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The AfD basically killed itself in an internal power struggle, at which the far right (which is a no-go for 90% of the voters in Germany) succeeded.
The FDP is somewhat right in terms of economy, but as a liberal party progressive, hence can't attract the large numbers of middle right old conservative voters. I agree that the FDP will probably make it in the upcoming elections, but they'll never make it over 15%, their policies mainly attract the pro free market people, who aren't that numerous in Germany.
Imo Merkel is way past being in danger, the rage at her refugee politics is calming down, IS is basically finished (yes, we'll see a bit of rise in the near future in European terrorism as a result, but probably not before the election and not for long), Germany is economically stable enough for both major parties to promise tax reductions (!) and the AfD will never gather more than 15% with their current party leadership (I deem more than 10 unlikely tbh). Also with the recent votes against the populists in EU-countries independence from the EU isn't that big of a topic anymore.
Recent polls see the CDU at ~39%, while the SPD is at ~25%, and FDP, AfD, Green and left all at ~8-9%
On a side note: the CDU has started moving slightly to the right recently.
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Germany3128 Posts
On June 21 2017 20:39 Big J wrote:
What about the FDP and AfD? they both are right-wing alternatives. They just barely didn't make the 5% threshold last election, but they will make it in the upcoming elections.
I am expecting many conservatives to turn their back on the CDU in the years to come, unless the AfD implodes. Which won't happen, the demand for such a party is way to high at this point. The AfD will live simply by people on the right wanting it to live.
Merkel is on dangerous ground, her refugee politics were never fueled by some form of liberalism, only by the German constitution forcing her to be somewhat open. (She wanted to close the borders, she was adviced that it would be against the law) Yet she is creating a story of a middle-of-the-road party, which alienates right-wing voters and drives them towards the AfD. She is mirroring Schröder's way and there is no turning back for the party, once they have given up ground on the radical end.
I'm interested how the FDP will do. And if they will fuck up again, but I would like to see them back in the Bundestag. BTW: They are only to the right of the CDU in terms of economical policy.
The AFD is on a downward spiral tho. Will they be able to get in the Bundestag this time around? Sure. But if you look at the Sonntagsfrage, they would get roughly 7-8 % less voters than last year around this time ( they are currently roughly at 7-8%). With the German bureucracy finally kicking in --> starting to deal with the refugees and as a result the refugee crisis not being a media dominating topic anymore, the AFD really really really NEED a big terrorist attack on German soil to gain grounds. That's the problem if your only big topics are Immigration and Terrorism.
With the AFD basically 86ing Petry at their Parteitag in cologne the AFD has lost all pretenses of being slightly moderate. They are not 'electable' anymore for moderate Germans who just want a firmer stance on immigration.
It also doesn't help them that in all the state parliaments where the AFD is elected since a year or two they have done fuck all and just spout nonsense. The most notable things AFD politicians have done in the state parliaments so far are: Use Nazi rhetoric, compare a CDU politician to Goebbels and call for prison sentences for homosexuals.
Germans see, that the AFD is currently on a spiral to become even more right(see: Meuthens speech about his enlightenment about foreigners in Germany, which has eerily similarities to Hitlers enlightenment about Jews in 'Mein Kampf') and don't have any plans the moment they actually get elected. With their main topic immigration not being in the media anymore I actually don't see them having any huge impact anymore (unless a big terrorist attack on German ground, or a 2nd big refugee wave).
Edit: Merkel isn't on dangerous ground. The only thing that could have been dangerous to her was the SPD and Schulz if they would have used his hype instead of once again fucking up.
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My God, Reddit...People shitting on soldiers in the street - this is why they are needed. No, it's not a fascist state. Yes, it's a safer state.
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On June 21 2017 21:26 SoSexy wrote:
My God, Reddit...People shitting on soldiers in the street - this is why they are needed. No, it's not a fascist state. Yes, it's a safer state.
Wut?
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FDP is a centre party with a classical liberal ideology right?
