So Germany has voted, and yes, it’s bad, but it could be a lot worse. We needed early elections after the FDP (libertarians) broke up the coalition with the SPD (labour) and the Greens. The campaigns were overshadowed by two deadly attacks by Afghani refugees, one probably with an islamist background.
First, the naked data, and yes, it looks grim:
Source: Tagesschau
The black ones are the conservatives. Their leader worked together with the far right AfD to “stop immigration” a few weeks ago, sparking wide protests all over the country. Merz will be our next chancellor and apart from his politics, his Black Rock past and lack of experience, he is lacking the character to lead a country. They are the strongest party, followed by the far right AfD, Elon’s and Trump’s favourites.
SPD and Greens lost big, also pretty much deserved. they allowed the FDP to run the show and they also allowed the conservatives and the right wingers to dominate the whole discourse with nothing but immigration.
Then we have the FDP, who rightly got kicked out. Their treachery didn’t pay off and neither did their ultra libertarian course.
And the BSW, the “Union Sarah Wagenknecht”, which split off the party “die Linke” (the left) about a year ago, because the Left wasn’t racist and homophobic enough. Actually, they’re mostly like the AfD minus the ultra capitalist angle. I always say that Sarah puts the “national” in “socialist”. She’s also an absolute Putin pal. Good riddance.
Leaves us with the Left. Now, that’s where my sympathies lie. I know, their Ukraine policy is shit and my one big issue, but I’ll say this: if you think that their Ukraine policy is a dealbreaker, but can overlook the Greens’ and the SPD’s policy on Palestine, then be at least honest: you don’t care about human rights, you care about white people. What is amazing is that after the split off, everybody thought that was it. In the polls, they were at 3%, well below the magiv 5% you need to make it into parliament. And then they did something no other party did: they actually fought for the votes. They refused to bow to the “we need to stop refugees” narrative and were the only party to have a truly humanist position. They were also the only ones that positioned other topics like high rents and inflation. They pushed hard on social media, actually reaching young voters and made a huge come back.
And this is why I’m not desperate. Before the CDU started campaigning, they consistently polled way above 30%, at 37% at their highest. And then their shenanigans lost them a lot of votes, with only a minority of them going to the AfD (about 1%).
Now the work begins. Since Merz deemed to insult all of those protesting against fascism as “not having all the cups in the cupboard” (aka being several cards short of a full deck), the motto is: get up, fill the coffee cup, keep fighting!
Former emo kid, or euphemism for the coal lobby?
One bit of reassuring news I read: according to one commentator at least, #PhonyStark’s support doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference for the fascist party.
lumipuna @1
At the risk of missing the sarcasm and stating the obvious…
This BlackRock (wiki)
Yep, that Black Rock.
@Raging Bee
Yeah, seems like his influence is limited and also Tesla is going under here
Thanks for this analysis. I agree with you!
Also, maybe/hopefully Germans don’t have quite as much hero-worship-of-rich-assholes as we Americans do of late…
Merz … is lacking the character to lead a country.
Which country?
Some I could name and one I live in actively reject character in leadership.
I wonder if whichever coalition comes out of this will be stable.
One minor piece of good news at least. 8-)
I get a half hour English language report from DW News which I watch whenever I can because it contains more European news than I get on the U.S. shows; so I’ve been following the German elections.
IIUC correctly, and if Merz is telling the truth that he won’t consider a coalition with AfD, the only coalition that gets a majority would seem to be one with the Social Democrats? Does that make sense? And would such a coalition be stable and be able to govern?
Good riddance FDP, olle Großkotzer. and “let’s have a more national socialism” BSW (yes, she said that at a inteview…).
I do hope for a more effective left in the coming years and maybe a new social heading for the SPD instead of the Schörderian technocrats. One can dream.
As to coalitions, I trust poor “middle class” millionaire Merz’ moral compass as far as I could have thrown Kohl, i.e. not far. And the AfD numbers are quite scary.
Pierce R. Butler
Any country. Honestly, while I have no love for our current chancellor, he at least has a calm character, as we say “nordisch unterkühlt” (a sub cool nordic temprament). He’s not easily provoked, unlike Merz, who loves dishing out, but then throws a tantrum when he gets only half of it back. That’s quite dangerous with two more such men leading the USA and Russia.
