Exit Polls show AfD will easily win Thuringia. Saxony is close. AfD is expected to win the state election in Brandenburg later this month. Next year, Germany may be ungovernable.
It generally takes at least 5 percent of the vote to have any member in Germany parliament. If the above numbers hold, FDP and the Green party will have no representation in Thuringia.
Die Linke (The Left) will get about 11.5 percent of the vote down from 19.5 percent.
The Guardian has Live Election Results.
A far-right party became the biggest force in a German state parliament for the first time since the second world war in one of two closely watched elections on Sunday, exit polls showed, while a separate new populist force on the left [BSW] established a firm foothold in the country’s political landscape.
Voters in the ex-communist east made their dissatisfaction with Germany’s mainstream political parties deafeningly clear, putting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in the top spot in Thuringia with between 30.5 and 33.5% of the vote, and second place in Saxony with 30-31.5%, according to exit polls.
“It is a historic success for us. It is the first time we have become the strongest force in a state election,” a triumphant Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader, said. “It is a requiem for this coalition (in Berlin).”
The results in Saxony and Thuringia proved disastrous for the three ruling parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left-led federal government, with each scoring in the single digits in both states one year before Germany holds its next general election.
Although the outcome had been predicted for months, the centrist parties proved powerless over the course of the year to reverse the trend and the results sent shock waves through the political landscape.
BSW’s Fabio De Masi has called the new party’s performance “historic,” calling for new federal elections.
Saxony
I was hoping tor a total wipeout of the Greens but it appears they will hang on.
Note that Die Linke (The Left) will get wiped out in Saxony due to the 5 percent threshold requirement.
DW provides an interesting discussion of the German Political Parties.
Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU)
Party Color: BlackBlue
The CDU/CSU pledge to reduce corporate taxes and benefit high-income earners.
On migration, the CDU/CSU stresses its commitment to the fundamental right to asylum, but they want tighter restrictions on who can apply for asylum and they stress the need to deport refugees who have committed criminal offenses in Germany.
The CDU/CSU wants Germany to play a leading role in world affairs. They see Europe and the United States as Germany’s traditional partners.
Social Democratic Party (SPD)
Party Color: Red
The SPD’s core issue has always been social policy such as a minimum wage. The SPD aims to tax the rich while easing the tax burden on low and medium-earners.
Green Party
Party Color: Green
Their supporters marched for everything from ending nuclear power to gay rights — while maintaining the key plank of environmental protection.
The Greens put an emphasis on infrastructure development and plan to finance it all through debt, with the argument that debt is less of a burden in the long run than decaying infrastructure.
Environmental concerns remain core: Ranging from the phase-out of combustion engines in cars to renewable energy to create electricity and heating.
In terms of social policy, the Greens advocate a mandatory minimum pension payout subsidized through an increase in tax revenue, while a new system is established to which civil servants would also contribute. They also support a “guaranteed income,” an increase in the minimum wage. They want to ease pressure on low and medium-earners by raising the amount of income exempt from income tax. The difference is to be made up by raising taxes for higher earners.
In terms of foreign policy, they want a tough values-based approach that more directly criticizes China and Russia for human rights violations.
Free Democratic Party (FDP)
Party Color: Yellow
Personal freedom, and restricting the power of the state, have been the party’s guiding principles.
The FDP wants to combat climate change by promoting new technologies and it has promised to accelerate Germany’s sluggish digitalization drive.
The party’s program is founded on the principles of individual freedom and civil rights. It has always campaigned for more tax cuts. The FDP opposes expropriations, rent control, or rent caps and wants to see an increase in owner-occupied homes.
The FDP wants more privatization, opposes a speed limit on the autobahn, and believes that technology will sort out the adverse effects of climate change.
It would like to introduce a statutory equity pension based on the Swedish model rather than prop up the current pension system from the state coffers.
The FDP is a pro-European party and wants to enable skilled workers to migrate to Germany under a points system based on the Canadian model. War refugees are to be granted temporary protection status quickly with minimum bureaucracy and should return home swiftly after the relevant conflict has ended.