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On June 21 2017 21:58 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2017 21:26 SoSexy wrote:
My God, Reddit...People shitting on soldiers in the street - this is why they are needed. No, it's not a fascist state. Yes, it's a safer state. Wut?
Sorry, just rambling after some comments I saw on Reddit.
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Already 4/18 ministers of Macron's first government out over judiciary problems (ongoing investigations). Not even 5 weeks... Reminds me of this. One of them, Bayrou, was in charge of the bill to "restore confidence in public action" ! King Macron's ship is sinking before it even departed.
New post-législatives government to be announced in one hour.
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At least while still in safe harbor the leaks are much easier to fix. 
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On June 21 2017 22:19 RvB wrote:
FDP is a centre party with a classical liberal ideology right?
Right.
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On June 21 2017 21:16 TheNewEra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2017 20:39 Big J wrote:
What about the FDP and AfD? they both are right-wing alternatives. They just barely didn't make the 5% threshold last election, but they will make it in the upcoming elections.
I am expecting many conservatives to turn their back on the CDU in the years to come, unless the AfD implodes. Which won't happen, the demand for such a party is way to high at this point. The AfD will live simply by people on the right wanting it to live.
Merkel is on dangerous ground, her refugee politics were never fueled by some form of liberalism, only by the German constitution forcing her to be somewhat open. (She wanted to close the borders, she was adviced that it would be against the law) Yet she is creating a story of a middle-of-the-road party, which alienates right-wing voters and drives them towards the AfD. She is mirroring Schröder's way and there is no turning back for the party, once they have given up ground on the radical end. I'm interested how the FDP will do. And if they will fuck up again, but I would like to see them back in the Bundestag. BTW: They are only to the right of the CDU in terms of economical policy. The AFD is on a downward spiral tho. Will they be able to get in the Bundestag this time around? Sure. But if you look at the Sonntagsfrage, they would get roughly 7-8 % less voters than last year around this time ( they are currently roughly at 7-8%). With the German bureucracy finally kicking in --> starting to deal with the refugees and as a result the refugee crisis not being a media dominating topic anymore, the AFD really really really NEED a big terrorist attack on German soil to gain grounds. That's the problem if your only big topics are Immigration and Terrorism. With the AFD basically 86ing Petry at their Parteitag in cologne the AFD has lost all pretenses of being slightly moderate. They are not 'electable' anymore for moderate Germans who just want a firmer stance on immigration. It also doesn't help them that in all the state parliaments where the AFD is elected since a year or two they have done fuck all and just spout nonsense. The most notable things AFD politicians have done in the state parliaments so far are: Use Nazi rhetoric, compare a CDU politician to Goebbels and call for prison sentences for homosexuals. Germans see, that the AFD is currently on a spiral to become even more right(see: Meuthens speech about his enlightenment about foreigners in Germany, which has eerily similarities to Hitlers enlightenment about Jews in 'Mein Kampf') and don't have any plans the moment they actually get elected. With their main topic immigration not being in the media anymore I actually don't see them having any huge impact anymore (unless a big terrorist attack on German ground, or a 2nd big refugee wave). Edit: Merkel isn't on dangerous ground. The only thing that could have been dangerous to her was the SPD and Schulz if they would have used his hype instead of once again fucking up.
In my opinion, you are getting overly excited. Once they are in the true propaganda machinery will start. They will start playing a victim that got democratically elected but the bad, nondemocratic other parties don't want to play with it. They will get all tons of media presence by playing with a vague Nazi connotiation and always pretending they have been missinterpreted and that the big bad system parties and media are trying to shut them up, although they got democratically elected and so on and so on. And once Merkel-4 is started, they can really shine. They can put forward demands, that any reasonable, democratic party that is abiding the constitution cannot fullfill, but since the CDU is already the next most right-wing party, the only option for the "concerned voter"who sees all these problems, and noone is doing anything about it", is going to be to shift further to the right.
