#AfD Brandenburg

[unfug-bilder]

Während ich die letzten Kisten packe kommt endlich LEBEN in den brandenburgischen Wahlkampf. Ich wußte doch, dass auf die lokalen Nazis Verlaß ist.

[sonicskullsalt]

So, und bei der nächsten Möglichkeit gehen wir dann jetzt auch alle wählen, okay?

Brandenburg Edition 2024

Am 22. September sind in Brandenburg Landtagswahlen

[tessabennet]

you only want afd to get banned because you're lgbtq you pathetic cunt. Get a life, turn to God and stop the shit you're spreading.

God looks down on you with shame and I'm the one who's choosing decency:

[ghaniblue]

Meine lieben Mitbrandenburger,

HABEN DIE EUCH INS HIRN GESCHISSEN?!

[timelessnewsnow]

As the polls close at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), early indications suggest that the AfD may surpass Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), building on its recent successes in other eastern states.

Know more 👆🏻

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tim Ganser at The UnPopulist:

Since the end of World War II, Germans had by and large steadfastly resisted voting for far-right populists. That norm was shattered in the last decade by the success of the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which seemed to gain more traction as it radicalized into a full-blown, hard right populist party. A year into its existence, spurred by widespread discontent with German fiscal policy, the AfD won seven seats in European Parliament. In 2017, after undergoing a hard-right turn, it won 94 seats in the German federal elections, good for third place overall. For the past year, the AfD has consistently ranked second in Politico’s poll aggregator tracking the public’s voting intentions.

In this Sunday’s European Parliament elections, roughly 1 in 6 German voters is expected to cast a ballot for the AfD, whose members have trivialized the Holocaust, encouraged their followers to chant Nazi slogans, and participated in a secret conference where they fantasized about forced deportations of naturalized citizens they derisively call “Passport Germans.” Worse still, the AfD is predicted to be the strongest party, with up to a third of the vote share, in the three elections for state parliament in Saxony and Thuringia on Sept. 1 and in Brandenburg on Sept. 22. And in generic polls for a hypothetical federal election, the AfD fares even better than it did in any previous election. How did Germany get to this point?

The AfD’s Origin Story

The AfD was founded in early 2013 by a group of conservatives, led by the economics professor, Bernd Lucke, greatly disillusioned with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fiscal policy. In their view, the European debt crisis had revealed deep instability within the eurozone project as smaller nations found themselves unable to cope with the economic demands of membership, and they believed Merkel’s focus on saving the euro was coming at the expense of German economic interests. This was, however, the opposite of a populist complaint—in fact, the AfD was initially referred to as a “Professorenpartei” (a professor’s party) because of the party’s early support from various economics professors who were more interested in fiscal policy than catering to popular will. In its earliest days, the AfD could best be characterized as a cranky but respectable party of fiscal hardliners. Its anti-establishment posture stemmed entirely from its belief in the necessity of austerity. Even its name could be construed less as nationalistic and more an answer to the dictum coined by Merkel—“alternativlose Politik” (policy for which there is no alternative)—to defend her bailouts during the eurozone crisis.

Although the AfD had launched an abstract economic critique of Merkel’s policies that could be hard to parse for non-experts, its contrarian stance resonated with a significant portion of Germans. Right out of the gate, the AfD obtained the highest vote share of any new party since 1953, nearly clearing the 5% threshold for inclusion in the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament, in its first electoral go round. Its success was also measurable in terms of membership, passing the 10,000 mark almost immediately after its formation. The rapid increase in membership, however, helped lay the groundwork for its turn toward right-wing populism. Perhaps due to pure negligence—or a combination of calculation and ambition—the party’s founders did little to stop right-wing populists from swelling its rolls. And as the German economy emerged through the European debt crisis in good financial shape, fiscal conservatism naturally faded from the public’s consciousness. However, a new European crisis having to do with migrants came to dominate the popular imagination. The AfD hardliners seized on the growing anti-migrant opinion, positioning the AfD as its champion, thereby cementing the party’s turn towards culture war issues like immigration and national identity.

Starting in late 2014, organized right-wing protesters took to the streets to loudly rail against Germany’s decision to admit Muslim migrants, many fleeing the Syrian civil war. The AfD right wing’s desire to become the political home of nativism led to a rift within the party that culminated in founder Bernd Lucke’s being ousted as leader in 2015, and his replacement with hardliner Frauke Petry. Lucke left the party entirely, citing its right-wing shift, following in the footsteps of what other party leaders had already done and more would do in the coming year. Up until this point, the AfD unwittingly helped the cause of right-wing populism. If the reactionary far-right had tried to start a party from scratch, it would have likely failed. The AfD, after all, was created within a respectable mold, trading on the credentials of its earliest founders and leaders. But with saner voices now pushed out, right-wing populists had the party with public respectability and an established name all to themselves. And they deliberately turned it into a Trojan horse for reactionary leaders who wanted to “fight the system from within.

[...]

A New Normal in Germany

As right-wing populist positions have become part of the political discourse, Germany is now in the exact same position as some of its European neighbors with established hardline populist parties. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni ascended to the premiership in October 2022 as the head of her neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party, which is poised to perform well in the upcoming European Parliament elections. In France, the Marine Le Pen-led far-right Rassemblement National (RN) is set to bag a third of votes in those elections, roughly double what President Macron’s governing coalition is expected to obtain.

