My reading of the story is that the SPD has been the dominant party in Germany for decades, but that may not continue because the voters don't like it so much any more. Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work?
I think one of the quibbles is that the coalition-building negotiation, which is the hallmark of parliamentary democracy, in practice excludes the left and right wing. Meanwhile, the notional distinction between center-left, center-right, and free-market-liberal is watered down E.g. SPD dismantling the social support policies which once gave them their name, and no substantial difference in subordinating national policy to the Atlanticist program, despite astonishing economic punishment this has brought to not only Germany, but the rest of the continent which is their most immediate export market. This lack of a difference on arguably the most impactful issue of the current generation, makes the exclusion of the the left and right wing even more important, since only they dare question the suicidal orthodoxy of today's EU leadership. Perhaps appropriately for this publication, it is now a subject for historians because the process has reached the point of being irreversible.
"subordinating national policy to the Atlanticist program" means...?
Continued membership in NATO? Joining NATO in its support of Ukraine? Participating in sanctions against Russia put in place in response to its invasion?
Yes - joining NATO in turning Ukraine into a South Vietnam. And most especially, turning a blind eye and in many cases within NATO, actively participating (!!) in support of the US sponsored Nazi revival in Kiev. You know, all the Bandera statues everywhere. Astronomically shameful. But if that's too uncomfortable a subject, we can move on.
Any Atlanticist in good standing also supports the equally suicidal confrontation with China, once again to please the US. This will ultimately be even more devastating, since China has the ability to displace EU exports and finance globally, besides of course being the next most central export and import partner of EU outside itself. This is likewise baked in the cake, and you can thank the Atlanticists for that one too.
Next after that, the French and German centrists support the US-Israeli confrontation with the Islamic world, genocide and all, which has now shut down the Suez canal, plus of course that has been going on for over 20 years already and has managed to spur the wave of migrants which in practice further undermined the dream of a united and prosperous EU, by giving Euro-skeptics an easy political argument to make.
The main benefit of NATO is breaking the hundreds of years old cycle of war *between* European powers. This is something genuinely positive and worthwhile.
However, it also bears repeating that Russia never attacked the core NATO countries (I.e. at the time West Gremany joined). On the other hand, France, Britain, and Germany, have each attacked Russia historically. The US has attacked dozens of countries, and supported the worst murderous regimes as its allies of convenience, all in living memory.
In the current episode, it began when US arranged a violent coup d'etat in Kiev via the 2013-2014 revolution -- for the purpose of undermining Russia and eventually overthrowing the Russian government. The character of their proxies was quite in line with postwar US cynicism relative to the so called principals it occasionally pays lip service to. Perhaps German voters, had they known this, would have thought better. Of course they simply weren't informed.
But going forward, also to repeat, it gets worse. NATO countries are in the advanced stages of the process which tricks them into acting as a sort-of shield or sacrificial punching bag, for the US confrontation with China. As with Russia, they will soon be forbidden to trade with China, for the sake of improving the US position, while the US will not apply the same restrictions to itself. This will kill what's left of EU export economy - not just the exports to the China market, but making uncompetitive EU exports to the entire "rest-of-the-world" market - because they will be starved of efficient materials inputs and intermediate-goods inputs. This is what the, Macron, Scholz and their generation of centrist / Atlanticist leaders really stand for. The regret will be profound.
Apologies for generalising, but all the malaise in European democracies “makes sense” if we acknowledge that there is a high level of elite preselection that ends up offering candidates whose competence lies in securing preselection, not governing well.
This applies also (and especially) to the EU which in turn sees fit to intervene in national level politics. So the elites have a grip on power and elections no longer matter, only preselection matters.
West Germany was set up by the US as an oligarchic federal republic, with very strong fences against democracy, especially if it slides to the left (as a likely if it is driven by hoi polloi's vote). As soon as something goes amiss, the gloves of the law come off:
"But what if the current authoritarian turn in Germany is not a failure of the constitution but rather a case of it doing exactly what it was designed to do? The German constitution has long been seen as the country’s main democratic bulwark against the kind of anti-democratic aberrations of the Nazi era. However, for its creators, this meant, paradoxically, that it also had to act as a bulwark against democracy itself — or better, its potential “excesses”. After all, as liberal commentators never tire of reminding us, Hitler rose to power through democratic means. As the weekly newspaper Die Zeit recently observed, the Basic Law is “deeply laden with scepticism” and mindful of “the abuse of power and the obstruction of the democratic system”. Its creators didn’t trust the people, and were actually quite fearful of the concept of mass democracy.
