#vote blue to avoid a repeat of Nazi Germany

[scottguy]

Article: Ex-Aide Warns What Laura Loomer Really Wants From Donald Trump: ‘It’s Terrifying’

Ex-Aide Warns What Laura Loomer Really Wants From Donald Trump: ‘It’s Terrifying’

Laura Loomer (and other Trump sycophants) are EAGER to start sending people to gas chambers.

They really want the job.

They will get the chance if you don't vote blue.

Remember, you may be a Republican, but if you're black or Latin, or an immigrant with any non-European ethnicity at all, they will come for you too.

Your Republican party affiliation will not protect you when they start rounding up victims. It will be indiscriminate chaos.

Remember Shindler's List? It wasn't pure hatred driving it all. Part of it was simply GREED. They STOLE all of the assets of the Jews which were free for the taking once they had been arrested. Finally, the "problem" of six million Jews in ghettos "solved" with gas chambers.

[some-jw-things]

Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Holocaust

Hey so I don’t know what went so horribly wrong with the formatting of that last post-- I’ve seen a version of it without the ask and first like four replies, a version where the long part is repeated twice, and for some reason two paragraphs I wrote up at the beginning went missing. Anyway here is an attempt to make a cleaner, understandable version of it, let’s hope it works

In the 1870s Charles Taze Russell founded the Bible Student movement that later became Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he was a Zionist, which idk what that means but ultimately it doesn’t matter because when he died the leadership was inherited by Joseph Rutherford who was just a regular old antisemitic bigot.

One of the main things that Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for in their literature is shitting on every other religion. They believe that they have the one true religion, and all the others are false and worthless in God’s eyes. Apparently in the 1920′s and 30′s this really got whipped into a frenzy-- even worse than it is now.

https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/hitler-nazi.php

Jehovah’s Witnesses had already been under heat in Germany. They refuse all military service, don’t vote, and avoid all forms of nationalism and national allegiance as a part of their religion. It is very common for governments to take issue with that-- there’s a handful of countries out there now where some of those things are illegal and JWs just go straight to jail. I think it’s the main issue behind the current Russia thing but that’s unrelated. Anyway, there is a certain type of government that gets more up in arms than most when you say you don’t give a shit about them and feel no allegiance whatsoever. The Witnesses were in an increasingly hostile environment and they knew it.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jehovah-s-witnesses-in-the-holocaust

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses

Jehovah’s Witnesses had a convention on June 25, 1933 in Berlin. The convention hall was covered in swastika flags. The program opened with Song 64, which had previously not been sung in years due to having the exact same melody as the German national anthem.

There’s an account of that in the book Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich, but it’s behind a paywall on JSTOR so I can’t really link it. The relevant quote is from Konrad Franke, who was the former branch overseer from Germany’s Bethel and was horrified by what he saw.

This was extremely weird for all of the obvious reasons but also because Jehovah’s Witnesses consider flag worship and all other nationalism to be a form of idolatry. It’s why they refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance in the US, there’s been several lawsuits over the issue in the past.

The convention was used to issue the Declaration of Facts. It addresses a conspiracy theory that claimed Jehovah’s Witnesses were being secretly paid for their preaching work by Jewish people— by saying that Satan must have started that “malicious” rumor. It immediately jumps to this quote:

“The greatest and the most oppressive empire on earth is the Anglo-American empire. By that is meant the British Empire, of which the United States of America forms a part. It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations.”

It also says that JWs do not oppose the German government’s principles, but “stand squarely” for them. And also: “A careful examination of our books and literature will disclose the fact that the very high ideals held and promulgated by the present national government are set forth in and endorsed and strongly emphasized in our publications and show that Jehovah God will see to it that these high ideals in due time will be attained by all persons who love righteousness.”

Link to English translation: https://www.jwfacts.com/pdf/declaration-of-facts.pdf

It was reprinted in the JW 1934 yearbook pages 134-138. https://archive.org/details/1934-JwYearbook/page/n1/mode/2up

According to the 1974 yearbook p. 111, JWs were given 2,100,000 copies of the Declaration to give out to as many people as possible after the convention. https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/301974004#h=239

The one that went to Hitler came with a personal letter from Rutherford attached.

