trollercoaster

Demographics and the so-called centre-left parties are working against us here. But the CDU is also working hard to ensure that we’ll have a much bigger problem than themselves, the Nazis of the AfD, within a much shorter time than 16 years.

The only benefit of Merz is, that he’s an old geezer who is nearing the ripe age of 70, with a bit of luck, Mother Nature will rid us of him before his term ends.

Is it true that he is invincible?

You really dont, do you?

But knee jerk border checks on a handful roads won’t change that in any meaningful way. All it will do is funnel away resources that would be needed elsewhere more urgently. And look impressive on the news.

All while undermining one of the greatest achievements of the EU.

The actual goal of those border controls is just populist knee jerk bullshit to score sympathies with the people who are increasingly voting for the Nazi party.

The political establishment has been predictably unsuccessfully trying to appease the far right by copying their talking points for years by now. This is just another escalation of this disgraceful act, after the Nazis scored high in two state elections.

Quality journalism of the kind that’s so expensive we all have to be incessantly nagged with paywalls, ads, and cookie banners in order to pay for it.

I’d rather not eat the rich. After eating a big corporation’s CEO, you’ll likely need to check yourself into rehab in order to get rid of the cocaine addiction you’ll acquire from such a meal.

While quite a lot of the original Nazis went unpunished, the problem is that you can only kill people, but you can’t kill an ideology. You can only keep it small by not providing it the societal circumstances it needs to thrive.

If you have rampant social inequality, skyrocketing cost of living, stagnating wages, worsening working conditions all combined with a political establishment that is the a perfect mix of greedy, uncaring, corrupt, and incompetent, people will flock to the political extremes. If there is no left counterbalance to the right, things will get even worse, because people will now only flock to the extreme right. (the absence of an effective left wing counterbalance has brought along the current circumstances in the first place, because it allowed neoliberalism to run rampant unchecked)

Percentages of people with higher education have exploded. (This is of course also driven by market demand and that’s why the liberals supported these policies to an extent making them possible)

The “market demand” is insane, the amount of bullshit jobs that can be done by a trained monkey but supposedly require a whole bunch of high level degrees for comparatively low pay is just ridiculous.

The entire “labour market” is broken and highly skewed in favour of corporations who can and will happily offload the training of their employees on the taxpayer while avoiding paying any taxes themselves wherever possible.

The so-called centre-left chose this neoliberal bracelet round their ankle by themselves. If you look back in history further than the last federal election in Germany, you’ll find that one of the harshest social cutbacks in post WW2 German history, the “Agenda 2010” was instituted by this so-called “centre-left”, namely a Red/Green coalition under Schröder/Fischer all on their own, without any FDP fig leaf to blame.

The FDP with their well known and predictable antisocial lobby policy having been invited into the current coalition is just a convenient fig leaf for the SPD and the Greens to pretend that they are still somewhat left, while in reality, there isn’t anything substantially left left in them.

They do run a hollow and shallow brand of feelgood leftism for a small privileged bubble that doesn’t need to worry about hard left topics like working conditions, cost of living, and distribution of wealth.

The left, for the most part, has also shifted away from traditional working class leftism towards a bizarre kind of ivory tower leftism catering to a relatively small bubble of people in higher education and is tearing itself apart with perpetual infighting over ridiculous and inconsequential things.

This new left has little to nothing to offer for the working class. If you ever heard them speak or tried to read their pamphlets, you might wonder whether they are actually reaching the working class at all, because the works of this new left tend to be infuriatingly tedious to listen to and/or read and are very capable of giving anyone a mighty headache. Additionally, the centre left has gone full neoliberal, as /u/LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee already said here. This might account for a lot of the people who gave up on voting. (Ever wondered why the SPD keeps scoring worse and worse every election? They abandoned the notion of being a working class party, and people are finally catching onto it)

The problem is that there is no real credible left in Germany. The so-called “center-left” are anything but left in the most important economic aspect, and the economically left parties are rightfully very small, because they are otherwise a very odd bunch ranging from mere Putin bootlickers to outright Stalinists.

