Europe’s centrist political class is looking anxiously towards elections for the European Parliament in 2024. What they fear is a “lurch” to the far-right. In Germany the AfD has surged to joint second place with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD in the polls. At 19 percent the AfD’s support is roughly twice what it was at the time of the last Bundestag election in September 2021.
If AfD were to come around to US hegemony in general and the war in Ukraine in particular, then all would be forgiven. See: Waters, R. and Hopkins, C.J.
Hell, AfD could propose feeding migrants to sharks and nobody in the political class would raise a peep as long as their opponent had wrongthink attitudes on the foregoing. See: Meloni.
The goodthink set would even conjure up excuses. Because, you know sharks are so much quicker and more humane than piranhas.
Wanting a reasonable, sane immigration policy is desired of course. In the US, that has been blocked politically, overwhelmingly by rightist elected officials.
What we -- that is, anyone to the right of fPOTUS -- don’t want immigrants kidnapped and shipped out of state. Or keeping them locked away in concentration camps. Or the dragging of feet to process said immigrants. Or lining the Rio Grande with blades to slice up people climbing over the barrier. (I should add that that’s not the relatively reasonable old time conservatives.)
What some of us, but none of your conservatives, would also like if we addressed or help to address the underlying conditions pushing desperate people to illegally immigrate as a result of ~80 years of the US fucking up nations.
I hate to break it to you but most conservatives are coming around to the idea that we should stop fucking up their nations and withdraw troops from Europe, funding from Ukraine, withdraw from NATO and tend to our own needs. The fucking with other nations is mostly driven by the left. Trump was the only President in my long lifetime who wanted us out of everyone else’s business. We have our own energy base, large enough economic growth and resources to leave the rest of you to you own resources. We are one election away from you getting your wish.
No, they are not. Conservative primary candidates are currently shrieking about the China threat and mulling over strikes into Mexican territory in the name of some inevitably botched "War on Drugs 2.0" that fails to address the true causes. Trump foreign policy did disentangle, or at least confuse, some US ties to or involvement in other countries, but the illusion that he was based anti-imperialist guy is just that: an illusion.
China is a legitimate threat and cause for concern. Their leadership has all but declared war on us. They are the aggressor. Not us. Their espionage, both commercial and military, is well documented. If anything, we’ve been too passive, possibly because of Biden and other D’s close financial “relationship “ with China and the CCP.
As to Mexico, stopping illegal immigration is not war mongering. Nor is stopping the Chinese reverse Opium War strategy of flooding the US with cheap powerful drugs via Mexico.
Defending one’s country does not make one an imperialist.
The neocon line is a bit old hat at this point. All of these talking points have been used for every other supervillain the US has conjured up, and I'd hope that most people are able to see through them by now.
That China is the aggressor will come as something of a surprise to Asians who've been watching the US navy come across the Pacific at them for over 150 years now. But Americans aren't terribly conversant with much history, so ...
My belief is that right now South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and even the Vietnamese would like to see a little bit more of the US Navy than they see now. As would the Taiwanese, I assume.
No offense but the climate is always changing. That is the definition of climate. If you think the 1,000,000 people came from South and Central America to Texas because of climate change, I have a bridge to sell you. Illegal migration can be stopped in a day, if the politicians wanted.
Within the US, there has been a legal mass migration out of colder northern states to the warmer southern states. Climate change in reverse?
It's nearly 8 million in the last 2.5 years. You're correct that it has nothing to do with climate change, because the climate hasn't really changed all that much. Certainly not nearly as much as has been claimed, or was predicted.
Because the German political establishment has demonstrated that it cares not a whit for German voters or their concerns.
In fact, the German establishment is proud of how out of touch they are. Remember when Baerbock said openly that she didn't care what German public opinion was? Or when German politicians said that they would continue to lavish assistance onUkraine, even if that meant Germans froze or starved?
And what is the German political establishment response to AfD? The talk is of finding a pretext to ban it.
This is not correct. Significant parts of the AfD is not just "far-right", but extremist-right as documented e.g. by https://www.institut-fuer-menschenrechte.de/publikationen/detail/warum-die-afd-verboten-werden-koennte. Even more tellingly, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) classifies the AfD as a "suspected right-wing extremist case" and its youth organization Junge Alternative as a "secured right-wing extremist movement".