What makes the situation in Germany especially worrisome is that, unlike in France and Italy, far-right parties had failed to garner any meaningful vote share in nationwide elections until just seven years ago; indeed, until the 2017 federal election, there had never been a right-wing populist party that had received more than six percent of the national vote in Germany. The nation’s special vigilance toward far right ethnonationalism in light of its history of Nazi atrocities was expected to spare Germany the resurgence of far-right populism. But it actually led to complacency among mainstream parties. By 2017, the AfD—already in its right-wing populist phase—received nearly 13% of the vote in the federal election to become the third-strongest parliamentary entity. And by then it had also made inroads in all state parliaments as well as the European Parliament. The norm against it was officially gone.

To be sure, the AfD is not on track to take over German politics. It currently has the fifth most seats among all German parties in the Bundestag, fourth most seats among German parties in the European Parliament, and is a distant eighth in party membership. Nor is it currently a threat to dominate European politics—late last month, the AfD was ousted from the Marine Le Pen-led Identity and Democracy (ID) party coalition, the most right-wing group in the European Parliament. Le Pen, herself a far-right radical, explained the AfD’s expulsion by describing the party as “clearly controlled by radical groups.” But none of the above offer good grounds for thinking the AfD will be relegated to the fringes of German or European politics.

After the election, the AfD could rejoin ID, or it could form a new, even more radical right-wing presence within the European Parliament. Some fear that the AfD could potentially join forces with Bulgaria’s ultranationalist Vazrazhdane. Its leader, Kostadin Kostadinov, said that AfD’s expulsion from ID could create an opening to form “a real conservative and sovereigntist group in the European Parliament.” Also, ID’s removal of the AfD wasn’t due to its stated policy platform being out of step with Europe’s right-wing populist project. Rather, it was because the AfD’s leading candidate, Maximillian Krah, was implicated in a corruption and spying scandal involving China and Russia, and because he said he would not automatically construe a member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) to be a criminal. Absent these entirely preventable missteps, the AfD would be in good standing with right-wing populist partners in Europe.

Seeing far-right Nazi-esque Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) rise in prominence in Germany is a sad sight.

[mariacallous]

In the context of a turbulent and unsatisfying three years in office, the incredibly awful September in progress might rank as the three-party German government’s grimmest month yet. After elections in the east that issued record results for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party—another vote, in Brandenburg, looms on Sept. 22—the government is also reeling from the fallout of two Islamist terrorist attacks that left three dead and eight wounded. One of those attacks involved a Syrian asylum-seeker whose petition for protection in Germany had been denied; he had links to the fundamentalist Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Now the government has announced its response: starting on Sept. 16, Germany will unilaterally impose border closures, for six months, on all nine of its borders with other European countries. Incoming foreign nationals will be screened according to arbitrary criteria, and rejected applicants will be forced onto Germany’s next-door neighbors.

Although some details remain unclear, Germany’s plan amounts to an unprecedented step. Eight of the neighboring countries are EU members, and all of them are part of the Schengen regime that guarantees freedom of movement across borders within the bloc and recognizes the right to political asylum. Meanwhile, Germany’s mainstream opposition party is demanding an even more severe policy—one that would essentially prevent the country from accepting any new asylum applicants onto its territory at all.

“Until we achieve strong protection of the EU’s external borders with the new common European asylum system, we must strengthen controls at our national borders,” said Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser. Her proposal involves expedited procedures at the German frontiers to determine whether each person who arrives may enter and apply for political asylum.

According to Faeser, the planned border screenings will limit illegal migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime.” There will be more deportations during this period, she said, but they will conform to EU law. But some experts disagree. European law expert Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European law at HEC Paris, told the Guardian that the German controls “represent a manifestly disproportionate breach of the principle of free movement within the Schengen area.”

And Sergio Carrera, a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a Brussels-based think tank, told Foreign Policy that the border closures will most probably have a knock-on effect across the continent: “There’s the risk of these measures triggering a race to the bottom. Where’s the end point? We’re talking about rights that go to the very heart of what the EU is all about.”

The new measures at the German borders ratchet up pressure on European Union norms that are already strained. According to EU law, free movement within the bloc is guaranteed within the Schengen area, which encompasses most EU member countries (except Cyprus and Ireland) as well as Switzerland and Norway. Foreign nationals claiming political persecution have the right to apply for political protection in the country through which they enter the EU. But the bloc’s member countries may suspend Schengen’s guarantees in the case of “internal security concerns” as long as those concerns are proportional and legitimate and the suspensions temporary. Brussels must be briefed in advance.

Germany has had periodic border checks in place along the Austrian border since 2015—a response to the refugee crisis of 2015-16. Last year, in response to heightened migration flows, Germany established checks on its borders shared with Poland, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland. In fact, across the European Union, member states have temporarily restricted internal border crossings 404 times since 2015, according to German daily Die Tageszeitung.

Germany’s move would take another step toward turning the exception policy of internal EU border checks into the rule, argued Christian Jacob of Die Tageszeitung. A European Parliament study issued last year claimed that this was already happening and that a “systematic lack of compliance with EU law” could undermine rule of law guarantees.

