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Harris1st
Germany6900 Posts
I do actually believe Chancellor Merz can turn the ship around enough to get revoted. Here is to hopium. Like it was said above, i believe the young voters don't see the retirement problem as big yet. The problems more imminent are what drives them: War, Energy, Immigration, Housing and living costs in no particular order. | ||
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mahrgell
Germany3943 Posts
The left with their one dimensional "eat the rich" campaign could then obviously gobble up many young voters without any contest from the other parties. And while SPD, CDU and Greens had to consider the possibility of actually having to deal with Trump, the Left never had this issue. They are guaranteed opposition anyway. Their campaign statements are of no consequence, their promises never have to be kept. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25071 Posts
On February 24 2025 21:05 Harris1st wrote: Well, the new government has quite some pressure to not fuck it up completely otherwise the next government will be led by AfD. I do actually believe Chancellor Merz can turn the ship around enough to get revoted. Here is to hopium. Like it was said above, i believe the young voters don't see the retirement problem as big yet. The problems more imminent are what drives them: War, Energy, Immigration, Housing and living costs in no particular order. If Germans are anything like us Brits (sense of humour excepted), yeah this tracks. Folks my age are pretty pissy on much of this, pensions not quite, although gradually as we push into mid 30s and beyond you’re starting to see more attention paid on this. In a crude sense I think a ton of dissatisfaction is due to things very visible and obvious. Oh my mum and dad had free university and I don’t (UK specific perhaps), or were on the property ladder 10 years before me with worse jobs? Or I worked with folks close to retirement age now in retail who bought a house on a single retail income back in the day? I think many here would ideally want things to get better versus what our forebears had, but would take a stable equilibrium. But if things are actively getting worse in some of these domains? That’s a hard bloody sell. I think older folks are quite fortunate that so much of what they benefitted from, and younger folks no longer do is buried by anti-migration sentiment. Not in any ‘eat the elderly’ uprising sense haha don’t get me wrong. But it fragments a lot of the youth vote to prevent it ever seriously challenging political parties and policies In the UK for example we have a pension ‘triple lock’. Which effectively guarantees that the state pension will stay above 2.5%, inflation or effective wage increases, it moves up whichever of those is highest. Is this a bad policy? I’m not against insulating our pensioners against shocks. However, the wider working population has still got fucked by stagnant wages or inflation, or both. The disabled are still left at their payments being eroded by those forces too. Perhaps a problem many of us have is simply that we don’t want to make it a zero-sum confrontation, even if maybe it might be politically advantageous. We don’t want to fuck the elderly over, or migrants or whatever, but rebuild failing systems for a more general uplift. Incidentally my German TLers, just how left are some of those parties mentioned here? | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21650 Posts
The question is why they are flocking to the far right nazi's and not elsewhere. Because the Nazi's sure aren't going to fix anything either. I legit wonder how much the political directions of the youth are being driven by social media and the flood of right wing propaganda on it, whether from local or foreign sources. | ||
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9614 Posts
On February 25 2025 01:11 Gorsameth wrote: what was it, Millennials are the first generation in history to be less prosperous then their parents. Young(er) people have every right to be thoroughly pissed off with 'the establishment' because it has utterly failed them. The question is why they are flocking to the far right nazi's and not elsewhere. Because the Nazi's sure aren't going to fix anything either. I legit wonder how much the political directions of the youth are being driven by social media and the flood of right wing propaganda on it, whether from local or foreign sources. The right wing have done a stellar job of capitalizing on the situation tbh. I posted an article in US politics a while back about a study showing how leftist activists are by far the least likely group of people to want work with anyone who doesn't share their ideology. That's essentially the reason. The left's attitude is 'we are right and eventually enough people will see that that we never have to make any compromises, we just have to wait for some mythical future special day where everyone comes to us.' | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
On February 25 2025 02:27 Jockmcplop wrote: The right wing have done a stellar job of capitalizing on the situation tbh. I posted an article in US politics a while back about a study showing how leftist activists are by far the least likely group of people to want work with anyone who doesn't share their ideology. That's essentially the reason. The left's attitude is 'we are right and eventually enough people will see that that we never have to make any compromises, we just have to wait for some mythical future special day where everyone comes to us.' I think this is true, but I also think it makes sense for the left to not compromise. When they compromise with liberals, we've seen what happens, the liberals just demand their allegiance and never do anything leftist in return. The other group to compromise with would be like, populists who have conservative social views, which has been done in the past, and I have some skepticism for that as well. I can see not emphasizing social issues too much because economic issues are more important, I think that's fine, but I can't see straight up being tolerant of racism or anything proactive like that, and I'm afraid that's most likely what would be demanded of us if we went in that direction. | ||
