Yesterday was election day in Bavaria and Hessen. Just over 23% of the entire German population had the chance to express their political preferences at the ballot box. The results were not only a slap in the face to the parties of the federal coalition, but also yet another sign that our centre-right establishment, consisting of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have entered a period of long-term decline. In her long and calculating chancellorship, Angela Merkel traded the long-term viability of the CDU for personal power and success, and the political landscape of the Federal Republic will never be the same.
You and Kuntsler together! Fantastic! He is such an interesting man -- he went from NYT writer and liberal to Trump loving conservative. His book Geography of Nowhere helped popularize the liberal New Urbanism trend which sadly has been corrupted into building fake small towns with sad and lonely apartments on top of ugly cheap big-box retail in the middle of nowhere. They took the "density and diversity" and "walk-able streets" ideas and left behind the "civic pride" and "attractive public spaces" and "a reason to walk there" ideas in the dust. What's left is a glut of the same monstrous shopping wastelands but with the added insult of ugly houses and apartments on top of them, and sidewalks that endlessly circle the parking lagoons. You're welcome to walk from your apartment (with a lovely balcony overlooking the dumpsters) to the Best Buy to the Dick's Sporting Goods and back again. But that's it. "Back to your work-from-home-cell, you small useless people!"
They built such a horrific group of apartments, 3-D printed homes and condos in Williston Vermont that it looks like some Soviet planning committee doing its worst. Took a lovely farm and field and made this:
look at those photos the "msm news" shows on tv or internet. Those ugly cement buildings. We have those monstrosities being built right here in Loudoun County Virginia. They actually look like prison housing.
Here in Northern Virginia they are called 15 minute cities (I think)
They are little crowded mad houses and most are at present, filled with illegal immigrants and migrants collected from a host of places south of the US, living on the government dime with subsidies. Of course the US govt does not want to give all of these people cars because cars are baaad
Hi VeryVer, I grew up in the Soviet Union and I can’t stand such buildings. They hurt my eyes. A few times I heard from the Europeans that they liked the Soviet architecture a lot. It’s interesting that most of them support the left-wing parties. They tell me that they will do better when I tell them about my life in the Soviet Union.
It could have been worse....they could have copped for some 'fun' and 'thought-provoking' Deconstructivist buildings. Deconstructivism, in case you've missed it, is all the rage amongst the architectural cognoscenti: "Buildings in this style seem like they have been constructed to appear as if there must have been a gas explosion inside or a bomb has been dropped on them." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/deconstructing-deconstructivism
It is yet one more instance of the strange shapes that ‘Progress’ has taken on in the modern Western world.
Interesting. I think I learned it from Roger Scruton. But its legacy is apparent. Everything seems to look like a tin shed.
I live in Britain and there is plenty of Victorian buildings around. Now they built to last plus they made even the most mundane buildings with an artistic flair.
I live in Britain too (retired architect). Yes we have a fantastic Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architectural legacy (as indeed do some parts of the US) but we also suffered one of the worst post-war obsessions with 'Brutalist' 'Modernist' concrete monstrosities..(as I discuss in the essay I linked in my original comment).
Fuck me it looks like East Berlin. Is it really that hard to build some nice terraces with a park or two? We did that an put a corner shop/pub at the junctions and it worked and still works very nicely.
It will take huge effort for AfD to become a bigger force, but surly this time has arrived? As in other parts of the EU27, but not yet in the UK, a political voice for the masses who have been silenced needs to arise. Meanwhile the danger of complete social destruction continues as the established system ignores most of the people.
They patently have the policies that people want, control of borders, an end to the net zero madness and taking back control from the EU that's now killing the German economy.
This will come to a stand off, where it will not be possible for an effective coalition and the CDU/CSU will have to break that cordon or keep losing its voters.
therer's a huge and ongoing marketing offensive by the "psychotic" class of politicians.. they're being sponsored by the German SME class which drove BREXIT in the UK, disenfranchised by radical corruption of the governing class by the major corporations, but getting to 15-20% didn't take much of an effort at all.
The "huge effort" may not be necessary. I boldly predict that the AfD will sweep the upcoming elections thanks to the generosity of the idiots running the CDU. They are driving voters away in droves by supporting insane and unpopular immigration and energy policies.
