Germany megathread

[palandio]

I'm not sure which possibility I should find more disturbing:

1. The riots being (at least partially) planned and coordinated. The occassional use of ski masks and bludgeons points towards this direction.

2. Several hundred people ("party folk") hanging around in small groups with no common organization on a normal Saturday night in the plain center of Stuttgart who then spontaneously engage in massive violence. This is basically what the police implied in today's press conference.

Probably a bit of both. Apparently there have been minor incidents and tensions on the past weekends. So maybe something was already building up.

[palandio]

Stuttgart's bar and discotheque owners are now complaining about the police describing the Schlossgarten mob as "Party- und Event-Szene".

[palandio]

Appears we don't have a Germany megathread yet.

I'm sure there was one, maybe it has been locked?

Until November 2018 there was "German Elections & Politics" which was closed and locked because it had become too long. Since then there have been "German elections (federal & EU level)" and "German Elections (statewide & community level)", but apparently no general event/politics thread.

In fact I find continuous megathreads relatively useful. It might at first seem tempting to give more prominence to an event or ongoing situation by creating a new thread dedicated to it, but after some time the new thread tends to fall into obscurity. Instead (reasonably confined) megathreads make it easier to follow events over time.

Thank you President Johnson!

[palandio]

So I just went to observe to big, fat anti-COVID restrictions protest in Berlin. My primary take-aways from there:

- There was a lot of flag-waving going around. The most commonly seen flag seemed in fact to be the Black-White-Red flag of the German empire (1871-1918), also a widely used symbol of full-on neo-Nazis because the Swastika flag itself is outlawed around here, while the Black-White-Red had also been been used as Germany's official flag in concurrence with the Swastika for a transitional period between 1933 and 1935. The apparent ubiquity of that flag today surprised even me a bit. Didn't actually expect everything to be that right-wing.

- The second most commonly seen flag at the protests seemed to be the state flag of the Russian Federation. Go figure. This also included a guy with a Vladimir Putin t-shirt I had seen walking around.

- The third most common symbol was the "Q". Some people who had arrived to the protests in their car had the habit of donning a big, white "Q" symbol on their vehicles. There were even some comibinations with aforementioned symbols, for instance I also saw a woman protestor wearing a t-shirt with a big "Q" in the Black-White-Red colours of the empire.

- A few Trump fans were also waving an American flag, often in conurrence with the Russian flag or even the Black-White-Red one. In Germany, the Stars and Stripes seem to be increasingly becoming a symbol carried by Nazis as a result of the presidency of Donald Trump. But maybe this would change again with a Biden win in November.

- Another notable aspect was that there seemed to be significant age gap between protestors and counter-protestors. While anti-Corona restrictions protestors had an average age of about 50, pro-restrictions counter-protestors were more about 30. This seems to be line with the fact that Pegida and AfD in Germany as well as Trumpism in America is in large parts a rebellion of middle-aged white people against the system. Another feature distinguishing protestors and counter-protestors was that the former group was often mask-less, while the latter group usually wore a mask.

- I happened to come by at a corner were anti-Corona restrictions protestors and the Antifa was almost directly faced against each other. The mood was pretty aggressive there and I sometimes expected a brawl to start any second. But in the end, it limited itself to mutual shouting, insulting, and name-calling.


UPDATE: And I just read in the news that the police has officially dispersed the protests due to non-compliance with phyiscal distancing rules.

Demonstrations in Berlin continue to a degree, but I'm glad the police has stepped in. The court should never have ruled to allow the demonstration in the first place given in what kind of situation we find ourselves in. Many of the protesters are AfD-hacks and other deluded folks anyway. The most hilarious thing is these people complaining about "dictatorship" now. They have no clue what a dictatorship is actually like.

Well, I certainly get the point that banning such protests would only help to embolden them and radicalize them further. And of course, at this point this could very well be the strategy of right-wing extremists: Deliberately not wearing any masks and not keeping distance to fellow protestors so that such protests get banned and so that they can point out how awfully authoritarian everything has become.