They thus took it upon themselves to create a constitution that, while guaranteeing equal individual rights for all citizens, would also contain various safeguards and provisions to ensure that the “will of the people” would not get out of hand. The document’s authors envisaged the creation of only three “people’s parties” — the CDU, SPD and FDP, reflecting a narrowly defined spectrum of acceptable opinion. This allowed for the ban of anti-constitutional parties — and even for the temporary stripping of the basic rights of individuals who oppose the “democratic order” too vehemently. Importantly, the text’s “safeguards” were excluded from any future change, even via a parliamentary majority.
Of course, many of these limits were also a consequence of the geopolitical context of the time — namely, Germany’s semi-sovereign status and its subordinate role within the US-centric imperial system. In many ways, under the American umbrella, the Federal Republic of Germany was established as a bulwark against socialism, which meant tightly bounding the new state into the US-led order through Nato and then the EEC. Seen in this light, the various safeguards embedded within the constitution were just as much aimed at avoiding the rise of a new Hitler as they were at keeping Germany firmly within the boundaries of the role assigned to it in the post-war geopolitical divide. This goes a long way to explaining the German establishment’s evolution into US “vassal-in-chief”, especially since the start of the Ukraine war, and its aggressive stance against those who dare to question its destructive consequences.
Once one understands the ideological premises of the German constitution — that the state must do whatever it takes to protect the status quo from any threats arising from the masses — the nation’s authoritarian turn starts to make sense. Far from being an aberration, this is exactly what the German post-war system was designed to do all along."
This is very similar with what the Americans have done when setting up their plutocratic republic:
"On the morning of May 29, 1787, in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, opened the meeting that would become known as the Constitutional Convention by identifying the underlying cause of various problems that the delegates of thirteen states had assembled to solve. “Our chief danger,” Randolph declared, “arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.” None of the separate states’ constitutions, he said, had established “sufficient checks against the democracy.”"
It's true there are many features of the American system that were explicitly crafted by rich landowners (and in many cases slaveowners) to keep the lower classes in line. And we retain those to this day: The Electoral College, the extraordinary power of the Supreme Court, the undemocratic makeup of the Senate are three obvious examples.
Is Germany like that? It's a multiparty democracy that has included left parties in governing coalitions many times (can you imagine the Greens in this country ever having ANY political power?)
Now, many German voters seem poised to make some REALLY bad choices with the AfD, but if enough voters go down that road then Germany will be ruled by a party that is effectively neo-Nazi, no mechanism in the German constitution will stop it.
The way the communist party was banned, same way can be done with AfD. The AfD is already monitored by that bureau for the protection of constitution...
And yet the AfD is running candidates and winning elections. You're saying at some point they'll be banned? Also, the Communist party was banned in the mid-50's. Today, German voters have a wide range of choices - much wider than the choices we have in this country - with no interference from the government.
And why do you think McCarthyism is well behind us? It doesn't look that way to me. The choices that you speak of are like skitles candy, all are of different colours but taste the same.
But that story's from January and since then we've had elections where the AfD has run candidates and won elections. This looks to me like all the talk about striking Donald Trump from the ballot for being an insurrectionist.
What would constitute a broad enough array of choices, in your opinion? If German voters had the option to vote for the Communists? I'm not for banning any political parties, but as a practical matter, how many Germans would vote for the Communists if they had a chance? Do you think a German Communist party would get a single vote in the former East Germany?
I think there would be more Germans voting for a communist party than would be French, or Italians, who still have communist parties running... The East Germans would in certain amount.
And that story was one of the few there, I picked it because was BBC. Couldn't get access to DW stories.
A comparison of the federal electoral results graph (1949-2021) that you posted with the equivalent for European elections (1979-2024) might also be interesting. Among other things, it shows that the SPD has been in a steady and constant decline since 1979 (with only a small uptick in 2014).
As an American, I can say it's done a lot for our country. For European and other countries with aging populations and low birth rates it would be a big help.
Unless you're clinging to the racist notion that certain pieces of land should be reserved only for certain ethnic groups.
All the world is growing older. The west trying to steal immigrants is not cool. Also, I do cling to the idea that spaces and people/ciltures do go together.
"trying to steal immigrants"="allowing people to voluntarily migrate to their countries"
Also, based on your other comments, my understanding is that Western Europe, through their foolish choice to ally themselves with the Americans have turned their countries into unlivable shitholes that no sane person would want to live in, let alone migrate to. Puzzling!
It's like how, back in the Soviet era, some people chose to risk their lives to get into West Berlin from East Germany, even though it is well known that East Germany, under the benign leadership of the Soviet Union, was a worker's paradise. Puzzling!