The party is critical of Russia and China and supports Germany’s partnership with the United States and its role in the European Union.
Die Linke (Left Party)
Party Color: Magenta
The Left is the only major German party that rejects military missions abroad.[I question if this is still true]. It also wants NATO to be dissolved and the minimum wage to be raised dramatically. Some political scientists still see the Left as a radical party that ultimately seeks to overturn the capitalist economic order, but the party itself actually only advocates stronger market regulation, stronger rental caps, and more social investment.
The Left Party rejects deportations, wants to dissolve the EU border protection agency, Frontex and demands asylum for poverty, environmental, and climate refugees. It wants to give all long-term residents the right to vote and to stand for election on the federal level.
It wants a higher minimum wage and to lower the retirement age and introduce a “solidarity minimum pension” financed through tax revenue, paid for by tax increases for the very rich.
AfD Alternative for Germany
Party Color: Light blue
The AfD wants to prevent refugees from heading to Germany at all. The party wants to immediately deport anyone whose application for political asylum is rejected.
The party insists on the primacy of “traditional” German culture and rejects Islam as a part of German society. It also questions the notion that climate change is man-made, wants to uphold family values and opposes diversity and gender issues.
The AfD wants to limit NATO’s operational area to the territory of its member states and replace the EU with a new organization.
Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht (BSW)
The Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance is left-wing on economic issues: social justice, job security, higher wages, generous benefits and a revamped tax system. Close to the far-right on issues like immigration and gender diversity.
Foreign policy: The BSW is critical of sending weapons to Ukraine and its supporters in the Russo-Ukrainian War, and blames NATO for escalating the conflict. In reference to the Israel–Hamas war, Wagenknecht described the Gaza Strip as an “open-air prison.”
Climate policy: Opposes the shift toward renewable energy.
Coalition Math
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Thuringia said it will seek talks to explore the possibility of forming a state government, reiterating that there will be no cooperation with the AfD.
Yeah, good luck with that. Die Linke want to dissolve the border while AfD and BSW want to stop immigration.
It will be impossible to get a coalition majority without AfD or BSW, both of which are staunchly anti-immigration.
I fail to see how any sensible coalitions can form given this mix of platforms in either Thuringia or Saxony.
The Brandenburg election is on September 22 2024. AfD is expected to win.
Conclusion
At least three German states will be ungovernable by the end of September.
Federal elections in Germany will be held on September 28 2025 to elect the members of the 21st Bundestag.
France is Now Ungovernable Following a Pyrrhic Victory for the Left-Green Alliance
On July 7, 2024 I noted France is Now Ungovernable Following a Pyrrhic Victory for the Left-Green Alliance
It’s September 1 and France is still struggling to determine a Prime Minister.
If AfD and BSW do as well as polls suggest, Germany may be ungovernable as well. This is what happens when you collude to keep the winner out of power.
Addendum
A reader notes Sonstige means “everyone else”. Wikipedia described Sonstige as a left-wing, progressive, anti-military party.
‘Far Right? Hardly.
AfD, Sbu, and Bsw do have common interests and all want to govern. They might find a way to compromise, especially not wanting to disappoint supporters who want to see action.
Far right, is just the regular right,except the left is so far left its outside Pluto’s orbit at this point. Strange how the political dialogue has been so twisted that wanting to have a physical border on a country (which is defined by physical borders) is now considered “Ultra Right”.
what planet is this?
Definitely, the northern part is turning into the planet of monkeys, planet of apes is a step up.
“Far right…..”
Has pretty much nothing to do with the “right” in the American tradition at all.
Europe, and by now also America, is still stuck in the narrow confine of the 1930s era European intellectual prison. Where the traditional “right”, meaning conservatives, no longer existed at all. Instead, all that was left, was International; “proletariat of the world unite” Marxist Socialism on the nominal “left”; vs National; wave flags and stomp boots; socialism on the nominal “right.”
In the end, both won: The former in Russia, the latter in Germany. Neither turned out all that well…. Surprise, surprise….
But hey, it wouldn’t be the #DumbAge if it wasn’t for doubling down on Dumb. So here we are again…..
