Posted on 09/25/2017 11:35:32 PM PDT by Redmen4ever
Four AfD deputies from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommerschen Landtag left their faction - and founded a new one.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.de ...
If I’m understanding things correctly, the current leadership (the ones that replaced Petry) of the AfD with their “more confrontational” approach may be responsible for the AfD success in the recent election. Is that understanding correct?
The AfD, from day one when they were purely the anti-Euro party....has been an umbrella group with mostly unusual characters showing up to be part of the top level.
Bernd Lucke, the original guy who designed and built the party, gone since the summer of 2015. When he walked out...it’s said that roughly 20-percent of the membership packed up and left with him.
All of the 5.3 million votes for the AfD? It’s safe to say that over half of the votes were merely frustration votes given to them because they were the only major party with an anti-immigrate theme. If any of the five other parties had picked up the topic and had solutions listed out...they would have picked up the votes instead.
Petry did fine guiding the party to success at the state level leading up to this federal election; and, she did well to finish first in her constituency (one of three AfD candidates to do so). But, you are absolutely correct. The current leaders of the party have achieved an enormous victory with their confrontational style.
Shades of Milton Friedman vs Ann Rand. Where Ann hated Milton over that one issue.
This doesn't sound like they're of sound mind. It wouldn't matter what they believe if they're anti-mass immigration they will be treated as dirt.
“The four say they don’t want to be permanently treated as radicals, but want to play a constructive role in their state government. “
Sounds like the German right wingers are as spineless, eager to cave and “reach across the aisle” as our republican eunuchs - they so yearn to be “liked”.
The Free Democrats picked up some of AfD’s positions. For example, the Euro. Both of them did well, and especially in eastern Germany. The eastern Germans continue to see the influx of immigrants as taking away jobs and driving down wages. Since reunification, the Left Party tapped into their anxieties. Now, the Free Democrats and AfD are. Similarly in this country, Donald Trump connected with working class whites on jobs and wages; and, I think, he will have a great opportunity to connect with working class minorities when he runs for re-election.
When you go back to 2013, Bernd Lucke carried the whole initial wave of AfD on the back of dumping the Euro. He actually got 810,000 votes (1.9-percent). Most people believe that he basically took the majority of the 810,000 votes from the FDP Party (they did lousy in this election....barely getting one million votes.
If you asked most Germans about the anti-Euro feeling in 2013...this was NOT a top ten problem on their list. It probably didn’t even make the top fifty-list.
Oddly, the crowd that drifted in and attached to the AfD...were the same type crowd that hyped up the immigration issue at the end of 2014, and eventually dumped Bernd Lucke in July of 2015 (he didn’t want the party to become the anti-immigrant party).
Today? Bernd Lucke runs another party...Liberal Conservative Reformers. Same gameplan....anti-Euro.
If you went over to the AfD today and brought up the Euro or anti-Euro chat...the majority has no real opinion. So you just kinda grin over this. A political party built upon one single issue in 2013...firing their originator...then going to another single issue in 2017 of a totally different category.
I’ve sat around in Germany and watched the whole thing unfold since 2013.
I think the biggest shock is that the Linke Party....which often brags on it’s support for the common German working man...had probably the greatest opportunity ever imagined. They could have picked up the immigration topic...gone to oppose Merkel’s vision in various ways. They would have have taken the bulk of votes that the AfD had, and even some additional votes away from the SPD. It might have been a pretty close election between the CDU and Linke Party.
Instead, the Linke Party sat there, did mostly nothing, supported the Merkel-vision and watched jobs affected, and wages pushed back down.
Why bother making the party then? That is really strange.
Thank you
If I might add a couple things to what you said: The founders of AfD did fine to get their party’s foot in the door. That was two generations of leadership ago. The movement has been growing like topsy; and, developing a life of its own. I love the egg-head Euro position of the original AfD. But that position is not what propelled AfD into double-digits. Here’s the issue:
AfD is affirming that there’s something good about Germany (and northern Europe in general), whereas the other parties come across as apologetic.
In Germany, it is expected that everyone incorporates work, family life, and outdoor activities into a well-balanced and wholesome life. People are committed to honesty and treating each other with courtesy. It is a country that balances its national budget, where the unemployment rate is low, and where social insurance works.
Now, there is an invasion of people who do not embrace these values, who don’t speak the language, who don’t work regularly, who are involved in drug trafficking and human trafficking and in sexual assault against females and boys. And the major parties are too ashamed of their country’s history to defend the country against this assault, and too beholden to the big corporations that rely on cheap immigrant labor.
This is what AfD taps into, and the elites call it extremism.
The long knives are out. After only a day.
I’ve seen two public forums where Bernd Lucke came into the picture (all before the summer of 2015). He wanted a one-topic political party, and I think he wanted more to siphon votes off away from the FDP Party (my humble opinion). He is a lawyer...fairly competent...hyped up on having a German currency. Beyond that...he had no other real platforms. There are a couple of marginal parties in existence around Germany which functioned in this fashion.
If you go and read through the Reformer’s literature...it centers purely on economics: negative talk on low or zero interest policies of the ECB. They favor free trade and support the TTIP only if there’s pro-Germany stance coming out of it. When they do chat about immigration, they chat on the Canadian-model...point-system, and to only bring qualified applicants into Germany. They hate the minimum wage law of Germany, but they support some crafted yearly minimum income for every citizen (never explaning how it’d work other than writing a check from the government to each citizen). Then at the bottom of all topics....they reject all extremism.
At best, with this new Lucke-team....they might have 2,000 people on a good day who are hyped up and fully supporting their political agenda.
Alice Weidel Speech on AfD She's a most unlikely looking/sounding neo-Nazi, I think her detractors have every reason to be afraid of her rising popularity. There's a refreshing directness about Alice. Her star is in the ascendant.
Her opponents will do to her what his are doing to Trump. Alice will handle it.
Like a lot of socialist parties nowadays, the Linke just isn't that popular with the working class.
All the more so, since whatever ties West German labor unions have are probably with the SPD, rather than with the post-Communist Linke.
It's the party activists who call the tune in the Linkspartei, and they are mostly left-wing ideologues or nostalgic East Germans.
Sahra Wagenknecht, one of the party's top leaders and someone very far to the left, did criticize Merkel's refugee policy and was savaged by the rest of the party elite.
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