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Elections In Germany: “Erst kommt das Fressen …”
In comments I was asked to write about yesterday’s elections in Germany. But I find it difficult to describe my country from its inside. There are already good reviews available and Conor Gallagher at Naked Capitalism has done a great job with this one which I highly recommend to read:
Germany Holds an Election in an Alternate Reality – Naked Capitalism, Feb 24 2025
In the alternate reality of German politics the U.S. is a friend. It did not blow up the Nord Stream pipeline and it did nothing to provoke the proxy war with Russia. In the alternate reality the Weakness in the German Manufacturing Sector has not been caused by it.
In the alternate reality it is all about ‘values’.
The legendary writer Billmon had named his blog Whiskey Bar. It was a reference to the Alabama Song by Berthold Brecht. When Billmon closed the comments at his site I opened this blog as an alternative. I named it Moon of Alabama in reference to the chorus of that song.
The German election has brought another Brecht opera to my mind.
Living in their alternate reality the ruling parties in Germany have forgotten that “Fressen” (Engl.: guzzling, seizure, scoring) comes before “Moral” (Engl.: ethics, morale, values).
The voters have honored that by looking and voting for ‘alternatives’:
Berhold Brecht, Dreigroschenoper, NR. 15. ZWEITES DREIGROSCHEN-FINALE.
MAC – Ihr Herrn, die ihr uns lehrt, wie man brav leben
Und Sünd’ und Missetat vermeiden kann,
Zuerst müßt ihr uns was zu fressen geben,
Dann könnt ihr reden: Damit fängt es an.
Ihr, die ihr euren Wanst und uns’re Bravheit liebt,
Das eine wisset ein für allemal:
Wie ihr es immer dreht und wie ihr’s immer schiebt,
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.
Erst muß es möglich sein auch armen Leuten,
Vom großen Brotlaib sich ihr Teil zu schneiden.
HINTER DER SZENE – Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?
Berhold Brecht, Three-Penny Opera, 15th ACT, II FINALE
M. – You gentlemen preach to us that honesty is the best policy.
Stay clear of sin and crookedness, you say.
First tell us how to fill our stomachs,
then you can talk, that’s how to begin.
You who have a great time getting fat while we stay honest,
learn a lesson, once and for all;
no matter how you twist and turn, no matter what you’re shooting at,
first come the eats and then the moralizing.
First the people who have nothing
must get a slice of your loaf of bread.
CROWD — On what does a person live?
I have voted for the BSW, the new party of the ‘conservative socialist’ Sarah Wagenknecht. In my view it is the only party which has understood Brecht’s warning to the rulers: Pragmatism, here: bread through peace with Russia and migration limits, must come first; before all appeals to abstract ‘values’, ethics and morale.
The still very young BSW party has received 4.97% of all votes. 13,500 votes less than needed to take the 5% hurdle and seats in the parliament. That is unfortunate but there are reasons for it:
[T]he BSW was caught off guard by the snap election. The party lacked local infrastructure and was short on cash for the campaign. It was forced to hurriedly register regional branches in order to participate in the national election.
I am optimistic that the party will continue to grow as it is currently the only real alternative in German politics.
As for other parties: The Alternative für Deutschland, AfD, was the clear winner in these elections. It was often described as ‘hard-right’ and even compared to fascism. That has created a kind of Streisand effect and allowed for its growth. But its program and ideas remind one of the conservative Christian Democrats during the 1980s. It is avidly pro-capitalist and pro-American but, inconsistently, also pro-Russian. That has helped it win in eastern Germany.
The center-left Social Democrats were the biggest losers in these election. It is the first time since 1887(!) that it is not the number one or number two party in Germany but had to take the third place. But it is still highly likely that it will govern again as the junior partner of the Christian Democrats.
Proportional voting in Germany (no ‘first past the post’) pretty much guarantees that all German governments are based on coalitions. The need to compromise prevents radical outcomes. It leads to policies of muddling through issues rather than resolving them.
