Germany megathread

[CumbrianLefty]

I believe that it was Macron himself who needlessly started this debate which only distracts from the real issues regarding Ukraine.

Worse IMHO is SPD's main appeaser Rolf Mützenich applauding Scholz for not sending the Taurus missiles, arguing that it prevents Germany from becoming a "warring party"... the same argument the dovesh wing of the SPD had used against Leopard shipments and before that against Marder shipments. According to the version of Mütznenich from summer of 2022 we already have been a "warring party" for the past 18 months now.

Remember Tucker’s unhinged conspiracy theory about how the Ukrainian government declared him a terrorist and are out to assassinate him because some NGO put him up on Myrotvorets? Mützenich was actually the first one to do this back in 2022. Just an absolutely disgusting character.

Dear me, what a dickhead.

[President Johnson]

I believe that it was Macron himself who needlessly started this debate which only distracts from the real issues regarding Ukraine.

Worse IMHO is SPD's main appeaser Rolf Mützenich applauding Scholz for not sending the Taurus missiles, arguing that it prevents Germany from becoming a "warring party"... the same argument the dovesh wing of the SPD had used against Leopard shipments and before that against Marder shipments. According to the version of Mütznenich from summer of 2022 we already have been a "warring party" for the past 18 months now.

Agreed, Macron probably wanted to distract from the fact France is providing way fewer aid to Ukraine than Germany and the UK.

Ukraine policy is definitely what I'm most at odds with my party. Scholz has been way too indecisive over the entire conflict so far, which only emboldened the dictator in the Kremlin to continue his aggression. At this point Greens, FDP and the moderate SPD faction around Michael Roth should just vote with CDU/CSU to demand Taurus shipments.

[Storr]

I believe that it was Macron himself who needlessly started this debate which only distracts from the real issues regarding Ukraine.

Worse IMHO is SPD's main appeaser Rolf Mützenich applauding Scholz for not sending the Taurus missiles, arguing that it prevents Germany from becoming a "warring party"... the same argument the dovesh wing of the SPD had used against Leopard shipments and before that against Marder shipments. According to the version of Mütznenich from summer of 2022 we already have been a "warring party" for the past 18 months now.

Agreed, Macron probably wanted to distract from the fact France is providing way fewer aid to Ukraine than Germany and the UK.

Ukraine policy is definitely what I'm most at odds with my party. Scholz has been way too indecisive over the entire conflict so far, which only emboldened the dictator in the Kremlin to continue his aggression. At this point Greens, FDP and the moderate SPD faction around Michael Roth should just vote with CDU/CSU to demand Taurus shipments.

I agree that Macron's statement about sending troops to Ukraine was a distraction. Scholz has been indecisive over the course of the entire conflict, but at least he's put his money where his mouth is when it comes to supporting Ukraine: "Germany's Kiel Institute, which compiles national contributions to Ukraine’s war effort, ranks France as a clear laggard with €640 million in military aid compared to Germany, which has provided or promised €17.7 billion." At best "a French parliamentary calculation found that France had allocated €1.7 billion", which is still dwarfed by Germany's military contributions to Ukraine.

[Storr]

"A most wanted man: Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek exposed as decade-long GRU spy"

"NEW: Jan Marsalek, the fugitive COO of disgraced company Wirecard, wasn't just behind Germany's biggest financial fraud in history. @InsiderEng can now reveal he was also a GRU agent for a decade."

"This investigation puts the Wirecard graft in a new light. Marsalek wasn't just a thief and a con artist -- he was working for Russian military intelligence at the height of Wirecard's fortunes, when it was on the DAX-30.

Wirecard was a colossal money-laundering front, with clients such as Germany's Federal Criminal Police, whose informants used the company's financial services. Any information Wirecard was privy to was thus easily accessed by Moscow via Marsalek for whatever intelligence purposes Putin and the GRU wanted."

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1763514514668912722?s=20

[President Johnson]

As if we needed further evidence we need to get tougher on Russia's regime.

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1763959169701355879

[jaichind]

AfD's Rolf Weigand is the new mayor of the Saxon city of Grossshire

[Yeahsayyeah]

Of course, you could still post the news without using posting a poster with far-right propagandist framing...

