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Far-right AfD says it is now ‘major all-German party’ after state elections
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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You know far-right political parties are on the rise in times of economical hardships. And now you have pretty much good conditions for such parties to thrive. The cost of living is increasing every day, the middle class is getting squeezed and their disposable income is getting lower, rents and real estate prices are almost at historic heights.
In such times people are desperately looking for a scapegoat and someone to blame, and those parties are giving them exactly that. They have always been in the opposition, so they feel they are guilt free for the current situation. And people being the irrational beings they are, are looking for a saviour in such "alternative" parties.
The worst thing is that right-wing ideals are opposed to what many voters think they are voting for.
Right-wing parties may claim to support the working class, but in reality they are in favour of increasing privatisation (e. g. Afd wants to discontinue the public broadcasters) and private profits and enlarging the economic divide between the rich and the poor.
I can't believe that people continue to vote for the very same centre-right and right-wing parties (CDU/CSU, FDP, etc.) that have been in power for the last decades in Germany and are directly responsible for the continous downfall of (public) services, like the dreadful state of the two-class healthcare system (rich people and civil servants have private healthcare, everyone else relies on underfunded and mismanaged public healthcare).
To me it seems like people are voting blindfolded. People desperately need more education in my opinion, which is why I also put blame on the (public) media for their often superficial and sensationalist reporting and lack of insightful explanations of current events.
The scapegoat thing is a big part of it, but the other problem is that there is no credible "working class" left party left in the German political spectrum.
The SPD abandoned social democracy long ago, under Schröder. The Greens were in a government coalition with the SPD at that time and also turned big time neoliberal. These days they'll form coalitions with anyone only so they can get into government. Their environmentalism is mostly feel good easing of ecological conscience for people who can afford a brand new electric SUV, at the expense of people who can't. Their "leftism" is pretty much limited to some bickering over "gender neutral" language. The "Left" party is plagued by the typical infighting problem of any left movement, also they are stuck up the arse of Vladimir Putin, a fascist dictator, of all people, so where is their credible leftism? Often mentioned by right wingers is also the heritage of the Left being the successor of East Germany's one and only party, but pretty much every German political party has some less than pretty heritage left over from past German dictatorships, this is only the most recent party having such a problem.
Well, if you look at the Ampel, the Greens seem to be the only party, that still cares about climate change. "Climate Chancellor" Scholz always supports the FDP when it comes to policies against climate change. Just take a look on the law on heating, how it changed from the original one proposed during the coalition talks. The Greens had to heavily compromise on it several times, because they received no SPD support for their stance. Now the law is a joke compared to the initial one. You can definitely charge them with not standing up for the necessary policies, but not for them not trying.
Scholz was never a "climate chancellor" He has always been an advocate for big money, he even is most likely personally involved in the cum ex tax evasion scheme. The Greens also give little to zero shits about people of lower income, which makes them easy targets for hate and drivel by AFD and friends (this includes CDU/CSU and the entire Springer media conglomerate). Not that those have any interest in helping low income people, either, but they are seeding hatred amongst them in order to farm votes.
Maybe but that is still quite a bit more than the parties further on the right.
That's not difficult, just don't outright hate poor people and you're better than them.
FIFY
At least in East-Germany people simply may not want a left party. They are voting far-right because they are far-right / neo-Nazi themselves.
Auto-translated:
Source: EFBI Policy Paper 2023-2: Authoritarian Dynamics and the Dissatisfaction with Democracy | University of Leipzig
Of course, a good percentage of the AFD voters are actual Nazis and lost causes, but the thing is that an increasing number of people aren't voting at all because the existing political landscape doesn't have anything credible to offer. Due to the 5% cut-off for getting into parliament, voting for a small party is frequently seen as wasting a vote, which exacerbates the problem if none of the big parties are seen as deserving a vote. With fewer people voting, all it needs is every Nazi out there to go and vote AFD to create a scary high percentage of votes for them.
That seems wrong. At least in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt (the states mentioned in the paper) voter turnout has been quite stable the last 20 years.
A quick search leads to:
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/281790/umfrage/wahlbeteiligung-bei-den-landtagswahlen-in-thueringen/
https://www.wahlen.sachsen.de/landtagswahl-historie-eckdaten.html
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/3179/umfrage/wahlbeteiligung-bei-den-landtagswahlen-in-sachsen-anhalt-seit-1990/
Seems to vary a bit regionally, also there seems to have been a recent uptick that I wasn't aware of.
The Greens had like something around 10% at that time. I think you highly overestimate the influence they had. They get some brownie points in the coalition papers and then they agree to carry the points of the SPD. That's how coalitions work in Germany.
If you look at how currently the FDP is holding the government hostage, the Greens could very well have done much more under the Schröder government, had they only wanted to. They just didn't.
I'm not sure I want the Greens to be more like the FDP.
They already are, just in a worse way.
Username checks out I guess, but I'm not a fan of those constant shit takes.
It's not a shit take, the Greens are neoliberal. They are an FDP for people who want to ease their ecological conscience by driving a brand new electric SUV to the organic supermarket to buy an organic soy latte packed in single use plastic for only 3.99€.
It is. It's downright moronic and typical anti Greens propaganda bullshit.
When the Greens were a part of the Schröder government, they took part in instating the worst social cutbacks in post WW2 German history. Since then, there is little reason to believe they have changed
They will form a coalition with anyone who offers them a place in government.