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9614 Posts
On February 25 2025 02:43 Nebuchad wrote: I think this is true, but I also think it makes sense for the left to not compromise. When they compromise with liberals, we've seen what happens, the liberals just demand their allegiance and never do anything leftist in return. The other group to compromise with would be like, populists who have conservative social views, which has been done in the past, and I have some skepticism for that as well. I can see not emphasizing social issues too much because economic issues are more important, I think that's fine, but I can't see straight up being tolerant of racism or anything proactive like that, and I'm afraid that's most likely what would be demanded of us if we went in that direction. Yeah... These are the exact problems. I get it too. Our centrist government in the UK makes me absolutely bloody furious with basically everything they do, and that is who the left would have to work with. It looks like quite a miserable future for the left. The fact is people are getting angrier, and that means more racism, more misogyny, more ridiculous blaming of the wrong things for everything that needs fixing and these are the demands that the public have, so how can the left even begin to work with that? | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25071 Posts
On February 25 2025 02:43 Nebuchad wrote: I think this is true, but I also think it makes sense for the left to not compromise. When they compromise with liberals, we've seen what happens, the liberals just demand their allegiance and never do anything leftist in return. The other group to compromise with would be like, populists who have conservative social views, which has been done in the past, and I have some skepticism for that as well. I can see not emphasizing social issues too much because economic issues are more important, I think that's fine, but I can't see straight up being tolerant of racism or anything proactive like that, and I'm afraid that's most likely what would be demanded of us if we went in that direction. Yeah, broadly agree. It’s interesting to consider, and by interesting I mean also simultaneously depressing that some of the broader right thru far right coalitions, especially in the cultural domain absolutely just should not function. It’s less of a broad series of compromises, and more of a ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t trample over x sacred cow of mine because you did something I approve of.’ Yes I know functionally yes, obviously that’s basically just compromise, but I think the dynamics are quite different. There’s not the friction, there’s not those alliances, formal or informal waxing and waning with events, that sense of pragmatism and ‘hey it’s not perfect but it’s the best we could manage’ that you see with coalitions and compromise all the time. And should generally expect to see. I’m not saying it’s completely non-existent but it’s sure not prominent, certainly if we look at the broader Trump base, or similar ones. To bring this back to the wider left a second, how am I supposed to compromise with somebody on certain points of principle, if they didn’t demand it of others for years? Can I even do so? Is it even worth pursuing? I think there’s a lot more hard-nosed pragmatism that lurks behind the moral rigid idealism that some on the left are charged with than many account for. Which is essentially ‘if I am willing to compromise in good faith and the other party is, I’m open to that. If the other party has a long track record of being full of shit, I would be a fool to give too much away.’ In a nutshell anyway, and of course I’m not saying we lack the moral idealists! It’s a conundrum that’s for sure. To take but one area, travelling back in time a bit to my late teens/early 20s let’s say. There used to be rather a lot of overlap between the left and libertarians on things like social issues, foreign policy, the size scope and abuse of certain apparatus of state .Obviously a big central bone of contention re the role of government. What the fuck happened to that? How can I now compromise with Dave the Libertarian if say he’s been a MAGA enthusiast for 8 years despite that platform clearly pissing over much he claims to value? In a parallel universe where Libertarians rode Trump etc hard and moderated some of his impulses where it transgressed their ostensible values etc, then yeah you can maybe sell some alliances of overlap. Obviously not all Libertarians etc, just the first example that came to mind. | ||
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Broetchenholer
Germany1909 Posts
There is no way of coming back, unless you can shame them again into a stance where they cannot vote for AfD again. And in order for that to work, something truly horrible would need to happen, because the denial of reality in real time can already be observed. And as none of the other parties are interested in actually solving some of the real problems we face that would make my brother in law feel like belonging to this society again, I have zero confidence that this will ever go away again. My little daughter will have to live in this world and it makes me sad. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23188 Posts