One result would almost certainly be a chain reaction across the bloc. Walter Turnowsky, a migration expert at Denmark’s Der Nordschleswiger, a German-language newspaper, fears exactly this. “Officially, the announced German border controls are also temporary, but ultimately the announcement means the end of free travel across the EU,” he said. “From now on, governments will claim: ‘Well, Germany controls its borders too,’” so they will do the same.

The new German measures aim to stop non-EU citizens who have already applied for asylum elsewhere in the bloc from entering Germany by bus, train, or car from Schengen zone neighbors. (Currently, only third-country nationals who have invalid papers or don’t intend to file for political asylum are refused entry.) Under the new measures, the migrants would be returned to the country where they entered the Schengen area and originally applied for asylum, which are usually one of the EU’s southern external border countries, such as Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, or Spain.

German border guards would detain the foreign nationals at the border—perhaps even in a kind of jail, apparently for no longer than five weeks—until their status can be verified. Foreign nationals who had not previously applied for asylum but who claim political persecution could then enter Germany and apply for protection, which German courts would rule on at a later date.

One of the looming questions is what criteria German police would invoke to screen those parties interested in entering the country. Since not every person traveling into Germany can be stopped, “it will be people who look different, regardless of citizenship,” said Carrera, of CEPS. “A certain racial appearance will make some people suspect. This is racial profiling, and it is illegal.”

Against the background of its fierce battle in eastern Germany with the AfD, Germany’s conservative opposition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has opted to steal the other party’s thunder by endorsing measures very much like those of the far right—and until recently entirely taboo. Claiming that the government’s measures do not go nearly far enough, the CDU argues that no people—none at all—should be permitted to enter Germany in the absence of a visa or European passport.

This would de facto end the country’s commitment to offering asylum. In order to make this flagrant violation of international law at least appear to conform to EU regulations, under the CDU plan, Germany would declare a state of emergency as a result of internal security threats. This, the CDU believes, would legalize the across-the-board rejection of unwanted third-country nationals.

The proposal also goes a gigantic step beyond the limitation of movement in the EU, effectively eviscerating the right to political asylum.

“This kind of measure, and those the government are taking, will be investigated and could come before the EU court of justice,” Carrera said. “The EU will determine whether the security concerns really justify such a breach of EU law.” Other experts have said that Germany will not be able to prove that the recent attacks or the numbers of asylum-seekers—which have fallen this year—actually threaten the state’s internal security and thus justify (or indeed, are really aided by) these measures.

One of the many problems with the new German modus operandi: Neighboring states will have to accept people refused by Germany back onto their territory—and Austria, for one, which has general elections on Sept. 29 (and where polls indicate the situation for migrants is getting even worse, with a very strong showing of the far-right Freedom Party likely) said forget it, it won’t take them.

Poland is also up arms at the prospect of traffic jams at the borders that would obstruct commercial and private transportation. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the German move a “de facto suspension of the Schengen Agreement on a large scale.”

The Belgian daily Le Soir seems to hit the nail on the head: “With governments like this, there’s no need for the far right to be in power. The pressure of elections and the fear of extremes are causing those in power to run around like headless chickens, with migrants as the only means for decompression.”

EU expert Thu Nguyen, the deputy director of the Berlin-based Jacques Delors Centre, told Foreign Policy that unilateral decisions taken by Germany—the EU’s most populous state—are entirely unproductive. She noted that the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, a set of new rules passed this year for managing migration and establishing a common asylum system at a bloc-wide level, addresses some of the concerns about immigration raised by Germany and other EU states, including by facilitating faster procedures for asylum applicants at the continent’s external borders.

After all, Germany—including the CDU’s parliamentary group in the EU, the European People’s Party (EPP)—was essential in drafting the pact, together with the 25 other EU member states. When the pact came in front of the European Parliament earlier this year, EPP parliamentarian Tomas Tobé said that “the absolute best way to help support a European migration policy is to be loyal to the whole migration pact.”

[tanadrin]

Looks like the SPD may have squeaked it out in Brandenburg, which is good news--interestingly, their polling numbers went way up right before the election, which makes me wonder (and certainly hope) that their comparatively dismal state in other polls is at least partly an artifact of expressive responses or non-response bias ultimately counteracted by voters coming home, at least to oppose the AfD. The Greens and Die Linke got totally wiped out, though. Seems increasingly clear that the BSW is just gonna cannibalize Die Linke until there's nothing left of them.

But does mean that the Landtag is now precisely a 50/50 split between centrist parties (SPD, CDU) and two different flavors of complete asshole (BSW, AfD). Kind of awkward.

