I’ve only lived in Germany for a year and a half so if some more experienced Germans could tell me what I’m missing and explain why things aren’t so bad that would be nice, but it seems like this country is shifting in a negative direction politically from this polling data and it scares me.
If AfD ends up being the second biggest party in the Bundestag next federal election I’ll be quite upset but that’s how it goes I guess.
You’ve spent more time in Germany than I have, but I have visited numerous times over the years and have family there that I talk to regularly. I feel as though I’ve felt the slip over the years.
I have very happy childhood memories of visiting family in Germany from the 90’s, but not enough social consciousness to be aware of any troubles.
My first visit since the mid 90’s was around 2004, shortly after adoption of the euro. At that time I encountered a small amount of negative sentiment (in public) against ‘Turks’ who were willing to work for far less than native Germans.
My next visit was not until 2009, by which time that sentiment seemed to have solidified into a solid core of hatred for the ‘Turks’; I got the impression by this time that the term ‘Turks’ was a catch-all for migrants from all over the world who were willing to work for far less than native Germans would. People would tell me stories of their children being out of work because an up-market hotel’s entire hospitality staff was replaced overnight by cheap off the books labour. At this time it seems the majority of negative sentiment was of an economic nature, and made far worse by unscrupulous operators willing to pay cash rather than go through the correct channels.
Fast forward to 2015 and Germany was destination number one for Refugees and Asylum Seekers fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. 1.1 million ‘official’ arrivals during this crisis, and likely far more ‘unofficial’ result in 16 billion Euro spent on them, as Angela Merkel welcomes them with open arms. It was at this point that I began to encounter a level of viciousness in public discourse that I did not think would ever be possible in Germany again.
At the risk of trotting out a broken record, things rapidly came to a head on New Year’s Eve, as waves of new migrants started sexually assaulting native Germans in their thousands.
Call it growing pains if you will, but I can’t think of a better illustration for the massive shift in sentiment than the the New Year of rape and sexual assault:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–16_New_Year's_Eve_sexual_assaults_in_Germany
From this point onwards, all migrants were associated with the increase in crime and assaults across the country, and forever soured in the minds of Germans. As you can see from those articles, many of the assaults were carried out by North Africans, who did not actually have any legitimate claim to asylum, but were still in-country awaiting processing.
At any time in history when mass migration has occurred there have been major difficulties as the clash of cultures takes place, but rarely outside of war times has it ever resulted in a mass-rape or mass-sexual assault event. There was no possible way for these people to be welcomed into the country after this imo.
Almost immediately small vigilante groups were formed to protect German women on the streets, and this is where the AfD finds its origin.
The main reason it has continued to get worse is this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/22/skilled-migrants-arent-interested-in-germany/
Germany is ending up with all of the dregs, and none of what they actually need.
I don’t really have much more to say on this topic save for this: The German people are proud, strong and have a deep respect for their culture. They have demonstrated time and again that they are happy to use that strength to help those in need economically, through donation of medical resources and military resources, and to basically prop up the Euro for 2 decades. But, everyone has a limit on what they are willing to endure in order to help.
I don’t think there’s any coming back from the events of the last 10 years. Perhaps Germany just isn’t the best spot to enact a multicultural wonderland.
As a native German and antifascist leftist I’m worried as well, but I don’t think that history will simply repeat itself. The problems we are facing are very different and I don’t think that a party as radical as the AfD is able to gather 20% support in a federal election. Germany HAS become a multicultural wonderland in recent years and the majority supports it! German politicians of the left, center and center-right shouldn’t engage in the blame game. Especially the CDU/CSU has to understand that their role now is not to copy AfD talking points.
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I agree with your comment.
However, cough cough Akshually…
While genocidal they lost the title of MOST genocidal dictatorship. CPSU even at moderate estimates is much higher than Nazis.
Unless “most” means people/year performance to you?
Arguably, it’s the definition of genocide at play here.
To qualify what I am going to say, I have a minor in History, with a particular focus on the 20th century.
There are moments in both the Soviet Union’ and China’s histories that are genocidal, or aren’t always considered genocide but probably should be considered it. Things such as the Holodomor, etc (I’m not going to argue if this is a genocide or not). As you mention, both nations likely killed more people than the Nazis did (although things such as the black book of communism should not be considered a credible source).
The difference is, neither the Soviet Union nor Communist China were founded on a platform of genocide. The Nazis were. The majority of people killed in the Soviet Union and China were not killed through genocide, they were mostly killed through political violence and state mishandling of resources. The intentions were just different; the Nazis cannot be understood without their desire for genocide, the Soviets can.