On February 25 2025 02:56 Jockmcplop wrote: Yeah... These are the exact problems. I get it too. Our centrist government in the UK makes me absolutely bloody furious with basically everything they do, and that is who the left would have to work with. It looks like quite a miserable future for the left. The fact is people are getting angrier, and that means more racism, more misogyny, more ridiculous blaming of the wrong things for everything that needs fixing and these are the demands that the public have, so how can the left even begin to work with that? It's not really "the left" so much as neoliberal centrists that insist they "are right and eventually enough people will see that that we never have to make any compromises, we just have to wait for some mythical future special day where everyone comes to us.' (coulda been Democrats campaign slogan in the US) People to the left of neoliberal centrists and people to the right over the last 50 years have been conceding to the neoliberal centrists. Now those neoliberal centrists are being forced to be the ones making concessions, and they'd rather make them to their right than to their left. Even if that means empowering fascists. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4755 Posts
One side promises sharing and equality, one side promises hard work and fruit of labor. One side promises shiny things. People have been duped and have continued being duped. | ||
zatic
Zurich15325 Posts
On February 25 2025 00:50 WombaT wrote: Incidentally my German TLers, just how left are some of those parties mentioned here? Quoting myself from https://tl.net/blogs/410943-germany-x-german-general-election (which makes for one trip down memory lane) The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is Germany's oldest political party, and the main party on the left side of the political spectrum. Similarly to what Angela Merkel is doing to the CDU right now, before 2005 former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took the SPD on a very centrist course, most famously by introducing highly controversial welfare reforms. This caused a major disruption within the SPD, one that is has not been able to recover from since. The SPD is uncomfortably locked in between an ever more centrist CDU and the far left, and has difficulty differentiating itself from either without alienating either the left or rights branches within the party. Their classic topics are worker's rights, social, and welfare programs, but in any of those their position is only marginally different from the Union's today. They also supported the Merkel administration on all foreign policy and European integration questions. The Left Party is a joint party made of PDS, which superseded the communist party in former East Germany, and the far left branch of the SPD, which had split from the SPD during the Schroeder administration. The Left enjoyed much success towards the end of the Schroeder administration and during the first Merkel years, but has long struggled with internal disagreement over direction and internal power contests. They are hovering just above the 5% threshold. The Left's program is classic socialist with additional pacifist ideals and a modern program regarding family and social issues. While they are not a truly communist party and have many overlaps with the SPD and the Green party, they do reject capitalism and the free market in favor of a democratic socialism. These hold up fairly well. The squeezing of the SPD has only continued, and if things go on they will become a party purely for and of the retired. While the Left still largely uses the same vocabulary, I would argue classic turn of century socialist positions as in international worker's solidary or straight up socialism is not what they advertise anymore front on center. They still reject capitalism, but their language is more vague and less immediate today. The newly founded Bundnis Sarah Wagenknecht (BSW) is a split off from the Left party. It's a bit difficult to say what they truly stand for, because their program is incredibly vague and for the most part simply unsubstantiated populism. They propose higher wages, better healthcare, cheap energy, free education, higher pensions, better infrastructure, lower prices. In two areas they are clear though: Rapprochment with Russia is their main theme throughout their program, and they reject NATO in general and the US especially. And they reject wokism (without naming it), cancel culture, and immigration. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25071 Posts
On February 25 2025 05:27 zatic wrote: Quoting myself from https://tl.net/blogs/410943-germany-x-german-general-election (which makes for one trip down memory lane) These hold up fairly well. The squeezing of the SPD has only continued, and if things go on they will become a party purely for and of the retired. While the Left still largely uses the same vocabulary, I would argue classic turn of century socialist positions as in international worker's solidary or straight up socialism is not what they advertise anymore front on center. They still reject capitalism, but their language is more vague and less immediate today. The newly founded Bundnis Sarah Wagenknecht (BSW) is a split off from the Left party. It's a bit difficult to say what they truly stand for, because their program is incredibly vague and for the most part simply unsubstantiated populism. They propose higher wages, better healthcare, cheap energy, free education, higher pensions, better infrastructure, lower prices. In two areas they are clear though: Raprochment with Russia is their main theme throughout their program, and they reject NATO in general and the US especially. And they reject wokism (without naming it), cancel culture, and immigration. Much obliged, I think I read the original if memory serves, just I guess it dissipated without following German politics more regularly. I must say I’m somewhat confused as to this growing pro-Russia sentiment, be it on both right and left sides of the aisle. I mean I understand how it’s trying to be pushed and why, but as to why it’s actually resonating in some quarters I’m perpetually in the dark. | ||