The mainstream parties are retaining Strauß' law by continuously using the term "all democratic parties", which is a euphemism for "all parties except the AfD".
Mainstream is so naive in its head-in-the-sand belief that not naming things means they aren't real or don't have to be acknowledged =)
Ironically, their obsessive fear and/or demonisation of AfD only serves to feed and charge the energies of that which they would deny. Consider how Trump Derangement Syndrome held Trump square and centre in the public eye throughout 2016.
Instead of demonising political opponents, the mainstream could be articulating a compelling, strong, clear vision of what they have to offer but they don't even try to listen to the electorate and cater to their needs, desires, or fears. The election results are a rejection of what they have been offering.
Mainstream ignores when it wants to suppress. When it attacks, it aims to polarize, by infuriating both its regular adherents who believe the propaganda, and those attacked, who feel the injustice of it. When it polarizes, it still rules, by making the citizen body impotent in being divided against itself.
Compelling, strong, clear visions are offered only by those who want to be constructive, and that's not the ruling propaganda media.
Of course this process is what gives the parties who shall not be named by 'polite society' the media coverage that MSM want to remove. In short - MSM and politicians have shot themselves in both feet at the very same time.
The strange thing is that we are lead by an absolute, passive Zero - Olaf Scholz, who even looks like a zero.
In "normal" times that would have led to a passive government, unable to do anything, and would have led to a time of stqnd-still, where nothing happens. And that would have been a good thing, a time for pause and respite.
But in the last years a machinery has been engineered to move us into the direction of industrial and societal decline. No we are automatically going downhill. Being passive now means going downhill faster.
This is the worst time since WW2 to be led by zeroes.
I wonder if things will progress like in Denmark where the SPD equivalent eventually adopted anti-migrant policies. It kept them in power but in the latest polls they are now down to 20% from 27% in the 22 election and a new anti-migrant party has emerged as a breakout from the CDU equivalent (Venstre, the name is from the 19th century!), which now has 1/3 of the support of the peak in 2010s (25% to 8%). One Venstre politician who was kicked out of parliament started her new party (Denmark Democrats) who quickly gained 10% on an anti-migrant platform. Venstre then split with a moderate faction, including the ex-PM, forming a new party, the Moderates. But then the two parties in a grand betrayal entered a coalition government with the socialists after the 2022 election!
Note that the main anti-migrant party, Dansk Folkeparti, has been completely decimated, going from the 15% in 2015 or 17 (election) to around 3% today. Those voters have gone largely to the Denmark Democrats and some probably went with the socialists. DFP largely abandoned its free market roots and advocates for more handouts for ethnic Danes. There is another party, hit by some internal conflict of late, that combines anti-migrant with free market, which is my choice. Nye Borgerlige. With a 2% lower limit, you get lots of parties in parliament in DK. I think Holland is worse with 1%!
I think CDU deserves a similar fate and maybe that's what Strauss would have predicted.
In Sweden, meanwhile, from being pariahs, the Sweden Democrats are a support party for the center-right government. But even if they are the biggest non-socialist party, they are not "eligible" for any ministerial jobs. Hopefully, AfD becomes the biggest party in Germany with time.
yes, FW are to the right of CSU, but not *as* to the right as AfD. they're a mix of things: shades of liberal FDP economic inclinations, they're localists/federalists, Eurosceptics, they have a lot of Christian supporters, and some overlap at least rhetorically with AfD.
Strauss' comment about there being no room for a democratic party to the right of the Union was of course twisted by Merkel to imply that any party to the right of the Union was undemocratic, rather than that the Union should be a sufficiently broad church for none to emerge.
It worked while she was in office. Boy is it backfiring now.
Also I can't help gloating a little, thankyou 18.6% of Hessens voters for not being intimidated by the constant slur of being a nazi.
Yeah, the media standard is that anyone or any group slightly right of center is a "far right winger". In the US, Biden's government and law enforcement agencies consider republicans, conservative christians, and people who speak at school board meetings to be "domestic terrorists".