All while the “real”, meaningfully different, “right” worked like a charm while it lasted, in the US: The “right” with darned near no government budgets. No standing army at all. NO restrictions on neither speech, travel/immigration nor owning and bearing anything.
Compared to this latest #DumbAge sandbox fight between the same old recycled interpretations of totalitarian socialism from the ’30s; this American “right”; rebranded “hard right” by the 30s since America was by then socialist too; is still the only one which meaningfully differs from the two, barely different at all, versions of the same old Euro totalitarian socialism on offer to the dimwitted indoctrinati yet again.
But, again:#DumbAge.
Why can’t the CDU form a coalition with BSW? I think the CDU would compromise on immigration since it isn’t a topic that’s winning voters anyway
BSW are not compromisers at all. Opposition to compromise, was a significant reason for their founding.
While far more “interesting” to observe than the more muddleheaded traditional parties, I also can’t imagine they would even know what to do with actual power. It’s easy to be a principled Libertarian/Anarchist, since the answer is always to just get rid of more, come what may. But being principled totalitarians??” That’s simply too intractably incoherent.
But with the kind of size they have quickly attained; especially if the rest continues to freeze AfD out as beyond the pale; BSW can end up in a position to extract plenty of concessions from the established parties, in exchange for case-by-case support.
It is now extreme right (“like Hitler, fascism”) to stand for traditional values, punish criminals instead of victims, and defending the border.
For everybody who actually votes AfD there are two people who basically think the same way but have been cowed/shamed from supporting such a maligned party. (cooties)
The Greens are by birth and by their political behavior (pro-War; force their virtues on the whole nation; criminalize dissent, only approved public discourse) the real Nazis.
Only idiots and liars call parties like the AfD “far right”. I’ll be generous and assume that Mish is trolling the audience to get more hits to his website.
It seems as if there has been an inflection.
ungovernable? what a crock of hyperbole. democracy is a messy affair since ancient greeks invented this stuff. look at pax dumbfuckistan. we lived through a grifter donald and a corpse joe…….we might bust up into 50 states but people will govern in EU and Amerika.
Ungovernable doesn’t mean the state will collapse.
It means that none of the policies advocated by parties in the election will come about. It means the state is actually governed by an unelected, largely invisible bureaucracy and connected policy wonks.
In addition, no one in government is accountable for its actions as long as they are not conspicuously criminal in nature. The only substantive things accomplished are those that can be counted on to waste a lot of money. Success, achievement and positive outcomes are way down the list of priorities.
loss of basic comprehension seems to be a feature of modern education. you are correct in your definition of “ungovernable” . you’d think it would be obvious, but obviously not in the current world where “words are violence” and other nonsense memes subvert logic and thought into rote emotional reaction to “trigger” words.
that’s not salt, it’s Narcan. easy.
The problem is that the idiot cult in every country keep calling normal people “far right” and thus prevent themselves from ever forming a viable alliance, even when it’s blindingly obvious what common issues the majority of voters around the developed world, want.
What exactly are the “common issues” that the majority of voters around the developed world want? Got a list? Because I would love to see it.
Uhhh… maybe stop importing people from foreign, violent and backward cultures. Stop forcing people to act like homosexual unions are equivalent to heterosexual marriage, stop forcing people to pretend that a boy can become a girl – and vice versa. Stop having drag queens in kindergartens. Stop censoring and deplatforming anyone who has a different opinion. Stop arm-twisting formerly sovereign nations to accede to all demands of the American hegemony.
those are all just indicators of a sick twisted crumbling evil empire. happens to them all.
Thanks for that list. A bit odd though.
I was expecting something more like a Maslow’s needs list. You know:
1. Basic needs: adequate water, food, shelter, clothes, electricity,
2. Security: employment, property, health, freedom of movement
3. Belonging: family, friends, religious freedom, culture, national pride
4. Opportunity: to succeed and be successful
I believe that those things would rank much higher with most voters around the world.
Your list kind of boils down to: freedom to hate and attack anyone different than you.
