Within months of becoming Chancellor, Friedrich Merz promised an “Autumn of reforms,” which never materialised because the political will to fix Germany’s economic and fiscal problems does not exist within his coalition.
How can he go on with no one behind him? I dislike the multiparty system, which resembles probably what I saw in Belgium. Even if AfD is the largest party they get blocked from government by a coalition of smaller parties, for which people did not really vote. And the mayor party cannot even deliver the governor/prime minister. My father once said that people should get the posts in order of their votes. Most votes gets to be prime minister, and so on. That would be democracy. What there is now is a hassle between politicians IMO
“That would be a democracy” . . . Begs the question, is Germany a democracy when it firewalls its largest political party, and effectively disenfranchises about a third of its citizens?
To me the prime characteristic determinants of a democratic nation are: 1. free, fair, and meaningful elections, and 2. a resulting government that reflects and implements the wants and needs of the electorate. I’m not so sure that is the case when it comes to Germany, the US, the UK, or most of the west’s other democratic republics. Why the charade?
I'm old enough to remember a German politician being hugely unpopular, suffering election loss after election loss and ignoring the will of the populace was called being a "great leader." As long as they have the "nerve, courage," and "muscle" to retain power, even outlawing political opposition:
"The third critical quality of a great leader is courage – or nerve, as Klaus puts it. The surge of refugees in Europe, especially Syrian asylum-seekers in 2015, led to an explosion of populist sentiment, with political leaders increasingly calling for borders to be closed. Weak leaders buckled under the pressure, either aligning their rhetoric with that of the populists or getting steamrolled by their fiery competitors.
Not German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She set a powerful example by agreeing to accept one million refugees. At first, her standing with voters – and even many within her own party – sagged, to the point that some began writing her political epitaph. But her remarkable courage eventually paid off. She is now recognized worldwide as one of the strongest leaders of our time.
In his own quiet way, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of Indonesia has shown similar courage. Indonesia, like Europe, is confronting growing pressure from nationalist and populist voices seeking to displace the five principles of tolerance – the “Pancasila” – that underpin Indonesian statehood.
The imprisonment of Jokowi’s political ally, former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, for blasphemy against Islam has reinforced that pressure. Yet Jokowi, like Merkel, has continued to fight back against the extremists, even outlawing the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir."
FF - The irony of Schwab talking about opening borders to millions of Muslims and multi-ethnic invaders while in China, a nation with closed borders and homogenous ethnicity, no mass migration to, isn't lost.
Considering that Die Linke is the heir to East Germany's Socialist Unity Party, this is an illustration of Santayana's aphorism that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Looks to me like this particular parliamentary system makes it rational to vote for any party that promises you stuff/money from the government, even where you might be competing for that stuff/money against global south migrants.
Those in the US (and Europe) who like to complain about foreign (Russian) interference in elections are themselves eager to interfere across borders in others' elections.
Looking at German political scene (and my own domestic one too), I am reminded of an old problem with hunting:
Many many hunters wants to down a prize animal, a prime specimen.
This easily leads to the entire race or breed degenerating, since only the lesser specimens get to procreate.
In a way, media and the Kanon of Approved Ideas & Values, lobbyists, and so on, has acted as prize hunters for decades now, removing from politics anyone capable, brave, and wise.
What is left are the "sneaky fuckers" (a semi-technical term in evolutionary biology I believe?), that no-one bothers killing.
Thus, the system was subjected to evolutionary pressure and produced Merz-like creatures as a response.
Such a species, breed, race or Kultur invites its own extermination.
Oh gear, I'd need to start in the 1960s and move forward for a real explanation, but a brief summary:
The Reds have supported mass-migration since 1976, and have set the system up to use non-White migrants as voter-cattle.
The Liberals/capitalists have done the same, but to force wage-dumping and breaking the power of the unions.
When the problems with importing people from MENA and Africa became apparent in the late 1980s, there was a concerted effort by all the power-blocs to hide the problems and associate any criticism in any shape as racism and right-wing extremism.
Since most Swedes over age 40 have state media as their main or only news-source, this propaganda programme has made it so we are now split in three political groups:
Pro-migration Swedes. Think German communists or US woke-lib-progressives
Anti-migration Swedes. Think baseline European Socialist Democrats of the 1960s.
