Loralei is an issue:
Posted on 05/07/2024 5:30:13 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The spectacular rise of the AfD party has alarmed Germany’s political establishment, some of whom are threatening a ban.
A few months ago, Germany’s leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, ran a bizarre front-page cartoon showing a modern-day “Lorelei” character at the river Rhine with a message underscoring their deep uneasiness about the rise of right-wing politics in Germany. Lorelei, the mythical blond beauty sitting with her harp on a rock at the river, was depicted on the cover in Germany’s leading left-wing magazine with the facial features of Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
In German mythology, Lorelei lures passing boatmen with her songs. Likewise, in Der Spiegel, one can see far below Weidel’s seat a vessel with dwarf-like Germans wearing hats in the colors of the country’s flag, black, red, and gold, waving at the AfD politician, but unaware that they are drifting dangerously close to the rocks in the river. “Extreme temptation. Why so many Germans are now falling for the AfD,” the headline on the Spiegel cover shouted.
The spectacular rise of the right-wing “populist” AfD in the polls this year has alarmed the German political establishment and the predominantly left-liberal media. Within a year, AfD has managed to double their support to more than 20 percent from 10 percent, thus becoming the second-largest party in the polls ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and only about five points behind the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, CSU. Voters’ frustration with Scholz’s three-party “traffic light” coalition (SPD, the Greens, and the Liberals) is running high. AfD’s rise is mainly fueled by voters’ dissatisfaction with high energy prices, costly green climate policies (like a proposed ban on gas boilers), and the out-of-control mass immigration of asylum seekers to Germany, which is again approaching the level of the 2015 migration crisis.
The AfD’s advance has been deeply unsettling for the gatekeepers of respectable opinion in Germany. They call for a firewall against the party to prevent it from gaining legislative and administrative influence. To some critics, this wall resembles the “anti-fascist protection wall” that the former Communist East German regime boasted of creating. When CDU leader Friedrich Merz pointed out that such a firewall is unworkable on the local level in communal assemblies where AfD holds multiple seats, he became the target of attack. Merz quickly returned to the mantra that AfD must never be allowed to be part of any coalition. In the wake of the AfD’s recent surge in the polls, there have even been calls to ban the party.
For decades, the established parties and media had prevented the emergence of any significant political force to the right of the CDU/CSU. They pushed all attempts to form right-leaning challenger parties towards the “extremist” fringe or confined them to a “Nazi” ghetto. This worked well for the left and also the centrist CDU/CSU. However, among the CDU, conservatives were increasingly marginalized and stripped of party responsibilities. This has contributed to the sense that a new party was needed on the democratic right.
The Alternative für Deutschland, founded in 2013, is in many ways the result of mistakes by former Chancellor Angela Merkel and her “there is no alternative” position in agreeing to large bailouts during the Euro crisis. Before that, Merkel had continuously shifted the center-right CDU party to the left (or what she called “to the center”). She managed to steal votes from the SPD and the Greens but increasingly abandoned the right flank, leaving a vacuum there. The CDU had already begun to shift leftwards during the era of Helmut Kohl, but Merkel turbocharged the “modernization,” which in effect was a codeword for the “greening” of the CDU. After the atomic power accident in Fukushima, Japan, she adopted the Green’s opposition to any nuclear power and pursued their costly energy policies.
German conservatives came to despise “Mutti,” as Merkel was called then by many in her party and the German media. Her decision in the summer of 2015 to open Germany’s borders to more than a million asylum immigrants from the Middle East and Africa was the final straw for many conservatives to break from the CDU. AfD entered the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, for the first time in September 2017 with 12.3 percent of the total vote and then had delegates reelected in September 2021 with 10.3 percent....
Loralei is an issue:
I believe the third riech was leftist. I know people like to claim otherwise, but a “Socialist Workers Party” could be nothing but leftist. Isn’t this just like the communist leftists in our country demanding “their democracy”?
The Styx song?
They always claimed they were on the left and were of the left.
A major difference with the International Socialists is they used national cultural symbols and pride to propel their movement.
Odd that seldom do any of these assclowns see an issue with the rise of radical extreme left-wing parties. Likely because their ideals are aligned.
I’ve said many times, Nazis are just communists with better tailors.
It may be too late for Germany. They are shutting down nuclear and coal fired electrical generating plants. They are shifting production to China. And letting in Muslims that will have more children than the Christians will have. By killing jobs they will have a poor class that is growing and needs support from the government.
Germany was having trouble, what a sad, sad story....
I have stayed in a hotel in Boppard Germany along The Rhine near “de Loreli” bend in the river that causes the treacherous maneuvers of the riverboats. It’s bar and lounge are in what once was a 1,00-year-old monastery. There are old castles and vineyards in the area, too.
Sure. Birds of a feather…you know the rest.
Sadly, yes. Even worse is too many folks have zero critical thinking skills.
You nailed it once again👍
This is the song they refer to and it emotionally resonates for the Germans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_QotuhPSk&pp=ygUMbG9yZWxlaSBzb25n
I suppose it beats The Horst Wessel Lied.
Or it did, once. Few people nowadays know it any more.
In Japan, however, it is still popular, as an example of German romantic poetry and music - thanks be to conductor Franz Eckert (1852-1916), who spent most of his career there.
The Loreley
by Heinrich Heine, translated by Mark Twain from his very amusing book „A tramp abroad“:
I cannot divine what it meaneth
This haunting nameless pain:
A tale of the bygone ages
Keeps brooding through my brain.
The faint air cools in the gloaming,
And peaceful flows the Rhine,
The thirsty summits are drinking
The sunet’s flooding wine.
The loviest maiden is sitting
High thrones in yon blue air,
Her golden jewels are shining
She combs her golden hair;
She combs with a comb that is golden,
And sings a weird refrain;
That steeps in a deadly enchantment
The listener’s ravished brain.
The doomed in his drifting shallop
Is tranced with the sad sweet tone,
He sees not the yawning breakers.
He sees but the maid alone.
The pitiless billows engulf him!
So perish sailor and bark,
And this, with her baleful singing,
Is the Loreley’s gruesome work.
Heine was a mediocre poet at best, in spite of all his fame, and the Lorelei is the only poem I know where the translation is better than the original - may Catherine Winkworth and Charles Sanford Terry forgive me😂
Having lived their during Merkels invited beasts she did more damage to Germany, and Europe, then the entire history of European welfare. They will not recover from the imported violent Africans and Islamists. They destroyed everything in their past and there is no military will to defeat them. In fact. Even complaining about the violence, crime, and filth from the immigrants will lead to the arrest of a native
NAZIism, Marxism, Maiism, Socialism. It’s all the same turd.
“The spectacular rise of the AfD party has alarmed Germany’s political establishment, some of whom are threatening a ban.”
When Thuringa state elected a ‘governor’ Merkel didn’t like she declared the election invalid until they “elected” someone she liked.
Absolutely. Btw, if you want to see the inside of a prison over here, just play the HWS on your stereo really loudly, so that all the neighbors might enjoy it as well 😂
A much better fighting song in German would have been the old hymn „A mighty Fortress is our God“- especially the third stanza - though of course not in the Nazi sense.
Here is a beautiful translation by Frederick H. Hedge:
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper he, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great ;
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing,
Were not the right man on our side,
The man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be ?
Christ Jesus, it is he,
Lord Sabaoth his name,
From age to age to the same,
And he must win the battle.
And tho’this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him ;
His rage we can endure,
For lo ! his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Thro’ him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kin-dred go,
This mortal life also ;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
Amen.
Sometimes yes. It proves yet again that trying to reason with a leftist - or any other ideologue, for that matter - is like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end.
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