The CDU/CSU, even in their "right-conservative prime time" (which, admittedly, is a while ago), was never a "right-extremist suspected case" (Verdachtsfall) and their political positions far away from those of the current AfD.
1. The tail wagging the dog: how come the population at large got the idea that AfD is far right? The population has been told ad nauseam by the press, which is totally aligned with the state (including the US interests of a subdued Germany) that AfD is a far right, neo-nazi and anti democratic. The same way other issues have been portraied to the western population: China/Russia, revanchist, non-democratic, authoritarian, war mongering, etc...
2. The questions not asked in the fabled polls in Germany:
- Who blew up NS1 & NS2;
- What about the cost of living and energy and Germany loosing its industrial competitivness
- What about German gov closing down the nuclear power plants and opening coal power plants?
- What about Germany relying on expensive energy?
- What about Germany supporting US hegemony?
- What about Germany providing all kind of support to Ukraine, including militariliy?
- What About Analena claiming that she cares more about Ukrainians than Germans citizens?
- What do Germans think about the unelected technocrats in EU bureucracy taking control of German policies?
- What about the censorship imposed on EU and German citizens, which is far greater than that experienced by those in US or Canada, for that matter?
- What about the mishandling the pandemic and the vaccination problem (people are used with vaccines that work 100%)?
There are more than the massive immigration problem Germany and EU at large faces - and caused, as Hungarian officials have repeated many times, by the US actions in Middle East and North Africa: the war on Iraq, the war on Syria, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Libya, and all needs to be considered as well.
Interesting. Sounds like in GERMANY there’s a strong protest vote. The elite don’t want to accept that. But they are in control. In ISRAEL , a democracy , the elites are not in control and don’t like it. They are the protesters. In turn , since they can’t beat democracy , they try to control the courts in order to get what they want. Something to notice.
The numbers cited do not give me cause for comfort as I am currently rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It only takes an organized strong willed minority in a context if systemic crisis to produce transformational change that drags the bulk of society with it. Certainly the election of Trump or a Trumpian (Desantis or Ramaswamy for example) candidate with a platform of destroying the so-called administrative state (that which makes up the Executive Branch) alongside a right wing Court and a GOP in control of one ir both houses could lead to same. These are perilous times without strong coherent pro-democracy (moderate to progressive) alliances. It is all complicated as well by the tinder box of armed conflict between East-West. The post-War neo-liberal order is unraveling. And NATO unity around Ukraine will not stop that process.
Some of us have a different term for “destroy the administrative state”. I call it “Congress, do your job.” The people who were elected (accountable?) are supposed to make the laws, no? I guess thinking that way makes me nazi-ish.
Semi-worthless book. I've read parts of it; much misreading of history and the author was a journalist (such people often are partisan liars) and a probable Leftist. I have a good hunch Shirer supported the Morgenthau Plan and thought Joe Stalin was a great guy. If you know The Future most writing of the period is cringeworthy. Be more widely read I would suggest. Of course delving into history is something I do a lot; most people don't do that so there's a lot they don't know about and have no curiosity anyways.
Sounds like you run a good source, Adam. Do note that having ideological-based parties as in Germany leads to the sullen politics of Germany and Europe and the occasional bloody revolutions. (I have childhood memories of there being some "trouble" in France; turns out this was the death by suicide of the Fourth Republic and its being succeeded by the Fifth Republic in 1962. every time a French republic gets a new constitution they up the number by one.) Your stuff seems better and more careful than the warmed-over Allied propaganda from two world wars we usually read on Germany. I note it doesn't cost $$ to subscribe; I'll try you!
Excellent information about German political trends. The parallel with US politics is important. From Pew: "About eight-in-ten Republicans (79%) say increasing deportations of immigrants currently in the country illegally is important, with nearly half (49%) calling it very important. By comparison, 39% of Democrats view increasing deportations as very or somewhat important, including just 12% who see it as very important." If my own opinion is typical, the Democrats must do more to acknowledge the problem of immigration and figure out how to balance their sympathy and support for illegal immigrants with a realistic control of immigration. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult to do, both in theory and practice.