Identitarian voters, by which I mean which party they vote for has nothing to do with reality or politics; they have always voted for party X and always will.
Then there's a sociological/psychological side to it too, beyond politics, Simply put, most people are rather ignorant due to our de facto media-monopoly which is regime-loyal to a degree that'd have made Julius Streicher jealous being their only source of information. Also, many Swedes are as socially conformist as are Germans - being outed as a Wrongthinker can be career-ending, and social suicide.
Sweden has had issued with contained emotion for decades, amplified by stifling socialism. The sad part is so many people think there is no way forward but to ignore the beauty of their country and kill themselves.
As long as there's no outright majority of 51% for the AfD - unlikely given how strategic voting to keep them out has played a role in those elections - the Germans will keep being governed by a red-dee red-green coalition. I'm not mentioning the CDU: thanks to the M&M duo (Merkel and Merz) they'll vanish, their voters drifting to the AfD. As for the youth voters: well, the economic crash will show even the stupidest Leftie voter that 'eating the rich' is not a solution. Mind you, they might get employment by the increasingly blatant criminal clans of migrants. After all, someone has to do the drug running, innit ...
I would have expected the SPD to go down first (followed by the CDU in the next decade).
But you make a good point with the left ecosystem. The SPD will likely survive, with ups and down. Probably the young leftist people will keep voting for The Linke, when they get a bit older they switch to the Greens, and eventually in their old age to the SPD.
Also, the SPD has a lot of wealth and infrastructure (e.g. in media and unions). After all, they are by far the oldest party.
The CDU by now stands for nothing and may go the way of the FDP, maybe as a junior partner of the AfD for a while.
The SPD isn't supporting policies which the vast majority of their voters oppose, nor are they ruling out working with any of the other parties on the left. That's what the CDU has done to themselves. There's an old American cliche about shooting yourself in the foot, but what the CDU has done is more like shooting yourself in the head.
These outcomes have almost a mythic quality of retribution and justice to them.
Plus a little bit of the brigades of international leftism popping up all over. Hoping Germans will show a little more revulsion towards them, ultimately, than Morons of Noo Yawk.
I just can't understand it. A right wing Facist Hiltler loving party actually not wanting war?!
Surely deliberate/Green based de-industrialisation of the EU's greatest power, massive unchecked immigration and war against Russia would've/should've been a vote winner.
It seems Mertz et al are truly perplexed by this. Says it all really.
Only the drumbeats of war can save him and his handlerrs.
What about the CSU? I have wondered for a while whether there is any chance that the CDU/CSU alliance might fracture one day under the pressure from the insane firewall.
Is there any chance, do you think, that the CSU might decide the AfD is closer to their own ideas than the CDU is, and that they might do a deal with the AfD similar to their current deal with the CDU?
I don't think that's likely, mainly because it's the CDU that is hurt most badly by the firewall. It bites less in Bavaria, where the CSU is at the district level highly entrenched and where it has its own right-of-centre coalition partner in the Freie Wähler (so they're not forced to go into massively unpopular coalitions with Greens and SPD).
"The general agitation against the AfD and the fight “against the right” has the effect of turning every last state election into a referendum on national politics..." This sounds a lot like the upcoming midterms in the USA. I think this is what Trump is counting on. The polls, as usual, do not look good for Republicans.
"As I wrote the other day …the Left and greens will never abandon their core belief that we are doomed by global warming . So they figure, we might as well freeze to death this winter."
That's an old trick of leftists. Here in Arizona, we have a lefty governor who did not fight very hard in the debate on the distribution of Colorado river water among the lower basin states, and as a result, we got stuck with the largest cutback of river water among those states. The average AZ voter forgets that our lefty governor looks at this result as a feature, not a bug. Severe water restriction will hamper future development of land - she's in favor of this - because it fits in better with her communist vision of "15-minute cities."
She is amazingly irksome, but so are the voters who put her in charge.
The USA is orchestrating much of the war going on in the Middle east and Ukraine. The idea the USA is 'clean' is far, far from the truth.