I fear you might be right with the assumption that they will try to achieve a turnaround by more repressive methods, be it censorship (DSA!) or banning AfD. The latter would be a catastrophe, One Does Not Ban Opposition Parties One Does Not Like, not unless one wants to wave goodbye to democracy as a concept.
Have you checked out the under-18-mock-election? The result:
CSU: 25.5%
Greens: 15.9% (-12.9%) - an enormous loss
SPD: 13.5%
AfD: 12,2% (+5.3% or so)
FDP: 7.8%
FW: 7.6%.
Which means that even among the very young cohort "Green" issues are no longer seen as enticing as the Green Party might expect or hope.
True...though Germans own a lot less than many of their European brethren and sistren anyway. It's more ...until you can't afford to light or heat your rental flat.
I had lost all faith in youth, you have restored it.
At the Conservative Party conference recently in the UK, it was like a funeral except for a couple of people.
The home secretary Suella Braverman who wants to stop mass immigration and deport any illegals and Nigel Farage who was there as part of the GB News team.
The queues of young people who were queuing up to have a selfie or talk to Farage was huge, I think they might be finally making the link between their lack of housing and high taxes and mass immigration at last.
Sweden's elite refused to acknowledge the Sweden Democrats, yet now they are in the government,so Jimmie Akesson has been vindicated; now the AfD will follow suit.
Sooner or later,our out-to- lunch leaders plus assorted fellow travellers will have to acknowledge that we are very very very fed up: across Europe and Blighty, people have had enough of pious posturing, hypocrisy, hectoring and lecturing and: Open Borders, Net Zero, social breakdown, gender bending, lies, lockdowns and self interested stupidity masquerading as governance.
Blighty's Rishi and Suella are making the right noises at last, so we must hope that finally they'll beat the Blob and rescue us.
I think Bravermans comments about multiculturalism and its failure have set things in motion. That is the correct approach, not haggling over immigration numbers. Condemn it all.
A minor correction: the Sweden Democrats are not formally in governement; our Liberal party and the Christian Democrats both opposed that, so the SD is acting as an allied party to the formal governement.
Example: are lowered taxes on income left or right?
Let's say an income of €25 000 net per year is enough to for a family, mom and dad and three kids plus a dog and a cat and a car.
Let's say we decide to create an income tax code that stipulates any household may earn €25 000 annually before starting to pay taxes, regardless of where the money comes from (assuming legal sources).
Is that left or right?
There's no left or right in politics, only what works and what doesn't.
One has to ponder, are they doing this to drive up support for the right so once they (the elite) switch parties again (switching which US Party is in control and doping their bidding the most) there will be soo much support for the Right that it will take decades of abuse by the Republican party before that support diminishes. It's what they've done before, switching from Democrat to republican's once the support for the party they were affiliated with was so decimated that they had to change parties. That said i don't think they are doing it this time. I believe the global elites promoting all of this have decided the Left is teh political ideology they will use for the rest of the plan. Here in teh US and in the UK that would have worked pre-2016; before Trump beat Hillary and before the Pro-Exit side won. Those were 2 significantly damaging blows to their plan and the only way each was able to happen was because they took their eye off the ball when they assumed what people were saying in polls was true and they based all their decisions around that resulting in their failing to interfere in both enough to stop both. Now they are wasting large numbers of resources to tarnish both; Trump and the Pro-Leave side. If they tried a party switch now ii would require too long of a delay in the plan and I for one believe they are out of delays. The schedule they are on is now fixed. That + the delays from Trump and Brexit forced their hand and they had to turn up the heat soo much so that they exposed many of their assets like the media. Trust in the media and even news media is at all time low and at least in the US I imagine it will take decades for the press to rebuild that trust and it will require the press to do something they simply can't do now; report the truth vs manufacturing consent.
Yes, an excellent piece and some great context as well as some insight that makes me think exactly the same thing is happening here in the UK.
We had Blair and all the "leftie luuvy elites infecting our politics, our media and civil service as well as NGO's and are attempting to cancel and remove anyone or anything right of centre.
And that infection is just two to three years ahead of the UK in Germany, it looks likely that Labour will be elected here by the same luvvies and fail spectacularly as the SPD/Green/FPD coalition has.