Yeah, and Republicans are tough on immigration unless they can't hand off the dirty work to state troopers and the national guard anymore. The troopers say do it yourself, push those mothers and kids back into the water, onto the barbed wire. Then the tough guys have trouble sleeping at night.
I know right? Was there ever a time when doing a sober actuarial analysis to seek optimal numbers and distribution for immigration WASN'T white supremacist repugnikkan EVILdoing?
Poor Germany... In my country, we already understand that math is racist (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2017.1377417?cookieSet=1) and so no analyses of housing, education or healthcare service capacity, needs assessment and growth potential are considered in crafting immigration policy. By way of example, the current plan for our healthcare system is to recruit away as many physicians from the Global South as possible. That will make my country: a) less racist b) raise my home value c) help our pension and workplace disability plans d) improve quality of life for the most people globally e) have no significant net effect on the singular civilizational crisis of our time: global warming.
"improve the quality of life for the most people globally" ? I ran than in my util calculator, and it keeps coming out negative. Am I doing something wrong?
I was commenting about Democrats, not Republicans. You seem to do a good enough job of that. I wouldn’t even disagree with your point. But I certainly won’t assume you’re shallow-minded. I leave that to the knuckleheads still on Tw***er.
All this sounds remarkably similar to voter motives for the rise of UKIP and europhobia in England and Wales (not the U.K.), underpinned by holding back of working class living standards. We all know how that ended with Brexit and the transformation of the Conservative governing party into UKIP for polite company. So we need to know whether the German press fuels the populist discontent and whether there is a section of the mainstream right who see the chance to make political/career gains by taking on the AfD agenda.
... industrial production in Germany has slumped “much more than economists expected in June” and that “many experts expect this trend to continue in the coming months.” The results are based on data from the Federal Statistical Office released last Tuesday.
Much of the decline in production is due to sectors hard hit by Germany’s energy policies. One example is the automotive industry because its future is fraught with huge uncertainty as combustion engines are planned to be phased out.
The construction sector has been hit hard as well as energy norms and heating regulations for homes threaten to make building even more unaffordable to many. High energy prices also have fueled inflation, which in turn has forced bank interest rates up and made home financing unattractive. Building permits issued for new homes are extremely low.
.... But overall the coming months continue to appear especially gloomy for Germany, Europe’s largest economy. High energy costs have also led to many companies moving operations out of the country.
Until Germany gets back to reality with its energy policies, don’t expect improvement anytime soon.
"Germany Is Losing Its Mojo. Finding It Again Won’t Be Easy. Europe’s biggest economy is sliding into stagnation, and a weakening political system is struggling to find an answer. Germany’s manufacturing output and its gross domestic product have stagnated since 2018.
By Bojan Pancevski, Paul Hannon, and William Boston
"BERLIN—Two decades ago, Germany revived its moribund economy and became a manufacturing powerhouse of an era of globalization.
"Times changed. Germany didn’t keep up. Now Europe’s biggest economy has to reinvent itself again. But its fractured political class is struggling to find answers to a dizzying conjunction of long-term headaches and short-term crises, leading to a growing sense of malaise.
"Germany will be the world’s only major economy to contract in 2023, with even sanctioned Russia experiencing growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.
* * *
"But Scholz has struggled to stop the infighting in his coalition. The government’s approval ratings have tanked, and the far-right populist Alternative for Germany party has overtaken Scholz’s Social Democrats in opinion polls. “The country is being led by a bunch of Keystone Kops, a motley coalition that can’t get its act together,” Joffe said."
Law of nature: when “liberal democracies” fail, the people want a strongman to straighten things out.
There can’t be a leftist uprising of the workers because the workers are kept ignorant (now more than ever) and divided. Whatever a worker wants to after work, studying up how to obtain agency and so on is not something that’s considered.
So, an authoritarian strongman. Should add that said strongman would be right wing because...
We get such government as the Powers That Be allow us. So here in the US, we get a bought and paid government, the recipients of moneys from the Powers That Be put serving those people first and foremost.
At the same time, we have a media who much prefer to push their scenarios -- that is, lies -- over truths reporting. Ex. The NY Times as a matter of policy essentially will never, ever critique capitalism, which to say neoliberalism, in any meaningful way.