If.... if it ever emerges who blew up Nordstream 1 / 2, and now, is actively targeting refineries producing diesel..... even the most placid Europeans will be beyond anger. For too long the EU27 and UK have been viewed by Chyna, Russia, USA and the Middle-East tent types as a mere cash cow.
Could it be Merz will have to use recreational chemicals more frequently to change the perception of his membership of the USA inspired 'coalition of the hopeless', now that fake Prime Minister Starmer KC has left the building?
At what point does playmate President E Macron leave office?
Merz is in the position of no one wanting the thankless job that he currently holds. Who would want the job of a ranch foreman after virtually all of the horses and cattle have escaped and scattered to the four winds?
"Merzpocalypse" is a political portmanteau blending the last name of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz with the word "apocalypse".The term refers to the 2026 German government crisis and the dramatic collapse of political support for Merz's ruling grand coalition.
I am wondering if there are ways that the present arrangement could change without a change in leadership.
Is there a mechanism through which existing CDU representatives could defect to the AfD? Or would that require fresh elections?
If they cannot change parties, could CDU representatives simply break ranks and vote with AfD on some measures? Or is the party discipline structure too strong?
Surely after the Autumn of Reckoning the Winter of Discontent will come. Will Merz survive until Frühlingserwachen? Possibly, as they say „Totgesagte leben länger”
How can he go on with no one behind him? I dislike the multiparty system, which resembles probably what I saw in Belgium. Even if AfD is the largest party they get blocked from government by a coalition of smaller parties, for which people did not really vote. And the mayor party cannot even deliver the governor/prime minister. My father once said that people should get the posts in order of their votes. Most votes gets to be prime minister, and so on. That would be democracy. What there is now is a hassle between politicians IMO
“That would be a democracy” . . . Begs the question, is Germany a democracy when it firewalls its largest political party, and effectively disenfranchises about a third of its citizens?
To me the prime characteristic determinants of a democratic nation are: 1. free, fair, and meaningful elections, and 2. a resulting government that reflects and implements the wants and needs of the electorate. I’m not so sure that is the case when it comes to Germany, the US, the UK, or most of the west’s other democratic republics. Why the charade?
I'm old enough to remember a German politician being hugely unpopular, suffering election loss after election loss and ignoring the will of the populace was called being a "great leader." As long as they have the "nerve, courage," and "muscle" to retain power, even outlawing political opposition:
What Makes a Great Leader?
China-US Focus, Aug 10, 2017
https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/what-makes-a-great-leader-
"The third critical quality of a great leader is courage – or nerve, as Klaus puts it. The surge of refugees in Europe, especially Syrian asylum-seekers in 2015, led to an explosion of populist sentiment, with political leaders increasingly calling for borders to be closed. Weak leaders buckled under the pressure, either aligning their rhetoric with that of the populists or getting steamrolled by their fiery competitors.
Not German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She set a powerful example by agreeing to accept one million refugees. At first, her standing with voters – and even many within her own party – sagged, to the point that some began writing her political epitaph. But her remarkable courage eventually paid off. She is now recognized worldwide as one of the strongest leaders of our time.
In his own quiet way, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of Indonesia has shown similar courage. Indonesia, like Europe, is confronting growing pressure from nationalist and populist voices seeking to displace the five principles of tolerance – the “Pancasila” – that underpin Indonesian statehood.
The imprisonment of Jokowi’s political ally, former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, for blasphemy against Islam has reinforced that pressure. Yet Jokowi, like Merkel, has continued to fight back against the extremists, even outlawing the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir."
FF - The irony of Schwab talking about opening borders to millions of Muslims and multi-ethnic invaders while in China, a nation with closed borders and homogenous ethnicity, no mass migration to, isn't lost.
To my mind, this is the most noteworthy development of this week's elections in Germany: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/21/one-in-two-young-female-voters-backed-radical-socialist-die-linke-party-in-berlin-elections/
Considering that Die Linke is the heir to East Germany's Socialist Unity Party, this is an illustration of Santayana's aphorism that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
If they watched “Lives of others” they would never vote Communist or Socialist.
Looks to me like this particular parliamentary system makes it rational to vote for any party that promises you stuff/money from the government, even where you might be competing for that stuff/money against global south migrants.
is Merzdämmerung how it would be said in Germany?
yes, but that word has been bouncing around the press and political statements for a while now so I went with Merzpocalypse instead
Armerzgeddon?