However, I do agree that seeing a large-scale (40,000 people?) protest march against a alleged "Corona dictatorship" which primarily dons the flag of the old German empire and of Russia definitely exhibits a certain amount of cognitive dissonance and/or hypocrisy.

^^

Since this ongoing story from the international COVID thread is increasingly about right-wing extremism in Germany rather than the coronavirus pandemic itself, I decided to outsource it and continue with it in this thread here. Probably makes more sense.

Anway, later this evening at least a couple of dozen COVID restriction protestors, waving Black-White-Red flags from the Imperial era, broke through barricades in front the Reichstag and atttempted to storm the entrance of the German parliament, throwing rocks and bottles at nearby police officers. The protestors were eventually repelled by the police, using pepper spray.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this is now the top story in Germany and possibly also the moment where the protests are ultimately backfiring on the protestors, since they went a bit too far for their own good.

As I indicated in the beginning, the narrative is now not about COVID restrictions any longer, but about violent neo-Nazis and how neo-Nazis have effectively taken over and assimilated the anti-restrictions movement.

Fortunately I was a few hundred kilometers away, hence I have to rely on what I read online and elsewhere, but here is what I gathered:

- The organizers and much of the crowd cover a wide spectrum from mere anti-COVID measure fatigue to COVID denialism to outright conspiracy theories. The ideological background is vast and diffuse, but with a heavy bent towards esoteric stuff and anti-vaxers.

- During the last weeks there has been a heavy mobilization for the protests among the far-right scene and in particular the Reichsbürger scene. For anyone who has ever been to a larger protest it should be clear that the flag-wavers are usually to be found among the most organized parts of the protesters, with the most radical or sectarian groups being overrepresented. (So-called Reichsbürger consider the Federal Republic of Germany to be illegitimate and claim that the German Reich has never been legally abolished.)

- As far as I can tell at least a part of the Russian and American flags has to be viewed in this context, because the Reichsbürger demanded a "peace treaty" from Russia and America in front of the Russian embassy. (You might ask what this has to do with COVID-19. Honestly I don't know.)

- In this regard the Berlin police department and Berlin's Senator (=secretary/minister) of the Interior Andreas Geisel were right: The massive mobilization of the militant Reichsbürger meant a threat to the public security, plus they correctly expected that the protesters would not even pretend to abide by the epidemiologic measures (keeping distance, masks). Geisel's mistake (and yes, I consider it a mistake) was to declare after the ban that he didn't want the protests in Berlin for political reasons.

- Altogether I think that yesterday was a very successful day for the Reichsbürger and related far-right groups. They are continuously building ties with more mainstream (yet still slightly bizarre) groups and increased polarization will help them to channel insecurity, discontent and fatigue towards their bizarre agenda and depict themselves as the only alternative.

- "Pro-restriction counter-protestors" seems like an odd designation to me. It often happens that people are protesting against "xyz" and then there is a counter-protest and it's not so much pro-"xyz" per se and more against the people protesting and their motives. And rarely has this been the case as much as here in my opinion.

[palandio]

An environmental disaster is happening at the Oder River, with the exact cause for thousands of fish dying still unclear.

https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1558770439459115009

A likely cause could be the toxin prymnesin produced by the alga Prymnesium parvum that normally doesn't grow in freshwater, but may have been able to grow because of elevated salt depositions.

[palandio]

The source for this diagram is probably not a compilation of exit polls, but the Repräsentative Wahlstatistik (representative electoral statistic), except for 1990 and 1994, when there was no such thing and it must be exit polls.

For the representative electoral statistic ballots in a representative sample of about 3-4% of all precincts are marked with demographic identifiers (gender, age group) and counted by these identifiers.

The representative electoral statistic is extremely precise, since it doesn't have most of the issues commonly associated with (exit) polls. It includes data since 1953 and differentiates by Bundesland and East/West, too.

https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/dam/jcr/8ad0ca1f-a037-48f8-b9f4-b599dd380f02/btw21_heft4.pdf

(Apologies in advance to your employer for supplying you with fresh material )

[palandio]

I don't know. To me this seems for the most part like an unholy compromise between the right-wing ideology that inspired Hartz IV and the modern left-wing ideology that work (or at least work that someone is actually willing to pay for) is overrated anyways.