The result of that, as a consequence of the Conservatives failure to do what is necessary in stopping the migrant boats, refusing to leave the ECHR and take control of case law to parliament is that its seen as having failed.
That failure, combined with the spectacular lack of spine to implement Brexit and the freedoms to grow our economy rather that listen to German business leaders repeatedly saying like a chorus, that regulation is far too high and costly and the result of chasing anything but cheap or reliable green energy is driving business out of Germany and its starting to do the same in the UK.
Housing is in crisis, both in Germany and the UK, why? Far too much immigration, in the last twenty years there's been at least 20M net migration, you simply cannot build that many houses.
Public services are collapsing as a result, towns are ever expanded leading to permanently blocked roads.
They blame the need for immigration on a declining birth rate, true, but why is it declining? Because young people can't get a home and can't afford them, why? because migration is taking those homes and in a supply demand market that has far too much demand and not enough supply, prices go up to ration it.
And its the poorer working class losing out, there are 1.2 million families on council house waiting lists and they keep getting jumped over for migrants housing, the indigenous population are second class citizens in their own country.
People are forced to queue for hours at Accident & Emergency while Border Force officials give migrants both a free taxi service and escort to A&E and simply walk to the front of the queue - no waiting for them.
What is happening in Germany now, will be followed in the UK, The Labour Party will come to power, it will follow the same failed policies as Germany, there will be mass immigration, both legal and illegal, a worsening housing crisis even higher energy bills from failed green policies and complete disillusionment with politics, The Conservatives will not benefit much, they will remember their identical failed policies and the UK will move to the right likely with Farage and Reform UK.
And then we might get some sense returning, that you cooperate with your allies on what what you agree, and you don't keep implementing clearly failed socialist policies of the EU and the WEF which have led us to trying to feed the entire world and failing to stand up for its own people.
Like all socialism - its a friend of anyone else's country but its own. And the people will not stand for it much longer.
Where Germany are now is where the UK is following.
My prediction: AfD will spell the end of European politics as we have known them these past 75 years. Even the composition of the next European Parliament (though largely symbolic) will be enough to start the edifice crumbling. An AfD led coalition would be the EU’s demise.
Yes, you are correct w.r.t Germans' support for the EU. They still have it in their manifesto though (the document on their website is quite outdated) . But they will probably go for a referendum first
The way I would put it is this: they are not in thrall to the EU. The ‘group’ they will sit with in the European Parliament opposes many of the policies that define the current agenda in Brussels. Their ascendancy as a German party will be enough to seriously challenge the status quo.
You and Kuntsler together! Fantastic! He is such an interesting man -- he went from NYT writer and liberal to Trump loving conservative. His book Geography of Nowhere helped popularize the liberal New Urbanism trend which sadly has been corrupted into building fake small towns with sad and lonely apartments on top of ugly cheap big-box retail in the middle of nowhere. They took the "density and diversity" and "walk-able streets" ideas and left behind the "civic pride" and "attractive public spaces" and "a reason to walk there" ideas in the dust. What's left is a glut of the same monstrous shopping wastelands but with the added insult of ugly houses and apartments on top of them, and sidewalks that endlessly circle the parking lagoons. You're welcome to walk from your apartment (with a lovely balcony overlooking the dumpsters) to the Best Buy to the Dick's Sporting Goods and back again. But that's it. "Back to your work-from-home-cell, you small useless people!"
They built such a horrific group of apartments, 3-D printed homes and condos in Williston Vermont that it looks like some Soviet planning committee doing its worst. Took a lovely farm and field and made this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.4509551,-73.1063426,3a,75y,262.21h,96.5t/data=!3m10!1e1!3m8!1srfBY_vKXUqY_uO3WEjufdg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DrfBY_vKXUqY_uO3WEjufdg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D336.30136%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i50?entry=ttu.
oh my, that is truly depressing. reminds me a bit of these horrible renovations in Philadelphia: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mtx4esrDRkSF7v4dA
yep. The designs look like post war housing or 3rd world cement boxes.
Third world cement boxes. Lol 😆
look at those photos the "msm news" shows on tv or internet. Those ugly cement buildings. We have those monstrosities being built right here in Loudoun County Virginia. They actually look like prison housing.