I've seen the rise and fall of FPÖ one too many times and I am far too liberal to pretend, that for some reason what's been happening in the US, France, Austria, the Netherlands and many other states I probably should be paying more attention to, cannot happen in Germany. It's only just beginning and the AfD can look back on some 30 years of successful populism to not copy every mistake, but use all the decent strategies in the playbook.
You don't need ongoing terrorism or refugee's coming in. You have 10% foreigners and many more people with foreign heritage, often easily recognizable by their skin color. They won't go anywhere and neither will the AfD's claims that everything that's wrong with the country is lazy foreigners.
Also sorry for answering so late.
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On June 22 2017 04:08 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2017 21:16 TheNewEra wrote:On June 21 2017 20:39 Big J wrote:
What about the FDP and AfD? they both are right-wing alternatives. They just barely didn't make the 5% threshold last election, but they will make it in the upcoming elections.
I am expecting many conservatives to turn their back on the CDU in the years to come, unless the AfD implodes. Which won't happen, the demand for such a party is way to high at this point. The AfD will live simply by people on the right wanting it to live.
Merkel is on dangerous ground, her refugee politics were never fueled by some form of liberalism, only by the German constitution forcing her to be somewhat open. (She wanted to close the borders, she was adviced that it would be against the law) Yet she is creating a story of a middle-of-the-road party, which alienates right-wing voters and drives them towards the AfD. She is mirroring Schröder's way and there is no turning back for the party, once they have given up ground on the radical end. I'm interested how the FDP will do. And if they will fuck up again, but I would like to see them back in the Bundestag. BTW: They are only to the right of the CDU in terms of economical policy. The AFD is on a downward spiral tho. Will they be able to get in the Bundestag this time around? Sure. But if you look at the Sonntagsfrage, they would get roughly 7-8 % less voters than last year around this time ( they are currently roughly at 7-8%). With the German bureucracy finally kicking in --> starting to deal with the refugees and as a result the refugee crisis not being a media dominating topic anymore, the AFD really really really NEED a big terrorist attack on German soil to gain grounds. That's the problem if your only big topics are Immigration and Terrorism. With the AFD basically 86ing Petry at their Parteitag in cologne the AFD has lost all pretenses of being slightly moderate. They are not 'electable' anymore for moderate Germans who just want a firmer stance on immigration. It also doesn't help them that in all the state parliaments where the AFD is elected since a year or two they have done fuck all and just spout nonsense. The most notable things AFD politicians have done in the state parliaments so far are: Use Nazi rhetoric, compare a CDU politician to Goebbels and call for prison sentences for homosexuals. Germans see, that the AFD is currently on a spiral to become even more right(see: Meuthens speech about his enlightenment about foreigners in Germany, which has eerily similarities to Hitlers enlightenment about Jews in 'Mein Kampf') and don't have any plans the moment they actually get elected. With their main topic immigration not being in the media anymore I actually don't see them having any huge impact anymore (unless a big terrorist attack on German ground, or a 2nd big refugee wave). Edit: Merkel isn't on dangerous ground. The only thing that could have been dangerous to her was the SPD and Schulz if they would have used his hype instead of once again fucking up. In my opinion, you are getting overly excited. Once they are in the true propaganda machinery will start. They will start playing a victim that got democratically elected but the bad, nondemocratic other parties don't want to play with it. They will get all tons of media presence by playing with a vague Nazi connotiation and always pretending they have been missinterpreted and that the big bad system parties and media are trying to shut them up, although they got democratically elected and so on and so on. And once Merkel-4 is started, they can really shine. They can put forward demands, that any reasonable, democratic party that is abiding the constitution cannot fullfill, but since the CDU is already the next most right-wing party, the only option for the "concerned voter"who sees all these problems, and noone is doing anything about it", is going to be to shift further to the right. I've seen the rise and fall of FPÖ one too many times and I am far too liberal to pretend, that for some reason what's been happening in the US, France, Austria, the Netherlands and many other states I probably should be paying more attention to, cannot happen in Germany. It's only just beginning and the AfD can look back on some 30 years of successful populism to not copy every mistake, but use all the decent strategies in the playbook. You don't need ongoing terrorism or refugee's coming in. You have 10% foreigners and many more people with foreign heritage, often easily recognizable by their skin color. They won't go anywhere and neither will the AfD's claims that everything that's wrong with the country is lazy foreigners. Also sorry for answering so late.