So said media report on, say, immigrants as in this post and the reaction is panic about a greatly exaggerated problem. (Same here in the US.) Again, reporting on actual problems, threats to society, whatever goes either unreported or misreported. And here we are.
Good to know things are not as bad in Germany as they appear in news reports, however, your fellow Columbia Univ faculty member, Eric Kandel, had a sobering take on aggression and violence rising globally in this 2015 Charlie Rose roundtable from The Brain Series.
I think he was correct judging by how unsafe it really has become to drive in the NY Metro area as one simple, but in one's face example. In other words, Civilization is holding itself together apparently in Germany, but mankind worldwide is collapsing into increasingly violent aggression, no longer just by rogue states, military juntas or the American Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil & Gas, Big AG, Big Pharma, Big Media. The singular word that repeatedly comes up in reporting, from Hindus killing Christians in India to fascist parties in Germany to right wing politics in the U.S. is the word "Nationalism". It is the battle cry of frustrated people.
Thank you, Adam Tooze, not only for the again very informative blog post, but especially for sentences like this: "In the resulting debate and policy process, which seeks to respond to a huge global problem of displacement, poverty and violence, they make choices that leave a minority of Germans dissatisfied."
From where I'm sitting the AfD looks like a classic case of Jonathan Hopkins' "Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies"
'In the resulting debate and policy process, which seeks to respond to a huge global problem of displacement, poverty and violence, they make choices that leave a minority of Germans dissatisfied.'
This is nonsense. First, most asylumseekers ie immigrants are middle class in their own countries. Second, western politics has gotten so soft that doing military service in Assad's army is reason enough for asylum (i get why the neat left feels so sorry for conscripts since they never served at home - in their democracies - either.
To add: Lord Tooze better read some Wim Koopmans, he's done a lot of work on German immigration, crime, labor participation, fundamentalist sympathies etc.
Finally, it's not the least about the numbers visible in the first two charts in the EU terrorism monitor below, with which not just Germans are intimately familiar by now, and that are so elegantly sanitized from the discussion:
Jihadists trump right wingers massively, who in turn are dwarfed by the left.
With soft i mean sentimental. No one is discussing allowing 'refugees' from military conscription to weaken the Syrian army. It has nothing to do with it.
Apart from that, incorporating conscripts who do not want to be there strengthens an army then?
It looks more like it that conscripts have to protect your lala world where everyone else solely looks after one self and says 'screw the state'.
I would grant you that none of my fancy liberal high school democracy-loving classmates put on a uniform. Not serving was a form of risk-free resistance to them, signalling their nonconformist attitude and leftist credentials (military service was for the docile form the left pov, while the right, although supportive of the armed forces, also preferred not to serve).
And indeed, almost everybody i met in the army came from modest backgrounds with only a small minority from big cities.
The fight or flight instinct seems to be distributed differently amongst urban middle classes. I guess 'flight' these days literally means a plane ticket to get the hell out.
When did wanting to control your country’s borders become far right? It seems like another in a list of “far right” policies like;
1) Preventing violent crime, especially in poorer neighborhoods
2) Prevention of voluntary irreversible surgical and medical procedures in children
3) All racism is bad. Not just some politically favored racism.
4) The family has been the most civilizing institution for humanity since, like, forever
5) All children deserve a good education and bad teachers and policies should be eliminated
6) Some sexual discussions and topics should be brought up at age appropriate times in a child’s development, decided by the parents.
7) Work is your contribution to society.
8) The media’s primary function is to determine the fact based truth
All of these were unarguable a generation ago among both the left and right. Now they are far right.
The left has moved left. The right has stayed where it has always been.
If AfD were to come around to US hegemony in general and the war in Ukraine in particular, then all would be forgiven. See: Waters, R. and Hopkins, C.J.
Hell, AfD could propose feeding migrants to sharks and nobody in the political class would raise a peep as long as their opponent had wrongthink attitudes on the foregoing. See: Meloni.
The goodthink set would even conjure up excuses. Because, you know sharks are so much quicker and more humane than piranhas.
Didn't Meloni become much more pro-immigration after becoming the PM?
The US’ right has moved far, far to the right.
Wanting a reasonable, sane immigration policy is desired of course. In the US, that has been blocked politically, overwhelmingly by rightist elected officials.