[wladimirkaminer]

Ostdeutschlands Unbehaglichkeiten

Eigentlich geht es uns gut. Brandenburg, Thüringen, Sachsen sind für mich die schönsten Ecken Deutschlands, hier gibt es mehr Birken als in Russland und die Sonnenblumen werden so groß wie Palmen. Im Herbst, wenn es genug geregnet hat, erwarten wir eine große Pilzernte: Steinpilze, Butterpilze, Maronen. Und die Landtagswahlen erwarten wir auch, allerdings mit Zittern. Mein Brandenburger Nachbar, der bei jeder Wahl immer gerne als Wahlhelfer im Wahllokal sitzt, erzählte, er würde genau wissen, wer im Dorf die AfD wählt. Das seien nämlich diejenigen, die ihre Wahlzettel nicht einmal sondern vier Mal knicken, damit niemand sehen kann, was sie angekreuzt haben. Das hat er mir vor acht Jahren erzählt. Heute schämt sich keiner mehr im Dorf, für die Alternative zu stimmen, sie scheint hier alternativlos zu sein. Die Plakate der AfD haben die alteingesessen  Parteien von den Straßenlaternen verdrängt, nur selten lächelt Frau Wagenknecht mit ihrer frisch gegründeten BSW, sie wird in der Regel sehr tief, unter den AfD-Plakaten an die Lampen angebracht, man merkt, ihre HelferInnen sind ältere Zeitgenossen, sie steigen ungern auf die Leiter.

In fröhlicher Zweisamkeit schauen sich nun die beiden Parteien an. Nein, jetzt habe ich extra nachgeschaut, am Mast hinter der Düngerscheune, wo unser Dorf schon zu Ende ist, am Rande eines endlosen Feldes mit Sonnenblumen, versteckt sich noch ein Plakat der Freien Wähler, es fällt aber kaum auf. Die Ergebnisse der Sonntagsumfragen zeigten in der letzten Zeit ein düsteres Bild. Bei den Landtagwahlen in Sachsen kratzte die SPD an der 5% Grenze, die FDP existierte gar nicht mehr und die Grünen, sollten sie noch ein Prozentpunkt verlieren, wären auch raus aus dem Landtag. Dann hätte die Bundesrepublik in Sachsen ein Dreiparteien- Königreich mit AfD, BSW und CDU. „Die späte Rache des Ostens“ titelten die Zeitungen. Aber wofür denn? wunderte sich der Rest der Republik. Für die Wiedervereinigung? Die war doch besser gelaufen als man sich anfangs vorgestellt hatte. Hätte jemand damals dem Osten erzählt, ihre über alles geliebte Westmark werde bald abgeschafft und eine Ostdeutsche zu Bundeskanzlerin gewählt, hätten sie sich mit dem Finger an den Kopf getippt und dem Erzähler einen Arzt gerufen. „Was haben sie denn, es geht doch den Menschen im Osten gut,“ höre ich oft auf meinen Reisen, ich, der frisch zugezogene Brandenburger.  

Meine Frau und ich wir haben zur Coronazeit Berlin verlassen und sind in Brandenburg heimisch geworden, in Brandenburg gab es wie man weiß, kein Corona. Ganz im Gegenteil haben die Brandenburger damals aus Funk und Fernsehen erfahren, dass sie schon immer richtig gelebt haben, mit einem hundert Meter Abstand zum Nachbar und niemandem die Hand geben.

Gelacht haben wir über die Hygieneverordnungen, gelacht und  gelästert, die Bundesregierung war völlig aus dem Häuschen, sie wusste über die Viren genau so wenig wie über den Osten und zeigte es auch: keine Ahnung vom wahren Leben, mindestens von unserem Leben. Die Gesetze und Verordnungen waren vielleicht gar nicht dämlich, sie wurden bloß für ganz Deutschland verfasst, aber ganz Deutschland ist an jeder Ecke anders. Der Osten ist anders, Brandenburg ist anders. Besonders laut gelacht haben wir über die Ausgangssperre nach 22 Uhr. Wohin soll jemand gehen, um die Zeit? Wir haben kaum Straßenbeleuchtung, wenn ich mich nach 22 Uhr von meinem Haus entferne, bin ich nach fünf Minuten schon im Maisfeld und kann mit den Wildschweinen politischen Diskussionen führen. Die Kneipenschließungen haben uns auch nicht tangiert, wir haben gar keine Kneipe, es gibt ein „Haus des Gastes“ hinterm Wald, die nette Betreiberin hatte es gleich zu Beginn der Pandemie geschlossen, aus Angst vor chinesischen Fledermäusen. Sie hatte aber auch davor nur Freitags auf, die kleine Veränderung der Öffnungszeiten haben die Menschen in unserem Dorf gar nicht mitbekommen. Wir saßen oft an der Bushaltestelle. Wir haben keinen Bus, aber eine hübsche Bushaltestelle. Angeblich gab es hier vor langer Zeit, in den Neunzigerjahren, viele Kinder, die mit einem Schulbus zur Schule gefahren wurden. Und eines Tages fuhr der Schulbus los und kam nie mehr zurück. Seitdem haben wir keine Schule, kaum Kinder und keinen Bus. Aber eine gut erhaltene Bushaltestelle. Und manchmal im Herbst, wenn es davor geregnet hat, sitzen darin fremde Menschen, Pilzsammler, die sich im Wald verlaufen haben und an der falschen Haltestelle rausgekommen sind. Sie warten auf einen Bus. Die Einheimischen nicken den Fremden im Vorbeigehen zu, schauen auf die Uhr und sagen „Kommt gleich“.