It’s in German. Here is an English translation:

https://www.jwfacts.com/pdf/letter-to-hitler.pdf

It describes Jehovah’s Witnesses as “standing on the foundation of positive Christianity.” Positive Christianity is the actively antisemitic form of Christianity pushed by Hitler and the Nazi regime. It’s mainly about depicting Jesus as white and his main goal in life to have been fighting Jewish people, who then killed him. Here’s the wiki article on it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity

Rutherford’s letter also claims the Watchtower Society has been staunchly pro-German for years and that that’s why the entire Governing Body was thrown in jail in the US in 1918. The Watchtower did condemn the war effort and all JW leaders were charged and found guilty under the Espionage and Sedition Act, but it was for 20 years, not 80 like the letter says, and the decision was almost immediately reversed and the charges dropped.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_in_the_United_States

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/watchtower-study-october-2018/1918-one-hundred-years-ago/

The letter blames Jewish businessmen and Catholics for leading a propaganda campaign against Jehovah’s Witnesses and persecuting them. Rutherford then says that JWs “are fighting for the very same high ethical goals and ideals” as the national government. Also “referring to the purely religious and unpolitical goals and efforts of the Bible Researchers, it can be said that these are in full agreement with the identical goals of the national government of the German Reich.”

Rutherford spends a good chunk of the letter denying allegations of communism and begging Hitler to lift the bans on the religion.

In modern contexts, the Society brags about this. This whole story has been respun as thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses sending Hitler personal letters imploring to his humanity and asking for an end to Nazi persecution for everyone. A good specific example is from a 2011 Watchtower. It says “Did Hitler receive letters of protest from church officials concerning the outrages perpetrated by the National Socialists, or Nazis? There were some, but such letters were few and far between. In the Moscow archives, however, Eberle found a file containing a number of letters sent to Hitler by Jehovah’s Witnesses from different parts of Germany, protesting against the conduct of the Nazis. In fact, Witnesses from about 50 countries sent Hitler some 20,000 letters and telegrams protesting the mistreatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses. (...) [This] testifies to an act of collective and uncompromising defiance that commands respect.”

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2011731#h=4

The letter and Declaration did not give Hitler a change of heart. In March 1935, he reintroduced compulsory military service. All Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to comply. On April 1, the religion was placed under full ban.

There had been between 25,000-30,000 JWs in pre-Nazi Germany, and 20,000 stayed active through that era. About 6000 were placed in concentration camps or prisons.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses

Jehovah’s Witnesses— unlike other groups— were allowed to walk out of the camps at any time if they signed a paper renouncing their faith first. I don’t have any hard numbers, but every source just says that very few did. Approximately 1200 died. They wore a purple triangle, and for a while, purple was like the JW color, if that makes sense, but nowadays there’s an official Org logo and it’s blue

Culturally, Jehovah’s Witnesses paint themselves as the shining beacon of spiritual resistance to the Nazis while simultaneously throwing every other group that was there under the bus. They say they’re the only ones who went into the camps and came out spiritually stronger, the only ones who made it out with their faith intact, and the only ones who supported each other as an internal community. Since the internet became popular, they’ve gotten more careful about what is printed outright in publications, but old yearbooks are really bad. They’ll draw parallels to Witnesses thrown into Soviet era gulags and talk about how they’re the only clean and righteous people in there, and everyone admired them and had to admit that, even the guards

Also this might be really shitty of me to say but I don’t think anything about JWs’ behavior in the Holocaust is inspiring or uplifting. I don’t think choosing to stay in the camps is so amazing of them. I think that’s what I would have done if I had lived in that era. I think it’s perverse to tell people— especially children— that God demands proof of their faith in the form of their blood spilled out on the ground

[adambstingus]

Thank Economic Growth for Germanys Boring Elections

To reach gluemaker Delo Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH, you drive an hour from Munich, past villages with onion-domed churches and the Ammersee, a cobalt-blue lake with views of the Alps, before turning into offices nestled between a cornfield and a grove of beech treeshardly the kind of place youd expect to find a global leader in its industry.