Thanks for telling me a little bit about who you are though.
Yeah, I’m a little old fashioned. I remember when drag shows were in gay bars not kindergartens. Not hating anyone – just leave the kids alone.
I have not been to a gay bar. Did you go very often? Were the drag shows fun?
I was in one once almost 40 years ago with friends. Not my deal, but to each his own. I do find it interesting that the “open-minded” often ultimately resort to anti-gay jokes. Don’t worry, though. I don’t want you censored or deplatformed.
Thanks!
Yes. To each his own. Words to live by.
You bring a drag Queen to my kids school and you will regret it, plain and simple.
He would probably struggle to persuade one to follow him, much like with his comments.
It’s amazing how fast the “tolerant” ones use homosexuality as a slur when it suits them
Why are you a troll? Is trolling fun?
most trolls are paid to do it, but some are just lonely.
is it papadave, or papatroll?
The deflection is making your argument weaker. Try again.
The first three things in your list make sense as long as you don’t add on a whole bunch of things to them that are your particular concerns. Which is what you did, of course.
Four and five on your list threaten many individuals if they are as you define them.
Then you top the list off with sneering, passive/aggressive hate comments about anyone who disagrees with you.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is not very convincing. Living Systems Theory by James Grier Miller, is a better read and his ideas make more sense than Maslow.
But adjusting your own odd list…
Ethnic and cultural Identity and territory that is part of if is the missing context from your list.
1. Basic needs: adequate water, food, shelter, clothes, electricity, within your country for your people (family, tribe, ethnic group, ethnic state)
2. Security: employment, property, health, freedom of movement within your country for your people exclusively and not for outsiders (defined as of the same ethnicity, blood, mtDNA, culture, and all the obvious things that you will probably pretend not to know)
3. Belonging: family, friends, religious freedom, culture, national pride for your people in your country and not outsiders
4. Opportunity: to succeed and be successful for your people in your country and not outsiders.
As an American you live in a state that is not an organic ethnic state, but more like a corporation that hires citizens.
Importing civic state concepts from new world places like the USA into ethnic state places like in Europe is part of the problem. Essentially the price of Pax Americana is the undermining and attempted destruction of organic homogeneous ethnic states in Europe.
Sentient’s list is actually quite normal and popular in most places outside the insane West.
Try the LGBTQLMNOP+++ schtick in Africa and much od Asia. Let us know how that’s received.
Your list is after the collapse of America thanks to people that think like you do
all the men are good looking and all the women strong
An end to the leftist march through the institutions.
An end to mass immigration.
An end to wokefascist polcies like transism and greenism and all the other dogshit they pump out – but hey, carry on acting like you don’t know.
In France we are waiting for some white smoke coming from the Elysée but it will take a while longer. We have the Olympic truce and the Paralympics are still going on till Sept 8th. After we will see. We will probably have a milquetoast socialist prime minister in the end but Macron will still be calling the shots. LePen has agreed “in principle” so she must has gotten some goodies on immigration. The far Left Mélenchon is closed out and now even being contested in his own faction and that is a very good thing. Looks like a wide center is possible.
Europe seems doomed simply because the number of people who don’t vote allow idiot cult leftists to get a larger say in wrecking the countries than they would otherwise get. It’s a case for coercing people to vote just to purge the left from government.
Participation rates in Europe are usually higher than in the US. Some like Belgium fine you if you don’t vote.
I would be broke by now in Belgium.
Yes. There are over 20 countries with mandatory voting. Fines for not voting vary.
I would be happy to pay the fine if we ever do the same in the US.
Why pay the fine?
You can always write your own name on the ballot and vote for yourself. That satisfies the requirement of voting to avoid a fine and at the same time opts you out of the voting process itself.
What if you win? Then you will have to clean up all the messes.
Why bother with a fine when you can bind voting with taxation?
No representation without taxation seems reasonable in the USA.
I’ll see your vote and negate it with an absentee ballot deposited in a drop box.
Maybe I’ll even raise you a vote and drop in two absentee ballots!