Sie haben guten Sinn für Humor, ein bisschen Spaß darf sein. Das Leben macht immer bessere Witze als Fernsehen. Da standen im Ersten Programm neulich zwei Komiker, und machten Witze über den Osten. Der eine sagte, das „B“ bei der AfD stehe für Bildung. Aber das „B“ gibt es bei der AfD doch gar nicht. Wo ist denn da der Witz? Das hat bei uns keiner verstanden. Oft und gerne erinnern sich meine Nachbarn an ihre Heimat, die untergegangene DDR, die Titanic ihres Lebens. Nicht dass sie dieser Titanic nachtrauern oder sie vermissen würden, das nicht. Was vorbei ist, ist vorbei. Aber es sind viele Fragen offengeblieben. Vor allem die Frage, wo ist das ganze Zeug? In der DDR gab es jede Menge Zeug. Wo ist das alles hin? Mein Nachbar, ein Oberst im Ruhestand, erzählte, es gab früher in der DDR drei U Boote. Wo sind sie jetzt? Niemand weiß es. Alles verkauft und verraten, aber es geht uns gut, man kann nicht meckern, sagen meine Nachbarn.

Sie erinnern sich, wie der Schröder kam, als guter Kumpel ins Bundeskanzleramt. Er würde Kohls Versprechen - die blühenden Landschaften – wahr machen, dachten viele, die anfangs noch Kohls „Allianz für Deutschland“ (auch AfD) gewählt hatten. Schröder war für die Schwachen und die Unterbezahlten, er rüttelte an den Gittern des Bundeskanzleramts, lässt uns mitregieren! Zusammen mit dem Lafontaine und dem anderen, wie hieß er noch mal, der Dritte? Genau, Scharping.  Und was hat es gebracht? Harz IV.

Auch 30 Jahre nach der Wiedervereinigung, die gleichen Gehälter kannste vergessen, ein Busfahrer in Düsseldorf und ein Busfahrer in Bautzen bekommen immer noch nicht den gleichen Lohn,  obwohl sie die gleichen Busse fahren.

Die Ostdeutschen kommen sich vor wie die Burgenländer in Österreich, es werden unheimlich gern die Witze über die blöden Ossis und ihre Ostalgie erzählt.

 Und im Westen habe ich tatsächlich Leute kennengelernt, die glauben, der Solidaritätszuschlag wird nur im Westen erhoben. „Wie lange noch sollen wir diesen Soli zahlen?“ regten sie sich auf. „Warum kann der Osten noch immer nicht ohne? Ist es DDR-Erbe?“

Apropos Erbe. Die Karte der Höhe der Erbschaftssteuer in Deutschland spricht eine klare Sprache, fast 90% dieser Steuer wird im Westen erhoben, als wären die Ostdeutschen allesamt Waisenkinder, die nichts zu vererben haben. Aber es geht uns gut, wir haben uns selbst gekümmert und wir sind nicht nachtragend. Nur ein bisschen. Und so kam die AfD, das A steht für Alternative. Zum alteingesessenen politischen Pack, gegen die da oben.

 Und deswegen besteht das politische Programm dieser Partei fast komplett aus Hetze, Hetze gegen die anderen Parteien, gegen die abgehobenen Grünen, die uns erzählen wollen, wie wir essen, heizen  und fahren sollen, Hetze gegen die großen bürgerlichen Parteien, die sich nie gekümmert haben und nur die Aufträge für die Städteverschönerung verteilt, natürlich an Firmen im Westen. Die die ostdeutschen Einkaufszentren errichteten, ohne die Einheimischen zu fragen, ob sie sie haben wollen. Die Gewinne wurden wie stets privatisiert, die Verluste verstaatlicht. In den meisten Einkaufszentren herrscht gähnende Leere, viele Geschäfte haben  zugemacht. Und dann kam die BSW, unsere Sahra hat es noch feiner als die AfD gemacht, sie hat dem Osten den Zauberspiegel gezeigt, in diesem Spiegel ist der Osten noch jung und hat volle Haare.

So funktioniert das menschliche Gedächtnis, man vergisst schnell alles schlechte und malt das Gute besser aus, als es jemals war. Die Sahra liest den Menschen aus dem Märchenbuch DDR vor: kostenlose Kinderversorgung, vernünftige medizinische Betreuung, Bildung für alle, und das Wichtigste von allem: Den Weltfrieden, es lebe die deutsch-sowjetische Freundschaft. Die Russen sind gut, sie waren immer gut zu uns, also können sie keine Kriegsverbrecher sein, man muss sie nur höflich fragen. Bloß der abgehobene Westen weiß nicht Bescheid.  Die Ostdeutschen wissen Bescheid. Viele von ihnen waren früher in Russland, noch in der Sowjetunion, sie haben an der Baikal-Amur Magistrale mitgebaut, am Lagerfeuer sowjetische Schlager mitgesungen. Es war eine sehr schöne Zeit. Sie waren alle Mitglieder der DSF und haben ihre Monatsbeiträge bis auf den letzten Pfenning bezahlt. Ihre Ausweise haben sie noch Zuhause. Sie bringen diese Ausweise zu meinen Lesungen, zeigen die Stempel und sagen: Hier, alles bezahlt. Und wo ist die Freundschaft hin? Die Sahra gibt an, den Schlüssel zur Tür zu haben, der geheimen Tür, die in die Vergangenheit führt. Dort hinter der Tür wartet der Weltfrieden auf uns und die guten Russen gießen Wodka ein und kochen ihre Pelmeni.