Prison housing may be an apt description given the future some want to impose.
oh-- so bad! And across the street are normal houses, which makes it worse. It's such a waste of resources to build such awfulness. These apartments https://www.google.com/maps/@41.2829479,69.2623307,3a,75y,149.33h,102.7t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPHIIHzLuYJpx06Zxq0_qPekkUYKkaFNM9OIbwu!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPHIIHzLuYJpx06Zxq0_qPekkUYKkaFNM9OIbwu%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0.7675303-ya349.1062-ro0.33503658-fo100!7i5760!8i2880?entry=ttu in Tashkent are better!
Bang on!
Here in Northern Virginia they are called 15 minute cities (I think)
They are little crowded mad houses and most are at present, filled with illegal immigrants and migrants collected from a host of places south of the US, living on the government dime with subsidies. Of course the US govt does not want to give all of these people cars because cars are baaad
Remember, these are the brilliant minds who think they will be imposing 15 minute cities on us, lol.
Yikes! I grew up a few km north of Vermont's border and am familiar with the state's rural charm.
That monstrosity in Williston certainly does look dystopian.
Hi VeryVer, I grew up in the Soviet Union and I can’t stand such buildings. They hurt my eyes. A few times I heard from the Europeans that they liked the Soviet architecture a lot. It’s interesting that most of them support the left-wing parties. They tell me that they will do better when I tell them about my life in the Soviet Union.
I didn't even know about this. And here I thought "Smart Cities" was the worst insult.
It could have been worse....they could have copped for some 'fun' and 'thought-provoking' Deconstructivist buildings. Deconstructivism, in case you've missed it, is all the rage amongst the architectural cognoscenti: "Buildings in this style seem like they have been constructed to appear as if there must have been a gas explosion inside or a bomb has been dropped on them." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/deconstructing-deconstructivism
It is yet one more instance of the strange shapes that ‘Progress’ has taken on in the modern Western world.
There is some truth in the notion they fear beauty and therefore work to destroy it.
HL Mencken identified this in an essay in 1926 'A Libido for the Ugly'.
Interesting. I think I learned it from Roger Scruton. But its legacy is apparent. Everything seems to look like a tin shed.
I live in Britain and there is plenty of Victorian buildings around. Now they built to last plus they made even the most mundane buildings with an artistic flair.
I live in Britain too (retired architect). Yes we have a fantastic Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architectural legacy (as indeed do some parts of the US) but we also suffered one of the worst post-war obsessions with 'Brutalist' 'Modernist' concrete monstrosities..(as I discuss in the essay I linked in my original comment).
I live in an Edwardian building. But you are right, lots of concrete. I will check out the link.
Fuck me it looks like East Berlin. Is it really that hard to build some nice terraces with a park or two? We did that an put a corner shop/pub at the junctions and it worked and still works very nicely.
It will take huge effort for AfD to become a bigger force, but surly this time has arrived? As in other parts of the EU27, but not yet in the UK, a political voice for the masses who have been silenced needs to arise. Meanwhile the danger of complete social destruction continues as the established system ignores most of the people.
I think their ceiling realistically is probably just under 30% in the West, and maybe around 40% in the East.
In other words, their voice can no longer be ignored or banned.
It can however be frozen out by the other parties refusing to enter coalition with them, which is what's happened.
They patently have the policies that people want, control of borders, an end to the net zero madness and taking back control from the EU that's now killing the German economy.
This will come to a stand off, where it will not be possible for an effective coalition and the CDU/CSU will have to break that cordon or keep losing its voters.
If they have 30% - 40%, someone will be tempted.
therer's a huge and ongoing marketing offensive by the "psychotic" class of politicians.. they're being sponsored by the German SME class which drove BREXIT in the UK, disenfranchised by radical corruption of the governing class by the major corporations, but getting to 15-20% didn't take much of an effort at all.
"Meanwhile the danger of complete social destruction continues as the established system ignores most of the people."
Let them eat cake attitude by ruling elite is a cautionary tale worth remembering!