But the economic indicators do look quite depressing for western europe and uk, and everyboy knows why that is the case. There is yet a lot of fat there so calling them shitholes is a bit of a stretch.
There was nowhere any paradise, ever. But the hells are mostly those protected by the US.
Where did the fat come from? Decades of post-war high economic productivity, excellent university systems, world-leading technology? Did the western Europeans ever do anything right to land themselves in this position?
Agenda 2010 was a disaster for working Germans and a great gift for the financiers. The success was based on wage suppression and cheap Russian gas. Now the latter has disappeared, but the wage suppression remains while the financiers have bid up property prices. And now a trade war with China just to finish things off.
I'm thinking that European elections don't necessarily represent reality, in the sense that everyone who hates the EU turns up to vote. Let's not forget that Nigel Farage was elected to the European Parliament, yet stood seven times for an electorate in England and got wiped out essentially.
To what extent do you think the SPD’s problems have to do with the unique unpopularity of Scholz? If they replaced him with Pistorius, how much better would they do?
Interesting piece! But I am finding the paragraph on AfD vote share among unionised workers very hard to parse. The figures do not seem to correspond well to what is argued.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken but the figures in the table seem to show that, broken down by Gewerkschaftmittgliedschaft, support for the AfD was 18.5% for Mitglieder and 15.4% for non-Mitglieder. In other words, unionised workers *in general* tended to support AfD more strongly than non-unionised workers. There is no need to drill down to the Gewerkschaftmittgliedschaft by Berufsgruppe level to make this point. And actually the effect seems to be *weaker* among Arbeiter (the difference is merely 1.4 points versus 3.1 among all Berufsgruppe).
Don't kid yourself. The elites in germany and elsewhere in europe consider democracy far too important to be left to the whims of the voters.
My reading of the story is that the SPD has been the dominant party in Germany for decades, but that may not continue because the voters don't like it so much any more. Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work?
I think one of the quibbles is that the coalition-building negotiation, which is the hallmark of parliamentary democracy, in practice excludes the left and right wing. Meanwhile, the notional distinction between center-left, center-right, and free-market-liberal is watered down E.g. SPD dismantling the social support policies which once gave them their name, and no substantial difference in subordinating national policy to the Atlanticist program, despite astonishing economic punishment this has brought to not only Germany, but the rest of the continent which is their most immediate export market. This lack of a difference on arguably the most impactful issue of the current generation, makes the exclusion of the the left and right wing even more important, since only they dare question the suicidal orthodoxy of today's EU leadership. Perhaps appropriately for this publication, it is now a subject for historians because the process has reached the point of being irreversible.
"subordinating national policy to the Atlanticist program" means...?
Continued membership in NATO? Joining NATO in its support of Ukraine? Participating in sanctions against Russia put in place in response to its invasion?
Yes - joining NATO in turning Ukraine into a South Vietnam. And most especially, turning a blind eye and in many cases within NATO, actively participating (!!) in support of the US sponsored Nazi revival in Kiev. You know, all the Bandera statues everywhere. Astronomically shameful. But if that's too uncomfortable a subject, we can move on.
Any Atlanticist in good standing also supports the equally suicidal confrontation with China, once again to please the US. This will ultimately be even more devastating, since China has the ability to displace EU exports and finance globally, besides of course being the next most central export and import partner of EU outside itself. This is likewise baked in the cake, and you can thank the Atlanticists for that one too.
Next after that, the French and German centrists support the US-Israeli confrontation with the Islamic world, genocide and all, which has now shut down the Suez canal, plus of course that has been going on for over 20 years already and has managed to spur the wave of migrants which in practice further undermined the dream of a united and prosperous EU, by giving Euro-skeptics an easy political argument to make.
Wonder if there might be a reason why German voters would want to be part of some kind of alliance to counter Russia.
The main benefit of NATO is breaking the hundreds of years old cycle of war *between* European powers. This is something genuinely positive and worthwhile.
However, it also bears repeating that Russia never attacked the core NATO countries (I.e. at the time West Gremany joined). On the other hand, France, Britain, and Germany, have each attacked Russia historically. The US has attacked dozens of countries, and supported the worst murderous regimes as its allies of convenience, all in living memory.
In the current episode, it began when US arranged a violent coup d'etat in Kiev via the 2013-2014 revolution -- for the purpose of undermining Russia and eventually overthrowing the Russian government. The character of their proxies was quite in line with postwar US cynicism relative to the so called principals it occasionally pays lip service to. Perhaps German voters, had they known this, would have thought better. Of course they simply weren't informed.