Not many Flemish like Belgium, there’s a strong movement to break away, which with mass immigration will only get stronger as people seek to protect what they have left from the invasion.
Hungary, wants to send the illegal migrants it receives to Brussels. I think its an excellent idea, and Brussels can show the world how it deals with illegal immigration as its streets overflow..
Under no rational assessment is more Macron a good thing. Free Pavel Durov!
Germany Ungovernable? France too? Add in the US?
So what does this mean for the average person? To me, it means to focus your energy on improving your own life. Because there is nothing you can do to change the political situation; except to take advantage of it as best you can.
You can change things but you have to start by the grassroots and work up.
How is that working for you so far in France?
That statement is too general to respond to. Please narrow it down a bit.
Lol! Okay.
How is the grassroots change going in France?
And in addition: which party (or parties) is responsible for this grassroots change.
LePen’s Rassemblement National in its pressent form is the fruit of a grassroots reorganization of about fifteen years that took it from two seats in parliament in 2012 to the 142 it has today.
you seem to embrace a life worth living per the inventors of democracy. the wise ancient greeks. men that don’t participate in their politics are just nihilists. papa dave seems to wear his with some great pride. the banality of evil in other words. most of amerikans are right there.
He is an ulta-Libertarian. Since hardly any candidates are pure enough for them, they end up never voting at all.
your ancestors would disagree.
My ancestors are from Ukraine.
So you see yourself as just passing through so no need to bother about voting.
Nope. I simply consider it a waste of my time. The odds of my vote making any kind of difference is very tiny.
However, I will defend everyone’s right to vote. Certainly, Vote if you want to.
But stop with the political bickering and hate for those who don’t vote the same as you. That kind of hate is only tearing countries apart.
a place with basically no history of self rule. no offense of course. i assumed you live in pax dumbfuckistan. land of the nihilists.
My grandfather had his farm taken from him in Ukraine. He was fortunate enough to be put on a ship and arrived in the US; the land of opportunity. He started with nothing, but took advantage of the opportunity this great country provided him to make a wonderful life.
Voters is what kept it a land of opportunity, PapaDave. That is the basic fact that allowed your grandfather to prosper.
They are ungovernable because the elites keep trying to find ways to deny what the critical mass of normal voters want, and invest energy in smearing them, and pandering to noisy fringe extremists. The UK is an example – 20% of the voters have led to another cryptofascist Labour government that 80% already hate after a few weeks. It’s just because a third of people don’t vote. As soon as the Tory vote collapses, because the Tory voters realise that Tories are socialists, they let Labour in to continue destroying everything.
What critical mass of voters is that?
Yes, hate is rampant.
Thanks for supporting my point. Look after yourself, your family, and your friends. Because government won’t. No matter what party is governing.
local gov is best. but one lives in a large empire. think like a libertarian at national level. a small R old fashioned not MAGA idiot at state level. an old fashioned D good local services at city level and think like a marxist with family and friends………….hat tip Taleb i’m paraphrasing. switzerland does it best.
My focus has always been on family and friends. Not much time for the rest.
You assume too much of your family and friends – their betrayals are often the worst of all.
Perhaps that has been your experience. You then project that experience on to others.
I remain focused on my family and friends. But, you are free to focus on whatever you want.
Oh perhaps it’s an observation of the deluded I see around me, and you are reacting defensively out of a deep-seated fear of betrayal that you refuse to face?
You are free to delude yourself about your relationships as much as you want.
Hate towards the voters by the leftist establishment, and their media, yes.
The critical mass being the bulk of the normal distribution; and if, for the sake of pedantry, and to pick at it, let’s go for a pareto quanta of 80% of those who actually vote, distributed across parties.
Obviously people don’t vote for all the shit smuggled into omnibus bills and parties, they generally vote for what they believe is non-radical and that which will not undermine prosperity.
Brexit was the clearest expression of that, but reading between the lines of various polls and actual votes, the general mood in most developed countries is that unprecedented mass immigration, both legal and illegal is unwanted; except by the elites, who don’t have to live with it and the negative effects of it.