You could also argue, though, that the genocidalism score should be dependant on the amount of potential victims.
Depending on the estimate, for example the California Genocide had a higher murder ratio.
I don’t think it’s fair to let genocidists “off the hook” just because they ran out of people to murder.
I agree, I’m just not sure what this is responding to. I didn’t intend, and I hope didn’t imply, that this was at play here. The Holodomor isn’t better than the Holocaust simply because one ended with fewer deaths, and I agree with what I think is undergirding your comment, that there’s no real way to “rank” genocides, they’re all bad.
Yeah, that was basically my point.
I’ve had a few discussions that went like “Nazis where the pinnacle of evil due to the holocaust, which was the most evil thing that ever happened, thus nothing else is really evil”.
And while I totally agree that Nazis/holocaust are really evil, there are a lot of other events and groups that are really evil, and I disagree with ranking genocides just by the size of the “genocidable” population.
I did put “letting off the hook” in quotation marks, because I didn’t think you implied that anyone who murders people on a massive scale is ok, just because somebody else was worse. So no worries, you didn’t imply that.
A genocide, by definition, is an event where as many people are murdered as possible. They are usually limited by the size of the victim population and by the resources the murderers have. Not by how evil the murderers are.
I’m confident we’ll see an outright fascist win the White House here in America next year. (The marketing team won’t call it fascism of course, but it’ll be something that sounds cool and functionally the same) It’s going to be hard for Joe Biden to sell himself on reelection when everyone is living with a 30%-50% increase in their cost of living and he didn’t do anything meaningful about it. And, as you saw with Trump, my countrymen don’t care what an asshole or how corrupt a politician is if they sell themselves well as a candidate of change.
And once a fascist runs America, other countries will follow suit.
Confident doomsaying is always easy and popular on politics threads, and I just don’t buy it here. Before the 2022 midterms, commentators were just as confident that the economy (and inflation!) would hand the GOP a huge victory in Congress. Didn’t happen.
Biden’s done exactly what he said he would, which is to focus on and fight for laws and measures that have a chance of passing the US Congress. Hard to argue with his strategy.
On the economy:
- Consumer prices are up ~15%, not 30 and especially not 50… The twelve month change as of January 2023 was 6.4%.
- The US has 3 million more jobs than before the pandemic, and 1.7 job openings per unemployed job seeker.
Legislative record:
- A trillion dollar infrastructure deal with bipartisan support
- A federal gun control bill with bipartisan support
- A bill that finally recognizes same-sex and interracial marriage at the federal level. Passed the Senate with 12 Republican “yes” votes.
Confident doomsaying is always easy and popular on politics threads, and I just don’t buy it here. Before the 2022 midterms, commentators were just as confident that the economy (and inflation!) would hand the GOP a huge victory in Congress. Didn’t happen.
Every president in recent memory that had control of Congress lost it at the midterms. It happened Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. That Republicans didn’t win Georgia was due to one thing: the promise of $2000 in COVID aid, of which only $1400 actually materialized, and that is Biden (and really, all the neoconservatives’) MO. Make the promises and find a way to finagle your way out of it once you’re elected.
The US has 3 million more jobs than before the pandemic, and 1.7 job openings per unemployed job seeker.
Yeah. Most people are working 2-3 of them to afford to live. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, consumer prices aren’t the only piece of this puzzle.
A trillion dollar infrastructure deal with bipartisan support
A half-measure at best, and you know it, because as with everything they do, we only have bipartisan support if the wealthy get the lion’s share of the money. That’s how it was with Obamacare and COVID relief. It’s what they do.
A federal gun control bill with bipartisan support
It seems like you’re deliberately misrepresenting things here. The so-called gun control bill’s biggest provision was to make suggestions to the states that they’re in no way bound to implement. What’s even worse is Biden could issue an executive order to cancel federal contracts for any company that sells AR-15’s to the public, and he wouldn’t need Congress to pull it off. Neither major party gives a crap about gun violence.
A bill that finally recognizes same-sex and interracial marriage at the federal level. Passed the Senate with 12 Republican “yes” votes.
That totally matters in a country where marriage policies exist mostly at the state level, and the Supreme Court has already admitted they’re gunning for gay marriage next.
Now, I get it. No one wants to feel like they actually voted for the conservative outcomes that result whenever one of the two major parties is elected, but you did, and that’s not a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of historical record.
My point is simple. People will remember when they’re working full-time and still can’t afford to live, and that is the reality of Joe Biden’s presidency. They’re not going to care that Trump or DeSantis are pieces of shit.
