up reports on the political reliability of potential election candidates is one of the most DDR-esque things i've ever seen. reading that whole document was surreal experience.
I guess we can take some limited solace in that (so far) you have to be candidate for mayor of a third-level town before this happens. In the DDR it happened to anyone who wanted to go to medical or law school, or just spend a weekend in the west. And their family.
At least so far no one has been refused an exit visa from the BRD because of political unreliability.
Oh, wait...
tfw you discover the state has all these legal competences you never noticed before and they can just forbid you from crossing internal Schengen-zone borders for really no reason at all.
The political sector of the ankle monitor market -- booming!
Here in Arizona, the Secretary of State runs the election process.
When the Secretary of State runs for Governor, the political gymnastics are entertaining to behold.
Our current governor was our previous SoS. Her campaign involved fleeing from any reporter she didn't personally approve of, to take refuge in the women's room (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=katie+hobbs+flees+rest+room). She ran against a strong MAGA former media anchorwoman known to the entire state, and... won. Miracles still do happen in the desert.
How surprising, the person who was responsible for counting the votes, won the election. Stalin would be so surprised!. And she conveniently disrupted the voting in the hard right areas on election day as well. Our elections here in Arizona are a joke after that election. Trump must have won by a half million actual votes in order to officially win this state in 2024.
Whenever I contemplate the state of elections in AZ compared to NM... I realize that AZ was simply closer to CA, so of course they perverted the elections there sooner.
*sigh*
No, but his presence or not on the ballot will flip the outcome from one cartel party to the other. Also, his coming in a likely close second will have embarrassed all of them. Look at the affiliations to determine the likely outcome with and without, and also refer to Eugyppius' previous posts on the long-term intentions of the far-left wing of the party cartel. This is actually a curious short-term own-goal.
Doesn't matter.
Hey, I know of an American political party that would just LOVE kicking its opponents off the ballot; and just like the German political establishment, they won't have any trouble finding pious-sounding reasons to do so. Which reminds me: when Hitler came to power, didn't he outlaw all other parties too? Hmmm ... “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
It's not because they haven't tried. After the phony felony trials of Trump, Democrats in several blue states tried to get him kicked off the presidential ballot as a felon. Fortunately for all of us, every such attempt was stymied by a court decision ruling that "not being a felon" is nowhere in the constitutional list of requirements for the president.
Not to mention all the other candidates they tried to disqualify from the ballot, like RFK Junior and the No Labels party.
Thanks, I did not know that part.
Are there an opposing parties in Ukraine?
Oh , I forgot …permanent martial law .
And what has that to do with the price of beans?
Obviously relevant in the context of talking about democracy and eliminating competition in voting?
By liking you comment, I guess I now have to give up hope of ever becoming mayor of Ludwigshafen. Their loss.
"Ludwigshafen? Why, I wouldn't run for dogcatcher there!"
Yes, but Bürgermeister has a ring to it.
Watch out about rings.
Ringmeister?
And all these years I didn't realize I was a traitor to the Yiddishkeit of my ppl because I hungered for a mate like Beorn.
edit: PS: In case you never knew we New Yorkers saw Wagner and raised him--https://arts.columbia.edu/news/der-ring-gott-farblonjet-mfa-directing-thesis-delivers-wild-wagner-send
"the sitting mayor of Ludwigshafen, Jutta Steinruck (a former Social Democrat) wrote an email on 18 July to the state Interior Ministry of her concern that “Paul is not loyal to the constitution.” ... Exactly a week later, the Ludwigshafen election committee, which is chaired by Steinruck herself, formally excluded Paul from the election on the basis of his anti-constitutional tendencies."
I once read that the Eskimos had 47 different words for snow. Is there any German equivalent at all for the English phrase "due process?"
Internet-translating gives "Rechtsstaatlichkeit".
Article on what the concept of Rechtsstaat is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat
As you'll see from the condensed list of principles for the Rättsstat (Swedish, we use the same basic system as does Germany), most of the EU-nations have left most of it behind if we compare the 1980s/1990s to present day.
We have left Rule of Law and are moving into a state of Rule by Law.
In America we've long referred to it as "Rule of Man".
What a great well-researched and smartly presented article about timely threats to honest thinking. Sure, a hand gesture can be interpreted in sooo many ways and like the famous Biblical interpretations, folks forget that there were DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. Hence, the WP of a human hand's fingers contorted to make a far fetched contrived English expression are not the same words of the German or other languages. In fact, to me, I like to think that if you see a WP, like in an Escher painting, it means White Pussycat or some such fun concept....
The hand gesture thing was a 4chan troll. People in the US have lost their jobs over it, while anonymous posters are high-fiving each other on 4chan.
> As particularly suspect, they single out a piece Paul wrote in 2022 on the Amazon series Rings of Power, where he wrote that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy “reflects a conservative mindset” because its protagonists “fight for a cause greater than themselves: their homeland, the survival of their culture, a just order, the defence against a global threat.” Being the wrong kind of Tolkien fan is enough to get you stripped of your passive electoral rights in current-day Germany.
I mean.... LOTR is basically British anti-German propaganda. You know the orcs are supposed to be Germans, right? In a funny way, it kind of makes sense that someone who likes LOTR would be a threat to Germany.