[Estrella]

Some interesting thoughts from an n-tv journalist about Scholz, his willfull obstructionism of Taurus and the justification he came up with at a Q&A with citizens in Dresden. tl;dr it’s not cowardice, or not just cowardice — he might be trying to reposition SPD’s foreign policy to be closer to AfD/Linke/Wagenknecht.

https://twitter.com/hwieduwilt/status/1763469526300057674

I see it completely differently: Scholz is starting the election campaign. His target is clearly the peace movement and the fearful. Putin will not be able to understand it any other way than as:  To Moscow with love.

It's almost divine that seasoned professional observers here are acting as if Scholz is a little fool who constantly has the wrong things falling out of his face. Yes, he can't communicate - but he can certainly strategize. And he always says things carefully.

Incidentally, it is a common disinformation technique to link an accusation with a supposed decontextualization. I treated myself to the full-length Citizens' Assembly and fell off my chair at the scene without any help from Twitter.

Scholz performs Schrödinger's solidarity: it's there and it's not. The cat was dead during the Citizens' Dialogue. And the little animal has very bad prospects - because soon the East will be voting.

[Middle-aged Europe]

AfD's Rolf Weigand is the new mayor of the Saxon city of Grossshire

Großschirma, actually.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Some interesting thoughts from an n-tv journalist about Scholz, his willfull obstructionism of Taurus and the justification he came up with at a Q&A with citizens in Dresden. tl;dr it’s not cowardice, or not just cowardice — he might be trying to reposition SPD’s foreign policy to be closer to AfD/Linke/Wagenknecht.

https://twitter.com/hwieduwilt/status/1763469526300057674

I see it completely differently: Scholz is starting the election campaign. His target is clearly the peace movement and the fearful. Putin will not be able to understand it any other way than as:  To Moscow with love.

It's almost divine that seasoned professional observers here are acting as if Scholz is a little fool who constantly has the wrong things falling out of his face. Yes, he can't communicate - but he can certainly strategize. And he always says things carefully.

Incidentally, it is a common disinformation technique to link an accusation with a supposed decontextualization. I treated myself to the full-length Citizens' Assembly and fell off my chair at the scene without any help from Twitter.

Scholz performs Schrödinger's solidarity: it's there and it's not. The cat was dead during the Citizens' Dialogue. And the little animal has very bad prospects - because soon the East will be voting.

It's the old Gerd Schröder election strategy from 2002.

Back then the SPD was more aggressively opposed to the Iraq invasion than the Greens (who were also opposed to it but generally communicated in a more subdued manner). The SPD went a bit overboard with it too, considering that justice minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin lost her job after comparing George W. Bush with Adolf Hitler during the election campaign.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Left-wing extremists have successfully sabotaged the Tesla Gigafactory in the state of Brandenburg, cutting it off from the power supply and causing the plant to be shut down for the next couple of days:


https://www.dw.com/en/germany-tesla-gigafactory-hit-by-far-left-sabotage/a-68440976

[President Johnson]

Some interesting thoughts from an n-tv journalist about Scholz, his willfull obstructionism of Taurus and the justification he came up with at a Q&A with citizens in Dresden. tl;dr it’s not cowardice, or not just cowardice — he might be trying to reposition SPD’s foreign policy to be closer to AfD/Linke/Wagenknecht.

https://twitter.com/hwieduwilt/status/1763469526300057674

I see it completely differently: Scholz is starting the election campaign. His target is clearly the peace movement and the fearful. Putin will not be able to understand it any other way than as:  To Moscow with love.

It's almost divine that seasoned professional observers here are acting as if Scholz is a little fool who constantly has the wrong things falling out of his face. Yes, he can't communicate - but he can certainly strategize. And he always says things carefully.

Incidentally, it is a common disinformation technique to link an accusation with a supposed decontextualization. I treated myself to the full-length Citizens' Assembly and fell off my chair at the scene without any help from Twitter.

Scholz performs Schrödinger's solidarity: it's there and it's not. The cat was dead during the Citizens' Dialogue. And the little animal has very bad prospects - because soon the East will be voting.