Yet one of Delos adhesives is used in 80 percent of the worlds smart cards, and its customers are spread across Europe, the U.S., and Asia. That success is testament to Germanys commitment to globalismnow a dirty word in some countriesand helps explain a political puzzle: How, in 2017, can Europes biggest economy have a normal, even boring, election while crusading populists have upended the political order elsewhere? “Other countries havent had the stability weve enjoyed,” says Delo Managing Partner Sabine Herold. “Its a mistake to believe that you can save your castle by building more walls.”

Sabine Herold, managing partner at Delo Industrie Klebstoffe. 

Photographer: Stefan Hobmaier for Bloomberg Businessweek

When Germans vote on Sept. 24, theyre likely to back the same pair of centrist parties that have run the country since World War II, selling pretty much the same policies and messages theyve advocated for decades. Neither side has made Trump-style appeals to restrict trade or pare back globalization. They havent even bashed the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel, the sensible shoes of global politics, is all but certain to win a fourth term by pledging to, well, keep things more or less the way they are. When Germans look at countries that have elected populists, they get scared back toward the political center, says Christina Tillmann, a political analyst at the Bertelsmann Institute, a think tank. And then theres the countrys history: “The whole appeal of a nationalist ideal,” Tillmann says, “just doesnt resonate very well here.”

Merkels longevity is doubtless due to her skills as a politician, but its also because most Germans recognize theyre globalizations winners. Germany has thousands of midsize, family-owned enterprises like Delowhat they call the spread across the country, distributing wealth rather than concentrating it in a few cities. And employees typically feel they have a share in a companys success. Delo, for instance, doesnt use any temporary staff, so everyone from janitors to research scientists is a full employee. Delos adhesives, which can top €3,000 ($3,600) for a container the size of a soda can, are all made at the companys factory outside Munich. And as a private company, Delo can prioritize long-term growthits sales have more than tripled in the past decadeover short-term profits. That glue for credit cards? It took seven years to develop. “A big company would have axed the project long ago,” says Herold, an engineer who in 1997 took over the company with her husband.

Successive German governments have nurtured the Mittelstand, which supplies the world with everything from tiny screws that penetrate concrete, to automated ovens for grilling 400 chickens at a time, to tunnel-boring machines as long as oil tankers. The sectors strength helped bring unemployment down to 5.7 percent in July, from almost 12 percent in 2005. Industry still accounts for more than a quarter of German jobs, a level not seen in the U.S. since 1984, the World Bank says. About 1,500 Mittelstand companies are leaders in their niches, vs. only about 300 in the U.S., says Carsten Linnemann, a lawmaker with Merkels Christian Democratic Union and head of the partys group that coordinates relations with the Mittelstand. “Most Germans know that they profit from trade,” he says.

Although the U.S. has also been a winner from globalization, the wealth has flowed mostly to the top, fostering resentment and the rise of figures such as Donald Trump. In Germany, where exports account for 46 percent of the economy, quadruple the U.S. level, stressing the benefits of globalization plays well with the electorate. A recent study by the Bertelsmann Institute found that calls to overthrow the political elite or erect trade barriers alienate German voters. Merkel isnt shy about her fondness for free trade, and she frequently praises the Mittelstand in campaign stops. On Sept. 1 she dropped in at the annual meeting of a lobbying group for the sector in Nuremberg. “The backbone of the economy is the Mittelstand, so thank you very much,” Merkel tells hundreds of delegates packed into the citys convention hall. “We must fight to ensure we keep our status as a great exporter, and that Made in Germany continues to mean something.”

World Bank

Germany, of course, isnt immune to populism and has an active neo-Nazi movement: Last year the interior ministry recorded more than 22,000 right-wing extremist crimes, the highest number on record. But no hard-right party has made it into the Bundestag since the 1950s. Thats likely to change this time around, with polls showing the populist Alternative for Germanyknown by the acronym AfDwill get about 10 percent of the vote in this months elections. The party is strongest in the formerly communist East, where the Mittelstand has shallower roots. Jobs are more scarce and salaries are about 30 percent below those in the West. Across Germany, income inequality is an increasingly hot topic, and long-suppressed nationalism is slowly rising.

