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....
Germany having problems—I say GOOD. When ever Germany gets its act together we get into a horrible World War. Stay Commie and broke. Go green and gay and be a weak third rate power. Enjoy your beer and Let America tell you what to do. Germany needs to never become any sort of power—again. Last time they almost won-—Third times a charm, so they say.
Once the Germans were all war-like and mean
But that couldn’t happen again
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they’ve hardly bothered us since then
As long as many other Americans will be, without doubt. The next war could become even uglier than most others before, because, unlike then, the front lines will go straight through entire nations.
Civil wars are often more terrible than wars between nations. War between the Staes, anyone?🙁
Sorry „States“, of course 🙂
Do not forget that anyone to the right of -——— non commie trash, is considered right wing.
The difference between the National Socialists and the State Socialists was that the State Socialists would foolishly take over a business and parachute in some party flunkie who had no idea how to run it. The National Socialists by contrast were smart enough to leave the existing owners/managers in place - so long as they did what the government wanted them to do.
Profits would be strictly limited. The government would put out contracts for various military items that would take up just about all the productive capacity of the entire economy, but so long as you did what you were told the Nazis were content to sit back and let you figure out how to run the company. Needless to say, things ran much better with managers and owners who knew what the hell they were doing in the first place.
Make no mistake though....the government controlled and dominated the economy and if you tried to make products the Nazis didn’t approve of or were unwilling to produce the products they wanted, the best you could hope for was to have the government take over the company and throw you out. At worst, things could get much uglier than that for you.
The problem with Germany today is not that its too strong. Its that its too weak. Without the Germans and their science, technology, industrial capacity (this is withering away), the Europeans will never have a military force that is capable of anything. Nobody else even has the potential to be strong enough.
If you want dependents who will be a net drain on America then by all means wish for a weak Germany. If you want the Europeans to be the strong ally of freedom they should be and could be, forget it then.
Interesting Loralei folk song, you posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_QotuhPSk
It should inspire conservative Germans. not worry them.Loralei sings for the left.
“Interesting Loralei folk song, you posted.”
I will admit that this does not at all resonate for me the same way it does for a lot of Germans. I also don’t understand why they get all misty over this.
Wow. I never have seen a more correct description of the Nazis‘ economic policies.
Thank you very much 😀
Well, it would be outrageously effective for the German Conservative party to adopt the song as their party anthem.
Well, it is because it is one of the few songs in the rich repertoire of German song which bridges the gap between folk-song on one side and art-song on the other.
I think one of the few others is „Der Lindenbaum“ by Schubert, to a romantic poem by Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827).
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