Now, I get it. No one wants to feel like they actually voted for the conservative outcomes
This is projection. Can you conceive of someone with slightly different political values than yourself?
A half-measure at best, and you know it, because as with everything they do, we only have bipartisan support if the wealthy get the lion’s share of the money. That’s how it was with Obamacare and COVID relief. It’s what they do.
This is how you debate? “I’m right because politician bad”? Cite a source or two.
That totally matters in a country where marriage policies exist mostly at the state level
lol, with the small exceptions of my own tax bill and federal benefits.
and the Supreme Court has already admitted they’re gunning for gay marriage next.
Right…in which case federal recognition becomes critically important.
To be fair, the Democrats would qualify as a right-wing party in most of Europe.
But that’s due to the general political landscape in the US, which is between far right and right extremists.
Even the most right-wing party here in Austria, the FPÖ, which is considered by many as a only-thinly-veiled Nazi party doesn’t want to discontinue public healthcare or gun control.
We’re all affected by how our respective governments were born, and grew up, or didn’t, or haven’t had the chance to.
Yeah, the US political system has the big problem that it is too old and never had to adapt.
The last major political earthquake in the US was the civil war, and even that did not lead to a new constitution.
So the US is limping along with a basic framework that’s almost 250 years old. It missed quite a few updates that most other countries got, and as such it’s slowly deteriorating.
Generally speaking: representative democratic systems tend to decay into undemocratic and hostile systems, unless there is a re-founding every few decades.
There isn’t really a way around that.
The biggest issue for the US democratic system is, that all the big wars in the last century happened outside of their borders. Most European nations where politically so torn up that they had the chance to seriously update their systems and reset to actual democracy. Many of them are decaying now into less and less democratic systems, but at least we got an update/reset 80 years ago, and not 234 years ago.
That is certainly one perspective.
Slightly off-topic, but watch the interview of President Obama by Hasan Minhaj :)
Obama describes the power of the presidency like the Captain of a large ocean liner or aircraft carrier, who can really f things up by running into an iceberg, but at most set a good course for the future by correcting it by a few degrees. (very paraphrased)
Hasan had a different analogy that it’s like parenting: You can f up a kid’s future majorly as a parent, but no amount of parenting will make your kid LeBron James.
So things can always get significantly worse but never meaningfully improve? What a great system we have here! /s ~Nai
Yeah, it’s a medium great system ;)
Just to say it for the record here is my interpretation: The country can still do great things, it’s just that the captain can’t just make it happen on their own.
I mean considering how corrupt the Supreme Court is right now, how corrupt Congress has been for ages (corporate lobbying is a nightmare), how are we supposed to get things to significantly improve? Specifically how? People have been trying to vote better people into power for years, hasn’t worked. The massive BLM protests barely caused any systemic change, let alone on a national level, UBI is still constantly in limbo despite clear, and undisputable evidence that it helps alleviate poverty (though Universal Basic Services would be better), net neutrality is dead despite the protests about that, an unprecedented number of anti-trans bills are being passed despite a lack of popular support (not that such basic human rights should even be contingent on popular support in the first place), and just… A whole bunch of other bullshit that’s been going on despite efforts to try and make things better which only end up sort of temporarily treating the symptoms of the root problems at best. What are we supposed to do? How do we get enough people on board for it to work out any time soon? How do we know if it has a reasonable chance of working out? I don’t know what to do. ~Nai
No one wants to feel like they actually voted for the conservative outcomes that result whenever one of the two major parties is elected, but you did, and that’s not a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of historical record.
This is the only part of your comment that I take issue with. There was ample opportunity to vote for an actual progressive in the 2020 presidential primary election. We got Biden because that’s who people voted for. They could have voted for Sanders or Warren, and they chose not to. That’s a voters problem, not a party problem.
Personally, I’m reticent to blame the voters in a country where 40,000,000 of them can’t afford to miss a day of work.
And I wouldn’t call Warren a progressive except in the performative sense.
Personally, I’m reticent to blame the voters in a country where 40,000,000 of them can’t afford to miss a day of work.
That doesn’t seem to be stopping any right-wing voters, many of whom are equally poor.
And I wouldn’t call Warren a progressive except in the performative sense.
Okay, but they didn’t vote for Sanders, either.
That doesn’t seem to be stopping any right-wing voters, many of whom are equally poor.
Seeing as how so few vote, it most definitely is. That’s partly why neither party will raise the minimum wage at the federal level. The problem is they’re votes are worth more.