What we -- that is, anyone to the right of fPOTUS -- don’t want immigrants kidnapped and shipped out of state. Or keeping them locked away in concentration camps. Or the dragging of feet to process said immigrants. Or lining the Rio Grande with blades to slice up people climbing over the barrier. (I should add that that’s not the relatively reasonable old time conservatives.)
What some of us, but none of your conservatives, would also like if we addressed or help to address the underlying conditions pushing desperate people to illegally immigrate as a result of ~80 years of the US fucking up nations.
I mean, JFC, if you can’t recognize the enemy...
I hate to break it to you but most conservatives are coming around to the idea that we should stop fucking up their nations and withdraw troops from Europe, funding from Ukraine, withdraw from NATO and tend to our own needs. The fucking with other nations is mostly driven by the left. Trump was the only President in my long lifetime who wanted us out of everyone else’s business. We have our own energy base, large enough economic growth and resources to leave the rest of you to you own resources. We are one election away from you getting your wish.
No, they are not. Conservative primary candidates are currently shrieking about the China threat and mulling over strikes into Mexican territory in the name of some inevitably botched "War on Drugs 2.0" that fails to address the true causes. Trump foreign policy did disentangle, or at least confuse, some US ties to or involvement in other countries, but the illusion that he was based anti-imperialist guy is just that: an illusion.
China is a legitimate threat and cause for concern. Their leadership has all but declared war on us. They are the aggressor. Not us. Their espionage, both commercial and military, is well documented. If anything, we’ve been too passive, possibly because of Biden and other D’s close financial “relationship “ with China and the CCP.
As to Mexico, stopping illegal immigration is not war mongering. Nor is stopping the Chinese reverse Opium War strategy of flooding the US with cheap powerful drugs via Mexico.
Defending one’s country does not make one an imperialist.
The neocon line is a bit old hat at this point. All of these talking points have been used for every other supervillain the US has conjured up, and I'd hope that most people are able to see through them by now.
That China is the aggressor will come as something of a surprise to Asians who've been watching the US navy come across the Pacific at them for over 150 years now. But Americans aren't terribly conversant with much history, so ...
My belief is that right now South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and even the Vietnamese would like to see a little bit more of the US Navy than they see now. As would the Taiwanese, I assume.
Lip service. They will never, ever do what’s needed. But if you want to think they’re any part of the solution, be my guest.
The history of humankind is a history of migration, which is now being accelerated by climate change. It's inexorable and can't be stopped.
No offense but the climate is always changing. That is the definition of climate. If you think the 1,000,000 people came from South and Central America to Texas because of climate change, I have a bridge to sell you. Illegal migration can be stopped in a day, if the politicians wanted.
Within the US, there has been a legal mass migration out of colder northern states to the warmer southern states. Climate change in reverse?
It's nearly 8 million in the last 2.5 years. You're correct that it has nothing to do with climate change, because the climate hasn't really changed all that much. Certainly not nearly as much as has been claimed, or was predicted.
Actually, observed temperatures fall well into the confidence interval of the predicted temperatures: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/02/another-dot-on-the-graphs-part-ii/
And the effects are often worse than expected: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-already-worse-than-expected-un-report
Or take a look at ocean temperatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/26/accelerating-ocean-warming-earth-temperatures-climate-crisis
Churchill would be called a Nazi now. Bizarrely.
Because the German political establishment has demonstrated that it cares not a whit for German voters or their concerns.
In fact, the German establishment is proud of how out of touch they are. Remember when Baerbock said openly that she didn't care what German public opinion was? Or when German politicians said that they would continue to lavish assistance onUkraine, even if that meant Germans froze or starved?
And what is the German political establishment response to AfD? The talk is of finding a pretext to ban it.
AfD is hardly ‘far-right,’ whatever that means anymore. AfD was the CDU/CSU 40-50 years ago.
This is not correct. Significant parts of the AfD is not just "far-right", but extremist-right as documented e.g. by https://www.institut-fuer-menschenrechte.de/publikationen/detail/warum-die-afd-verboten-werden-koennte. Even more tellingly, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) classifies the AfD as a "suspected right-wing extremist case" and its youth organization Junge Alternative as a "secured right-wing extremist movement".