In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a rural state on the Baltic Sea in the former German Democratic Republic, theres a sense of having been left behind after two decades of brain drain to the West. The AfD really took off after the 2015 refugee crisis, and last year it won 21 percent of the vote in the states elections, trailing only the Social Democrats (31 percent) and pushing Merkels CDU into third place, with 19 percent. Over a tankard of beer before a campaign event in Friedland, a two hours drive north of Berlin on an EU-funded autobahn, AfD candidate Enrico Komning insists his party is neither far right nor xenophobic, despite racist remarks from some leaders and a platform that dismisses Islam as un-German.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democratic leader Martin Schulz at a televised debate in Berlin on Sept. 3, 2017.

Photographer: Herby Sachs/WDR/action press/REX/FEREX

Komning says that while the German economy is thriving, the benefits dont reach many of his supporters. For people who feel traditional parties dont represent them, “along comes the AfD, and we say: Well look after you,” he says. The party taps into national pride that Komning says has been wrongly stifled in the decades since the Nazi era. For most Germans, the memory of Hitlers rule still acts as an antidote to nationalist appeals. But Komning argues that “its wrong to focus on just these 12 years of National Socialism and ignore the good in the rest of German history.”

Komning defends a key AfD strategy: cranking up the heat on the current government in whatever way the party canan approach that came into sharp focus at a Merkel rally an hour further north, in the Hanseatic port of Greifswald. As Merkel makes her way to the podium in Fishmarket square, a plane flies low overhead trailing a blue banner that reads “Vote AfD.” When whistling AfD demonstrators interrupt her, Muttior “mother,” as the chancellor is often calledbreaks from her speech to mock the hecklers. “I dont think whistling will build Germanys future,” she says before returning to her speech. She promises to boost security and avoid a repeat of 2015, when a million-plus migrants crossed into Germanyher biggest point of vulnerability with voters. But mostly she talks about maintaining the countrys economic edge: improving technology in schools, shoring up infrastructure, and helping automakers develop new, cleaner engines.

The message resonates with Hans-Christian Schwieker, a 79-year-old vacationer from Cologne. Tucking into a bowl of hearty pea soup with bockwurst, he says hes not a big Merkel fan but nonetheless plans to vote for her. Sure, the campaign is boring. But thats as it should be, says Schwieker, who as a child in 1945 fled whats now Poland with his family. “Germany has experience with extremism,” he says. “We dont want change.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/26/thank-economic-growth-for-germanys-boring-elections/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/166828193652

[samanthasroberts]

Thank Economic Growth for Germanys Boring Elections

To reach gluemaker Delo Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH, you drive an hour from Munich, past villages with onion-domed churches and the Ammersee, a cobalt-blue lake with views of the Alps, before turning into offices nestled between a cornfield and a grove of beech treeshardly the kind of place youd expect to find a global leader in its industry.

Yet one of Delos adhesives is used in 80 percent of the worlds smart cards, and its customers are spread across Europe, the U.S., and Asia. That success is testament to Germanys commitment to globalismnow a dirty word in some countriesand helps explain a political puzzle: How, in 2017, can Europes biggest economy have a normal, even boring, election while crusading populists have upended the political order elsewhere? “Other countries havent had the stability weve enjoyed,” says Delo Managing Partner Sabine Herold. “Its a mistake to believe that you can save your castle by building more walls.”

Sabine Herold, managing partner at Delo Industrie Klebstoffe. 

Photographer: Stefan Hobmaier for Bloomberg Businessweek

When Germans vote on Sept. 24, theyre likely to back the same pair of centrist parties that have run the country since World War II, selling pretty much the same policies and messages theyve advocated for decades. Neither side has made Trump-style appeals to restrict trade or pare back globalization. They havent even bashed the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel, the sensible shoes of global politics, is all but certain to win a fourth term by pledging to, well, keep things more or less the way they are. When Germans look at countries that have elected populists, they get scared back toward the political center, says Christina Tillmann, a political analyst at the Bertelsmann Institute, a think tank. And then theres the countrys history: “The whole appeal of a nationalist ideal,” Tillmann says, “just doesnt resonate very well here.”