That’s not a good outlook for Germany but we will have to, again, live with it.
On a positive note: 100% of the 50 million votes, all on paper ballots, were counted within 8 hours. There was no strife.
BSW was succesful in stealing votes from the only opposition party in germany “The LEFT”, what was the reason why germany’s right wing media (since all of them are directly or indirectly controlled by oligarchs who use them to keep the right wing block in power against all left wing politics – SPD and Greens are not left wing, the are neocons who just use left wing promisses to lure people in) pushed her little ego tour.
She mainly stole the politics from her former party (The LEFT) and mixed them with some typical right wing distraction methods (= evil foreigners threaten you, not the rich oligarchs who actually steal all your money…).
Her financial plan was even worse then tha usual lies of SPD (Scholz) and Greens (Baerbock, Habeck), not really making much of a difference, still keeping the majority of wealth in the hands of very few and not helping the (working) poor at all, so there was all together little reason for people to vote for her party.
Those who fell for the whole evil foreigner propaganda got AfD, CDU and pretty much the whole right wing block. All the idiots who fell for the next try to defeat evil Russia wouldn’t vote for AfD (which was lying about that point anyway, just like Meloni, they not only planed massive abuse of the poor but all that to enrich the oligarchs even further, bleeding germany dry, while also having big talk about how germany must spend way more money on military, what would make the financial disaster they planed even worse) and BSW anyway. Even The LEFT was hated by these wannabe-fascists simply for being against weapon deliveries (as they always were).
The final nail in the coffing were the last lesser elections in some parts of germany, where BSW indeed managed to massively ‘steal’ votes from The LEFT – what mainly empowered the right wing block and brought the corrupt CDU (the core party of this block since the very beginning of germany after 2.WW – and also the most loyal vassal party of the USA) to power – and the very first thing BSW did was sell out to the CDU, just like the other two fake ‘left wing’ parties SPD and Greens do all the time.
Overall The LEFT was the ONLY party (at 5%+) that delivered a change in politics. All other parties stood for the same thing and mainly used different lies to sell this. That’s their job.
CDU: core party of the right wing block, mainly voted by old people, who don’t care for anything anymore, they vote for CDU since decades and won’t stop. Many of the weird people say, that CDU got the best economical knowledge, what is just wrong in every way. The CDU is overall corrupt since it was re-created (and took a hell lof of Nazis in and whitewashed them in general, all under US protection, who liked the Nazis a lot, the were very loyal soldiers in the continuation of 2.WW under them as the New Führer, since they hated the soviets and were very thankful that they got away with all their genocidal crimes…)
CSU: Simply just the CDU but also using the biggest federate state in germany to gather votes by making very antidemocratic politics against germany but selling it as good and fine for that federate state. CSU is even more openly corrupt than the CDU and the politicians even more disgusting (and full of sh*t), but this doesn’t matter, the peopel there kind of love them for that, a bit like in Italy with Berlusconi.
FDP: Pretty much the pimple on the bottom that is the CDU. Their main propaganda talk is “free market” and “freedom”, but as neolibs are, they mean the freedom of the slaveholders to exploit the slaves, so they just want to make their rich buddies (and themselves) richers, what isn’t really a secret.
SPD: same as the CDU, but covering all this with the lie of being a “worker party” – what they are not. They use the lie of being for social securit and alike, but never deliver.
Green: same as the CDU (you could argue that they started different and really wanted to change something, but as soon as they got to power this completely changed and they became full blown right with, anti social warmongers, what never changed, just got worse). They mainly lose the lie of being against rascism, pro nature, pro peace, but none of that is true.