The CDU/CSU, even in their "right-conservative prime time" (which, admittedly, is a while ago), was never a "right-extremist suspected case" (Verdachtsfall) and their political positions far away from those of the current AfD.
Mr. Tooze is trying but he is not trying enough.
Two main problems here:
1. The tail wagging the dog: how come the population at large got the idea that AfD is far right? The population has been told ad nauseam by the press, which is totally aligned with the state (including the US interests of a subdued Germany) that AfD is a far right, neo-nazi and anti democratic. The same way other issues have been portraied to the western population: China/Russia, revanchist, non-democratic, authoritarian, war mongering, etc...
2. The questions not asked in the fabled polls in Germany:
- Who blew up NS1 & NS2;
- What about the cost of living and energy and Germany loosing its industrial competitivness
- What about German gov closing down the nuclear power plants and opening coal power plants?
- What about Germany relying on expensive energy?
- What about Germany supporting US hegemony?
- What about Germany providing all kind of support to Ukraine, including militariliy?
- What About Analena claiming that she cares more about Ukrainians than Germans citizens?
- What do Germans think about the unelected technocrats in EU bureucracy taking control of German policies?
- What about the censorship imposed on EU and German citizens, which is far greater than that experienced by those in US or Canada, for that matter?
- What about the mishandling the pandemic and the vaccination problem (people are used with vaccines that work 100%)?
There are more than the massive immigration problem Germany and EU at large faces - and caused, as Hungarian officials have repeated many times, by the US actions in Middle East and North Africa: the war on Iraq, the war on Syria, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Libya, and all needs to be considered as well.
Interesting. Sounds like in GERMANY there’s a strong protest vote. The elite don’t want to accept that. But they are in control. In ISRAEL , a democracy , the elites are not in control and don’t like it. They are the protesters. In turn , since they can’t beat democracy , they try to control the courts in order to get what they want. Something to notice.
The numbers cited do not give me cause for comfort as I am currently rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It only takes an organized strong willed minority in a context if systemic crisis to produce transformational change that drags the bulk of society with it. Certainly the election of Trump or a Trumpian (Desantis or Ramaswamy for example) candidate with a platform of destroying the so-called administrative state (that which makes up the Executive Branch) alongside a right wing Court and a GOP in control of one ir both houses could lead to same. These are perilous times without strong coherent pro-democracy (moderate to progressive) alliances. It is all complicated as well by the tinder box of armed conflict between East-West. The post-War neo-liberal order is unraveling. And NATO unity around Ukraine will not stop that process.
The Republicans remind you of mid-century Germans because they want to *weaken* the executive power and the administrative state?
Sounds like you need to read a little more about the topic.
Some of us have a different term for “destroy the administrative state”. I call it “Congress, do your job.” The people who were elected (accountable?) are supposed to make the laws, no? I guess thinking that way makes me nazi-ish.
Semi-worthless book. I've read parts of it; much misreading of history and the author was a journalist (such people often are partisan liars) and a probable Leftist. I have a good hunch Shirer supported the Morgenthau Plan and thought Joe Stalin was a great guy. If you know The Future most writing of the period is cringeworthy. Be more widely read I would suggest. Of course delving into history is something I do a lot; most people don't do that so there's a lot they don't know about and have no curiosity anyways.
Sounds like you run a good source, Adam. Do note that having ideological-based parties as in Germany leads to the sullen politics of Germany and Europe and the occasional bloody revolutions. (I have childhood memories of there being some "trouble" in France; turns out this was the death by suicide of the Fourth Republic and its being succeeded by the Fifth Republic in 1962. every time a French republic gets a new constitution they up the number by one.) Your stuff seems better and more careful than the warmed-over Allied propaganda from two world wars we usually read on Germany. I note it doesn't cost $$ to subscribe; I'll try you!
Excellent information about German political trends. The parallel with US politics is important. From Pew: "About eight-in-ten Republicans (79%) say increasing deportations of immigrants currently in the country illegally is important, with nearly half (49%) calling it very important. By comparison, 39% of Democrats view increasing deportations as very or somewhat important, including just 12% who see it as very important." If my own opinion is typical, the Democrats must do more to acknowledge the problem of immigration and figure out how to balance their sympathy and support for illegal immigrants with a realistic control of immigration. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult to do, both in theory and practice.