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Yurie
11813 Posts
But the main thing you could spin it on right now would be cheap energy prices again. Since Germany is highly dependent on fossil fuels, having a cheap source is popular. If you also like strong leaders and lebensraum philosophy it makes sense since the major negatives are gone. | ||
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r00ty
Germany1050 Posts
Yes, that's the former inner German border as of 1990, unified Germany my ass. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6900 Posts
On February 25 2025 04:43 Broetchenholer wrote: Why is the right winning 20% of the vote in Germany? Because once the right created a mini semblance of legitimate politics, the stupid vote went there. Basically, as soon as people believed that the majority that would shun them was not automatically in the right, they voted for the bubble they had already been in. And that bubble was created by Facebook first and all the other social media apps afterwards. These people were always either hardcore bigots or too stupid to not fall for a simple world view with easy solutions and the air of being the victim of the political progress. And as they see themselves ( rightfully ) as the victims if society anyway, AfD for them is one of us and the Rest of their worldview is molded by the information bubble they are in. There is no way of coming back, unless you can shame them again into a stance where they cannot vote for AfD again. And in order for that to work, something truly horrible would need to happen, because the denial of reality in real time can already be observed. And as none of the other parties are interested in actually solving some of the real problems we face that would make my brother in law feel like belonging to this society again, I have zero confidence that this will ever go away again. My little daughter will have to live in this world and it makes me sad. Basically there is only one way for that to happen and that is AfD wins the election and govern Germany to shit, breaking all their promises. It would most definitely be a one and done. But who and how the other parties will collect the pieces afterwards, I don't know. Scary just to think about | ||
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Billyboy
976 Posts
On February 25 2025 06:41 r00ty wrote: For anyone not in the know: This is a map for the majority vote. Black=CDU, Blue=AfD, Red=SPD, Green=Grüne, Pink=Die Linke. Yes, that's the former inner German border as of 1990, unified Germany my ass. I think this has to do with some flawed but simple but flawed logic. Things are shitty, hells no we are not going back to communism after living through that, things got better when we went right, lets go far right that must be even better. Is it mostly those that lived through communism (like age groups) voting for the far right? | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6900 Posts
On February 25 2025 22:32 Billyboy wrote: I think this has to do with some flawed but simple but flawed logic. Things are shitty, hells no we are not going back to communism after living through that, things got better when we went right, lets go far right that must be even better. Is it mostly those that lived through communism (like age groups) voting for the far right? Actually no. East Germany feels "left out" or "forgotten" and that why they vote for the "Alternative for Germany". The main motivation isn't even to vote right. Just to vote for something different. And a lot of old folks actually wishes communism back and have rose colored nostalgia glasses on (things were better, everyone had work, childcare was free and for everyone from an early age, stuff like that). The young inherit these values from their parents / grandparents. | ||
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Billyboy
976 Posts
On February 25 2025 23:02 Harris1st wrote: Actually no. East Germany feels "left out" or "forgotten" and that why they vote for the "Alternative for Germany". The main motivation isn't even to vote right. Just to vote for something different. And a lot of old folks actually wishes communism back and have rose colored nostalgia glasses on (things were better, everyone had work, childcare was free and for everyone from an early age, stuff like that). The young inherit these values from their parents / grandparents. That is interesting because here there is a lots of people who "escaped" communism in the 80's and they have nothing at all good to say about it. They talk about food shortages, lack of choice, fear and so on. Edit: why isn't a far left populist party killing it? | ||
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Godwrath
Spain10121 Posts
On February 25 2025 23:44 Billyboy wrote: That is interesting because here there is a lots of people who "escaped" communism in the 80's and they have nothing at all good to say about it. They talk about food shortages, lack of choice, fear and so on. Edit: why isn't a far left populist party killing it? Why would it be? What most people consider the far left is not conservative. If you try to fit everything into the oversimplified left-right axis, you're only going to give yourself a headache. But honestly, it's surprising to see people still confused about this... especially after Brexit, Trump's first election, and the rise of the far right nearly a decade ago. There is a clear need for answers and to regain control. f you can provide answers they can understand and give them the feeling that, thanks to you, they will regain control, or at the very least, take it away from 'the other side'... I'm not saying they will actually gain it, obviously, they are more vulnerable to snake oil salesmen. But that's precisely the point: a significant portion of them is in a vulnerable position due to growing inequality. | ||
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