The "huge effort" may not be necessary. I boldly predict that the AfD will sweep the upcoming elections thanks to the generosity of the idiots running the CDU. They are driving voters away in droves by supporting insane and unpopular immigration and energy policies.
The mainstream parties are retaining Strauß' law by continuously using the term "all democratic parties", which is a euphemism for "all parties except the AfD".
Well, the AfD didn't exist when Strauß said that, and I doubt the CDU of the later 1980s would've viewed the AfD as an antidemocratic force.
Mainstream is so naive in its head-in-the-sand belief that not naming things means they aren't real or don't have to be acknowledged =)
Ironically, their obsessive fear and/or demonisation of AfD only serves to feed and charge the energies of that which they would deny. Consider how Trump Derangement Syndrome held Trump square and centre in the public eye throughout 2016.
Instead of demonising political opponents, the mainstream could be articulating a compelling, strong, clear vision of what they have to offer but they don't even try to listen to the electorate and cater to their needs, desires, or fears. The election results are a rejection of what they have been offering.
Mainstream ignores when it wants to suppress. When it attacks, it aims to polarize, by infuriating both its regular adherents who believe the propaganda, and those attacked, who feel the injustice of it. When it polarizes, it still rules, by making the citizen body impotent in being divided against itself.
Compelling, strong, clear visions are offered only by those who want to be constructive, and that's not the ruling propaganda media.
Of course this process is what gives the parties who shall not be named by 'polite society' the media coverage that MSM want to remove. In short - MSM and politicians have shot themselves in both feet at the very same time.
The strange thing is that we are lead by an absolute, passive Zero - Olaf Scholz, who even looks like a zero.
In "normal" times that would have led to a passive government, unable to do anything, and would have led to a time of stqnd-still, where nothing happens. And that would have been a good thing, a time for pause and respite.
But in the last years a machinery has been engineered to move us into the direction of industrial and societal decline. No we are automatically going downhill. Being passive now means going downhill faster.
This is the worst time since WW2 to be led by zeroes.
Is FW any good? Are they to the "right" of CSU?
I wonder if things will progress like in Denmark where the SPD equivalent eventually adopted anti-migrant policies. It kept them in power but in the latest polls they are now down to 20% from 27% in the 22 election and a new anti-migrant party has emerged as a breakout from the CDU equivalent (Venstre, the name is from the 19th century!), which now has 1/3 of the support of the peak in 2010s (25% to 8%). One Venstre politician who was kicked out of parliament started her new party (Denmark Democrats) who quickly gained 10% on an anti-migrant platform. Venstre then split with a moderate faction, including the ex-PM, forming a new party, the Moderates. But then the two parties in a grand betrayal entered a coalition government with the socialists after the 2022 election!
Note that the main anti-migrant party, Dansk Folkeparti, has been completely decimated, going from the 15% in 2015 or 17 (election) to around 3% today. Those voters have gone largely to the Denmark Democrats and some probably went with the socialists. DFP largely abandoned its free market roots and advocates for more handouts for ethnic Danes. There is another party, hit by some internal conflict of late, that combines anti-migrant with free market, which is my choice. Nye Borgerlige. With a 2% lower limit, you get lots of parties in parliament in DK. I think Holland is worse with 1%!
I think CDU deserves a similar fate and maybe that's what Strauss would have predicted.
In Sweden, meanwhile, from being pariahs, the Sweden Democrats are a support party for the center-right government. But even if they are the biggest non-socialist party, they are not "eligible" for any ministerial jobs. Hopefully, AfD becomes the biggest party in Germany with time.
yes, FW are to the right of CSU, but not *as* to the right as AfD. they're a mix of things: shades of liberal FDP economic inclinations, they're localists/federalists, Eurosceptics, they have a lot of Christian supporters, and some overlap at least rhetorically with AfD.
Wow, an embodiment of Strauss's prediction!
"The coalition government is the worst Germany has had since the war, and voters miss no chance to punish them."
Much is confusing in politics especially abroad but every rout of insiders feels fabulous! :~)
Strauss' comment about there being no room for a democratic party to the right of the Union was of course twisted by Merkel to imply that any party to the right of the Union was undemocratic, rather than that the Union should be a sufficiently broad church for none to emerge.