Certainly it’s true that most governments do not do what the voters really want, but it’s also not true to generalise that all are equally bad.
One hopes that the attempts by Britain’s aspiring Orwellian government throwing dissenting native working-class voters in jail for being angry about unwanted immigration that they consistently vote against, will backfire, given that IngSoc (i.e.: the Labour Party) is alienating the very proles it’s supposed to specifically serve.
Large numbers of people are not so naive as you seem to insinuate, they vote for people like Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Wilders, because they are told not to, and they want to gesticulate at the finger-wagging leftist puritan fascists.
Hopefully the peasants will remember the tradition of revolting and not be cowed by the threats, smears, and arbitrary injustices, and escalate matters as the economic stress grows and unemployment rises.
Funny. You say the left promotes hate. Then you spend the rest of your time spewing the same hate.
Thanks for proving my point that political involvement just keeps promoting more hate all around.
That’s not hate.
Buy a dictionary.
Then read it a bit.
Again with the “Far Right” in your articles, but no matter how many times I ask you what that means you never reply to me. But since I am stubborn, let me ask you again, what does that term mean to you since you keep using it.
the party’s top candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke has been fined twice for using a Nazi slogan.
How do you label someone who uses Nazi slogans?
Or do you dispute that he did?
“Everything for Germany” was the slogan once engraved on the knives of Nazi storm troopers.
Now, should “Everything for Germany” be banned?
Of course not.
NYTimes “To his supporters, he is a kind of linguistic freedom fighter, trying to reclaim unfairly maligned words, and more broadly, to preserve their conception of an ethnic German culture. … He has called Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame.””
Is that Left? Right? Far Right?
Far right seems appropriate
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/23/world/europe/germany-extremism-hocke-afd-nazi.html
He wasn’t “using a Nazi slogan”, he was using a phrase that his political enemies deliberately mischaracterised as the worst thing in the world.
We all know it’s bullshit, as much as CPI is, and we shouldn’t humour it.
BINGO. see what’s going on in Israel. the Zionist BS is being callled out even by most jews. thank heavens. Amerikans are the most zionist humans on planet. they are mostly stooooopid.
Alas the same can’t be said for the pretend palestinians who are actually Jordanian arabs lying to steal land from Israel.
You can see where Orwell’s Duck Talk came from… you get to the point where most words that mean anything are just banned. Why not just make the word “germany” a taboo as well, just ban it regardless of which words you put beside it… e.g.: “rhubarb kangeroo Germany” … FAR RIGHT!!! QUICK BAN THEM!!… it really is the banality of evil, but from the enemies of normal people who seize anything to smear them and stop them from getting what they vote for. It’s a disingenuous game, and you’re indulging it.
BANALITY OF EVIL. my favorite term of all time. not one in 100 amerikans have a clue. all the hasidic jews i live around in brooklyn know it. they know.
Why not google Adolf Eichmann instead of just thrashing at your keyboard.
Kamala Harris made “Joy” the theme of the DNC. It’s an obvious dogwhistle to the Nazi slogan “Strength Through Joy”.
Far right Kamala.
ha ha ha. love it. stealing that.
That’s where all this ducktalk censorship gets us… words are destroyed and all we get is shrill shrieks, yells, screams, bellows, grunts, growls and howls. Censorship and lies turns humans into animals, and thence to war.
he’s not far right. he’s a nationalist. in past 150 years or so, right wing generally means someone or party that wants NO change. the old GOP in the 1920s were right wing. in amerika we have no more right wing. just big government uniparty D and R. Mussolini invented fascism which combined the elements of the unions with the industrialists to battle against the communists. modern amerika is fascist. also called corporatist. i’ve been shocked in our lifetimes both the USSR collapsed in 1991, and the continent of europe united in 1993. a continent of nations who had killed each other continuously for centuries. it was a miracle. and also, the greatest financial scam was when italy and greece were able to combine their junk paper with germany and france for the currency………i vote in italia. and 2 states in amerika. the right wing is no more. there are no conservatives left in USA or EU. they all love gigantic huge governments……..spoke with some germans in california recently. they are sick and tired of paying for the sins of hitler and their idiotic grandparents………..i was making them chuckle with my light hearted nazi jokes. my dad guarded nazis in ww2. all my uncles fought in the heaviest battles there. 2 of my uncles at battle of the bulge. a good hitler joke was always told growing up to keep them laughing………at such horror.