That would be a disatrous strategy and won't work. Honestly if Scholz or SPD were actually reverting back to blustering over "diplomacy" and an appeasement policy towards Russia, even I would have second thoughts about who to vote for. Apparently some people like Mützenich still don't get it that appeasement only emboldens the dictator in the Kremlin.

[Estrella]

Norbert Röttgen (CDU) and Anton Hofreiter (Greens) wrote an op-ed in today's FAZ, titled The Catastrophic Defeatism of the Chancellor. Besides the obvious fact that Hofreiter is an important member of a governing party, until now his approach to Scholz's hesitation was a basically conciliatory 'it's bad, but we'll sort it out together'. Now the gloves are off. As you can imagine from the title, they tear Scholz to shreds.

https://twitter.com/michael_leh/status/1766915906880282805

Nuclear war. Escalation. War party. Those are the buzzwords that the Chancellor has coined since 24 February 2022 and that signal only one thing to Putin: he can continue breaking international law and norms and invade countries without any serious consequences.

When in April 2022 it came to sending of heavy weapons to Ukraine that had been blocked by the federal government for two agonizing months, the Chancellor started unnecessarily talking about the danger of a nuclear war. Putin could celebrate. He basically didn't need to do anything, Germany scared itself.

Why then does the Chancellor keeping using the nuclear war card? There is an obvious fear that next year, the war will become the topic of electoral campaign. The message to the people in 2025 will be: our Chancellor kept you out of war. Prudence is his middle name. Translated, it means: he is ready to weaken Europe and the West and do less than he can for Ukraine for domestic political reasons.

Scholz's explanation for why he won't send Taurus was "I am the chancellor, that's why" (yes, he literally said that). If you tell people that something will happen only over your dead body, they might take it the wrong way.

[President Johnson]

Norbert Röttgen (CDU) and Anton Hofreiter (Greens) wrote an op-ed in today's FAZ, titled The Catastrophic Defeatism of the Chancellor. Besides the obvious fact that Hofreiter is an important member of a governing party, until now his approach to Scholz's hesitation was a basically conciliatory 'it's bad, but we'll sort it out together'. Now the gloves are off. As you can imagine from the title, they tear Scholz to shreds.

https://twitter.com/michael_leh/status/1766915906880282805

Nuclear war. Escalation. War party. Those are the buzzwords that the Chancellor has coined since 24 February 2022 and that signal only one thing to Putin: he can continue breaking international law and norms and invade countries without any serious consequences.

When in April 2022 it came to sending of heavy weapons to Ukraine that had been blocked by the federal government for two agonizing months, the Chancellor started unnecessarily talking about the danger of a nuclear war. Putin could celebrate. He basically didn't need to do anything, Germany scared itself.

Why then does the Chancellor keeping using the nuclear war card? There is an obvious fear that next year, the war will become the topic of electoral campaign. The message to the people in 2025 will be: our Chancellor kept you out of war. Prudence is his middle name. Translated, it means: he is ready to weaken Europe and the West and do less than he can for Ukraine for domestic political reasons.

Scholz's explanation for why he won't send Taurus was "I am the chancellor, that's why" (yes, he literally said that). If you tell people that something will happen only over your dead body, they might take it the wrong way.

At this point I think he's merely opposing Taurus for opposing Taurus. He said it so many times that he can't walk back. Honestly it's kind of embarrassing and only enables Putin. And Putin has no respect for indecisive leaders.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

The American citizen Troy B., who raped and murdered an American woman and tried to murder her friend also near Neuschwanstein Castle last year, has been sentenced to life without parole.
But Troy is quite lucky under the circumstances given: German prisons are basically five-star hotels.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1768245945198628908

We call it Buntland. 🌈

[Middle-aged Europe]

After left-wing extremists had sabotaged his plant, Elon flew in and took control of the situation, personally. Afterwards he had a photo-op with a couple of male government officials from CDU and SPD, most notably the governing mayor of Berlin and the minister-president of the state of Tesla Brandenburg.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

A survey of 1,296 CDU/CSU voters shows who they believe would be the best candidate for Chancellor in 2025:

• 34% CSU boss Markus Söder
• 29% NRW minister-president Hendrik Wüst
• 20% for the incumbent chairman of the CDU, Fredrich Merz
• 9% for minister-president Daniel Günther from Schleswig-Holstein

A decision is not due until the results of the state elections in the east in September, but absolutely brutal for Merz.

