The Christmas holidays are over, the politicians and the media have awakened from their winter sleep, and Germany finds itself in the thick of an election campaign.
Reading this I’m thinking about the recent election of Trump and how the polls didn’t seem to reflect his true popularity due to folks being reluctant to express their support with the media so vehemently against him. Could the AfD be even more popular than the polls show?
Agree and the media and political hysteria about the far right won't change the way people vote. It just makes it less likely that they will publically admit their preferences in polls. I'm sure a lot of the "undecideds" know exactly who they want. Fingers crossed for an AFD landslide!
And what always amuses me is the right-wing party always gets the blame as if they sucked people in while in reality they are simply meeting a need that many in the country are seeking a solution to.
Indeed. Voters in a polling booth make a choice no-one will be able to tie to them personally, unless they choose to reveal it.
The most obvious explanation of groupthink (Irving L. Janis 1971 https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Dynamics/Janis_Groupthink.pdf) is "remaining loyal to the group by sticking with the policies to which the group has already committed itself". In other words: for reasons of personal safety and social survival and advancement and/or because the person cannot believe that the group's position is fundamentally wrong, believing what everyone else believes, not least due to shortage of the time and expertise required to properly research alternatives.
However, the situation is more complex because no-one has perfect knowledge of what other people actually believe. Social pressures result in many people expressing a preference for X, which conforms with tribal norms, while they actually believe Y, which is to the contrary.
Two days ago I read an article https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/democrats-in-full-retreat-on-immigration on 48 House Democrats supporting the Laken Riley Act (named after a woman who was murdered by an illegal immigrant), which "mandates the detention without bond of undocumented migrants arrested for minor offenses like shoplifting — in some cases, indefinitely". This might be Democrats jumping ship to be on the winning side, or it could be that they previously supported such actions, but were afraid to admit this publicly.
Then I read Jeffrey Tucker's article https://substack.brownstone.org/p/preference-falsification-and-cascade, which begins with: "Tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen posted the following: 'We are living through the most dramatic preference cascade of my life. Every day I am hearing the most amazing things.'".
A preference cascade is a wave of individuals expressing their true beliefs after a period of suppressing these due to the desire to conform with what _they_think_ other people in their tribe think. So, many people, in preference falsification, pretend to beleive Y when they actually beleive X which is to the contrary - thereby providing all other members of their tribe with a false impression of what they actually think.
As the number of people seen to be breaking ranks with tribal dictums increases, more are so emboldened and this positive feedback gives many people a sense of where true, wise, knowledge and the range of what is acceptable to express in public is heading. Many people want to be at the head of a wave of change and so try to be seen as leading successful trends, or at least not be left behind on the wrong side of history, so they join the cascade of expressing their true preferences which they formerly suppressed. (Also, some people just feel and say whatever they think the trend is within their tribe, without any other considerations.)
The private polling booth differs from responding to a survey, especially if it is administered by another person verbally or in person. A breakout of true concern about immigration, the economy and censorship pushed Donald Trump to victory.
It is easy to imagine the same social processes and the same concerns driving greater electoral support for AfD. This is especially so with all the other parties demonizing AfD and their policies and by promising never to work with them, rather than by adopting these policies themselves.
There's only one poll that counts and those who vote decide nothing whereas, as the US Democrats learned from the late Robert Mugabe, and the German leaders learned from the US Democrats, those who count the vote decide everything.
It's okay. I don't think Germany uses Dominion machines and has a long tradition of liberal democracy. Try expressing a dissenting view about history and see what happens.
Apparently internal Harris polls showed she was never ahead. Yet all we heard seemed designed to prime a Democrat victory. Remember the Des Moines register poll? Some of it is probably push polling as well. Curious how much of an effect in Germany.
Trump got almost the same percent of the vote as he did in 2020. Only a few million more than 2020. His voter base showed up almost the same.
What change are you talking about?? The question is where did the Democrat votes go and how was Harris millions of vote behind the most popular president in US History, Joe Biden?
What myself and other English speakers cannot fathom is why the AfD don't have 75% of the vote. Why this faffing around at 20%. What is wrong with people? What are they missing? Their country is in terminal decline.
Mass immigration combined with climate insanity is killing the country. Both these polices need energetically reversed, to put it mildly. Not just stopped but a very serious change in direction.
Why are we all so polite about these things? Climate change is an invention and mass immigration will trigger serious violence in the near future. The majority voted for neither of them.