Democrats have a lot of sympathy for illegal immigrants until those illegal immigrants appear in their “sanctuary cities”. Then it becomes a crisis.
Yeah, and Republicans are tough on immigration unless they can't hand off the dirty work to state troopers and the national guard anymore. The troopers say do it yourself, push those mothers and kids back into the water, onto the barbed wire. Then the tough guys have trouble sleeping at night.
I know right? Was there ever a time when doing a sober actuarial analysis to seek optimal numbers and distribution for immigration WASN'T white supremacist repugnikkan EVILdoing?
Poor Germany... In my country, we already understand that math is racist (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2017.1377417?cookieSet=1) and so no analyses of housing, education or healthcare service capacity, needs assessment and growth potential are considered in crafting immigration policy. By way of example, the current plan for our healthcare system is to recruit away as many physicians from the Global South as possible. That will make my country: a) less racist b) raise my home value c) help our pension and workplace disability plans d) improve quality of life for the most people globally e) have no significant net effect on the singular civilizational crisis of our time: global warming.
"improve the quality of life for the most people globally" ? I ran than in my util calculator, and it keeps coming out negative. Am I doing something wrong?
You're forgetting that math is racist.
or woke, depending on who you ask
I was commenting about Democrats, not Republicans. You seem to do a good enough job of that. I wouldn’t even disagree with your point. But I certainly won’t assume you’re shallow-minded. I leave that to the knuckleheads still on Tw***er.
I need to fix that dangerous hair-trigger I've got-- going to shoot myself in the foot if I don't take better care.
All this sounds remarkably similar to voter motives for the rise of UKIP and europhobia in England and Wales (not the U.K.), underpinned by holding back of working class living standards. We all know how that ended with Brexit and the transformation of the Conservative governing party into UKIP for polite company. So we need to know whether the German press fuels the populist discontent and whether there is a section of the mainstream right who see the chance to make political/career gains by taking on the AfD agenda.
How about an energy policy/economic explanation:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/13/germanys-economic-woes-intensify-as-production-slumps-much-more-than-expected/
... industrial production in Germany has slumped “much more than economists expected in June” and that “many experts expect this trend to continue in the coming months.” The results are based on data from the Federal Statistical Office released last Tuesday.
Much of the decline in production is due to sectors hard hit by Germany’s energy policies. One example is the automotive industry because its future is fraught with huge uncertainty as combustion engines are planned to be phased out.
The construction sector has been hit hard as well as energy norms and heating regulations for homes threaten to make building even more unaffordable to many. High energy prices also have fueled inflation, which in turn has forced bank interest rates up and made home financing unattractive. Building permits issued for new homes are extremely low.
.... But overall the coming months continue to appear especially gloomy for Germany, Europe’s largest economy. High energy costs have also led to many companies moving operations out of the country.
Until Germany gets back to reality with its energy policies, don’t expect improvement anytime soon.
Further to the above:
"Germany Is Losing Its Mojo. Finding It Again Won’t Be Easy. Europe’s biggest economy is sliding into stagnation, and a weakening political system is struggling to find an answer. Germany’s manufacturing output and its gross domestic product have stagnated since 2018.
By Bojan Pancevski, Paul Hannon, and William Boston
Updated Aug. 29, 2023
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/germany-is-losing-its-mojo-finding-it-again-wont-be-easy-c4b46761
"BERLIN—Two decades ago, Germany revived its moribund economy and became a manufacturing powerhouse of an era of globalization.
"Times changed. Germany didn’t keep up. Now Europe’s biggest economy has to reinvent itself again. But its fractured political class is struggling to find answers to a dizzying conjunction of long-term headaches and short-term crises, leading to a growing sense of malaise.
"Germany will be the world’s only major economy to contract in 2023, with even sanctioned Russia experiencing growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.
* * *
"But Scholz has struggled to stop the infighting in his coalition. The government’s approval ratings have tanked, and the far-right populist Alternative for Germany party has overtaken Scholz’s Social Democrats in opinion polls. “The country is being led by a bunch of Keystone Kops, a motley coalition that can’t get its act together,” Joffe said."
Law of nature: when “liberal democracies” fail, the people want a strongman to straighten things out.