Sahras Partei wächst wie Hefeteig viel schneller als die AfD es konnte, ihre Veranstaltungen im Osten sind stets ausverkauft. Die Vielfalt ihrer Themen hat sich in der letzten Zeit allerdings verkleinert. Böse Zungen behaupten, nachdem das BSW fast 9 Millionen Euro Spendengelder aus anonymer Quelle bekommen hat, geht es bei den Versammlungen kaum noch um medizinische Versorgung und kostenlose Bildung, die meiste Zeit  geht es um die guten Russen, also nur um Putin und seine Bande, das nervt, haben mir schon mehrere Anhänger gesagt. Sie wollen lieber wissen, was es mit Deutschland auf sich hat, wenn Amerika weg ist, China floppt und Russland sich in den Kriegen mit den eigenen Ex-Republiken verhakt, was wird mit uns? Was soll aus uns werden?  

[sonicskullsalt]

So, und bei der nächsten Möglichkeit gehen wir dann jetzt auch alle wählen, okay?

Europa Edition 2024

Am 9.6.2024 finden Europawahlen statt

plus diverse 'kleine' Wahlen in vielen Bundesländern

Ba-Wü: Kreistage, Gemeinderäte, Bezirksbeiräte, Ortschaftsräte, Regionalversammlung (Stuttgart)

Brandenburg: Kreistage, Stadtverordnetenversammlungen, Gemeindevertretungen, Ortsbeiräte

Hamburg: Bezirksversammlungen

MVP: Kreistage, Stadtvertretungen, Gemeindevertretungen

RPF: Kreistage, Gemeinderäte, Verbandsgemeinderäte, Ortsbeiräte, Bezirkstag (Pfalz)

Saarland: Kreistage, Stadträte, Gemeinderäte, Regionalversammlungen, Ortsräte

Sachsen: Kreistage, Stadträte, Gemeinderäte, Ortschaftsräte

Sachsen-Anhalt: Kreistage, Stadträte, Gemeinderäte, Verbandsgemeinderäte, Ortschaftsräte

Thüringen: Stichwahlen aufgrund der Kommunalwahlen vor zwei Wochen

[orc-apologist]

I'm mad about voting tonight (as I have been since my city's Pride on Saturday)

So I live in Thuringia, a state of the former GDR. The former GDR states, or East Germany, are generally depicted as being full of neonazis (true to an extent) and as "having never learned how democracy really works" (not true to an extent). Three of these states are holding state elections in September, Thuringia and Saxony on this Sunday and Brandenburg at the end of the of the month. In all three states the far-right AfD is projected to earn the largest share of the votes (around 30% in all cases).

As context, living standards are pretty drastically worse in East Germany compared to West Germany and East German economy, industry, and infrastructure were drastically deconstructed after the "reunification", which saw the state-owned industry very quickly privatized, usually sold off to the much richer Western companies. East Germany was essentially plundered and has actually seen a population degrowth, despite most of the refugees from the Arabic world being put here. For example, the only city in Thuringia that has grown since 1990 is the city I live in, Jena, which has managed to stay relevant due to its university and college, as well as industry fairly unique in Germany. It's still a fairly small city and has seen nowhere the growth rate as Western centers of industry like Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, and Mainz.

East Germany essentially doesn't know a "good capitalism", the way the West remembers the World Economic Wonder. All it has known is crisis, and crisis far worse than in the West. The majority of settlements, even cities, are absolute deadends here with aging populations because the youth is fleeing to cities with a future. Leipzig and Berlin if they want to, or can't afford to move, stay in the East, or basically any major Western city.

This sort of instability, lack of certainty, and lack of a future is what opens people up to politics that want to break with the current system because the current system is obviously not working. And they're right. It isn't. Thuringia, despite what is being projected, actually has the most leftist government out of all states at the moment after a huge surge in votes for the Left party in the 2019 elections. People were tired of the liberal politics of the SPD and CDU and voted in the self-described socialists. Alas, self-described they remained because, now that they had their seats, the Left was eager to fall in line. The people of Thuringia voted as left as it gets in Germany and they got nothing out of it.

It's only logical that they'll swing right to the AfD, which is now the only (well except the newest party, which is a little too new) "untested" party. It hasn't ruled anywhere in the ~10 years of its existence, but it has used these 10 years well to build itself up as the "answer" to the current political system. It isn't, but that doesn't matter as long as it talks to people where it hurts and takes that hurt to aim it at the wrong people.

The success of the AfD is a direct result of the actions of the other parties. In a bourgeois democracy, these parties ultimately serve the purpose of the nation's capital, its economy and the owners of that economy. They do not serve the people, as they claim, they serve capitalism. This is becoming more and more obvious. The AfD is the only party left with the benefit of the doubt. Really, it barely has that. A large share of its voters are voting it not out of belief but out of protest because they just want the others out, much like many Trump voters only vote Trump because they want Biden out. Sound familiar, by the way?

That's why a vote for the other parties is not a vote against the AfD, and also why a vote for the Democrats is not a vote against Trump. They're votes for them at a later date.