But going forward, also to repeat, it gets worse. NATO countries are in the advanced stages of the process which tricks them into acting as a sort-of shield or sacrificial punching bag, for the US confrontation with China. As with Russia, they will soon be forbidden to trade with China, for the sake of improving the US position, while the US will not apply the same restrictions to itself. This will kill what's left of EU export economy - not just the exports to the China market, but making uncompetitive EU exports to the entire "rest-of-the-world" market - because they will be starved of efficient materials inputs and intermediate-goods inputs. This is what the, Macron, Scholz and their generation of centrist / Atlanticist leaders really stand for. The regret will be profound.
Regardless of party or electoral outcome, the rulers will keep doing what they want to do.
These "rulers", they aren't... JEWS by any chance?
Apologies for generalising, but all the malaise in European democracies “makes sense” if we acknowledge that there is a high level of elite preselection that ends up offering candidates whose competence lies in securing preselection, not governing well.
This applies also (and especially) to the EU which in turn sees fit to intervene in national level politics. So the elites have a grip on power and elections no longer matter, only preselection matters.
West Germany was set up by the US as an oligarchic federal republic, with very strong fences against democracy, especially if it slides to the left (as a likely if it is driven by hoi polloi's vote). As soon as something goes amiss, the gloves of the law come off:
https://unherd.com/2024/05/germanys-authoritarian-turn/?
"But what if the current authoritarian turn in Germany is not a failure of the constitution but rather a case of it doing exactly what it was designed to do? The German constitution has long been seen as the country’s main democratic bulwark against the kind of anti-democratic aberrations of the Nazi era. However, for its creators, this meant, paradoxically, that it also had to act as a bulwark against democracy itself — or better, its potential “excesses”. After all, as liberal commentators never tire of reminding us, Hitler rose to power through democratic means. As the weekly newspaper Die Zeit recently observed, the Basic Law is “deeply laden with scepticism” and mindful of “the abuse of power and the obstruction of the democratic system”. Its creators didn’t trust the people, and were actually quite fearful of the concept of mass democracy.
They thus took it upon themselves to create a constitution that, while guaranteeing equal individual rights for all citizens, would also contain various safeguards and provisions to ensure that the “will of the people” would not get out of hand. The document’s authors envisaged the creation of only three “people’s parties” — the CDU, SPD and FDP, reflecting a narrowly defined spectrum of acceptable opinion. This allowed for the ban of anti-constitutional parties — and even for the temporary stripping of the basic rights of individuals who oppose the “democratic order” too vehemently. Importantly, the text’s “safeguards” were excluded from any future change, even via a parliamentary majority.
Of course, many of these limits were also a consequence of the geopolitical context of the time — namely, Germany’s semi-sovereign status and its subordinate role within the US-centric imperial system. In many ways, under the American umbrella, the Federal Republic of Germany was established as a bulwark against socialism, which meant tightly bounding the new state into the US-led order through Nato and then the EEC. Seen in this light, the various safeguards embedded within the constitution were just as much aimed at avoiding the rise of a new Hitler as they were at keeping Germany firmly within the boundaries of the role assigned to it in the post-war geopolitical divide. This goes a long way to explaining the German establishment’s evolution into US “vassal-in-chief”, especially since the start of the Ukraine war, and its aggressive stance against those who dare to question its destructive consequences.
Once one understands the ideological premises of the German constitution — that the state must do whatever it takes to protect the status quo from any threats arising from the masses — the nation’s authoritarian turn starts to make sense. Far from being an aberration, this is exactly what the German post-war system was designed to do all along."
This is very similar with what the Americans have done when setting up their plutocratic republic:
"On the morning of May 29, 1787, in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, opened the meeting that would become known as the Constitutional Convention by identifying the underlying cause of various problems that the delegates of thirteen states had assembled to solve. “Our chief danger,” Randolph declared, “arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.” None of the separate states’ constitutions, he said, had established “sufficient checks against the democracy.”"
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/democracy/our-chief-danger
The design of a system will map to the social structure that created it.
It's true there are many features of the American system that were explicitly crafted by rich landowners (and in many cases slaveowners) to keep the lower classes in line. And we retain those to this day: The Electoral College, the extraordinary power of the Supreme Court, the undemocratic makeup of the Senate are three obvious examples.
Is Germany like that? It's a multiparty democracy that has included left parties in governing coalitions many times (can you imagine the Greens in this country ever having ANY political power?)
Now, many German voters seem poised to make some REALLY bad choices with the AfD, but if enough voters go down that road then Germany will be ruled by a party that is effectively neo-Nazi, no mechanism in the German constitution will stop it.