- For recipients of Hartz IV this is probably an improvement.

- For low-to-middle income families and single parents there is no coherent idea how work is supposed to pay off financially. Right-wingers like to use this as an argument to cut social benefits, but instead you could also ask why people shouldn't keep part of every additional Euro they are earning.

- Sanctions are seen as the main incentive for starting to work or continuing to work, particularly by the right. On the other hand anyone who talks about monetary incentives from the comparison between benefits and wages is accused by the left of having a questionable idea of humanity. UBI, negative income tax, etc. are not even discussed.

- The Bedarfsgemeinschaften idea (household members contributing to one common income) was attenuated for young people in apprenticeships and student jobs who still live with their Hartz IV-receiving families. They are now allowed to keep part of their earnings which is definitely an improvement in my opinion. But the general idea remains in place although the same arguments that can be applied to youths could applied to other household members, too.

- Asset limits were raised but they are still in a region where they discourage any meaningful saving.

Altogether this won't help the acceptance of the welfare system since it continues to separate a small class of unenviable welfare recipients for whom work doesn't make sense from the population majority.

[palandio]

It would be very telling if this were the final cause for the breakup.

Until not too long ago (when domestic and foreign policy were less obiously intertwined) I thought that the whole anti-imperialist thing (and also the anti-German thing) are irritating political cults used for political posturing and distancing. But seemingly it's more important than all the other stuff.

[palandio]

It would be very telling if this were the final cause for the breakup.

Until not too long ago (when domestic and foreign policy were less obiously intertwined) I thought that the whole anti-imperialist thing (and also the anti-German thing) are irritating political cults used for political posturing and distancing. But seemingly it's more important than all the other stuff.

I guess ultimately this is about whether you are more anti-imperialist about America or more anti-imperialist about Russia then.

I mean the question is what anti-imperialism is supposed to mean:
- Being against imperialism
- Being against empires (because empires behave imperialistically)
- Being against the current #1 superpower out of abstract political-philosophical reasons
- Using all the abstract theory to mask plain anti-American resentment.

Going further imperialism as a (negative) term has a history in Soviet, communist, derived far-left and anti-Western discourse. We should not assume that when you say imperialism and when Sahra Wagenknecht says imperialism you mean the same thing.

[palandio]

Has population always been like that, or is the E being more sparsely populated a post-WW2 thing?

That depends on what you mean by sparsely populated.

The map and its description are misleading because what the map really shows are rural settlement patterns. Uninhabitated square kilometers are shown in white, whereas all other square kilometers are shown in dark red.
- Regions with mountains and large forests have a lot of white. These areas exist in both East and West.
- There are many flat and slightly hilly areas in the West with small hamlets or single farms on every square kilometer. In vast swathes of the East that have always been dominated by large estates the population is concentrated in the villages and the square kilometers inbetween are uninhabitated.

So the map would probably not have looked too different before WW2.

At the same time you are right that the population in the East is now lower than it was before WW2 and in the West it is now much higher than before WW2. Before WW2 the average population density in the West and in what is now the East were roughly equal. Interestingly in the most sparsely populated areas of the East (e.g. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) the population gains due to refugee settlement after WW2 still exceed the losses during the last decades. The regions that really lost compared to before WW2 are the industrial areas in Saxony and parts of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, but I don't think that it would show in less dark red areas. In the West on the other hand basically all areas have grown compared to before WW2, and often by a lot.

[palandio]

Has population always been like that, or is the E being more sparsely populated a post-WW2 thing?

That depends on what you mean by sparsely populated.

The map and its description are misleading because what the map really shows are rural settlement patterns. Uninhabitated square kilometers are shown in white, whereas all other square kilometers are shown in dark red.
- Regions with mountains and large forests have a lot of white. These areas exist in both East and West.
- There are many flat and slightly hilly areas in the West with small hamlets or single farms on every square kilometer. In vast swathes of the East that have always been dominated by large estates the population is concentrated in the villages and the square kilometers inbetween are uninhabitated.