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Coalitions: It will be a great coalition, as they are called, CDU and SPD. I suspect that Merz will constantly threaten the SPD with going for the AfD instead, the SPD will then co sign all the cruelties and will be the ones to lose, just like they did this time, having been dominated by the FDP.
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avalus
Yeah, every third of those who voted here voted for the fascists. IIRC, it’s not much different in your neck of the wood. That’s scary, because I have to deal with these people every day in school (less as teachers, but as parents)
billseymour@9
A coalition of the CDU and SPD was pretty much the expected outcome, the question was mainly if FDP and Wagenknecht’s Nazbols would gain seats and made a third member necessary.
Conservative/social democrat coalitions in Berlin have worked in the past, with Merkel as chancellor for a while, and are currently governing several states.
I expect mostly conservative politics from this coalition, the SPD has been a neoliberal free-market party since the 90s anyway and when working with the conservatives they tended to ‘compromise’ a lot. And that was when they had the second strongest faction in parliament…
The CDU’s favourite coalition partner is generally the FDP, but that wouldn’t have worked this time even if the most optimistic forecasts had been true.
I do not get to vote in Germany and I am not closely familiar with the parties named here, but our voting system in CZ is quite similar. Before every vote, I look at a list of the most important issues and I choose the party with whom I agree the most. Our Greens were not that party for a long time, I disagree with them on more issues, mainly because some of their supposedly “environmental” stances aren’t grounded in understanding science. AFAIK the German Greens are similar in those points where I deem our Greens an actual hindrance to effectively combatting Climate change (like being anti-nuclear power and pro-natural gas). So my guess is that I would not vote for the Greens. If Die Linke is pro-Putin, I would not vote for them either, because that would indicate they are idiots, there is nothing leftist about Putin or Russia. On my limited knowledge, I would probably vote for SPD, as I did in the past for their equivalent in CZ.
If after careful consideration I were choosing who to vote for and my choice would be between two parties that are nigh identical on every issue except that one is pro-Ukraine/pro-Israel and the other is pro-Palestine/pro-Russia, I would vote for the former. For several reasons, none of which have anything to do with skin color:
1) If Ukraine loses, Russia is going to be a continuing danger to countries in the former Warsaw Pact and I happen to live in one of those. If Palestine loses, Israel won’t be much of a danger to anyone, especially not in Europe where, again, my whole family and I live. And even in the Middle East, Israel can’t do much to its neighbors before it is stopped, it cannot conquer and control the whole Middle East when not even the UK, the USSR or the USA could.
2) I have distant family members in Ukraine. I do not have any family, however distant, in Palestine.
3) This is a classic trolley problem -- If I can help either 5 million Palestinians or 40 million Ukrainians but not both, I will choose the latter over the former. I’d prefer to help both, but if that option is not available, I’d be helping the bigger group.
4) Not getting off my high horse and not voting at all in such a scenario is stupid. Whilst I hope to never be put in front of a choice of “either Harris or Trump”, I would vote for Harris 10 times out of 10 in that situation. Not voting at all can, as demonstrated by the USA, result in combining the worst of both available options -- a pro-Russian and pro-Israel government. In Germany, not voting for any leftist party because some are pro-Russian and some are pro-Israel and I do not agree with any of them 100 % would just leave a higher vote share to the fascists.
I see Giliell posted while I was still typing…
I also checked the local votes in my corner of Hesse. The fascists are a bit below the federal average in the district, in the village here it’s slightly above, no surprise.
Here in Hesse we have the districts with the highest vote for the FDP, in the Taunus region close to Frankfurt. It’s where all the bankers have their villas. Everything you need to know about that party…
Charly
Die Linke aren’t so much pro Putin as they are misguided pacifists. The Greens are anti nuclear, that’s true, but mostly pretty much pro science, and actually, I agree with them on the anti nuclear stance. Nuclear power only works with massive,massive subsidies that can be better spend on renewables and developing better batteries. Also, guess where the uranium for nuclear plants would come from? Right, dear Putin…
mordred
Oh, I got a former school mate living in that region. And yeah, even with two way above average salaries, he and his husband are small fry there.
ondrbak -- Thanks. I was seriously confused, and kind of half-seriously scrambling for ideas.