Merkels longevity is doubtless due to her skills as a politician, but its also because most Germans recognize theyre globalizations winners. Germany has thousands of midsize, family-owned enterprises like Delowhat they call the spread across the country, distributing wealth rather than concentrating it in a few cities. And employees typically feel they have a share in a companys success. Delo, for instance, doesnt use any temporary staff, so everyone from janitors to research scientists is a full employee. Delos adhesives, which can top €3,000 ($3,600) for a container the size of a soda can, are all made at the companys factory outside Munich. And as a private company, Delo can prioritize long-term growthits sales have more than tripled in the past decadeover short-term profits. That glue for credit cards? It took seven years to develop. “A big company would have axed the project long ago,” says Herold, an engineer who in 1997 took over the company with her husband.

Successive German governments have nurtured the Mittelstand, which supplies the world with everything from tiny screws that penetrate concrete, to automated ovens for grilling 400 chickens at a time, to tunnel-boring machines as long as oil tankers. The sectors strength helped bring unemployment down to 5.7 percent in July, from almost 12 percent in 2005. Industry still accounts for more than a quarter of German jobs, a level not seen in the U.S. since 1984, the World Bank says. About 1,500 Mittelstand companies are leaders in their niches, vs. only about 300 in the U.S., says Carsten Linnemann, a lawmaker with Merkels Christian Democratic Union and head of the partys group that coordinates relations with the Mittelstand. “Most Germans know that they profit from trade,” he says.

Although the U.S. has also been a winner from globalization, the wealth has flowed mostly to the top, fostering resentment and the rise of figures such as Donald Trump. In Germany, where exports account for 46 percent of the economy, quadruple the U.S. level, stressing the benefits of globalization plays well with the electorate. A recent study by the Bertelsmann Institute found that calls to overthrow the political elite or erect trade barriers alienate German voters. Merkel isnt shy about her fondness for free trade, and she frequently praises the Mittelstand in campaign stops. On Sept. 1 she dropped in at the annual meeting of a lobbying group for the sector in Nuremberg. “The backbone of the economy is the Mittelstand, so thank you very much,” Merkel tells hundreds of delegates packed into the citys convention hall. “We must fight to ensure we keep our status as a great exporter, and that Made in Germany continues to mean something.”

World Bank

Germany, of course, isnt immune to populism and has an active neo-Nazi movement: Last year the interior ministry recorded more than 22,000 right-wing extremist crimes, the highest number on record. But no hard-right party has made it into the Bundestag since the 1950s. Thats likely to change this time around, with polls showing the populist Alternative for Germanyknown by the acronym AfDwill get about 10 percent of the vote in this months elections. The party is strongest in the formerly communist East, where the Mittelstand has shallower roots. Jobs are more scarce and salaries are about 30 percent below those in the West. Across Germany, income inequality is an increasingly hot topic, and long-suppressed nationalism is slowly rising.

In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a rural state on the Baltic Sea in the former German Democratic Republic, theres a sense of having been left behind after two decades of brain drain to the West. The AfD really took off after the 2015 refugee crisis, and last year it won 21 percent of the vote in the states elections, trailing only the Social Democrats (31 percent) and pushing Merkels CDU into third place, with 19 percent. Over a tankard of beer before a campaign event in Friedland, a two hours drive north of Berlin on an EU-funded autobahn, AfD candidate Enrico Komning insists his party is neither far right nor xenophobic, despite racist remarks from some leaders and a platform that dismisses Islam as un-German.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democratic leader Martin Schulz at a televised debate in Berlin on Sept. 3, 2017.

Photographer: Herby Sachs/WDR/action press/REX/FEREX

Komning says that while the German economy is thriving, the benefits dont reach many of his supporters. For people who feel traditional parties dont represent them, “along comes the AfD, and we say: Well look after you,” he says. The party taps into national pride that Komning says has been wrongly stifled in the decades since the Nazi era. For most Germans, the memory of Hitlers rule still acts as an antidote to nationalist appeals. But Komning argues that “its wrong to focus on just these 12 years of National Socialism and ignore the good in the rest of German history.”