What is wrong with people? The same thing that's wrong with my Democratic friends who still think Joe Biden is sharp as a tack and Kamala Harris was the Second Coming. In other words, brainwashing.
The L.A. fires are obliterating the bluest, most progressive, most elite Democrat area of California. Despite the nexus of stupidity, massive failure and incompetence that contributed to their wealthy enclaves being demolished by the fire, if I had to bet I would say those fools will still vote Democrat next time around.
Not so sure of that. The saying used to be that a conservative was just a liberal who got mugged. I'm guessing that now it will be: A Trump supporter is a former liberal whose house got burned down. Deep in the heart of most Americans lies a pragmatist trying to break out.
I know a man who used to do some lobbying for the State of West Virginia Board of Regents in Washington. In the course of that work he had had some dealings with Tim Walz. When Kamala picked him as her VP running mate, my friend called them the “Dream Team.” My wife and I have used that term derisively to refer to the Democratic ticket’s clown show ever since.
Did he ever explain why he thought so highly of Walz. To me Kamala was the weakest candidate to ever run for president. She could barely do a friendly interview let alone a press conference. Her picking of Walz was inline with my perception, that's why she picked him. A weak VP, who couldn't outshine her. Anyone else would have.
It's hard to understand the Germans' wholesale societal rejection of anything that might even nod towards Nazism until you live among them for a while.
Some of them.would quite literally cut off their own limbs rather than be perceived as not being 100% anti Nazi.
Yep, which is why our host will have to get used to the talking points that Hitler was a left-wing communist.
I know that grinds his gears being a professor of history, but his explanation for why this was wrong appeared to boil down to the exact way terminology was used in the 1920s. But we don't live then, we live now, and any comparison of the third Reich versus the USSR at all, especially if compares to the Western powers, shows that virtually nothing separated Hitler's ideology from that of the modern left. He was arguably ahead of his time, being so obsessed with race war at the time when the bulk of the left was still focused on class war. But the modern left is fully bought into race war as the explanation for the structure of the world and fully believes in the existence of racial groups oppressing each other. The Nazis were in fact socialists, openly stated they were, call each other comrades, passed animal protection laws and did many other things that modern leftists would find highly pleasing, and of course had exactly the same attitude towards censorship and totalitarian control.
The fact that the afd's opponents are suppressing their popularity by telling a polarizing and polar opposite version of history in which Hitler was a libertarian capitalist who believed in strongly defended borders, will inevitably invite historical re-examination and backlash. Because this has never in fact been true.
Global Naziism is over with Trump’s throttling of U.S. (Democrat) Naziism, cemented further in California’s (Democrat) unfolding post-nuclear, zombie apocalypse.
The AfD doesn't have 75% of the vote because, in the thorough way that Germans do everything, they have made the Holocaust and the lesson learned from it - "so etwas darf nie wieder passieren" ("such a thing must never happen again") - into a defining feature of their national identity, and along with it have cultivated, if not reveled in, a national guilt and self-hatred that has been openly expressed for decades by the left, for example on protest banners stating things like "Deutschland, du mieses Stück Scheisse" ("Germany, you rotten piece of shit").
I belive that the border opening of 2015 has been seen by many Germans as a chance for atonement, a chance to partly make up for their WWII sins by showing the world their moral righteousness, particularly with regard to the issue of racism. That must have been a powerful motive. Hence the sheer desperation of clinging to the narrative of the innocent migrant and the reflexive, categorical rejection of the AfD that symbolizes nothing less than their evil Nazi past. Many will rather accept the break-down of their society than allow in doubts about these core beliefs.
What shall be very interesting is if Norway tires of their own utility rates sometimes rising dramatically when the export power.
Both the UK and Germany, when Dunkelflaute conditions exist, do not have sufficient firm capacity to keep from blacking out.
In Germany this is due to closure of their perfectly-operating zero-carbon nuclear power plants. In the UK, it’s due to their misguided belief that wind & sun alone can provide all needed power.
Norway’s power export links are coming to their technical end-of-life in 2026-27; it will be hilarious if they announce a policy of stemming power exports.
The UK & Germany can only play their NetZero game if other countries provide backup power. No matter how much wind & solar is added, it all produces close to zero when it’s windless and cloudy.
So it all requires 100% backup by firm generators. So ratepayers get to pay for two different sets of generation infrastructure.
thank you for kind inquiry. I am only as of about yesterday fully recovered, I was extremely tired for many days, which you could perhaps divine from anemic posting schedule.