@Giliell, even more than with the anti-nuclear stance I have a problem with the pro-natural gas stance. Which, coincidentally, was mainly provided by Putin as a means to gain influence over Europe. Unlike Uranium -- Russia is not and was not the main supplier of Uranium to Europe, it has provided barely one-fifth of it (not to mention that Uranium supply can be switched easier than gas because it is not bound to an on-the-ground infrastructure like pipelines). And in the case of Germany, it worked. Merkel was way too friendly with the dictator and Scholz was too afraid of him in an almost, although luckily not quite like Chamberlain-like manner. All for the sake of that cheap, cheap gas to replace nuclear power plants.
At least that’s how it looks from my vantage point.
I disagree with you about nuclear energy. Germany’s closing of perfectly viable and safe nuclear power plants was in my opinion one of the dumbest decisions in a long while. Not only did they close those power plants before they used them to their full potential, but they also replaced them with coal and gas-powered ones, which have higher mortality per kW produced and thus are actually less safe. Especially since some of those coal-powered plants burn lignite, the worst and most polluting form of coal.
It is one thing to decide not to build new nuclear power plants because they are expensive and because renewables and batteries are a better option, but it is another thing entirely to scrap perfectly functional ones because of fear-mongering.
If Die Linke are misguided pacifists, I would not vote for them either. In such a capacity, they would serve as mere useful idiots to Putin and would be ineffective at leading the country in the current crisis. I am a pacifist too, but not when there is an actual war of imperial conquest going on in Europe just one country over.
I asked the same question of an acquaintance who lives in the former East Germany. He agrees that the most likely coalition is between the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, and observes that it worked OK during Merkel’s last two terms.
As you might imagine, I’m much more concerned about the craziness that’s happening in my own country right now. Indeed, our Republicans might be even crazier, and more dangerous for the world, than the AfD or Marine Le Pen’s group in France. With any luck, my cancer will stay in remission long enough for me to do my small bit in the next national elections late next year (if we still have meanginful elections by then).
Charly
I think you’re misinformed here. First of all, the Uranium indeed came from Russia and Kazachstan. Secondly, we did not have safe and viable nuclear plants. Our nuclear power plants haven’t had any major updates since the early 1990s. You can say that the 1998 red green coalition to close down nuclear was a mistake. I’d disagree with you, but that’s a difference in opinion. The first Merkel government then undid that decision, only to roll back after Fukushima. Now, you can disagree with all those decisions, but that doesn’t mean that here and now we had some very old power plants running mostly on Russian uranium. When Habeck (leader of the Greens until the election and minister for economy), for whom I have no love, decided to run the last three power plants for a few months longer, that was really going out on a limp. And actually the power companies were happy to be rid of the things (especially since the cost is offloaded onto the tax payer).
But most importantly: at that point nuclear energy provided a mere 3% of our electricity. Yes, burning coal and gas is a bad alternative, but we significantly cut down on that, too, 16% in the last year alone.
The “good nuclear plants that gave us cheap and reliable electricity were needlessly shut down” is one of the big right wing lies.
Maybe I am misinformed, although I did look up the sources of Uranium in Europe before posting. English Wikipedia on nuclear power in Germany offers this summary:
The source for that quote is a scientific paper. I am not qualified to dispute the validity of this conclusion. I also have no reason to assume that it is politically motivated. I did not read the whole paper (not qualified), but I did read the concluding paragraph that ends with this:
No doubt you too have evidence that convinced you of your conclusion and I do not think it makes sense to quibble about it. We will probably not agree on this and arguing would be a waste of time.
At least we agree that coal and gas were not the way to go.
Charly
I skimmed that paper. It’s interesting, to say the least. A lot of the numbers are very much “extrapolated” or”estimated”, aka “made up on a hunch”. For example, while the author does note that the power plants built in Europe within that time took years longer and cost triple of what was estimated, he then continues to operate with much more favourable numbers from China and the UEA. He calculates that if planning had started in 2002, the first reactors would have been operational in 2012 (!).
Carbon emissions due to building, transport and maintenance are completely excluded, as is the fact that a lot of the renewables were constructed by private citizens and as such the investment money would not have been available for NPPs.
The problem of nuclear waste is simply handwaved away, assuring that it’s actually profitable because of the remaining energy…
And even the author has to admit that in order to achieve what he claims possible, Germany would have had to build as much nuclear power as the rest of the world combined…
The real world example of newly constructed power plants absolutely contradicts these exercises in wishful thinking. Their building times are 15-18 years.
And last but not least I’d like to mention that the journal in which this was published seems to be pay to publish