So the map would probably not have looked too different before WW2.

At the same time you are right that the population in the East is now lower than it was before WW2 and in the West it is now much higher than before WW2. Before WW2 the average population density in the West and in what is now the East were roughly equal. Interestingly in the most sparsely populated areas of the East (e.g. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) the population gains due to refugee settlement after WW2 still exceed the losses during the last decades. The regions that really lost compared to before WW2 are the industrial areas in Saxony and parts of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, but I don't think that it would show in less dark red areas. In the West on the other hand basically all areas have grown compared to before WW2, and often by a lot.

https://www.deviantart.com/robeatnix/art/Population-Density-of-Germany-and-Austria-1910-818312533
Relevant.

Good map, although for spotting total population concentrations it has similar flaws. A lot of the population is concentrated in the district-independent cities that usually have a very small area. Some states like Baden, Württemberg (apart from Stuttgart) and Hesse-Darmstadt had their cities incorporated into districts. This increases the density of the respective districts and the states don‘t suffer from the effect that I described before.

[palandio]

What’s behind the recent AFD rise to ~20% nationally? I can understand a rise to say 15%, but what’s caused them to battle for 2nd place? Is there an issue they have the sole popular stance on or have their signature issues became a lot more salient?

In hindsight the 2010s were a relatively prosperous decade for Germany, more prosperous than for most other European countries. Recently Germany's economic development has been weak, prices are rising and incomes are not keeping up. There is a growing sentiment of crisis, and the problem is that the crisis is increasingly seen as permanent and not as a temporary shock.

In the old times the left (in a broad sense) by definition was anti-establishment and wanted to achieve progress against the conservative ancien régime. In order to accomplish its materialistic and post-materialistic agenda the left became a part of the state or at least started to identify with it more and more. (That does not mean that the state and establishment have been completely taken over by the left, far from it.)

An increasing segment of voters is feeling economically insecure and sees the left's agenda not as a solution but as a threat to their own wealth. The heating bill is an example for this and when its proponents started to address the concerns it was already quite late.

Of course there are also people in politics and media that don't like the left and particularly the Greens. But that's not new and the Greens' reaction strikes me as a bit naive. For the last decade the Greens have been enjoying the positive reception from Green-friendly and opportunistic journalists, until on time before most major elections certain right-wing influencers/journalists managed to deal a blow to the Greens. Opportunistic journalists followed and so did the easily impressable soft-Green swing voters.

The CDU/CSU which has been in government for 16 out of the last 18 years is seen as jointly responsible for the perceived mess we're in. And it doesn't know itself were it stands with respect to many hotly debated issues.

I agree with Old Europe's post on a lot, but I think that when certain fundamental indicators are bad and remain bad (i.e. a seemingly permanent loss of purchasing power) people will only have limited patience and after some time there will be discontent. The question is whether the discontent can be addressed within the established political spectrum (preferably by the government itself). My impression is that existing political problems and resulting insecurities should be dealt with within this spectrum. I think that a vast majority of voters would prefer this too over the AfD's reactionary and in part fascist politics.

[palandio]

Last week I also read about a recent study that many Germans feel overwhelmed and exhausted by crisises like climate change, Ukraine, inflation, migration (the article didn't mention the pandemic although it goes without saying that it should be factored in as well IMO). The reaction described by the study is one of a decoupling of private life and the public/political sphere.

While Germans say that the are happy with their own lives, they also show strong dissatisfaction with the political elite whom they assign to an inability to solve any of the aforementioned problems. In concurrence with that, usage of news media has been in decline. In simple terms, news are regarded as having become too depressing and are therefore blocked from one's consciousness and perception. According to the study, people are only shaken from that apathy when they feel like they are personally affected, like with inflation or energy prices.

Other than that, they increasingly focus on their own private lives which apparently includes seeking friendships with people they happen to agree with. Just like the increasingly depressing, overwhelming news cycles are ignored, people don't want to hear opinions that shake the bubble they have created as their personal safe spaces. They don't want to be informed, they don't want to debate, they don't want to be politically active.  They just want to be left alone.