It worked while she was in office. Boy is it backfiring now.
Also I can't help gloating a little, thankyou 18.6% of Hessens voters for not being intimidated by the constant slur of being a nazi.
indeed, it’s also relentlessly misinterpreted by the media
"as political momentum shifts decisively to the right"
... i.e. towards ~ the center, or "mentally normal people think"
Yeah, the media standard is that anyone or any group slightly right of center is a "far right winger". In the US, Biden's government and law enforcement agencies consider republicans, conservative christians, and people who speak at school board meetings to be "domestic terrorists".
The worry is they do indeed seem to believe this. But then again they think men are women, so who knows what mental hell they live in.
I fear you might be right with the assumption that they will try to achieve a turnaround by more repressive methods, be it censorship (DSA!) or banning AfD. The latter would be a catastrophe, One Does Not Ban Opposition Parties One Does Not Like, not unless one wants to wave goodbye to democracy as a concept.
Have you checked out the under-18-mock-election? The result:
CSU: 25.5%
Greens: 15.9% (-12.9%) - an enormous loss
SPD: 13.5%
AfD: 12,2% (+5.3% or so)
FDP: 7.8%
FW: 7.6%.
Which means that even among the very young cohort "Green" issues are no longer seen as enticing as the Green Party might expect or hope.
It's all fun and games until you can't afford to buy a house.
True...though Germans own a lot less than many of their European brethren and sistren anyway. It's more ...until you can't afford to light or heat your rental flat.
I had lost all faith in youth, you have restored it.
At the Conservative Party conference recently in the UK, it was like a funeral except for a couple of people.
The home secretary Suella Braverman who wants to stop mass immigration and deport any illegals and Nigel Farage who was there as part of the GB News team.
The queues of young people who were queuing up to have a selfie or talk to Farage was huge, I think they might be finally making the link between their lack of housing and high taxes and mass immigration at last.
Sweden's elite refused to acknowledge the Sweden Democrats, yet now they are in the government,so Jimmie Akesson has been vindicated; now the AfD will follow suit.
Sooner or later,our out-to- lunch leaders plus assorted fellow travellers will have to acknowledge that we are very very very fed up: across Europe and Blighty, people have had enough of pious posturing, hypocrisy, hectoring and lecturing and: Open Borders, Net Zero, social breakdown, gender bending, lies, lockdowns and self interested stupidity masquerading as governance.
Blighty's Rishi and Suella are making the right noises at last, so we must hope that finally they'll beat the Blob and rescue us.
I think Bravermans comments about multiculturalism and its failure have set things in motion. That is the correct approach, not haggling over immigration numbers. Condemn it all.
A minor correction: the Sweden Democrats are not formally in governement; our Liberal party and the Christian Democrats both opposed that, so the SD is acting as an allied party to the formal governement.
O my mistake; thank you for the correction
My only comment here is: are the words "right" and "left" relevant any more?
Policies have become so introverted and mixed up, that it is impossible to discern any ideology.
So, now, the "left" is in favour of censorship?
A new lexicon is needed.
Here is the media lexicon - far left wing, neo-marxists = normal, right and proper. Everyone else is fascist, domestic terrorist.
It is known as the Left Pole.
If you stand at the North Pole, technically any direction you walk is south.
Any deviation from their cherished position is somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.
They never were, excepting seating arrangements.
Example: are lowered taxes on income left or right?
Let's say an income of €25 000 net per year is enough to for a family, mom and dad and three kids plus a dog and a cat and a car.
Let's say we decide to create an income tax code that stipulates any household may earn €25 000 annually before starting to pay taxes, regardless of where the money comes from (assuming legal sources).
Is that left or right?
There's no left or right in politics, only what works and what doesn't.