[President Johnson]

A survey of 1,296 CDU/CSU voters shows who they believe would be the best candidate for Chancellor in 2025:

• 34% CSU boss Markus Söder
• 29% NRW minister-president Hendrik Wüst
• 20% for the incumbent chairman of the CDU, Fredrich Merz
• 9% for minister-president Daniel Günther from Schleswig-Holstein

A decision is not due until the results of the state elections in the east in September, but absolutely brutal for Merz.

I'm still pretty confident that the Union will end up running him as candidate. He's certainly playing the role of a candidate very well and the two sister parties will definitely avoid the nomination debacle of 2021 between Laschet and Söder.

Ironically, Mr. Black Rock is definitely is Olaf's best shot to get reelected.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Last week, in reaction to the new cannabis law, the CDU/CSU state governments took out their frustration and blocked the Online Access Act 2.0 ("OZG") in the Bundesrat, which was passed by the Bundestag back in February.

Since the opposing prime ministers did not even attempt to explain their decision to block the law, we can only assume that there are no factual objections to the OZG, and the Union parties are primarily doing this as a way of frustrating the Scholz government. Benefits for Germany be damned.

In the previous weeks, the Ministry of the Interior attempted to reach a compromise by making major concessions to the states, but received unconstructive resistance anyways. The law is not dead, but instead now is forced into a mediation committee, which will delay the law's implementation by weeks, if not months. In the meantime, German citizens and companies will continue to suffer from Germany's public administration being permanently stuck in 2005 and the lack of administrative services online, long queues in the Citizen's Registration Office, and all the economic costs that go along with it.

Another great example of how the CDU does nothing except sit on top of this country and hold it back👍

[MaxQue]

Last week, in reaction to the new cannabis law, the CDU/CSU state governments took out their frustration and blocked the Online Access Act 2.0 ("OZG") in the Bundesrat, which was passed by the Bundestag back in February.

Since the opposing prime ministers did not even attempt to explain their decision to block the law, we can only assume that there are no factual objections to the OZG, and the Union parties are primarily doing this as a way of frustrating the Scholz government. Benefits for Germany be damned.

In the previous weeks, the Ministry of the Interior attempted to reach a compromise by making major concessions to the states, but received unconstructive resistance anyways. The law is not dead, but instead now is forced into a mediation committee, which will delay the law's implementation by weeks, if not months. In the meantime, German citizens and companies will continue to suffer from Germany's public administration being permanently stuck in 2005 and the lack of administrative services online, long queues in the Citizen's Registration Office, and all the economic costs that go along with it.

Another great example of how the CDU does nothing except sit on top of this country and hold it back👍

And how the SPD and the Greens enables them to do so, by entering state level coalitions with them. This is 100% self-inflicted.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Last week, in reaction to the new cannabis law, the CDU/CSU state governments took out their frustration and blocked the Online Access Act 2.0 ("OZG") in the Bundesrat, which was passed by the Bundestag back in February.

Since the opposing prime ministers did not even attempt to explain their decision to block the law, we can only assume that there are no factual objections to the OZG, and the Union parties are primarily doing this as a way of frustrating the Scholz government. Benefits for Germany be damned.

In the previous weeks, the Ministry of the Interior attempted to reach a compromise by making major concessions to the states, but received unconstructive resistance anyways. The law is not dead, but instead now is forced into a mediation committee, which will delay the law's implementation by weeks, if not months. In the meantime, German citizens and companies will continue to suffer from Germany's public administration being permanently stuck in 2005 and the lack of administrative services online, long queues in the Citizen's Registration Office, and all the economic costs that go along with it.

Another great example of how the CDU does nothing except sit on top of this country and hold it back👍

And how the SPD and the Greens enables them to do so, by entering state level coalitions with them. This is 100% self-inflicted.

Well, it's either that or pushing them into the arms of the AfD for the lack of a governing alternative.

It very rarely happens that SPD and/or Greens prefer a coalition with the CDU when a outright SPD-Green majority actually exists (it tends to get more complicated when a third party in form of the FDP or Left is required... Kretschmann in Baden-Württemberg didn't bother with trying, his colleagues in Bremen or Rhineland-Palatinate did).