Komning defends a key AfD strategy: cranking up the heat on the current government in whatever way the party canan approach that came into sharp focus at a Merkel rally an hour further north, in the Hanseatic port of Greifswald. As Merkel makes her way to the podium in Fishmarket square, a plane flies low overhead trailing a blue banner that reads “Vote AfD.” When whistling AfD demonstrators interrupt her, Muttior “mother,” as the chancellor is often calledbreaks from her speech to mock the hecklers. “I dont think whistling will build Germanys future,” she says before returning to her speech. She promises to boost security and avoid a repeat of 2015, when a million-plus migrants crossed into Germanyher biggest point of vulnerability with voters. But mostly she talks about maintaining the countrys economic edge: improving technology in schools, shoring up infrastructure, and helping automakers develop new, cleaner engines.

The message resonates with Hans-Christian Schwieker, a 79-year-old vacationer from Cologne. Tucking into a bowl of hearty pea soup with bockwurst, he says hes not a big Merkel fan but nonetheless plans to vote for her. Sure, the campaign is boring. But thats as it should be, says Schwieker, who as a child in 1945 fled whats now Poland with his family. “Germany has experience with extremism,” he says. “We dont want change.”

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/26/thank-economic-growth-for-germanys-boring-elections/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/thank-economic-growth-for-germanys-boring-elections/

[allofbeercom]

Thank Economic Growth for Germanys Boring Elections

To reach gluemaker Delo Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH, you drive an hour from Munich, past villages with onion-domed churches and the Ammersee, a cobalt-blue lake with views of the Alps, before turning into offices nestled between a cornfield and a grove of beech treeshardly the kind of place youd expect to find a global leader in its industry.

Yet one of Delos adhesives is used in 80 percent of the worlds smart cards, and its customers are spread across Europe, the U.S., and Asia. That success is testament to Germanys commitment to globalismnow a dirty word in some countriesand helps explain a political puzzle: How, in 2017, can Europes biggest economy have a normal, even boring, election while crusading populists have upended the political order elsewhere? “Other countries havent had the stability weve enjoyed,” says Delo Managing Partner Sabine Herold. “Its a mistake to believe that you can save your castle by building more walls.”

Sabine Herold, managing partner at Delo Industrie Klebstoffe. 

Photographer: Stefan Hobmaier for Bloomberg Businessweek

When Germans vote on Sept. 24, theyre likely to back the same pair of centrist parties that have run the country since World War II, selling pretty much the same policies and messages theyve advocated for decades. Neither side has made Trump-style appeals to restrict trade or pare back globalization. They havent even bashed the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel, the sensible shoes of global politics, is all but certain to win a fourth term by pledging to, well, keep things more or less the way they are. When Germans look at countries that have elected populists, they get scared back toward the political center, says Christina Tillmann, a political analyst at the Bertelsmann Institute, a think tank. And then theres the countrys history: “The whole appeal of a nationalist ideal,” Tillmann says, “just doesnt resonate very well here.”

Merkels longevity is doubtless due to her skills as a politician, but its also because most Germans recognize theyre globalizations winners. Germany has thousands of midsize, family-owned enterprises like Delowhat they call the spread across the country, distributing wealth rather than concentrating it in a few cities. And employees typically feel they have a share in a companys success. Delo, for instance, doesnt use any temporary staff, so everyone from janitors to research scientists is a full employee. Delos adhesives, which can top €3,000 ($3,600) for a container the size of a soda can, are all made at the companys factory outside Munich. And as a private company, Delo can prioritize long-term growthits sales have more than tripled in the past decadeover short-term profits. That glue for credit cards? It took seven years to develop. “A big company would have axed the project long ago,” says Herold, an engineer who in 1997 took over the company with her husband.

Successive German governments have nurtured the Mittelstand, which supplies the world with everything from tiny screws that penetrate concrete, to automated ovens for grilling 400 chickens at a time, to tunnel-boring machines as long as oil tankers. The sectors strength helped bring unemployment down to 5.7 percent in July, from almost 12 percent in 2005. Industry still accounts for more than a quarter of German jobs, a level not seen in the U.S. since 1984, the World Bank says. About 1,500 Mittelstand companies are leaders in their niches, vs. only about 300 in the U.S., says Carsten Linnemann, a lawmaker with Merkels Christian Democratic Union and head of the partys group that coordinates relations with the Mittelstand. “Most Germans know that they profit from trade,” he says.

