Rise Of The Far Right Wing in Germany.

It's very worrying, and it's not only in Germany. Even in Norway a Far Right party is polling at around 20% these days! For any Noggies that might chime in I am aware that FrP is not as extreme as AfD but they are definitely "Far Right".
 
The entire establishment in Germany has been complicit in incitement against Muslims for their supposed “terrorism” because of the anti-genocide manifestations. Even so called leftists in Germany are vehemently and proudly pro-genocide.

Foreign minister Baerbock lied and pretended she’d seen “rape videos” (videos that everyone knows do not exist), in order to shut up protesters who were calling out her blatant anti-Palestinian racism…

For non-white people I am not sure they still can spot any difference between AFD and the established parties.
 
HTG said:
Been talked about in the EU-thread. But might warrant it’s own. The situation is dire and only getting worse. Especially the amount of young people voting the fascists is disheartening and shocking.
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Yes, I did think of that after I posted it.
In terms of cause and effect, we can obviously see the effect.
But I am interested in the cause.

Looking back. A few years ago, Angela Merkel allowed a large number of immigrants from a range of countries to come to Germany.
And of course, the eastern part of Germany was previously under communist rule.
Before that there was the Nazi rule.

So is the cause a combination of those?
 
Buster15 said:
Yes, I did think of that after I posted it.
In terms of cause and effect, we can obviously see the effect.
But I am interested in the cause.

Looking back. A few years ago, Angela Merkel allowed a large number of immigrants from a range of countries to come to Germany.
And of course, the eastern part of Germany was previously under communist rule.
Before that there was the Nazi rule.

So is the cause a combination of those?
Click to expand...
It's part that but I was reading an article on AfD voters recently and there is also a heavy anti-green sentiment. All the climate change policies and how costly it would be for people to move away from gas in their homes.

So it's anti-immigration, anti-green etc mixed in with a lot of resentment.
 
VorZakone said:
It's part that but I was reading an article on AfD voters recently and there is also a heavy anti-green sentiment. All the climate change policies and how costly it would be for people to move away from gas in their homes.

So it's anti-immigration, anti-green etc mixed in with a lot of resentment.
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The greens have become the scapegoat for everything that’s happening. They are the declared enemy of the German right and it’s catching on in broader society.
 
HTG said:
The greens have become the scapegoat for everything that’s happening. They are the declared enemy of the German right and it’s catching on in broader society.
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Here's the article I mentioned.

As Germany’s only political party that’s embraced climate change denial, AfD has capitalized on the discontent a fraction of voters feel toward existing environmental policies. Specifically, a law that requires many German residents to swap out their existing fossil fuel-based boilers for heat pumps that run on clean energy has raised many people’s ire due to how costly it could be for homeowners.
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https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/3/12/24080074/germany-afd-far-right
 
Oh, another thing which isn't exclusive to Germany: housing.

Quote from the same Vox article:
“What do you think as a German, if you need an apartment and then hear, there would be an apartment free but that is kept free for Ukrainians?” Mario asked. “Then I say to myself, thank you, Germany. I pay taxes but I don’t get an apartment.”
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This seems accurate to an extent at least..."mainstream centrist" politicians are at least perceived to be incapable of fixing issues.

 
HTG said:
The greens have become the scapegoat for everything that’s happening. They are the declared enemy of the German right and it’s catching on in broader society.
Click to expand...

That is quite similar to the UK. Reform, led by Nigel Farage was campaigning against the government climate change policies, saying they were too expensive to be average person, even though in truth he doesn't give a shit about the average person.

Despite that, the Green party actually did very well in the recent election.

In more recent times Germany has been an efficient and prosperous county although now the economy is stagnating.
So it is always very easy to link that to the climate change policies.
 
VorZakone said:
This seems accurate to an extent at least..."mainstream centrist" politicians are at least perceived to be incapable of fixing issues.

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It is for Germany. The Merkel years were a disaster. While the whole world seemed to celebrate her for reasons I’ll never comprehend, she basically stopped any infrastructural investments within Germany and therefore our infrastructure is close to collapse. It started with Schröder. But Merkel took the cake.
Education, streets, train infrastructure, digitalisation, military and other areas have not seen any sizeable investment during her whole time.

Oh, and she basically destroyed the renewable energies industrial sector in Germany, to appease the fossil fuel industry.
 