I've followed Icelandic politics since I visited a decade ago and met, stay in contact with a Pirate Party former MP. They crested in support following the bankers corruption in the major parties coming to light. Even secured the most votes of all parties, a plurality. But no other party, none, would form a governing coalition with them, top vote getting party. Iced out in Iceland. Shades of same in Deutschland.
Question, are there any formal debates between political candidates / parties, or are there just stump speeches? The systematic bias in the German media seems awfully undemocratic. Is there any provision to insure equal time / exposure in the public domain for all parties?
I commend to everyone your X thread that you link to above. Sitting here imagining you tearing out your hair--though I'm sorry you ravaged your scalp!--was horribly entertaining. And look. Musk is like magic gas--or any gas. He expands to the full parameters of the space he gets into.
Though it is sad that Musk overwhelmed the conversation to that extent, the reaction thread was pretty hilarious to read. I hope the whole thing wasn't a waste of effort with Musk's bloviating.
If it is taken as a training session by Weidel to become more deft and nimble in interviews and in taking advantage of any opportunity to speak up forcefully for her party, then it shall not have been a net negative.
Eugyppius, these polls sound encouraging. Like many others I tend to dismiss them as being manipulated, but it’s hard not to be pleased by these results. Fingers crossed.
I think the polls are manipulated, but likely against the AfD...Germans are gradually becoming aware that they've been fed fentanyl instead of vitamins...
But however pleasing the results, within the bounds of reality, the cordon sanitaire means that whether the AfD obtains 25% or even 35% matters little to practical politics at the level of citizens' lives. The result is merely a barometer of the percentage of citizens who are effectively disenfranchised. I'm sure all readers here would agree that disenfranchising 25%+ of the electorate is extremely unhealthy, but in the modern technocratic State, a Ceausescu moment is simply unrealistic.
With all the hysteria, hair pulling , hand wringing along with a flood of salty tears, it’s kind of hard to believe the AfD isn’t polling higher. I also just read an article on gateway pundit where Thierry Breton claims the EU could invalidate the election results should they go the “wrong” way. Maybe in Romania, but Germany? I’d like to see that…
Fear not. Thierry Breton just needs a new hair do and he'll be quiet. Remember, Queen vd Leyen fired him. He needs to consider how he got so much wrong that fellow libtards had to fire him. Very 'special'.
In the USA, we had in effect a “cordon sanitaire” between the mainstream media and the Democratic party against Trump. They ranted and raved that he was a fascist, even compared him to Hitler and Mussolini, the later after he was shot at by a would-be assassin, because Mussolini had once used an attempted assassination to his benefit politically. These elites would do anything to keep Trump out of office again, including forcing their previously nominated candidate off the ballot and replacing him with a babbling hyena and a socialist lunatic. It failed. Perhaps, these other parties in Germany could learn from that experience.
Living just south of LA has kept me away for a few days and, well, distracted. While members of my own family are safe, they are pressed on all sides to help others. Please pray for all those suffering, confound those taking advantage (the looting is off the charts) and expose the wicked decision makers (climate blamers). Lots of finger pointing while the locals pull together to help those in need. May God provide richly for those suffering.
As far as German politicians go and those leaders who have decided long ago to marry the devil, using the same dirty tricks of division, obvious and childish manipulation of history and false accusations ("far right" sounds alot like "anti-vaxer"), I laugh in their faces as they dare to pull out the 1933 comparisons. What they have done in the financial/inflation/economic/green policies alone reflect their own hypocrisy. German leaders have proven themselves to be pathetically disloyal to German citizens with the single action of allowing USA to destroy the Nordstream pipeline. They should be walking around in shame begging German citizens for forgiveness before they are sent to prison for treason.
Let us hope the best for Austria (and Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia) as courage and determination will be necessary to undo the damage before they can repair their own nations. In order for citizens to continue their support, I pray they expose every dirty trick the past governments have deployed on them. May God bless them with success!
As a DE perma-resident, I could just about swallow a CDU led coalition as long as the SPD & die Grüne were excluded. The damage wrought by these lunatic half-wits is driving DE to destruction. Added to which, the half-wit Grüne Energy Minister, Habeck, is putting himself forward as the next Chancellor. Habeck, Baerbock, Faeser et al have wrought more destruction on DE than Bomber Harris in WW2.
> They made Musk into a symbol for the carbon-free, electrical-vehicle future that awaits us all. It is hard to turn around in an instant and reconstruct the man as literally Hitler.