If you can afford a house of your own, and putting solar panels on top of it or changing the heating system just so, or buying a brand new electric car, they'll happily subsidise you for being already pretty well off. If you can't afford something like that, no subsidies for you, but feel free to pay the increased energy prices you dirty polluter of the environment.
If they ever manage to propose something that benefits less wealthy people, they'll roll over the very instant their coalition partners say no. All while one of those coalition partners is showing how it's done by shamelessly blocking virtually anything that goes against their own agenda with zero repercussions. The social side of the Greens (or what little is left of it) is pretty much toothless.
You're just further proving my point. But whatever, have fun with your AfD Nazis.
Don't worry, I won't have fun with the Nazis. As I remarked somewhere else, I regret that the German political spectrum is missing credible parties on the left. This has unfortunately led to a right shift of the entire political spectrum, which has enabled the AFD Nazis to gain popularity in the first place. Of course, shitting on the less wealthy parts of the population by pretty much all major parties does help with increasing that popularity even further, because they appeal specifically to those parts of the population, of course with the intent of shitting on them later.
But as you keep proving, people really don't bother with looking into what their favourite political parties are actually doing, or have done in the past, and prefer to let themselves get blinded by advertisements and Sunday speeches. If you don't want to go as far back as the Schröder government, just look at this let them eat cake moment of your beloved Greens. Things like that are why I think they haven't changed since then. If they were to change, they'd have to prove it. And as long as people keep voting for them instead of calling them out for being a bunch of neoliberal sociopaths, they won't change.
Unless a credible left alternative manifests itself, that actually improves conditions for the less wealthy, I unfortunately don't see much of a chance of avoiding a Nazi shitshow, because the political spectrum will continue drifting further to the right.
Yet you're here, spewing the same bullshit propaganda points of the AfD trolls. Makes it really hard to take you seriously. Those points have been disproven countless times already, it just gets old and tiresome, especially when they get repeated a hundred times each and every single day on political topics. But sure, keep on going. The matter of the fact remains that they're the only party left worth voting for in the Bundestag, especially if you actually care about the future.
Which points have been disproven?
My main point on the Greens still being a neoliberal shitshow that doesn't care about poor people was proven by a Green politician himself, who brazenly demanded from low income people to lower their living standard in order to be able to afford rising energy prices, while boasting about how he upgraded his own house to depend less on fossil energies. This, of course, isn't all that difficult to afford when you're living on a cushy state prime minister's salary. A party that tolerates people who not only think like that, but also make those thoughts a public statement, isn't really much better than the FDP.
This rhetoric of there being no alternatives is getting old. It's the same old narrative the SPD and Greens used when taking the axe to social security and workers' rights under Schröder.
Of course, the other parties are even worse, but that doesn't make the Greens any good. And the entire political spectrum being a steaming pile of shit is what is driving voters into the arms of the Nazis, because not everyone has a moral compass strong enough to prevent them from voting for such despicable people.
Oh yes, a bright future in which the lower classes have to lower their living standard in order to pay for the upper classes greenwashing theirs.
All of them.
This is not the first time I hear this claim but so far nobody has made any effort to really support it.
What specifically makes the Greens "neoliberal"?
When they joined the coalition with SPD in the Schröder government, they went all in with free market ideology and happily supported wholesale slashing of social security and workers' rights and sweeping privatisation of the public sector. They haven't really gone back from that since. Most of their subsidies programmes to incentivise more environmentally friendly technology are furthering the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, because in order to qualify for those subsidies, you need to be wealthy enough to buy something pretty damn expensive in the first place. This mindset was best portrayed by the Green prime minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, during the energy price crisis in 2022, when he advised poor people to stop showering and using a washcloth instead to save money on energy bills, while at the same time boasting how he himself had upgraded his house with new heating in order to become independent from fossil energy.
Ah yes, implementing neoliberal policies under Schröder I really depended on the 47 Greens that held 7% of the seats of the 14th Bundestag.
Kretschmann who is among the most conservative members of his party is your prime example for green policy?
It wasn't only the 47 in the Bundestag, it was the party leadership that set this agenda, and the party tolerating it. The same applies to Kretschmann. The party tolerates someone with his mindset acting on its behalf.
Yes, the biggest problem is that CSU/CDU and SDP are more or less the same, then you have the greens, far-right parties and the left, so there is not much sensible alternative to the current status quo.
Like the level of digitalization in Germany is pathetic, lack of affordable housing, excessive bureaucracy. I have the feeling Germany is stuck in the past, with no clear vision about the future that would be even more IT and AI centered.
Just look at VW, BMW, Mercedes, how they are scrambling to adapt to the new reality when vehicles would be filled with new tech and how ancient and sluggish and problematic their infotainment systems are with broken or not working OTA updates, etc., and how behind they are behind Tesla and the Chinese companies. Their sales crashed really hard in their most important market, China and their EV propositions are still mediocre and lackluster at best.
The mentality of the companies in Germany is super conservative, there are very few and mostly IT companies that offer hybrid ways of working and adopt English as their official language.
Taxes are crushing the middle class and salaries are not rising with the same pace as the productivity and GDP per capita.
Not to mention that Germany will soon face a demographic crisis which will put additional strain on the pension system.