[Middle-aged Europe]

Not very surprisingly, when it comes to foreign policy views and particularly with regards to Germany's membership in EU and NATO there are two relatively coherent blocs of voters with diametrically opposed views:

- CDU, SPD, and Green voters (pro-EU/NATO)

- AfD and BSW voters (anti-EU/NATO, or at least not as unanimously supportive as the aforementioned bloc)

This is the result of infratest-dimap's most recent polling, pages 19 and 25:
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-pdf-140.pdf


You can almost certainly throw FDP in with that first camp. The Left Party doesn't appear in that poll either, because like the FDP it is probably regarded as statistically too insignificant.

Interestingly, some earlier polling from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW) from about a month ago indicated that the Left Party's anti-Wagenknechtian remnant actually seems to align with the CDU/SPD/Green camp rather than the AfD/BSW one on foreign policy.

FGW had ascertained the opposition to supplying the Ukrainian military with Taurus cruise missiles. This was the distribution of "NO" votes among the supporters of the various parties:

AfD 90%
BSW 85%
Free Voters 69%
SPD 65%
Left Party 57%
CDU/CSU 47%
FDP 44%
Greens 38%

(Source: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/politbarometer-taurus-ukraine-100.html)


Bottomline is that there seems to be foreign policy split that is reminiscent of the one that has occurred between Democrats and GOP (or at least Trumpists) in the U.S.

[President Johnson]

Not very surprisingly, when it comes to foreign policy views and particularly with regards to Germany's membership in EU and NATO there are two relatively coherent blocs of voters with diametrically opposed views:

- CDU, SPD, and Green voters (pro-EU/NATO)

- AfD and BSW voters (anti-EU/NATO, or at least not as unanimously supportive as the aforementioned bloc)

This is the result of infratest-dimap's most recent polling, pages 19 and 25:
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-pdf-140.pdf


You can almost certainly throw FDP in with that first camp. The Left Party doesn't appear in that poll either, because like the FDP it is probably regarded as statistically too insignificant.

Interestingly, some earlier polling from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW) from about a month ago indicated that the Left Party's anti-Wagenknechtian remnant actually seems to align with the CDU/SPD/Green camp rather than the AfD/BSW one on foreign policy.

FGW had ascertained the opposition to supplying the Ukrainian military with Taurus cruise missiles. This was the distribution of "NO" votes among the supporters of the various parties:

AfD 90%
BSW 85%
Free Voters 69%
SPD 65%
Left Party 57%
CDU/CSU 47%
FDP 44%
Greens 38%

(Source: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/politbarometer-taurus-ukraine-100.html)


Bottomline is that there seems to be foreign policy split that is reminiscent of the one that has occurred between Democrats and GOP (or at least Trumpists) in the U.S.

It's really incredible how the Greens have changed on foreign policy over the last 25 years. Just remember the debates over Kosovo in 1999, just months after the first Schröder government took over. But I give them credit on evolving on some issues. With regard to Ukraine and Russia, I'm certainly more in line with the Greens and even CDU for that matter, as painful as the latter is.

[Middle-aged Europe]

It's really incredible how the Greens have changed on foreign policy over the last 25 years. Just remember the
debates over Kosovo in 1999, just months after the first Schröder government took over. But I give them credit on evolving on some issues. With regard to Ukraine and Russia, I'm certainly more in line with the Greens and even CDU for that matter, as painful as the latter is.

While diametrically the opposite of the Greens' position of the 1980s, it is still in a sense a logical ideological progression.... a confluence of various developments that finally catalyzed with Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

- Joschka Fischer's "never again Auschwitz" doctrine from the late 1990s
- the fact that Putin is an authoritarian nationalist who became a poster boy for the AfD and other right-wing movements
- that when you hear Annalena Baerbock talking you get the distinct impression that she must have come into contact with "appeasement makes the aggressor only more aggressive" line of thinking when she studied international law at the London School of Economics back in the 2000s

Bottomline is that the Greens of the 1980s were a pacifist party and an anti-fascist party, which eventually came to the conclusion that it had to choose between the two.