“….…i vote in italia. and 2 states in amerika. …”
Isn’t voting in two states illegal? It’s my understanding that a voter in the US must declare a primary residence and the jurisdiction in which their primary residence resides is the only jurisdiction a voter can legally cast a vote.
I’m thinking he meant that he’s lived in 2 different states in America and voted in those states when he lived there.
Sorry, but a link to the NYT is an automatic down vote in my book.
when you outlaw words, only outlaws will have words.If words are so dangerous they must be outlawed, then thoughts must be lethal….
The NYT……lol
Think of it as a bowling lane. The gutter on the right is the Far Right with extreme conservative policies. The gutter on the left is the Far Left with extreme liberal policies. The strike zone is somewhere in the middle. You’ll garner a bad score being a gutter-ball on either side
my compliments to the chef of the analogy.
Think of it as half a roof, where one half is higher than the other, but everyone pretends that it isn’t, and that the roof is actually pitched in the middle, when in fact it’s halfway down the slope. It’s just shifting the window of perspective and playing with words to try and ram through an agenda.
Once the ball is in the gutter it usually stays there.
not when you put the guard rails in the gutter so no kid gets a gutter ball. like the amerikan military. even the losers of wars get medals……….
unless it’s a rugby ball, or a crap metaphor.
“The gutter on the right is the Far Right with extreme conservative policies.”
There is nothing “conservative” about building a police state strong enough to prevent the Mayflower from landing in Massachusetts.A government sufficiently limited to need asking politely to bum a ride if they wanted to meet those darned Pilgrims, is conservative.
Any government with sufficient size and relative power vs the individuals they are supposed to; strictly and literally and nothing else, SERVE; to be in any sort of position to operate as either Marxist/International Socialists, or National Socialists; has nothing in common with conservatism all.
Especially so American conservatism.
I will get scared when the MSM screams panic ultra-right. Up until then, it’s voters exercising their right to vote out one regime.
Come on MSM (BBC,CBC,Guardian), you can do better, and start by allowing reader comments to your news pieces without repercussions.
Mish Sonstige is not a party, just means misc. or other
Thanks added an addendum
Votes for parties that have no representation will be proportionately awarded to the other parties. This will bolster their percentage representation quite a bit by the looks of it.
“Sonstige” must include dozens of tiny parties, including my evergreen favorite, Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität – BüSo, the Lyndon LaRouche political party of Germany, which runs in every election since the 70s and always gets about 0.04% of the vote.
Why label the AfD as far-right? Their policy, as described above, seems pretty sensible and mainstream to me.
All parties that are not woke, socialist, open border etc are smeared as far right and that applies not to just Germany
Yes, it’s time to learn to resist propaganda.
I question all political labels nowadays. Those words don’t mean what they used to mean.
It takes an extra effort, but we have to decide for ourselves what is right and just, and that requires looking at the details, without blindly adopting biased labels or opinion-words imposed from outside.
The answer is simple – just call all the opponents of them Far Right… the Far Right NYT, the Far Right BBC, the Far Right CNN, the Far Right Guardian… because we all know it’s just being used as a term for “pariah”.
I call the anti-factual media “Far Gone”…
> Their policy, as described above, seems pretty sensible and mainstream to me
Precisely. Labelling AfD “far right” is pure propaganda of an increasingly desperate government coalition bent on destroying Germany as fast as possible , closing down large sections of industry with the “German green madness” and sky-high energy prices (mainly due to the sabotaged NS pipelines), uncontrolled mass immigration, genocide from mRNA “DeathVAX” gene injections, and looming state bankruptcy and positioning the country as a WW3 spearhead thanks to recklessly spending great chunks of German taxpayer’s money on the lost Ukrainian proxy war following orders from US neocons.
