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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   252 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 30, 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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Surprised this hasn't been posted yet(mods if it's better suited for culture war thread please just move it)- the AFD and CDU have just voted together in the German parliament on immigration. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germanys-far-right-upends-convention-landmark-vote-immigration-rcna189959

Now it was a non-binding vote, but the German left is already posturing about it:

With Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens opposed to the motions, however, Merz knew he would have to rely on support of the AfD. The land border measure passed with a slim majority of just three votes, while the security proposal was rejected.

Critics including Scholz argue that Merz’s tactics shatter the taboo among mainstream parties against working with the AfD — a party that is monitored by German security services on suspicion of being right-wing extremist — in an effort to keep it from power.

“Since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany over 75 years ago, there has always been a clear consensus among all democrats: We do not make common cause with the extreme right,” Scholz said in a speech to parliament.

“You have broken this basic consensus of our republic in the heat of the moment,” he told Merz.

Relevantly, there are elections coming up- and if the CDU wins the most seats, but nowhere near a majority, as seems likely, this move seems to render it much more difficult to get coalition partners from the German left. Especially if- as also seems likely- AfD is the second biggest party.

Finally. The CDU painted itself into a corner by simultaneously claiming that the state of the welfare & migrant issues is germany's greatest crisis, but also that they will not work together with the only party which is both large enough and actually agrees on this. This went as far as that they took a (binding!) vote back after they realized only the CDU & AfD would vote in favor, pretty much just to avoid the bad optics. They seriously claimed that the voters just have to vote CDU (or at least CDU+FDP) into an absolute majority.

This was just not very credible, especially since Merkel (CDU) arguably started the whole mess. Correspondingly many AfD-voters explicitly said that they don't really agree with the AfD's platform on many issues, but they consider solving the welfare & migrant crisis so important that they're willing to bite the bullet. Hell, I've never voted AfD but strongly consider it for basically the same reasons, but the AfD's platform is just very unappealing to me overall except for those two points of agreement.

Worse yet, before this vote it was heavily implied that the CDU would coalition with the greens or the SPD, neither of which would vote with them, and the AfD was already steadily gaining in the polls. Imo if they had kept the Brandmauer up, the most likely outcome would be a lame duck 2025 government, with an ever-increasing risk of an absolute AfD majority. Which isn't even something most AfD voters want. They were basically just redoing the Weimar Republic.

Now, we can move forward. A CDU-AfD (maybe +FDP) government would still clearly be dominated by the CDU both in terms of votes and in experience & knowledge. It would most likely result in a significant loss of votes for the AfD unless the CDU does some very stupid things, though it would also likely cement the AfD as a long-term mainstream party (probably in the 10% range), again unless the AfD is very stupid. But as you say, the vote is non-binding, and Merz is known to be a little chicken who is eager to be accepted by mainstream journalism, which still leans heavily left.

Aren't they setting up a vote to ban the AfD and confiscate all the party's assets before the election?

It's a bit more complicated than that; There is a multi-party alliance of mainstream politicians who prepare such, but it's not officially supported by any of the leading politicians of any large party afaik (one should be cynical enough to consider they may support it indirectly, though). And at least both Merz (CDU candidate) and Scholz (SPD candidate) are on record saying explicitly that the AfD needs to be beaten in the poll booth, not through judicial means. Then again, neither of the two is known to keep their word.

Also, most legal experts that aren't affiliated with any party consider success quite unlikely, and the AfD has already won a few court cases against the government.

I think someone brought it up in the last Transnational Thursday thread, that it was quite possible that the cordon sanitaire could well be broken.

I wonder if Musk can/will promise C*U leaders a reward if they form a coalition with AfD.

Vietnam government increased traffic violation fines by 10x. For example, red light violations by motorbikes went from $32-40 to $175-235. Although this is a step in the right direction for a country that is ranked 22 in terms of traffic deaths in 2019, most people are feeling the pain in terms of increased congestion. Drivers drive safer and more legally, and therefore slower. Possible negative externalities here are increased pollution from the legion of motorbikes "stuck" behind red light (whereas before they can just "find a way" and continue with their travel). My friend in Vietnam gives another negative externality, which is that the police are now given perverse incentive to slow down traffic even more for "tea money". He says that at a nearby crossing for him has now been changed to 40s of red for 10s of green. Anyway, I'll see how this shakes out in about half a year or so.

I'm surprised they went ahead with such a measure. I visited Vietnam about a decade ago, and it was an accepted meme over there that traffic lights were a suggestion rather than a hard rule.

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