HTG said:
It is for Germany. The Merkel years were a disaster. While the whole world seemed to celebrate her for reasons I’ll never comprehend, she basically stopped any infrastructural investments within Germany and therefore our infrastructure is close to collapse. It started with Schröder. But Merkel took the cake.
Education, streets, train infrastructure, digitalisation, military and other areas have not seen any sizeable investment during her whole time.
Click to expand...
What was her rationale for stopping infrastructural investments?
 
HTG said:
It is for Germany. The Merkel years were a disaster. While the whole world seemed to celebrate her for reasons I’ll never comprehend, she basically stopped any infrastructural investments within Germany and therefore our infrastructure is close to collapse. It started with Schröder. But Merkel took the cake.
Education, streets, train infrastructure, digitalisation, military and other areas have not seen any sizeable investment during her whole time.

Oh, and she basically destroyed the renewable energies industrial sector in Germany, to appease the fossil fuel industry.
Click to expand...

Even though I did some work in Germany and have friends in Munich, I am a bit surprised to hear that. I had always thought of her as Mother Germany.... wrongly it seems.
 
Buster15 said:
Even though I did some work in Germany and have friends in Munich, I am a bit surprised to hear that. I had always thought of her as Mother Germany.... wrongly it seems.
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Not really wrong. That’s how many view her. But ultimately, she was a weak leader as she basically governed by sitting out the most serious issues.
She did her best for 16 years to avoid most serious public debates and issues, basically applied the short term fixes for everything that came up and left a disaster for the government to follow. The investment backlog in Germany is gigantic and it is destroying the fabrics of German society.
Add the steadily increasing immigration to those existing issues and it’s no surprise that the AfD has such successes in pandering to old stereotypes and racist tropes.
When your train is never punctual on your way to work, your internet connection is shitty, you struggle to find an affordable place to live, your kids visit shitty schools with not enough teachers, the streets are getting worse and there’s traffic jams everywhere and basically everything done in public services is still done by paper, people tend to get disillusioned with the state. That’s precisely what has happened here. And the media, instead of putting the finger in the wounds, are filled with cultural wars instead of serious debate.
And in the end, somehow the Greens are to blame, because their woke politics are at fault for everything. And of course the immigrants.
 
HTG said:
Not really wrong. That’s how many view her. But ultimately, she was a weak leader as she basically governed by sitting out the most serious issues.
She did her best for 16 years to avoid most serious public debates and issues, basically applied the short term fixes for everything that came up and left a disaster for the government to follow. The investment backlog in Germany is gigantic and it is destroying the fabrics of German society.
Add the steadily increasing immigration to those existing issues and it’s no surprise that the AfD has such successes in pandering to old stereotypes and racist tropes.
When your train is never punctual on your way to work, your internet connection is shitty, you struggle to find an affordable place to live, your kids visit shitty schools with not enough teachers, the streets are getting worse and there’s traffic jams everywhere and basically everything done in public services is still done by paper, people tend to get disillusioned with the state. That’s precisely what has happened here. And the media, instead of putting the finger in the wounds, are filled with cultural wars instead of serious debate.
And in the end, somehow the Greens are to blame, because their woke politics are at fault for everything. And of course the immigrants.
Click to expand...

Very interesting, that you.
I guess my perception has been characterised by my experiences in Munich. Whereas large parts of Germany are rather different.
 
SirAF said:
It's very worrying, and it's not only in Germany. Even in Norway a Far Right party is polling at around 20% these days! For any Noggies that might chime in I am aware that FrP is not as extreme as AfD but they are definitely "Far Right".
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I’ll allow it. FrP are an absolute shower of cnuts.
 
Buster15 said:
Even though I did some work in Germany and have friends in Munich, I am a bit surprised to hear that. I had always thought of her as Mother Germany.... wrongly it seems.
Click to expand...

I think now she's gone people are beginning to see what she's left behind and they don't like it. It's a lot like Tony Blair really.
 
HTG said:
Not really wrong. That’s how many view her. But ultimately, she was a weak leader as she basically governed by sitting out the most serious issues.
She did her best for 16 years to avoid most serious public debates and issues, basically applied the short term fixes for everything that came up and left a disaster for the government to follow. The investment backlog in Germany is gigantic and it is destroying the fabrics of German society.
Add the steadily increasing immigration to those existing issues and it’s no surprise that the AfD has such successes in pandering to old stereotypes and racist tropes.
When your train is never punctual on your way to work, your internet connection is shitty, you struggle to find an affordable place to live, your kids visit shitty schools with not enough teachers, the streets are getting worse and there’s traffic jams everywhere and basically everything done in public services is still done by paper, people tend to get disillusioned with the state. That’s precisely what has happened here. And the media, instead of putting the finger in the wounds, are filled with cultural wars instead of serious debate.
And in the end, somehow the Greens are to blame, because their woke politics are at fault for everything. And of course the immigrants.
Click to expand...
Sounds like Rutte in the Netherlands. Talked a good game, great international image, but absolutely no long-term vision and a total aversion to taking any real measures - meaning his governments were characterized by short-term fixes, including attempts to just not implement EU directives. The current agricultural crisis in the Netherlands is a direct result of that, and otherwise you see a lot of the same issues.