AusMerzung.
Your comment about Mamdanis strategist and Advisors helping Die Linkeis very interesting. Are we seeing a revival of the Comintern?
Those in the US (and Europe) who like to complain about foreign (Russian) interference in elections are themselves eager to interfere across borders in others' elections.
Looking at German political scene (and my own domestic one too), I am reminded of an old problem with hunting:
Many many hunters wants to down a prize animal, a prime specimen.
This easily leads to the entire race or breed degenerating, since only the lesser specimens get to procreate.
In a way, media and the Kanon of Approved Ideas & Values, lobbyists, and so on, has acted as prize hunters for decades now, removing from politics anyone capable, brave, and wise.
What is left are the "sneaky fuckers" (a semi-technical term in evolutionary biology I believe?), that no-one bothers killing.
Thus, the system was subjected to evolutionary pressure and produced Merz-like creatures as a response.
Such a species, breed, race or Kultur invites its own extermination.
How do you explain Sweden's recent slide towards suicide?
Oh gear, I'd need to start in the 1960s and move forward for a real explanation, but a brief summary:
The Reds have supported mass-migration since 1976, and have set the system up to use non-White migrants as voter-cattle.
The Liberals/capitalists have done the same, but to force wage-dumping and breaking the power of the unions.
When the problems with importing people from MENA and Africa became apparent in the late 1980s, there was a concerted effort by all the power-blocs to hide the problems and associate any criticism in any shape as racism and right-wing extremism.
Since most Swedes over age 40 have state media as their main or only news-source, this propaganda programme has made it so we are now split in three political groups:
Pro-migration Swedes. Think German communists or US woke-lib-progressives
Anti-migration Swedes. Think baseline European Socialist Democrats of the 1960s.
Identitarian voters, by which I mean which party they vote for has nothing to do with reality or politics; they have always voted for party X and always will.
Then there's a sociological/psychological side to it too, beyond politics, Simply put, most people are rather ignorant due to our de facto media-monopoly which is regime-loyal to a degree that'd have made Julius Streicher jealous being their only source of information. Also, many Swedes are as socially conformist as are Germans - being outed as a Wrongthinker can be career-ending, and social suicide.
Sweden has had issued with contained emotion for decades, amplified by stifling socialism. The sad part is so many people think there is no way forward but to ignore the beauty of their country and kill themselves.
As long as there's no outright majority of 51% for the AfD - unlikely given how strategic voting to keep them out has played a role in those elections - the Germans will keep being governed by a red-dee red-green coalition. I'm not mentioning the CDU: thanks to the M&M duo (Merkel and Merz) they'll vanish, their voters drifting to the AfD. As for the youth voters: well, the economic crash will show even the stupidest Leftie voter that 'eating the rich' is not a solution. Mind you, they might get employment by the increasingly blatant criminal clans of migrants. After all, someone has to do the drug running, innit ...
I would have expected the SPD to go down first (followed by the CDU in the next decade).
But you make a good point with the left ecosystem. The SPD will likely survive, with ups and down. Probably the young leftist people will keep voting for The Linke, when they get a bit older they switch to the Greens, and eventually in their old age to the SPD.
Also, the SPD has a lot of wealth and infrastructure (e.g. in media and unions). After all, they are by far the oldest party.
The CDU by now stands for nothing and may go the way of the FDP, maybe as a junior partner of the AfD for a while.
The SPD isn't supporting policies which the vast majority of their voters oppose, nor are they ruling out working with any of the other parties on the left. That's what the CDU has done to themselves. There's an old American cliche about shooting yourself in the foot, but what the CDU has done is more like shooting yourself in the head.
Yes, but right now only old people vote for the SPD.
The young leftist people go to the DIe Linke or Greens, which are perceived as more left than the the SPD. (but they are really all the same).
And the non-left people vote more and more for the AfD. Eventually all CDU voters will be AfD voters.
Yes, the CDU could have be part of the righist block, with the AfD, and have a similar role as the SPD on the left.
But Merkle forced them to go left, and now the AfD is taking all their voters.
These outcomes have almost a mythic quality of retribution and justice to them.