AfD: CDU clone, created as fake opposition party. Their job is to play the opposition in many areas (for example saying that they are against the Ukraine war, against the Euro, against Covid politics and so on), while pushing the typical right wing propaganda tricks (foreigners are evil, unemployed are lazy, good wages are bad for the economy, and so on), but all of that is again just lies. They constantly vote with the CDU and FDP and see the CDU (again, the very core party of this block) as their natural partner (what is no surprise, as said, they are pretty much a clone of it) and their whole financial plan is just a brutal slaughter of the lower and middle class to enricht the ultra rich even further and utterly ruining germany as a state with detonating debt (just like CDU, FDP – and in the end also SPD and Greens).
The ONLY party which went against that was The LEFT – and they got 9% for that (27% with young people most of them first voters, but this doesn’t help, majority of votery are the old and as said: they don’t care).
Posted by: Beatrice | Feb 24 2025 23:32 utc | 115
The comment by fnord | Feb 24 2025 15:50 utc | 8 is rubbish from beginning to end; so much so I’m compelled to write my own here against it.
First things first: BSW and AfD are surprisingly close to each other in many ways, which is widely recognized. Double interviews with Wagenknecht and Weidel, the two leaders, have become a sujet of its own. The classic, if a bit dated, horseshoe-theory of left and right applies; together they should ideally have crushed the center in a pincer, but we’re not there yet. The Wind of Change, now blowing eastward with powerful voices from overseas behind it, has already shaken the country up well, with many now being aware that something big has happened.
AfD have been extremely visible as of late. But legacy power structures have produced a campaign, clearly coordinated, that runs a surprising number of grey and even black tricks to sabotage them. Many of the moves feel desperate, such as the slogan „Ganz Hamburg hasst die AfD“ which puts hate, typically carried onto the streets by leftist kiddos, against the farcical substruction that AfD is primitive and resentful. It’s the old cliché of skinhead Neo-Nazis chasing turks and blacks through the streets, which has been made into an all-round Kampfbegriff by TPTB. An elaborate PsyOp, called the ‚Wannsee Lie’ in publications from AfD, has been set up to support the notion, but the story is complete fiction – no one has met and decided to push a program of „remigration“ against the masses of people who arrived here of late; said to be around 12-15 million since 2010.
I was writing campaign material for AfD. It was a good experience – I had full freedom, the team was (mostly) positive and motivated, with a particularly free-thinking writer colleague, and our candidate is clearly competent and charismatic; a great boss, too, engaging and not shy to take advice. I’m (for now) less certain about upper party echelons, and breadth is an issue, too; but then, the party is young and only about to find a stable identity with a complement of capable people.
We fully embraced the maverick role and created a number of rhetorical zingers to counter the toxic narratives, in the process forming a temporary leftist and progressive wing for AfD, which may or may not work outside of the metropolis. We boldly claimed to be the ‚Partei der Integration’ because we’re actually willing to tackle the issue instead of simply denying it, and leveraged our intellectual ressources to give positions on fundamentals of civilization, such as language, a working judiciary, ethics and religion, and more; all the while trying to reverse the reflexive ‚us against them‘ thinking which hinders a real and fruitful discussion which obviously must include the immigrant population to achieve good results. How do we want to live together, in a nation-state widely regarded as well organized, and been made the new home of countless millions who came here with nothing but trust and their readiness to work hard and participate in the community? And nothing of this has been problematic within the party ranks, to be sure. They were, in fact, rather happy about our ideas. I also met a number of openly homosexual folks which caused no issues at all.
One particularly thoughtful and humane initiative saw grown men bursting into tears: a Harburg council representative suggested that the city district had to offer walls to use for graffiti, support the colour spray, and be responsible to document whatever was to happen then.
In larger currents, AfD will almost certainly support leaving NATO, that’s why they also want a higher defense budget. They do not want war in the east. And they are mostly lean-state type people, reminiscent of moderately libertarian views. They have an eye on the working class, too. Socialism, however, is not on their menu for the foreseeable time, so indeed BSW will be an important balance in the future ahead.
Ceterum censeo, fuck the EU.
Posted by: persiflo | Feb 25 2025 3:41 utc | 130
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