I wonder if social media play a role in this trend. it allows for real-time tracking of what people think about anything. Connect that to politicians always worrying about the next elections, and it might be why short-termism seems bigger than ever in politics.
 
Pintu said:
The entire establishment in Germany has been complicit in incitement against Muslims for their supposed “terrorism” because of the anti-genocide manifestations. Even so called leftists in Germany are vehemently and proudly pro-genocide.

Foreign minister Baerbock lied and pretended she’d seen “rape videos” (videos that everyone knows do not exist), in order to shut up protesters who were calling out her blatant anti-Palestinian racism…

For non-white people I am not sure they still can spot any difference between AFD and the established parties.
Click to expand...

This reads like it's straight out of some tiktok bubble. Gaza is a footnote when it comes to the right wing shift. It's a particularly ridiculous theory, because we're seeing the same shift happening all over Europe since long before last year. So clearly it's not because of what videos Baerbock may or may not have seen.

Buster15 said:
Very interesting, that you.
I guess my perception has been characterised by my experiences in Munich. Whereas large parts of Germany are rather different.
Click to expand...

I don't think either perception is necessarily wrong, because a lot of things only started to really break after she left. E.g. propping up the decision to get out of nuclear energy with Russian gas instead of (a harder push towards) renewables. Worked well enough while she was in office, turned out to be a generational mistake when the Ukraine war started. Similar things can perhaps be said about fibre cable internet (that one even goes as far back as Kohl), the broader topic of digitalization, handling the refugee crisis, I guess the infrastructure deficit of "DB", too. She also was quite good at reassuring the public. Where Scholz seems painfully indecisive and uncharismatic, she knew when and how to address the country directly.

Buster15 said:
That is quite similar to the UK. Reform, led by Nigel Farage was campaigning against the government climate change policies, saying they were too expensive to be average person, even though in truth he doesn't give a shit about the average person.

Despite that, the Green party actually did very well in the recent election.

In more recent times Germany has been an efficient and prosperous county although now the economy is stagnating.
So it is always very easy to link that to the climate change policies.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's as "rational" as an economic short vs long-term argument. Bild and some other media have been running a smear campaign against them for years (if I had to guess I'd say the typical conservative resistance to reform coupled if some good old industry lobbyism). If you believe them the Greens want to ban meat, driving and just about anything that's fun, when they make an economic or fiscal proposial you're going to get a slew of articles that tells you it's going to tank the economy and most of their politicians never achieved anything in their lives. E.g. the heat pump law that you mentioned has been framed as "they want to ruin single family house owners". Then a bit later Merz himself quietly said that the CDU fully supports the general direction and infact there weren't enoug heat pumps installed in 2023.
https://uebermedien.de/94967/ueber-gewalt-gegen-politiker-und-die-grenzen-der-statistik/

Mmlxrg9.png


top one is all attacks on politicians (e.g. including verbal crimes), bottom one is only violent attacks. Keep in mind the Greens are neither far left nor far right and only the 3rd to 4th most popular party.
 
Buster15 said:
Yes, I did think of that after I posted it.
In terms of cause and effect, we can obviously see the effect.
But I am interested in the cause.

Looking back. A few years ago, Angela Merkel allowed a large number of immigrants from a range of countries to come to Germany.
And of course, the eastern part of Germany was previously under communist rule.
Before that there was the Nazi rule.

So is the cause a combination of those?
Click to expand...

Surely the same as everywhere.

People are largely miserable and poor, everything is too expensive and they feel stuck. Individual policies and conditions in individual countries notwithstanding, the whole world will pay for the pandemic for decades to come, food and fuel will become ever more expensive as we wreck the planet and wealth will be hoarded more and more by those at the very top.

The right always offers someone to demonise so people don't have to blame themselves and someone to cheer for to 'make things like they used to be' and idiots fall for it in desperation, every. single. time.
 
VorZakone said:
This seems accurate to an extent at least..."mainstream centrist" politicians are at least perceived to be incapable of fixing issues.

Click to expand...