You know what was absolutely hilarious to me last year?
I used to have this circle of friends. I never really fit in with them, for reasons which will become apparent shortly, and they all stopped talking to me a few months ago. But prior to that, they were amazing.
Because they were the most default democrats I've ever met. Like they're all Democrats. They all got really really mad about Trump. But they all come across like they don't actually care that much, and they just think they're supposed to. I actually joked with them once that all of them are just married in their late 20s, own houses, cook meals, and do gardening. How very liberal of them.
But you see, they all work in tech as software engineers, PMs, etc. And so they're not just default-democrats, they're default-tech-democrats. And that means they care a lot about global warming, and spending lots of money on luxury goods to show off how much better than you they are. So they all drive Teslas. In fact, they're so much better than you, because they care about the environment so much, that they all (used to) work for Tesla.
Then Musk started tweeting support for Trump. And it was absolutely amazing, watching them bend their minds into pretzels to justify how they spent the last 5 years saying this guy is going to save the planet from everyone dying of climate change, and now he's a nazi.
I don't have any specific hilarious anecdotes to share, but just, it was an omnipresent thing in interactions with them. it was amazing
Is it actually true that a significant part of CDU voters harbor sympathy with AfD?
In your last post on this topic, you included a poll result on the question (paraphrase) “do you agree with Musk’s comments on AfD?” and the yes/no splits for CDU were almost identical to Grüne and SPD - in the ~10/80 against range. Only FDP and BSW were materially more sympathetic, and even they were ~25/50.
Your comments on X about the Weidel-Musk conversation were hilarious. Being a good interviewer is a skill and Musk clearly doesn't have it. To do so you need to be able to ask a short question then sit back and listen. Clearly Musk isn't self-effacing enough to believe that other people's views are worth listening to for more than 2 minutes. Mr. Musk, please watch Michael Portillo to see how it's done.
It's like having a "ReichNag Fire" every day of our lives with these people.
If only Hitler had never lived these preachy prattling parasites would have nothing to harp on.
I'm convinced it's easier to convince people that Ernst Röhm was a hero who survived "The Night of the Long Knives" and slayed Hitler than to convince people Trump and AfD leaders are not Hitler.
I mean it might be easier to find common ground with these fools that way.
Polls are pretty meaningless these days. If I was to be called I would tell them to mind their own business. That it was nobody’s business but mine. So in the end we won’t know until the votes are in and counted. Then the horse trading will begin.
I didn’t listen to the interview but if it was disappointing then I find that refreshing. I am over smooth talking, boring, meaningless nonsense from politicians. A sincere but slightly less confident politician would be a breath of fresh air.
German polls historically have been pretty accurate. They may slightly overstate Green support and slightly understate CDU and AfD support - but generally just by one or two points.
I do; well did until I quit answering calls from unknown numbers. The University of Delaware polled me in 1988, then didn't bother to include my answers in the results reported in the Wilmington News-Urinal.
Reading this I’m thinking about the recent election of Trump and how the polls didn’t seem to reflect his true popularity due to folks being reluctant to express their support with the media so vehemently against him. Could the AfD be even more popular than the polls show?
Exactly that and the manipulation of the polls. None of it was enough tho.
Could you imagine the landslide Trump would've had if the press did 1/10th of the job they're supposed to do?
It would've been on the order of Reagan in 84'
I noticed the polls (Gallup, Dan Jones, etc.) were falsified about the time I was a tween many decades ago.
The job of the press is to control the narrative in favor of Democrats. They did their jobs, but not well enough.
Yup. The current corrupt press has two jobs:
1. Signal to people what is acceptable to think/say
2. Manufacture consent.
I think the clearly lost their touch. They currently have the attention of only about 22 percent of the population.
Agree and the media and political hysteria about the far right won't change the way people vote. It just makes it less likely that they will publically admit their preferences in polls. I'm sure a lot of the "undecideds" know exactly who they want. Fingers crossed for an AFD landslide!
And what always amuses me is the right-wing party always gets the blame as if they sucked people in while in reality they are simply meeting a need that many in the country are seeking a solution to.
Indeed. Voters in a polling booth make a choice no-one will be able to tie to them personally, unless they choose to reveal it.
The most obvious explanation of groupthink (Irving L. Janis 1971 https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Dynamics/Janis_Groupthink.pdf) is "remaining loyal to the group by sticking with the policies to which the group has already committed itself". In other words: for reasons of personal safety and social survival and advancement and/or because the person cannot believe that the group's position is fundamentally wrong, believing what everyone else believes, not least due to shortage of the time and expertise required to properly research alternatives.