Actually Biden vs Trump 2020 is a great example. People did it. They went out to vote. Trump was unelected. Biden got into office. What changed? What genuinely changed? Nothing. The crisis of capitalism only worsened and the Democrats hardly did anything to stop it. They cracked down on strikes. They cut public funds. They supported war after war. They continued to rule just as before. They maintained the status quo. Voting changed nothing. Now, four years later, we're back in the same place. Trump is back with a vengeance, and the best the Democrats have to offer is Kamala Harris. But even if Harris wins... what will change? Why would the Democrats suddenly change their ways? All they had to do was cry wolf and everyone came to help them, helped them maintain their seats, helped them maintain the status quo. Why change? Why fix a system that's running for you, even if it isn't running for anyone else? Another four years will pass. The Republicans will once again run Trump or someone similar, and they'll be stronger again because even more people will be absolutely tired of the Democrats running their lives into the ground. Maybe the Democrats will edge out another win. But another four years will pass, and another four years will pass after that.

The same is happening in Thuringia. People are calling for an all-party coalition to block the AfD, a popular front. That might work, especially because no party is willing to coalesce with the AfD (well the state CDU is but the national CDU has the final word in that and they won't allow it because it'd be political suicide because the CDU is the reactionary party for reactionaries for whom the AfD is too radical). What would that change, though? These parties would not suddenly start running the state differently, not at all. They'd continue the politics which have been pushing people to the AfD for 10 years. Plus, the whole "marketing" strategy of the AfD is that they're public enemy #1, that all the other parties want to keep them from power because they'd "really" care about Germans, unlike those other parties which care more about evil Arabs and the lazy unemployed than the hardworking, good-natured Arya- Germans. A popular front would only strengthen that narrative and make the AfD even more appealing!!!! Living standards would continue to drop and the AfD would start making sense to more and more people.

This popular front might stop them now, but five years will pass! And five years will pass again!

The answer to all of this is that something needs to change. Genuinely, drastically change. These so-called progressive parties are clearly unable to stop the advancement of reactionary forces. These reactionary forces are continuously radicalized by the drastic drop in living standards that are occurring all over the world. And why? Because wages are stagnating, while profits are skyrocketing. Because rent is too high and groceries cost too much and you can't go to the doctor because you either can't afford it or the waiting list has you on an appointment in four months. Or both. Because there's money for seemingly everything and everyone except you or the people you care about. No money for welfare, but all the money for warfare.

The so-called progressive parties have proven time and time again that they are not that change. They're the status quo. They'll defend that status quo with their lives. They stand in the way of our lives improving and therefore produce the conditions by which reactionary forces grow. Reactionary forces feed off of this desire for change by turning it backwards. We also need to do the same, but turn it forwards. Take that desire for change and create a revolutionary force that will sweep aside the system that is keeping us all down: capitalism.

This is why I'm not voting on Sunday. I'm not telling you not to vote in whatever election might be coming up for you, I am asking you to recognize that this system is a sham. Your "vote against x" is not good enough because this system does not want "good enough". Make what choice you want, I'd rather not waste my time in the booth when I could spend that time studying the ideas necessary to build that revolutionary force.

[shi1498912]

AFD VERBOT, JETZT!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

James Angelos at Politico:

BERLIN — Listening to Sahra Wagenknecht, Germany’s hard-left icon, you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the greatest threat to democracy is “lifestyle leftists” nursing lattes in reusable cups while shopping for organic kale at a Berlin farmers’ market. Such well-off, eco-friendly urban bohemians hold what they deem to be “morally impeccable” views about everything from Ukraine to climate change, she says, and then impose those beliefs over regular people with draconian zeal. Wagenknecht — whose recently formed populist party is polling in the double digits ahead of critical state elections in eastern Germany on Sunday — also believes there are too many asylum seekers coming to the country, claiming there’s “no more room.” She reserves much of her ire for Germany’s Greens, blaming their clean-energy push for the country’s deindustrialization, and favors closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. One of Germany’s most well-liked politicians, Wagenknecht started out in politics as a member of East Germany’s communist party and has long been the face of the country’s hard left. Of late, however, she often sounds positively far right.

Her views and scathing attacks on the mainstream left have, in fact, won her many far-right admirers. Björn Höcke, one of the most extreme politicians in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the party’s leader in the eastern German state of Thuringia was so impressed with Wagenknecht — particularly over her position on Putin — that he once called upon her to enlist in the AfD’s ranks. “I implore you, come and join us!” he said last year during a speech in Dresden. Instead, Wagenknecht has forged a new political force defined by a seemingly oxymoronic ideology she dubs “left conservatism.” In the process, she is upending German politics by chipping away at the crumbling dominance of the country’s mainstream parties and further scrambling the left-right divide that characterized Western politics for most of the 20th century. As established parties lose sway across Europe, the fractured political landscape makes it easier for political entrepreneurs like Wagenknecht to stake out new territory. That’s increasingly true in Germany too, which has long served as Europe’s anchor of stability — where politics were long relatively staid and predictable.

