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Transnational Thursday for January 23, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Yet another illegal immigrant who should've been expelled long ago went out and stabbed a child to death. Just our weekly bit of cultural enrichment here in Germany. This week it was in Aschaffenburg, not that it means anything to anyone. I for one have no idea where that is.

But wait, it's federal election time! The chancellor, leader of our much-maligned tripartite coalition government, recently called a vote of no-confidence and promptly got it. So now everyone is campaigning, and our conservative CDU party, led by the very un-merkelian Friedrich März Merz, is calling for blood stricter immigration laws and faster deportations. This kind of thing obviously does not sit right with the left-green parties, so it's a non-starter that can't make it through parliament.

...unless all the non-green-left members of parliament support it. Including those of the far-right AfD party. Cooperation with whom is a strict no-no for absolutely everyone above the municipal level. You can get figuratively shot and your political career ended just for getting the AfD's support by accident. Actually coordinating with them, or just talking to them, is absolutely verboten. They're normally not even allowed on public TV talk shows. We call it the "firewall".

And now the big thing in the papers is this: März said he'd do the right thing, walk the right path, "no matter who comes along". Is the firewall about to fall? Will the CDU actually accept the AfD's support? Are they perhaps even in actual talks with each other?

Friedrich März

Suspicious that you write Merz with an Umlaut.

Honestly I just wrote by ear, and "Merz" or "März", sounding the same, is usually encountered in the context of the month of March "März", so I instinctively went with that one.

But if you like, we can treat it as suspicious. I just don't know what it is you might suspect.

Who are you voting for this election? I'm having a really hard time deciding. Usually I go for the fringe pseudo libertarian loser parties like bündnis deutschland or partei der vernunft for vote signalling purposes.

I'm fairly ignorant of the day to day political discourse and shit slingings. I dont know of a single good german non-midwit political analysis source. Mrwissen2go only gets me so far. Which party would scott alexander endorse?

AfD, without a doubt. I'm an FDP member, but right now Germany doesn't need reasonable miniature reformers who make some reasonable tweaks here and there to maybe let the average Michel have a few more coins jingle in his pocket by the end of next year. Germany needs strong fucking medicine, needs to have the leftist mind-viruses that have plagued it for the last half-century blasted out of it, needs the overton window rammed back into a less exasperatingly retarded position, and as quickly as possible. We can already see some success in this - strong words from the CDU, the FDP reconsidering in how far its progressivism needs to be aligned with that of the left, and even the leftist parties aren't so sure of themselves anymore. It's small potatos for now; too early to stop administering the bitter medicine. But it is working. It needs to do more work. And if the only thing that can scare the other parties straight is the AfD, then the AfD it will have to be.

It may take another twenty years. It may fail to have the desired effect. But right now I want Germany to put up a fight against its internal enemies, those who hate it and those who opportunistically see it as a mere economic zone, and this is the only way. If the only ones who will stand up for it are the neo-nazis and their suit-wearing front-pieces, be they in Russian pockets, be they dumb as bricks, be they the second coming of Hitler himself, then come hell or high water, they have my vote.

Also, there is still, after so many years, a giant graffiti on a large piece of public infrastructure right in view of my window, ordering people to give not a single vote to the AfD. They tried to mess with the wrong contrarian.

That seems like a fairly strong argument. Out of curiosity I hopped over to the r/de subreddit. The vibe shift in regards to immigrants has definitely happened there. Not /r/canada but discussing issues caused by immigration is no longer verboten.

The economy though? Im a doomer when it comes to the economic zoning, as you put it, i think its an inevitable future. The only shot i have is being able to afford to live in a nice gated community with legal schnitzel and weißwurst.

Forget the actual leftists, among even my most intelligent thoughtful and moderate peers at my uni, they all pray to moloch. "Just a few more regulations and better allocated welfare subsidies, if only deutsche bahn wasnt so underfunded and we need to put more taxpayer money in critical government approved research and tech investment!"

The fdp suffers from this knob fiddling approach to governence too. And if you have a state full of german cog workers that probably works. The german mind cannot comprehend the permanent dysfunction of what weve imported.

I just dont see an actual way out. In the anglo countries at least they have a some ideological tools to discuss productivity and immigration.

Germans are so hyperfocused on the small in absolute terms amounts of violence that some groups generate and not on how were crafting a parallel society for a resentful underclass. Huge ethnic Differences between mittelschule and gymnasium attendance of groups will cause huge problems.

It would be hilarious if the most wishy-washy establishment party anywhere, ever, broke the cordon sanitaire around the AfD.