There can’t be a leftist uprising of the workers because the workers are kept ignorant (now more than ever) and divided. Whatever a worker wants to after work, studying up how to obtain agency and so on is not something that’s considered.
So, an authoritarian strongman. Should add that said strongman would be right wing because...
We get such government as the Powers That Be allow us. So here in the US, we get a bought and paid government, the recipients of moneys from the Powers That Be put serving those people first and foremost.
At the same time, we have a media who much prefer to push their scenarios -- that is, lies -- over truths reporting. Ex. The NY Times as a matter of policy essentially will never, ever critique capitalism, which to say neoliberalism, in any meaningful way.
So said media report on, say, immigrants as in this post and the reaction is panic about a greatly exaggerated problem. (Same here in the US.) Again, reporting on actual problems, threats to society, whatever goes either unreported or misreported. And here we are.
Nope
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/germany-far-right-stopped-afd-jeremy-stern
Good to know things are not as bad in Germany as they appear in news reports, however, your fellow Columbia Univ faculty member, Eric Kandel, had a sobering take on aggression and violence rising globally in this 2015 Charlie Rose roundtable from The Brain Series.
https://charlierose.com/videos/20942
I think he was correct judging by how unsafe it really has become to drive in the NY Metro area as one simple, but in one's face example. In other words, Civilization is holding itself together apparently in Germany, but mankind worldwide is collapsing into increasingly violent aggression, no longer just by rogue states, military juntas or the American Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil & Gas, Big AG, Big Pharma, Big Media. The singular word that repeatedly comes up in reporting, from Hindus killing Christians in India to fascist parties in Germany to right wing politics in the U.S. is the word "Nationalism". It is the battle cry of frustrated people.
Thank you, Adam Tooze, not only for the again very informative blog post, but especially for sentences like this: "In the resulting debate and policy process, which seeks to respond to a huge global problem of displacement, poverty and violence, they make choices that leave a minority of Germans dissatisfied."
From where I'm sitting the AfD looks like a classic case of Jonathan Hopkins' "Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies"
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/anti-system-politics-9780190699765?cc=us&lang=en&
'In the resulting debate and policy process, which seeks to respond to a huge global problem of displacement, poverty and violence, they make choices that leave a minority of Germans dissatisfied.'
This is nonsense. First, most asylumseekers ie immigrants are middle class in their own countries. Second, western politics has gotten so soft that doing military service in Assad's army is reason enough for asylum (i get why the neat left feels so sorry for conscripts since they never served at home - in their democracies - either.
To add: Lord Tooze better read some Wim Koopmans, he's done a lot of work on German immigration, crime, labor participation, fundamentalist sympathies etc.
Finally, it's not the least about the numbers visible in the first two charts in the EU terrorism monitor below, with which not just Germans are intimately familiar by now, and that are so elegantly sanitized from the discussion:
Jihadists trump right wingers massively, who in turn are dwarfed by the left.
Terrorism in the EU: facts and figures
https://bit.ly/3EbRFTg
"Second, western politics has gotten so soft that doing military service in Assad's army is reason enough for asylum..."
Weakness and softness have nothing to do with it. It's intended to weaken the Syrian army, nothing more, nothing less.
With soft i mean sentimental. No one is discussing allowing 'refugees' from military conscription to weaken the Syrian army. It has nothing to do with it.
Apart from that, incorporating conscripts who do not want to be there strengthens an army then?
Whether or not that is discussed in public, I can assure you that is the motivation.
And of course conscripts don't want to be in the army. That's why they're conscripts.
Nonsense. I was a conscript and me nor my fellow conscripts didn't want to be there.
Then there's no need for conscription, or you live in la LA land.
It looks more like it that conscripts have to protect your lala world where everyone else solely looks after one self and says 'screw the state'.
I would grant you that none of my fancy liberal high school democracy-loving classmates put on a uniform. Not serving was a form of risk-free resistance to them, signalling their nonconformist attitude and leftist credentials (military service was for the docile form the left pov, while the right, although supportive of the armed forces, also preferred not to serve).
And indeed, almost everybody i met in the army came from modest backgrounds with only a small minority from big cities.
The fight or flight instinct seems to be distributed differently amongst urban middle classes. I guess 'flight' these days literally means a plane ticket to get the hell out.