Although the U.S. has also been a winner from globalization, the wealth has flowed mostly to the top, fostering resentment and the rise of figures such as Donald Trump. In Germany, where exports account for 46 percent of the economy, quadruple the U.S. level, stressing the benefits of globalization plays well with the electorate. A recent study by the Bertelsmann Institute found that calls to overthrow the political elite or erect trade barriers alienate German voters. Merkel isnt shy about her fondness for free trade, and she frequently praises the Mittelstand in campaign stops. On Sept. 1 she dropped in at the annual meeting of a lobbying group for the sector in Nuremberg. “The backbone of the economy is the Mittelstand, so thank you very much,” Merkel tells hundreds of delegates packed into the citys convention hall. “We must fight to ensure we keep our status as a great exporter, and that Made in Germany continues to mean something.”

World Bank

Germany, of course, isnt immune to populism and has an active neo-Nazi movement: Last year the interior ministry recorded more than 22,000 right-wing extremist crimes, the highest number on record. But no hard-right party has made it into the Bundestag since the 1950s. Thats likely to change this time around, with polls showing the populist Alternative for Germanyknown by the acronym AfDwill get about 10 percent of the vote in this months elections. The party is strongest in the formerly communist East, where the Mittelstand has shallower roots. Jobs are more scarce and salaries are about 30 percent below those in the West. Across Germany, income inequality is an increasingly hot topic, and long-suppressed nationalism is slowly rising.

In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a rural state on the Baltic Sea in the former German Democratic Republic, theres a sense of having been left behind after two decades of brain drain to the West. The AfD really took off after the 2015 refugee crisis, and last year it won 21 percent of the vote in the states elections, trailing only the Social Democrats (31 percent) and pushing Merkels CDU into third place, with 19 percent. Over a tankard of beer before a campaign event in Friedland, a two hours drive north of Berlin on an EU-funded autobahn, AfD candidate Enrico Komning insists his party is neither far right nor xenophobic, despite racist remarks from some leaders and a platform that dismisses Islam as un-German.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democratic leader Martin Schulz at a televised debate in Berlin on Sept. 3, 2017.

Photographer: Herby Sachs/WDR/action press/REX/FEREX

Komning says that while the German economy is thriving, the benefits dont reach many of his supporters. For people who feel traditional parties dont represent them, “along comes the AfD, and we say: Well look after you,” he says. The party taps into national pride that Komning says has been wrongly stifled in the decades since the Nazi era. For most Germans, the memory of Hitlers rule still acts as an antidote to nationalist appeals. But Komning argues that “its wrong to focus on just these 12 years of National Socialism and ignore the good in the rest of German history.”

Komning defends a key AfD strategy: cranking up the heat on the current government in whatever way the party canan approach that came into sharp focus at a Merkel rally an hour further north, in the Hanseatic port of Greifswald. As Merkel makes her way to the podium in Fishmarket square, a plane flies low overhead trailing a blue banner that reads “Vote AfD.” When whistling AfD demonstrators interrupt her, Muttior “mother,” as the chancellor is often calledbreaks from her speech to mock the hecklers. “I dont think whistling will build Germanys future,” she says before returning to her speech. She promises to boost security and avoid a repeat of 2015, when a million-plus migrants crossed into Germanyher biggest point of vulnerability with voters. But mostly she talks about maintaining the countrys economic edge: improving technology in schools, shoring up infrastructure, and helping automakers develop new, cleaner engines.

The message resonates with Hans-Christian Schwieker, a 79-year-old vacationer from Cologne. Tucking into a bowl of hearty pea soup with bockwurst, he says hes not a big Merkel fan but nonetheless plans to vote for her. Sure, the campaign is boring. But thats as it should be, says Schwieker, who as a child in 1945 fled whats now Poland with his family. “Germany has experience with extremism,” he says. “We dont want change.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/26/thank-economic-growth-for-germanys-boring-elections/