However, the situation is more complex because no-one has perfect knowledge of what other people actually believe. Social pressures result in many people expressing a preference for X, which conforms with tribal norms, while they actually believe Y, which is to the contrary.
Two days ago I read an article https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/democrats-in-full-retreat-on-immigration on 48 House Democrats supporting the Laken Riley Act (named after a woman who was murdered by an illegal immigrant), which "mandates the detention without bond of undocumented migrants arrested for minor offenses like shoplifting — in some cases, indefinitely". This might be Democrats jumping ship to be on the winning side, or it could be that they previously supported such actions, but were afraid to admit this publicly.
Then I read Jeffrey Tucker's article https://substack.brownstone.org/p/preference-falsification-and-cascade, which begins with: "Tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen posted the following: 'We are living through the most dramatic preference cascade of my life. Every day I am hearing the most amazing things.'".
I had never heard the term "preference cascade", which the article goes on to discuss, by reference to Timur Kuran's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification 1987 article "Chameleon voters and public choice" and 1995 book "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1016932.Private_Truths_Public_Lies.
A preference cascade is a wave of individuals expressing their true beliefs after a period of suppressing these due to the desire to conform with what _they_think_ other people in their tribe think. So, many people, in preference falsification, pretend to beleive Y when they actually beleive X which is to the contrary - thereby providing all other members of their tribe with a false impression of what they actually think.
As the number of people seen to be breaking ranks with tribal dictums increases, more are so emboldened and this positive feedback gives many people a sense of where true, wise, knowledge and the range of what is acceptable to express in public is heading. Many people want to be at the head of a wave of change and so try to be seen as leading successful trends, or at least not be left behind on the wrong side of history, so they join the cascade of expressing their true preferences which they formerly suppressed. (Also, some people just feel and say whatever they think the trend is within their tribe, without any other considerations.)
The private polling booth differs from responding to a survey, especially if it is administered by another person verbally or in person. A breakout of true concern about immigration, the economy and censorship pushed Donald Trump to victory.
It is easy to imagine the same social processes and the same concerns driving greater electoral support for AfD. This is especially so with all the other parties demonizing AfD and their policies and by promising never to work with them, rather than by adopting these policies themselves.
There's only one poll that counts and those who vote decide nothing whereas, as the US Democrats learned from the late Robert Mugabe, and the German leaders learned from the US Democrats, those who count the vote decide everything.
Brings up the interesting question of how reliable the vote counting is in Germany.
It's okay. I don't think Germany uses Dominion machines and has a long tradition of liberal democracy. Try expressing a dissenting view about history and see what happens.
Apparently internal Harris polls showed she was never ahead. Yet all we heard seemed designed to prime a Democrat victory. Remember the Des Moines register poll? Some of it is probably push polling as well. Curious how much of an effect in Germany.
Trump got almost the same percent of the vote as he did in 2020. Only a few million more than 2020. His voter base showed up almost the same.
What change are you talking about?? The question is where did the Democrat votes go and how was Harris millions of vote behind the most popular president in US History, Joe Biden?
Agree. That is my thinking as well. Here in the US, turns out a lot of Hollywood elites voted for Trump, pretending they were just voting for RFD Jr.
What myself and other English speakers cannot fathom is why the AfD don't have 75% of the vote. Why this faffing around at 20%. What is wrong with people? What are they missing? Their country is in terminal decline.
Mass immigration combined with climate insanity is killing the country. Both these polices need energetically reversed, to put it mildly. Not just stopped but a very serious change in direction.
Why are we all so polite about these things? Climate change is an invention and mass immigration will trigger serious violence in the near future. The majority voted for neither of them.
What is wrong with people? The same thing that's wrong with my Democratic friends who still think Joe Biden is sharp as a tack and Kamala Harris was the Second Coming. In other words, brainwashing.
The L.A. fires are obliterating the bluest, most progressive, most elite Democrat area of California. Despite the nexus of stupidity, massive failure and incompetence that contributed to their wealthy enclaves being demolished by the fire, if I had to bet I would say those fools will still vote Democrat next time around.
Not to mention their inability to get fire insurance.
I think it’s physically impossible for them to vote for a republican.
Not so sure of that. The saying used to be that a conservative was just a liberal who got mugged. I'm guessing that now it will be: A Trump supporter is a former liberal whose house got burned down. Deep in the heart of most Americans lies a pragmatist trying to break out.