I guess all these factors also help create a climate in which right-wing extremists thrive... along with declining voter turnout, I suppose.

I'd call it the era of the Great Fatigue.

I agree that the pandemic played a role and not only by being another crisis. It contributed a great deal both to the retreat into the private sphere and to people creating their own opinion bubbles.

One hypothesis that I personally have is that already after the fall of the Wall many Eastern Germans experienced a multi-faceted crisis with effects very similar to the ones you described above. And that for people that have lost the belief in the positive side of society and government a far-right party is a logical choice.

Of course there are also people in politics and media that don't like the left and particularly the Greens. But that's not new and the Greens' reaction strikes me as a bit naive. For the last decade the Greens have been enjoying the positive reception from Green-friendly and opportunistic journalists, until on time before most major elections certain right-wing influencers/journalists managed to deal a blow to the Greens. Opportunistic journalists followed and so did the easily impressable soft-Green swing voters.

I certainly can tell you that pretty much everyone in the Greens is aware of that problem, and has been for at least ten years.

What's the problem though? I guess the lack of a certain "ruthlessness". These are boyscouts, not Lee Atwaters. Green party events are a wonderful place to be because of all the wonderful, highly empathetic people. They're just not equipped to deal with people who are not quite as nice. Maybe Joschka Fischer was, but then again  Fischer used to beat up police officers.

That seems to me a description of the Greens through rose-colored glasses. I think that what distinguishes many Greens from e.g. many modern-day conservatives is their amount of political idealism. It seems to me that many can't grasp how others could be so mean to them, when they're on the side of the just cause.

As a side note: I like that although we might hold different degrees of sympathy for e.g. the Greens, we can still find enough common ground and talk about the same reality from different perspectives.

[palandio]

There are many challenges for a potential Wagenknecht party and that's why I find it most likely that it will fail sooner or later:
- Wagenknecht seems to be not very talented at organizing and pursuing a successful long-term political project.
- In the East, where the electoral potential is probably the highest, so far no major LINKE politician has committed to her new project; not even Sören Pellmann, directly elected MP from Leipzig, who is known for being relatively close to her.
- If you look at some of Wagenknecht's friends in the LINKE caucus, they seem to be in this mostly for personal reasons and as part of the LINKE's traditional "left" wing, based on economic and welfare populism and anti-Americanism. On the other hand the political and mediatic space for this project will probably include certain right-wing elements that might be incompatible.
- German party law doesn't really allow for top-down parties. A new anti-establishment party will almost certainly attract a lot of loons and troublemakers. The direction that the party takes cannot be controlled by its founders. It would be much easier if Wagenknecht could just take over a part of the LINKE's established structures.
- Financial challenges. This seems to be one of the reasons why Wagenknecht is reluctant to officially found her party right in 2023. Parties get compensation for electoral success, but as much as they have earnings in that year; with the exception of parties that were only founded in the year of the election, they get compensation anyways. Money is also one of the reasons why a united LINKE caucus still exists.

Compared to all of this, voter potential or the lack of it doesn't seem to be the main challenge. Sure, the 20% that we see in some polls are probably unrealistic. On the other hand the recent shifts in party support indicate a certain potential of mostly genepool left-wing or center-left voters, that could support a new populist protest party. From my gut feeling, at least 5%, maybe even 10%.

[palandio]

[...]
So outside of the major parties, if my numbers are correct, there will be 1 member of SSW (elected 2021), 2 members of Zentrum (defected from AfD), 28 members of a rump Linke, and 10 members of BSW

There seem to be 5 members that were elected as AfD candidates and
- never became member of the AfD caucus, but remains a member of the party (Helferich)
- or left both caucus and party, with an intermezzo in the Zentrum that is already over (Witt)
- or left both caucus and party (Cotar, Huber, Farle [Farle left the caucus over a year ago, but the party only a couple of days ago]).

Was the "new" party perhaps hoping for more Linke defections than that?