The way the communist party was banned, same way can be done with AfD. The AfD is already monitored by that bureau for the protection of constitution...
And yet the AfD is running candidates and winning elections. You're saying at some point they'll be banned? Also, the Communist party was banned in the mid-50's. Today, German voters have a wide range of choices - much wider than the choices we have in this country - with no interference from the government.
I am saying they are under surveillance and they could end up beeing banned
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68029232
And why do you think McCarthyism is well behind us? It doesn't look that way to me. The choices that you speak of are like skitles candy, all are of different colours but taste the same.
But that story's from January and since then we've had elections where the AfD has run candidates and won elections. This looks to me like all the talk about striking Donald Trump from the ballot for being an insurrectionist.
What would constitute a broad enough array of choices, in your opinion? If German voters had the option to vote for the Communists? I'm not for banning any political parties, but as a practical matter, how many Germans would vote for the Communists if they had a chance? Do you think a German Communist party would get a single vote in the former East Germany?
I think there would be more Germans voting for a communist party than would be French, or Italians, who still have communist parties running... The East Germans would in certain amount.
And that story was one of the few there, I picked it because was BBC. Couldn't get access to DW stories.
A comparison of the federal electoral results graph (1949-2021) that you posted with the equivalent for European elections (1979-2024) might also be interesting. Among other things, it shows that the SPD has been in a steady and constant decline since 1979 (with only a small uptick in 2014).
I think the term “populist” is way too complimentary. It obscures their nativism and bigotry. Wouldn’t “white nationalist” be more accurate?
What is wrong with nativism? What is soo good about mass immigration?
As an American, I can say it's done a lot for our country. For European and other countries with aging populations and low birth rates it would be a big help.
Unless you're clinging to the racist notion that certain pieces of land should be reserved only for certain ethnic groups.
All the world is growing older. The west trying to steal immigrants is not cool. Also, I do cling to the idea that spaces and people/ciltures do go together.
"trying to steal immigrants"="allowing people to voluntarily migrate to their countries"
Also, based on your other comments, my understanding is that Western Europe, through their foolish choice to ally themselves with the Americans have turned their countries into unlivable shitholes that no sane person would want to live in, let alone migrate to. Puzzling!
It's like how, back in the Soviet era, some people chose to risk their lives to get into West Berlin from East Germany, even though it is well known that East Germany, under the benign leadership of the Soviet Union, was a worker's paradise. Puzzling!
It is not cool to put words in people's mouths.
But the economic indicators do look quite depressing for western europe and uk, and everyboy knows why that is the case. There is yet a lot of fat there so calling them shitholes is a bit of a stretch.
There was nowhere any paradise, ever. But the hells are mostly those protected by the US.
"There is yet a lot of fat there"
Where did the fat come from? Decades of post-war high economic productivity, excellent university systems, world-leading technology? Did the western Europeans ever do anything right to land themselves in this position?
I wonder how 2025 will go if, hypothetically, the rump Die Linke merged with the SPD to try to poach BSW votes.
Agenda 2010 was a disaster for working Germans and a great gift for the financiers. The success was based on wage suppression and cheap Russian gas. Now the latter has disappeared, but the wage suppression remains while the financiers have bid up property prices. And now a trade war with China just to finish things off.
I'm thinking that European elections don't necessarily represent reality, in the sense that everyone who hates the EU turns up to vote. Let's not forget that Nigel Farage was elected to the European Parliament, yet stood seven times for an electorate in England and got wiped out essentially.
And now - according to the polls - his party is ahead of the Conservatives. https://www.euronews.com/2024/06/14/nigel-farages-populist-reform-party-overtakes-conservatives-polls-show
To what extent do you think the SPD’s problems have to do with the unique unpopularity of Scholz? If they replaced him with Pistorius, how much better would they do?
Interesting piece! But I am finding the paragraph on AfD vote share among unionised workers very hard to parse. The figures do not seem to correspond well to what is argued.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken but the figures in the table seem to show that, broken down by Gewerkschaftmittgliedschaft, support for the AfD was 18.5% for Mitglieder and 15.4% for non-Mitglieder. In other words, unionised workers *in general* tended to support AfD more strongly than non-unionised workers. There is no need to drill down to the Gewerkschaftmittgliedschaft by Berufsgruppe level to make this point. And actually the effect seems to be *weaker* among Arbeiter (the difference is merely 1.4 points versus 3.1 among all Berufsgruppe).
I can't download the PDF with the review unfortunately (and I'd love to), it seems that the filename is a bit too complex for the technology
Same - still not fixed