All of this is being caused by the 1% of billionaires and multi-millionaires who own the press and make sure that no progressives who could actually bring about change ever get into power. People like Musk are just destroying everything to preserve their obscene wealth.
 
HTG said:
It is for Germany. The Merkel years were a disaster. While the whole world seemed to celebrate her for reasons I’ll never comprehend, she basically stopped any infrastructural investments within Germany and therefore our infrastructure is close to collapse. It started with Schröder. But Merkel took the cake.
Education, streets, train infrastructure, digitalisation, military and other areas have not seen any sizeable investment during her whole time.

Oh, and she basically destroyed the renewable energies industrial sector in Germany, to appease the fossil fuel industry.
Click to expand...

If infrastructure spend was THE problem (not saying it isn't one in most of Germany) I don't think we would see those states voting extreme right who have had an outlandish infrastructure spend the past 30 years. A infrastructure spend pretty much second to none in human history and absolutely not proportionate with economic activity.
 
Abizzz said:
If infrastructure spend was THE problem (not saying it isn't one in most of Germany) I don't think we would see those states voting extreme right who have had an outlandish infrastructure spend the past 30 years. A infrastructure spend pretty much second to none in human history and absolutely not proportionate with economic activity.
Click to expand...
The infrastructure in the east is still quite bad. There are few big companies there and the people living there have a shitty future perspective. There is a reason why so many young and educated people from the east leave for the west.
Obviously, this is not the sole reason for what's happening right now. But the worsening economy, infrastructure, healthcare, education and so on create an environment in which it is quite easy to score points with racist tropes. People are rightfully discontent with the political landscape. And they are wrongfully looking at the far right for help.
Of course some people are just racist assholes who are happy that they get to voice their shitty opinions openly now.
 
VorZakone said:
Click to expand...

Sad situation. And if I'm correct, the issue is mostly that the terrorists because of whom these measures are introduced, mostly radicalized themselves within Germany (someone please correct if I got this wrong). So it is not so much an issue of letting the wrong ones in, but mostly an issue of failing to provide a future to the people already here.
 
do.ob said:
This reads like it's straight out of some tiktok bubble. Gaza is a footnote when it comes to the right wing shift. It's a particularly ridiculous theory, because we're seeing the same shift happening all over Europe since long before last year. So clearly it's not because of what videos Baerbock may or may not have seen.



I don't think either perception is necessarily wrong, because a lot of things only started to really break after she left. E.g. propping up the decision to get out of nuclear energy with Russian gas instead of (a harder push towards) renewables. Worked well enough while she was in office, turned out to be a generational mistake when the Ukraine war started. Similar things can perhaps be said about fibre cable internet (that one even goes as far back as Kohl), the broader topic of digitalization, handling the refugee crisis, I guess the infrastructure deficit of "DB", too. She also was quite good at reassuring the public. Where Scholz seems painfully indecisive and uncharismatic, she knew when and how to address the country directly.



I don't think it's as "rational" as an economic short vs long-term argument. Bild and some other media have been running a smear campaign against them for years (if I had to guess I'd say the typical conservative resistance to reform coupled if some good old industry lobbyism). If you believe them the Greens want to ban meat, driving and just about anything that's fun, when they make an economic or fiscal proposial you're going to get a slew of articles that tells you it's going to tank the economy and most of their politicians never achieved anything in their lives. E.g. the heat pump law that you mentioned has been framed as "they want to ruin single family house owners". Then a bit later Merz himself quietly said that the CDU fully supports the general direction and infact there weren't enoug heat pumps installed in 2023.
https://uebermedien.de/94967/ueber-gewalt-gegen-politiker-und-die-grenzen-der-statistik/

Mmlxrg9.png


top one is all attacks on politicians (e.g. including verbal crimes), bottom one is only violent attacks. Keep in mind the Greens are neither far left nor far right and only the 3rd to 4th most popular party.
Click to expand...

That is very interesting and thank you for posting it.
 
HTG said:
The infrastructure in the east is still quite bad. There are few big companies there and the people living there have a shitty future perspective. There is a reason why so many young and educated people from the east leave for the west.
Obviously, this is not the sole reason for what's happening right now. But the worsening economy, infrastructure, healthcare, education and so on create an environment in which it is quite easy to score points with racist tropes. People are rightfully discontent with the political landscape. And they are wrongfully looking at the far right for help.
Of course some people are just racist assholes who are happy that they get to voice their shitty opinions openly now.
Click to expand...
Nothing is perfect but pretty much any other former Soviet state would have killed to get the kind of support former East Germany got after reunification.
 
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