Long gone are the days when the Volksparteien — big-tent parties — could virtually alone determine Germany’s political course. Upstarts like the AfD and Wagenknecht’s party — dubbed Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) — are fomenting a revolt against the political mainstream. That rebellion is particularly strong in the region that makes up the former East Germany which — despite the more than three-decade effort to absorb and integrate the formerly communist state after the fall of the Berlin Wall — is increasingly following its own parallel political reality. With three state elections to be held in eastern Germany — in Saxony and Thuringia on Sunday, and in Brandenburg on September 22 — the AfD is leading or close to leading all the contests. Wagenknecht’s new party is polling between around 13 and 18 percent, a striking result for a party that just formed several months ago.

I met Wagenknecht earlier this year backstage at a theater in Berlin, where she was scheduled to answer questions from a reporter from Germany’s left-leaning newspaper Die Tageszeitung before a live audience. Wagenknecht sported her signature look — a jacket with padded shoulders, a knee-length skirt and pumps — a style so invariable she’s often asked about it by reporters. (“Ultimately you get the feeling that it’s a kind of uniform,” the Tageszeitung journalist, Ulrike Herrmann, told Wagenknecht on stage later that night.) Wagenknecht is far from alone in blurring the traditional left-right spectrum. In the U.S., former President Donald Trump has embraced some traditionally left economic policies on trade and tariffs, partly explaining his appeal to working-class voters. France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, has co-opted economic and welfare policies from the traditional left, attracting, in the process, many former French Communist Party voters.

When I asked Wagenknecht if she saw any similarities between herself and Le Pen or other radical-right parties, a hint of shock seemed to break through her cool, composed countenance. Such parties, she told me, do not truly represent the “so-called little people.” Rather, she said, her brand of politics does — a left that focuses on fighting economic inequality while, as she put it, also embracing social policies that foster “traditions, stability and security.” That’s territory, she said, the left has mistakenly ceded to the right. “These are quite legitimate human needs, and at some point the left was no longer interested in them,” Wagenknecht told me. She then blamed the rise of the far right on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his left-leaning coalition’s “arrogant” approach to governing. “This is the direct result of an incredible frustration and indignation about wrong policies,” she said. “And the indignation is justified.”

[...]

Yet, in subsequent years, Wagenknecht became an increasingly controversial figure within the Left Party, including when, amid the refugee crisis of 2015, she became a critic of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, using the mantra “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”). In 2016, after a spate of terror attacks perpetrated by migrants, Wagenknecht released a statement that read: “The reception and integration of a large number of refugees and immigrants is associated with considerable problems and is more difficult than Merkel’s frivolous ‘We can do it.’”

Members of her own party sharply criticized her, arguing that no true leftist should attack Merkel from the right on migration. That year, at a Left Party gathering, a man from a self-described anti-fascist group threw what looked like a chocolate cake topped with whipped cream in Wagenknecht’s face. Relations with many members of her own party grew more strained after Wagenknecht became a sharp critic of the government’s “endless lockdowns” during the Covid-19 pandemic and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Wagenknecht frequently appearing on German television to offer takes that echoed Kremlin propaganda. Finally, last year, she announced that she and a group of Left Party allies would leave to form their own party, with Lafontaine, her husband, also later joining. “We live in a time of global political crises,” she said in Berlin. “And in this of all times, Germany probably has the worst government in its history.” Many people, she added, “no longer know who to vote for, or they vote out of anger and despair.” The choice led to the unraveling of the Left Party, which was forced to dissolve its parliamentary faction, liquidate assets and fire staff.

Wagenknecht has since grown adept at finding a leftist angle for what are commonly rightist stances. Her skepticism of immigration is due, in great part, to her support of the welfare state, which, she says, requires a certain degree of homogeneity to function. “The stronger the welfare state, the more of a sense of belonging there must be,” Wagenknecht told me in Berlin. “Because if people have no connection to those who receive social benefits, then at some point they will refuse to pay for those benefits.” Another example was Wagenknecht’s vote against a bill passed by the German parliament earlier this year to make it easier to change one’s legal gender — a law, she said, that would “just be ridiculous if it weren’t so dangerous.” But she found a traditionally left line of attack for that view, targeting the profit-seeking pharmaceutical industry as the main beneficiary of the bill. “Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby.” She has also repeatedly called for an end to German military aid for Ukraine and negotiations with Putin — a view prevalent on the far right, but for her, an anti-war stance rooted in the leftist tradition.

That she sounds like the right on these issues brings to mind the “horseshoe theory” of politics, often attributed to the French author Jean-Pierre Faye and his 1996 book “Le Siècle des ideologies,” which holds that political extremes bend towards each other, in the shape of a horseshoe, so that the far left and far right ends are closer together than they are to the center.  But a more concrete explanation for her policies is that Wagenknecht sees a representation gap — a space for people with socially conservative views who are uncomfortable with migration and progressive politics, but are also wary of the AfD’s extremism. Wagenknecht, in other words, seeks to provide a more palatable, anti-establishment alternative. Wagenknecht, like leaders of other parties, has ruled out governing with the AfD in a coalition. At the same time, she has not, like others, ruled out cooperating with the AfD to pass what she deems to be sensible legislation.

Politico Europe takes a deep dive into the “leftist”-turned-right-wing German politician Sahra Wagenknecht. Wagenknecht formed her own party called Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) that features a mix of far-right and far-left stances.