I know a man who used to do some lobbying for the State of West Virginia Board of Regents in Washington. In the course of that work he had had some dealings with Tim Walz. When Kamala picked him as her VP running mate, my friend called them the “Dream Team.” My wife and I have used that term derisively to refer to the Democratic ticket’s clown show ever since.
Did he ever explain why he thought so highly of Walz. To me Kamala was the weakest candidate to ever run for president. She could barely do a friendly interview let alone a press conference. Her picking of Walz was inline with my perception, that's why she picked him. A weak VP, who couldn't outshine her. Anyone else would have.
I've long since lost those "friends"...
It's hard to understand the Germans' wholesale societal rejection of anything that might even nod towards Nazism until you live among them for a while.
Some of them.would quite literally cut off their own limbs rather than be perceived as not being 100% anti Nazi.
Agree. Have a German born husband and his parents literally flew off the deep end about Nazis when I commented on a eugyppius post.
My sister in law just rolled her eyes at them.
Just the word Nazi makes them completely irrational.
Yep, which is why our host will have to get used to the talking points that Hitler was a left-wing communist.
I know that grinds his gears being a professor of history, but his explanation for why this was wrong appeared to boil down to the exact way terminology was used in the 1920s. But we don't live then, we live now, and any comparison of the third Reich versus the USSR at all, especially if compares to the Western powers, shows that virtually nothing separated Hitler's ideology from that of the modern left. He was arguably ahead of his time, being so obsessed with race war at the time when the bulk of the left was still focused on class war. But the modern left is fully bought into race war as the explanation for the structure of the world and fully believes in the existence of racial groups oppressing each other. The Nazis were in fact socialists, openly stated they were, call each other comrades, passed animal protection laws and did many other things that modern leftists would find highly pleasing, and of course had exactly the same attitude towards censorship and totalitarian control.
The fact that the afd's opponents are suppressing their popularity by telling a polarizing and polar opposite version of history in which Hitler was a libertarian capitalist who believed in strongly defended borders, will inevitably invite historical re-examination and backlash. Because this has never in fact been true.
Global Naziism is over with Trump’s throttling of U.S. (Democrat) Naziism, cemented further in California’s (Democrat) unfolding post-nuclear, zombie apocalypse.
The AfD doesn't have 75% of the vote because, in the thorough way that Germans do everything, they have made the Holocaust and the lesson learned from it - "so etwas darf nie wieder passieren" ("such a thing must never happen again") - into a defining feature of their national identity, and along with it have cultivated, if not reveled in, a national guilt and self-hatred that has been openly expressed for decades by the left, for example on protest banners stating things like "Deutschland, du mieses Stück Scheisse" ("Germany, you rotten piece of shit").
I belive that the border opening of 2015 has been seen by many Germans as a chance for atonement, a chance to partly make up for their WWII sins by showing the world their moral righteousness, particularly with regard to the issue of racism. That must have been a powerful motive. Hence the sheer desperation of clinging to the narrative of the innocent migrant and the reflexive, categorical rejection of the AfD that symbolizes nothing less than their evil Nazi past. Many will rather accept the break-down of their society than allow in doubts about these core beliefs.
That sounds like national suicide.
Indeed. I do think there's some kind of a wish to dissolve in the pool of Earth's endless racial variety as some kind of final cleansing.
Will never happen. All that does is thin the herd, removing the suicidal.
What shall be very interesting is if Norway tires of their own utility rates sometimes rising dramatically when the export power.
Both the UK and Germany, when Dunkelflaute conditions exist, do not have sufficient firm capacity to keep from blacking out.
In Germany this is due to closure of their perfectly-operating zero-carbon nuclear power plants. In the UK, it’s due to their misguided belief that wind & sun alone can provide all needed power.
Norway’s power export links are coming to their technical end-of-life in 2026-27; it will be hilarious if they announce a policy of stemming power exports.
The UK & Germany can only play their NetZero game if other countries provide backup power. No matter how much wind & solar is added, it all produces close to zero when it’s windless and cloudy.
So it all requires 100% backup by firm generators. So ratepayers get to pay for two different sets of generation infrastructure.
I hope you are now fully recovered Eugy?
thank you for kind inquiry. I am only as of about yesterday fully recovered, I was extremely tired for many days, which you could perhaps divine from anemic posting schedule.
If you weren't such a race hating antisemitic xenophobic science denying bigot you wouldn't get sick!
It's all your fault!