AFD is as “far right” as the US Republicans. Why Mish insists on labelling AfD “far right” remains a mystery.
I guess politico called this a few days ago.
Putin’s next coupElections in three eastern German states are likely to usher in Russia-friendly parties, giving the Kremlin a foothold once again.
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-next-coup/
Foothold shmoothold. Paranoiac.
Unmöglich, so sage ich.
Always The russian boogie man if all else fails…really tired argument….smear tulsi gabbard…trump…and all who oppose forever wars…disgusting….
Arbeit macht frei.
ha ha. sick but funny. don’t forget about the pretty little girls playing violins when the middlebrows walked into those camps without a fuss. now their kids are full blown nazis in israel and much of amerika……….
“Far right”. lol
There are element of the party allegedly linked to Nazism
That’s what they say about the GOP, too.
The Democrat party is Far Right. The Green Party is Far Right. etc…
“allegedly” is such a cowardly word… either make the accusation, or don’t.
you are probably reluctant to make the accusation because you aren’t certain if it’s true, in which case it sounds more like you are parroting an insinuation without supporting it with evidence – the essence of propaganda.
BS
The far-right Alternative for Germany and the left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance both won substantial gains in Sunday’s state elections. Both parties have close ties with Russia and oppose support for Ukraine.
…
AfD politician Björn Höcke once promised that if he were ever to become German chancellor, his first trip abroad would not be to Washington — but to Moscow.
https://www.dw.com/en/russias-best-friends-in-germany-afd-and-bsw/a-70072663
So he doesn’t want Germany to continue as an American vassal? Sounds like a good guy.
exactly why i vote 5 star movement in italia. guys like Mish seem very ignorant to the anti amerikan empire and anti zionist in much of EU.
Trip to Moscow as in Barbarossa II?
The Far Right ChipGuy mustn’t be trusted because he might be funded by Russia.
The states in former East Germany are the most conservative because they were once suppressed by communism. They don’t want communist rule again. Looking back, the fear of integrating East Germany economy with West Germany was completely misplaced because East Germans wanted to embrace capitalism more than West Germans were embracing it.
Don’t be surprised if the Brandenburg election results in an outright majority for AfD as unhappy voters realize they cannot rely on any coalition to address the problems
AfD intend to deNazify Germany with more of the same. There is no such thing as individual responsibility, freedom of speech, free markets, and low taxes for died in the wool National Socialist Germans.
^ Incoherent babble.
Turns out a lot of german right wing AfD is funded indirectly from Russian money.
A large part of the right-wing German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) supports Russia, its foreign policy, and its allies.
The German domestic secret service reported based on its findings that Russia is trying to destabilize the democratic system of Germany on many levels. According to the head of the service Thomas Haldenwang, Russian narratives are being spread by parts of the AfD and are contributing to expansion of right-wing extremism.[1][2]
AfD members and activists were listed as keeping close ties with Russian politicians and receiving financial benefits in an OCCRP investigation of Russia’s International Agency for Current Policy.[3]
In 2023 various German media outlets such as Der Spiegel, ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, ZDF Frontal, T-Online, and Correctiv have published findings on the AfD’s connections with Russia. Based on manifestos, trips, quotes and speeches, the “AfD’s systematic shift” (Correctiv) towards Russia has been widely observed.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfD_pro-Russia_movement
I doubt that is true but even if it is how come they are so popular? The citizens voting for their policy aren’t paid for by the russians.
Far Right ChipGuy is funded by Russia… -> https://madeuplinkIfoundonline.com
BS
Why would Russia want to fund a right wing party given Russia isn’t a right wing country itself and is actively fighting against a right wing party in Ukraine?
Follows a pattern of Western ungoverability. I know about a major nation running an election between a carnival pitchman and an accomplishment-free DEI hire.
LOL
Better to have a Barnum running the circus, than to hire the bearded lady.
i met the bearded lady at a freak show in southern CA about 5 years ago. we had a cigarette together. she was out back taking a break.
If they didn’t so heavily suppress and punish free speech in Europe, right wing gov’ts would have been elected throughout Europe long ago.