This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A few years ago a bunch of antifa punks wrote "No votes for the AfD" in giant glaring letters on public infrastructure in plain view from my window. So far the authorities have not removed this slogan, and since then I have been voting for the AfD and I intend to continue to do so until it is removed.
Now, if that weren't the case, and I had to choose between those two?
Probably still the AfD, if only to nudge the Overton window away from the left. I guess I'm alright with the AfD for as long as it takes to make the other parties crack down on immigration. Sadly nothing that happened in Germany has so far been able to achieve this - everyone except the AfD is pro-immigration in some way, or at least was, until very recently. It's only with the recent waves of anti-zionism and anti-semitism that the non-left parties have begun to propose anti-immigration measures. Too little, too late, for the wrong reasons, and I don't believe that they'll go through with it or keep it up once the current outrage has passed. The bigger the AfD gets, the more pressure it puts on the other parties to oppose immigration in general, and that's worth putting up with their lack of platform, decorum, intellect and qualification.
Supporting Wagenknecht, on the other hand, at best temporarily weakens Die Linke, while not actually doing anything to pressure the other parties into shifting their positions. Alright, that's assuming it goes as I predict and her new party goes under shortly. Assuming that it's here to stay and that it magically replaces the left altogether...I guess that's a slight win, since her positions are less absurd? But I really, really don't expect that to happen.
If immigration weren't an issue and nobody had turned my home office view into political propaganda, then I'd support other parties entirely, but I guess I am a two-issue voter for the time being.
Well, if the mainstream press is to be believed, then the AfD will also ruin the country economically, which should reduce pull factors and encourage immigrants and the rootless to emigrate again. Together with whatever immigration restrictions may ever be implemented, this may serve to make the country unattractive enough for the low-fertility native Germans to keep it as theirs for a while longer.
This is nonsense, of course. In my blackpilled view Germany is doomed either way. It's too late for benign ethnonationalism, nobody's got the spine for meritocratic civic nationalism, and whatever else is coming will have little to do with the Germany of yesteryear. But I'm sentimental and spiteful and I'd rather see the ship sink in the name of the people who built it than have its fate decided by a bunch of pirates, mutineers and stowaways.
And I get to hold such pointless views because in the end, I'm just one voter among very many and nobody's listening to me anyways.
Or did you want some kind of detached, impersonal perspective? If so, please specify parameters.
No. The government in general is not respected enough to actually have that kind of impact. Some very fundamental things about politics in Germany would have to change; it requires a very different political landscape (i.e., less fragmented and with institutions less captured by the left), a different kind of politician (not the kind of spineless grifters and bumbling ideologues we presently have), and a different public attitude towards politics (i.e., seeing the government as more than a money redistribution device).
I suspect it would take either a foreign invasion of Poland or even Germany, or a gentle Bundeswehr coup followed by a velvet-gloved non-democracy, or someone very charismatic with cross-partisan appeal reaching Germans and others who dwell in Germany on an emotional level. Right now the natives are too anti-national and the migrants are too detached from Germany as a nation, and the politicans either have contrary commitments or different interests.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link