Lolol get well, E.
He didnt get the vaccine and now he whines... LOL
You must be better, as rarely do I see one of your posts before 10:00AM EST.
Or 5:00 AM your time.
We can only hope that AFD reaches or, surpasses 25%...
30% would be sweet indeed
I've followed Icelandic politics since I visited a decade ago and met, stay in contact with a Pirate Party former MP. They crested in support following the bankers corruption in the major parties coming to light. Even secured the most votes of all parties, a plurality. But no other party, none, would form a governing coalition with them, top vote getting party. Iced out in Iceland. Shades of same in Deutschland.
Question, are there any formal debates between political candidates / parties, or are there just stump speeches? The systematic bias in the German media seems awfully undemocratic. Is there any provision to insure equal time / exposure in the public domain for all parties?
I commend to everyone your X thread that you link to above. Sitting here imagining you tearing out your hair--though I'm sorry you ravaged your scalp!--was horribly entertaining. And look. Musk is like magic gas--or any gas. He expands to the full parameters of the space he gets into.
+10 for the gassy observation.
Though it is sad that Musk overwhelmed the conversation to that extent, the reaction thread was pretty hilarious to read. I hope the whole thing wasn't a waste of effort with Musk's bloviating.
If it is taken as a training session by Weidel to become more deft and nimble in interviews and in taking advantage of any opportunity to speak up forcefully for her party, then it shall not have been a net negative.
Yeah, also a training session for musk. He's no Joe Rogan and maybe the commentary on the interview is making him realize that
Eugyppius, these polls sound encouraging. Like many others I tend to dismiss them as being manipulated, but it’s hard not to be pleased by these results. Fingers crossed.
I think the polls are manipulated, but likely against the AfD...Germans are gradually becoming aware that they've been fed fentanyl instead of vitamins...
“Fentanyl instead of vitamins” - I love it.
This is my thought as well. Just look at polls about the American presidential race for an example.
But however pleasing the results, within the bounds of reality, the cordon sanitaire means that whether the AfD obtains 25% or even 35% matters little to practical politics at the level of citizens' lives. The result is merely a barometer of the percentage of citizens who are effectively disenfranchised. I'm sure all readers here would agree that disenfranchising 25%+ of the electorate is extremely unhealthy, but in the modern technocratic State, a Ceausescu moment is simply unrealistic.
With all the hysteria, hair pulling , hand wringing along with a flood of salty tears, it’s kind of hard to believe the AfD isn’t polling higher. I also just read an article on gateway pundit where Thierry Breton claims the EU could invalidate the election results should they go the “wrong” way. Maybe in Romania, but Germany? I’d like to see that…
Fear not. Thierry Breton just needs a new hair do and he'll be quiet. Remember, Queen vd Leyen fired him. He needs to consider how he got so much wrong that fellow libtards had to fire him. Very 'special'.
I think he got fired because he’s like Biden, mentally incompetent and sometimes telling the truth about what is going on.
I had not thought of that. Thank you. Still M. Breton does have hair that seems to have it's own life - and possibly is brighter than the host.
In the USA, we had in effect a “cordon sanitaire” between the mainstream media and the Democratic party against Trump. They ranted and raved that he was a fascist, even compared him to Hitler and Mussolini, the later after he was shot at by a would-be assassin, because Mussolini had once used an attempted assassination to his benefit politically. These elites would do anything to keep Trump out of office again, including forcing their previously nominated candidate off the ballot and replacing him with a babbling hyena and a socialist lunatic. It failed. Perhaps, these other parties in Germany could learn from that experience.
Social Media in the EU is much more centrally controlled than in the US.
If Merz won't work with a party that has criminals in its ranks that rather rules out the [CENSORED] Partei [DOUBLEPLUSCENSORED].
Living just south of LA has kept me away for a few days and, well, distracted. While members of my own family are safe, they are pressed on all sides to help others. Please pray for all those suffering, confound those taking advantage (the looting is off the charts) and expose the wicked decision makers (climate blamers). Lots of finger pointing while the locals pull together to help those in need. May God provide richly for those suffering.
As far as German politicians go and those leaders who have decided long ago to marry the devil, using the same dirty tricks of division, obvious and childish manipulation of history and false accusations ("far right" sounds alot like "anti-vaxer"), I laugh in their faces as they dare to pull out the 1933 comparisons. What they have done in the financial/inflation/economic/green policies alone reflect their own hypocrisy. German leaders have proven themselves to be pathetically disloyal to German citizens with the single action of allowing USA to destroy the Nordstream pipeline. They should be walking around in shame begging German citizens for forgiveness before they are sent to prison for treason.