Almost forgot about the local wildlife up there. But yes, that’s likely also a big factor. Also Avoiding to hit a moose can easily line you up for hitting a tree. (not sure what’s the lesser evil here, moose are massive and have the bulk of their body weight right at windshield height, at speed such an impact won’t end too well, just as impacting a tree) Or make you tip over your car, if it’s not built for that sort of thing. (Totally not looking at the early Mercedes A-Class)

I think there have been studies that showed people vote for the AfD because they are racists and fascists and not because they’re somehow left behind or don’t feel included.

People have been racists and fascists before the AfD, too. But there wasn’t a political climate that allowed anyone to publicly support a fascist and/or racist party without instantly being ostracised. As a result, fascist and racist parties were getting relatively little positive publicity and their election results were so meager that an attempt to ban the NPD failed for the simple reason of them not posing a realistic threat to democracy.

The entire political spectrum shifting towards the right, and the media increasingly taking up the far right’s talking points, giving them a platform and positive publicity has emboldened the fascists and racists who previously would rather vote something else than throwing their vote away for a party that’s not going to make it anyway to vote for the AfD. The reaction of the political establishment has been, rather than opposing their rhetoric, adopting their talking points, to such an extent that recently an AfD politician publicly boasted how the AfD doesn’t even need to be in government in order to make changes, because everyone is doing their bidding anyway.

However, I do think racism is driven up by our current capitalist society where we have to fight for the scraps the billionaire class deems sufficient for us. This makes it much easier to hate every foreign person, because you feel there will be even less scraps left for you.

That’s a big problem indeed and a large part of the current political climate. And instead of offering an alternative to the rat race, all relevant political parties have embraced and furthered it. There is a big vacuum on the left side of the political spectrum, a lot of the supposedly “left” political parties are neoliberal capitalists through and through and contend themselves with feel good leftism for a very small bubble of privileged (pseudo) intellectuals. Most people don’t give a shit about things like gendered language (or are annoyed by it), but would instead be very much interested in making ends meet and having a life worth living with their hard earned income. But there is little to no classic working class leftism left in the left end of the political spectrum, at least not with any relevant party.

History repeats itself even in this aspect. The original Nazis couldn’t have come to power, weren’t it for the Weimar Republic’s political establishment turning into a colossal perpetual failure.

I’d be willing to take bets that the typical fatal traffic accident in Finland looks a bit different than in more densely populated countries. My guess is that it’s something like “single car vs. tree on a lonely country road”, while in more densely populated countries, the involvement of multiple vehicles is more likely.

The established political parties and the media have created a societal climate in which it’s no longer unacceptable to openly support Nazis. The entire political spectrum has shifted so far right that openly supporting a Nazi party isn’t a taboo anymore. Thanks to that, people are now losing their inhibitions. On top of that, the established political parties have shown again and again that they don’t give a flying shit about the wellbeing of the lower and middle classes. Of course, the Nazis don’t either, but that doesn’t matter to the people voting for them, because they are buying their propaganda, which is way too often just parroted by the media.

First time?

The electorate has been systematically driven into the arms of of those people by both the political establishment and the media for decades.

The political establishment has contended itself with turning austerity into some kind of state religion and administrating the resulting shortages. Whenever this has lead to discontent, they were happy enough to jump on the far right’s bandwagon and adopted their talking points because they deluded themselves that they could get back lost votes this way, rather than admitting that they had caused the problems themselves and even trying to rectify them. The media have happily been helping this process along by rarely questioning the never ending austerity at the expense of the middle and lower classes, while parroting every single far right talking point. Now we’re reaping what has been sowed in the past decades.

That the far right makes disproportional gains in the East is no surprise, as the East, especially its rural regions, has been systematically sold out and run down even further than under the GDR since reunification.