19 Comments

The FT chart with the voter movements looks a bit weird because it seems to leave out the voters who voted the same in both elections. That’s an important factor though

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Great article thanks! Better than the explanations on ZDF last night.

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You can't have a dynamic market economy where 57% of voters are over 50 and 40% over 60. You have a huge demographic bulge voting to retain the impossible post-war old ways and occasionally throwing a vote in for the far-right whenever they perceive the faintest risk to that.

Then you have the post-2008 generations just trapped serving that system. They're desperate for change but can't actually do anything to bring it about. It's no wonder they're voting for the anti-democratic parties.

It's kind of funny in a tragic way that the always-online generations spend hours online fighting over how they might like to organise their utopia then at every democratic event that's swept aside by the pre-2008 vote who just ensure the continuity of pensioned stagnation.

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Really lends credence to the european demographic political determinists haha

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Don't really get the optimism at the end, probably belies Tooze's communist leanings. Die Linke are about the same nonsense student politics that left Europe in the dust as the Americans got richer. Merz seems serious so hopefully he can govern without them or the Greens who are just NIMBY/anti nuclear loons. It's time to wake up Europe.

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I don't understand therefore must be communist.

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His Grandfather was a communist spy!

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even your jokes are stupid

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Don't be stupid.

Tooze for once is quite factual and all you can do is show how brainwashed you are.

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This was excellent until the last paragraph. Which is just imo partisan nonsense. Measured immigration does not equate racism. Die Linke stands for "decent social standards?" - come on. What's the empirical foundation for ESG outside of the green religious cult with its made up science and repression of critical studies?

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"A vote for the Greens/Die Linke in this election was a vote for vigorous and unapologetic resistance to racism and the defense of decent social and ESG norms by all means including street demos and modern social media. It was a progressive vote."

This is a curious amalgam of Greens and the left. Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't the Greens been a consistently pro war party, particularly with regard to Ukraine? Analena!? Have the Greens suffered because of that pro war position? Looking just at the Greens, how can one say a vote for them is "progressive"? If "progressive" now includes radical pro war sentiment, perhaps this, like many other bourgeois political terms has lost all meaning? What use is it then to people who wish to understand?

Clearly the biggest issue in this election was the war on Russia in Ukraine, which has not merely threatened WW3, but has ruined the German economy. Run an analysis based on each party's foreign policy and it's results in this election.

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It disqualifies him. All these academics are, in the end, political hacks. Bummer. His book on the Nazi economy is absolutely fantastic.

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it was Baader -Meinhof after all so women on the Left in Germany especially have a long and illustrious history.Rosa Luxembourg and Clara Zetkin---it takes more than Balls to cuase a revolution

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Right. Which revolution did those women lead again? Reality: gender is superfluous, it's a question of policy.

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hmm and Marx and Engels led what revoluution but would you doubt their influence and Meinhof shot off more then her mouth as you do

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These are great charts. What does Die Linke stand for that really makes it more left-wing than the SPD and Greens?

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misogynistic?

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I haven't been to this comment section in a while - there are people here who reference Baader Meinhof as a positive example of women involved in politics? Maybe it is time to let this aging, idea-less country finally expire underneath the dust pile that is European history.

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Thanks for this - I found the BBC coverage downright confusing.

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