Let us hope the best for Austria (and Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia) as courage and determination will be necessary to undo the damage before they can repair their own nations. In order for citizens to continue their support, I pray they expose every dirty trick the past governments have deployed on them. May God bless them with success!
Does any of this matter? Unless AfD gets an outright majority, it'll just be a Kenya coalition, right?
As a DE perma-resident, I could just about swallow a CDU led coalition as long as the SPD & die Grüne were excluded. The damage wrought by these lunatic half-wits is driving DE to destruction. Added to which, the half-wit Grüne Energy Minister, Habeck, is putting himself forward as the next Chancellor. Habeck, Baerbock, Faeser et al have wrought more destruction on DE than Bomber Harris in WW2.
> They made Musk into a symbol for the carbon-free, electrical-vehicle future that awaits us all. It is hard to turn around in an instant and reconstruct the man as literally Hitler.
You know what was absolutely hilarious to me last year?
I used to have this circle of friends. I never really fit in with them, for reasons which will become apparent shortly, and they all stopped talking to me a few months ago. But prior to that, they were amazing.
Because they were the most default democrats I've ever met. Like they're all Democrats. They all got really really mad about Trump. But they all come across like they don't actually care that much, and they just think they're supposed to. I actually joked with them once that all of them are just married in their late 20s, own houses, cook meals, and do gardening. How very liberal of them.
But you see, they all work in tech as software engineers, PMs, etc. And so they're not just default-democrats, they're default-tech-democrats. And that means they care a lot about global warming, and spending lots of money on luxury goods to show off how much better than you they are. So they all drive Teslas. In fact, they're so much better than you, because they care about the environment so much, that they all (used to) work for Tesla.
Then Musk started tweeting support for Trump. And it was absolutely amazing, watching them bend their minds into pretzels to justify how they spent the last 5 years saying this guy is going to save the planet from everyone dying of climate change, and now he's a nazi.
I don't have any specific hilarious anecdotes to share, but just, it was an omnipresent thing in interactions with them. it was amazing
Is it actually true that a significant part of CDU voters harbor sympathy with AfD?
In your last post on this topic, you included a poll result on the question (paraphrase) “do you agree with Musk’s comments on AfD?” and the yes/no splits for CDU were almost identical to Grüne and SPD - in the ~10/80 against range. Only FDP and BSW were materially more sympathetic, and even they were ~25/50.
10% is very significant, it is the difference between AfD being in second and first place.
Your comments on X about the Weidel-Musk conversation were hilarious. Being a good interviewer is a skill and Musk clearly doesn't have it. To do so you need to be able to ask a short question then sit back and listen. Clearly Musk isn't self-effacing enough to believe that other people's views are worth listening to for more than 2 minutes. Mr. Musk, please watch Michael Portillo to see how it's done.
Good point. After listening to them talk, I came away liking them both, despite Musk’s ineptitude as an interviewer. Corporate media stifles reality.
He's not a bad cross-examiner though, see him eviscerate the BBC (the most trusted news source in the world......)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9JlG-ZXX0
> The Austrian counterpart to the AfD, in other words, is about to form an entire government
If we want to be technical about it, technically Hitler _is_ the Austrian counterpart to Hitler
It's like having a "ReichNag Fire" every day of our lives with these people.
If only Hitler had never lived these preachy prattling parasites would have nothing to harp on.
I'm convinced it's easier to convince people that Ernst Röhm was a hero who survived "The Night of the Long Knives" and slayed Hitler than to convince people Trump and AfD leaders are not Hitler.
I mean it might be easier to find common ground with these fools that way.
"ReichNagFire". Perfect.
Polls are pretty meaningless these days. If I was to be called I would tell them to mind their own business. That it was nobody’s business but mine. So in the end we won’t know until the votes are in and counted. Then the horse trading will begin.
I didn’t listen to the interview but if it was disappointing then I find that refreshing. I am over smooth talking, boring, meaningless nonsense from politicians. A sincere but slightly less confident politician would be a breath of fresh air.
German polls historically have been pretty accurate. They may slightly overstate Green support and slightly understate CDU and AfD support - but generally just by one or two points.
I do; well did until I quit answering calls from unknown numbers. The University of Delaware polled me in 1988, then didn't bother to include my answers in the results reported in the Wilmington News-Urinal.