Plus a little bit of the brigades of international leftism popping up all over. Hoping Germans will show a little more revulsion towards them, ultimately, than Morons of Noo Yawk.
I just can't understand it. A right wing Facist Hiltler loving party actually not wanting war?!
Surely deliberate/Green based de-industrialisation of the EU's greatest power, massive unchecked immigration and war against Russia would've/should've been a vote winner.
It seems Mertz et al are truly perplexed by this. Says it all really.
Only the drumbeats of war can save him and his handlerrs.
What about the CSU? I have wondered for a while whether there is any chance that the CDU/CSU alliance might fracture one day under the pressure from the insane firewall.
Is there any chance, do you think, that the CSU might decide the AfD is closer to their own ideas than the CDU is, and that they might do a deal with the AfD similar to their current deal with the CDU?
I don't think that's likely, mainly because it's the CDU that is hurt most badly by the firewall. It bites less in Bavaria, where the CSU is at the district level highly entrenched and where it has its own right-of-centre coalition partner in the Freie Wähler (so they're not forced to go into massively unpopular coalitions with Greens and SPD).
"The general agitation against the AfD and the fight “against the right” has the effect of turning every last state election into a referendum on national politics..." This sounds a lot like the upcoming midterms in the USA. I think this is what Trump is counting on. The polls, as usual, do not look good for Republicans.
People are ignoring the elephant in the room .
Diesel fuel hit $10,50 in France yesterday.
Ukraine aka UK and USA took out the largest refinery of Diesel plus countless others refineries
As Eugyppius points out ,the left was strong in Berlin .
As I wrote the other day …the Left and greens will never abandon their core belief that we are doomed by global warming .
So they figure, we might as well freeze to death this winter .
I appreciate Eugyppius…but NO one is calling attention to irreversible path to ruin .
You can’t ignore science or nature.
There IS no woke Physics .
Go to substack “ Doomberg “ free ..today for partial alert .
Their opinion?
Put a fork in Europe .
Too late to undo the damage…Good luck Germany ..you are going to need it soon .
"As I wrote the other day …the Left and greens will never abandon their core belief that we are doomed by global warming . So they figure, we might as well freeze to death this winter."
That's an old trick of leftists. Here in Arizona, we have a lefty governor who did not fight very hard in the debate on the distribution of Colorado river water among the lower basin states, and as a result, we got stuck with the largest cutback of river water among those states. The average AZ voter forgets that our lefty governor looks at this result as a feature, not a bug. Severe water restriction will hamper future development of land - she's in favor of this - because it fits in better with her communist vision of "15-minute cities."
She is amazingly irksome, but so are the voters who put her in charge.
The USA is orchestrating much of the war going on in the Middle east and Ukraine. The idea the USA is 'clean' is far, far from the truth.
If.... if it ever emerges who blew up Nordstream 1 / 2, and now, is actively targeting refineries producing diesel..... even the most placid Europeans will be beyond anger. For too long the EU27 and UK have been viewed by Chyna, Russia, USA and the Middle-East tent types as a mere cash cow.
News: We are not just a wallet to be raided.
Could it be Merz will have to use recreational chemicals more frequently to change the perception of his membership of the USA inspired 'coalition of the hopeless', now that fake Prime Minister Starmer KC has left the building?
At what point does playmate President E Macron leave office?
Will Chancellor Merz be the last 'man' standing?
Merz is in the position of no one wanting the thankless job that he currently holds. Who would want the job of a ranch foreman after virtually all of the horses and cattle have escaped and scattered to the four winds?
Most excellent news!
Merz will be the last man standing.
"Merzpocalypse" is a political portmanteau blending the last name of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz with the word "apocalypse".The term refers to the 2026 German government crisis and the dramatic collapse of political support for Merz's ruling grand coalition.
I am wondering if there are ways that the present arrangement could change without a change in leadership.
Is there a mechanism through which existing CDU representatives could defect to the AfD? Or would that require fresh elections?
If they cannot change parties, could CDU representatives simply break ranks and vote with AfD on some measures? Or is the party discipline structure too strong?
Surely after the Autumn of Reckoning the Winter of Discontent will come. Will Merz survive until Frühlingserwachen? Possibly, as they say „Totgesagte leben länger”