It depends on what you mean by "more". Before the split Wagenknecht and the members relatively close to her within the Linke caucus were sometimes called the Wilde 13. The ten member that defected plus Pellmann, Perli and Birkwald. I would say that 13 would have been the maximum, because apart from that almost all others (except Ferschl) belong to two groups:
1. Bewegungslinke ("movement Left") and therefore completely opposed to Wagenknecht,
2. Eastern Reformers that in the past temporally entered a tactical alliance with Wagenknecht, but are politically quite far away from her and also feel a strong bond to "their" party (SED -> PDS -> LINKE).

[palandio]

After the Wagenknecht split-off from the LINKE caucus and the subsequent demotion from caucus to "group", the remaining factions of the LINKE are continuing to feud. Heidi Reichinnek and Sören Pellmann were elected as group leaders, both on a 14-13 margin. Reichinnek (representing Lower Saxony, but born and grown up in Saxony-Anhalt) is from the mostly Eastern "Reformer" wing, while Pellmann has been relatively close to Wagenknecht, but stayed in the party due to him also being some kind of Eastern traditionalist. Clara Bünger, the losing candidate on both counts (and Ates Gürpinar, who withdrew his bid), is part of the "Movement Left", which seeks close ties to pro-immigrant, climate and gender activism. This is a defeat for the party chairs Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan, who were elected in 2022, with their rival candidates being... Reichinnek and Pellmann.

[palandio]

Forsa is consistently reporting 3% results and consistently not reporting anything below, so probably the Free Voters were at 2% last week.

At the moment apart from the two INSA polls a week and the weekly Forsa poll, polls seem to come in waves. And since INSA and Forsa both have their issues, it will be helpful to see the next Infratest dimap and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen polls.

[palandio]

Shortly after its official foundation as a party, the Werteunion (Values Union) has already lost its first prominent members: Right-libertarian Markus Krall, who had ties to failed coupist Heinrich XIII. Prinz Reuss; Max Otte, "crash prophet", former chairman of the Werteunion, when it was still an association within the CDU, and candidate for the AfD in the 2022 presidential elections. They expressed their discontent with the party's (in their eyes) too soft course. It probably also has to do with Maassen calling CDU/CSU the Werteunion's "premium partner" and calling the AfD "radical", an attempt to triangulate between CDU/CSU and AfD.

[palandio]

Politicians from, among others, CDU and FDP have demanded Maximilian Krah's resignation as the European election's lead candidate for the AfD.

Given it is the AfD I'm not sure if he will follow suit though. A Trumpian "ILLEGA!L WITHCHUNT!!" and attacking the other parties for "betraying Germany" through their respective policies is just as likely.

The current AfD talking point regarding Krah's assistant seems to be that it's the fault of the German intelligence agency which has been observing the assistant for several years and should have warned Krah earlier, who would be the victim here. Additionally like always the AfD asks why these allegations became public exactly now. Not the most stupid defense, but it would be even more credible if there weren't hints that Krah himself is a Chinese and Russian asset so that there might have been good reasons for the intelligence agency not to inform him.

[...]

I wonder whether it wouldn't be better to keep him as their standard bearer, because he'd be an albatross around his party's neck. The parties of the democratic center must get much aggressive on painting AfD (and BSW) as a party of Moscow and Beijing. Ergo, they are anti-patriots, the exact opposite of what they claim.

Yeah, on at least two issues Krah is the personification of not entirely unpopular right-wing populist positions taken to the completely unpopular extreme:

Not entirely unpopular: "Illegal immigrant need to be deported, but we dispute any involvement in plans to deport legal immigrants or German citizens."
Maximilian Krah in his book Politics from the Right: "Even if a restrictive immigration policy could be implemented politically in 10 years, the question remains what should happen to the people with a migrant background who will then be in the country. [...] 25 million people, including 15 million German citizens. [...] Unfortunately even in ten years there will not be anywhere near a political majority or even the constitutional and international law possibility to expel these people from the country against their will."

Not entirely unpopular: "We should seek good relations with Russia and China and ignore Ukraine."
Maximilian Krah: Is basically a Russian and Chinese asset, praises Erdoğan.