One has to ponder, are they doing this to drive up support for the right so once they (the elite) switch parties again (switching which US Party is in control and doping their bidding the most) there will be soo much support for the Right that it will take decades of abuse by the Republican party before that support diminishes. It's what they've done before, switching from Democrat to republican's once the support for the party they were affiliated with was so decimated that they had to change parties. That said i don't think they are doing it this time. I believe the global elites promoting all of this have decided the Left is teh political ideology they will use for the rest of the plan. Here in teh US and in the UK that would have worked pre-2016; before Trump beat Hillary and before the Pro-Exit side won. Those were 2 significantly damaging blows to their plan and the only way each was able to happen was because they took their eye off the ball when they assumed what people were saying in polls was true and they based all their decisions around that resulting in their failing to interfere in both enough to stop both. Now they are wasting large numbers of resources to tarnish both; Trump and the Pro-Leave side. If they tried a party switch now ii would require too long of a delay in the plan and I for one believe they are out of delays. The schedule they are on is now fixed. That + the delays from Trump and Brexit forced their hand and they had to turn up the heat soo much so that they exposed many of their assets like the media. Trust in the media and even news media is at all time low and at least in the US I imagine it will take decades for the press to rebuild that trust and it will require the press to do something they simply can't do now; report the truth vs manufacturing consent.
Eugyppius,
Thanks for the link to your interview; if you do anymore interviews like that please keep us posted.
Yes, an excellent piece and some great context as well as some insight that makes me think exactly the same thing is happening here in the UK.
We had Blair and all the "leftie luuvy elites infecting our politics, our media and civil service as well as NGO's and are attempting to cancel and remove anyone or anything right of centre.
And that infection is just two to three years ahead of the UK in Germany, it looks likely that Labour will be elected here by the same luvvies and fail spectacularly as the SPD/Green/FPD coalition has.
The result of that, as a consequence of the Conservatives failure to do what is necessary in stopping the migrant boats, refusing to leave the ECHR and take control of case law to parliament is that its seen as having failed.
That failure, combined with the spectacular lack of spine to implement Brexit and the freedoms to grow our economy rather that listen to German business leaders repeatedly saying like a chorus, that regulation is far too high and costly and the result of chasing anything but cheap or reliable green energy is driving business out of Germany and its starting to do the same in the UK.
Housing is in crisis, both in Germany and the UK, why? Far too much immigration, in the last twenty years there's been at least 20M net migration, you simply cannot build that many houses.
Public services are collapsing as a result, towns are ever expanded leading to permanently blocked roads.
They blame the need for immigration on a declining birth rate, true, but why is it declining? Because young people can't get a home and can't afford them, why? because migration is taking those homes and in a supply demand market that has far too much demand and not enough supply, prices go up to ration it.
And its the poorer working class losing out, there are 1.2 million families on council house waiting lists and they keep getting jumped over for migrants housing, the indigenous population are second class citizens in their own country.
People are forced to queue for hours at Accident & Emergency while Border Force officials give migrants both a free taxi service and escort to A&E and simply walk to the front of the queue - no waiting for them.
What is happening in Germany now, will be followed in the UK, The Labour Party will come to power, it will follow the same failed policies as Germany, there will be mass immigration, both legal and illegal, a worsening housing crisis even higher energy bills from failed green policies and complete disillusionment with politics, The Conservatives will not benefit much, they will remember their identical failed policies and the UK will move to the right likely with Farage and Reform UK.
And then we might get some sense returning, that you cooperate with your allies on what what you agree, and you don't keep implementing clearly failed socialist policies of the EU and the WEF which have led us to trying to feed the entire world and failing to stand up for its own people.
Like all socialism - its a friend of anyone else's country but its own. And the people will not stand for it much longer.
Where Germany are now is where the UK is following.
Must stop CBDCs!
My prediction: AfD will spell the end of European politics as we have known them these past 75 years. Even the composition of the next European Parliament (though largely symbolic) will be enough to start the edifice crumbling. An AfD led coalition would be the EU’s demise.
Stay tuned for next summer.
Are AfD against the EU?
Yes, they are.
Not really, I thought. They used to be but had to drop it because Germans are still very strongly pro-EU even on the right.
Yes, you are correct w.r.t Germans' support for the EU. They still have it in their manifesto though (the document on their website is quite outdated) . But they will probably go for a referendum first
The way I would put it is this: they are not in thrall to the EU. The ‘group’ they will sit with in the European Parliament opposes many of the policies that define the current agenda in Brussels. Their ascendancy as a German party will be enough to seriously challenge the status quo.
Bravo to them then. It is dying anyway.