To be frank, I think that our stately outlet, the ARD and such, has done quite some reflection on their role in giving outlandish claims and personalities the attention they want and not deserve. So I am rather excited about them blabbering bullshit again and how "the media" will react.
I do hope it is going to be different to the last years. I almost expect it.
Sort of connected and easily accessible for you as a German speaker, I propose you to watch the "Sag's mir ins Gesicht!" series of the Tagesschau (say it to my face). If you manage, it's pretty cringy. Moderators, correspondents as well as the Tagesschau editor in chief did a series where they be asked by ordinary people whatever their concern regarding the media coverage via skype.
Motivated by the surge in hateful comments the goals of that project are manifold. Two of them are to encourage those who claim they are not heard to take word and to show that the media personalities who are attacked viciously on a daily basis are people still.
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On June 22 2017 04:08 Big J wrote:
I've seen the rise and fall of FPÖ one too many times and I am far too liberal to pretend, that for some reason what's been happening in the US, France, Austria, the Netherlands and many other states I probably should be paying more attention to, cannot happen in Germany. It's only just beginning and the AfD can look back on some 30 years of successful populism to not copy every mistake, but use all the decent strategies in the playbook.
You don't need ongoing terrorism or refugee's coming in. You have 10% foreigners and many more people with foreign heritage, often easily recognizable by their skin color. They won't go anywhere and neither will the AfD's claims that everything that's wrong with the country is lazy foreigners.
Even if the claim that populism won't go anywhere is correct (which I don't necessarily agree with), the AfD is not going to make it more popular. They suck even harder than the FN. They constantly replace their leaders with even crazier extremists which drives mainstream society even further away. And the German society is fairly conscious of this stuff, the amount of obscenity you can throw into politics here is limited.
But if they ditch it they'll lose their 'meta-political' appeal and just become a normal party, which will lose them their rabid base. It's a catch-22
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The current brand of populist politics is likely not to be particularly long-lived; too many of those populists are simply impractical as a political entity. But the ideas they became popular for are not so easily erased. At some point slightly less insane parties who share many core ideas but are more publicly palatable will take over. But there is no indication that the issues that allowed populism to take root are likely to dissipate.
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On June 22 2017 05:24 LegalLord wrote:
The current brand of populist politics is likely not to be particularly long-lived; too many of those populists are simply impractical as a political entity. But the ideas they became popular for are not so easily erased. At some point slightly less insane parties who share many core ideas but are more publicly palatable will take over. But there is no indication that the issues that allowed populism to take root are likely to dissipate.
I wouldn't say that parties that take over politics from populists are reasonable. But yes, this is exactly what's happening in Austria. Norbert Hofer, the FPÖ presidential candidate even claimed, that Sebastian Kurz's ideas for refugees were over the top and inhumane (in particular putting refugees in camps on islands) and that the FPÖ was less radical.
Not to mention that the conservatives are trying to transform Austria into a police state, mainly because someone used to shit in front of the interior minister's door (before he came minister) and now that guy is obsessed with putting up cameras, because that's what helped him deal with his issue. Heck, when it comes to privacy rights the FPÖ might even be the most liberal party we have at this point. I really wish I could just fly out all the people I know to some liberal state like China or North Korea and be done with this shithole.
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Well in the context, "put refugees on camps on islands" sounds insidious, but honestly I would like you to expand on that. Because on its face, I wonder how many of us would object to camps for processing refugees. If it's a short term arrangement, it's a logistically effective way to deal with a large unexpected influx of people. Is that the suggestion that goes too far, or some insidious variation on that theme?
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On June 22 2017 06:36 LegalLord wrote:
Well in the context, "put refugees on camps on islands" sounds insidious, but honestly I would like you to expand on that. Because on its face, I wonder how many of us would object to camps for processing refugees. If it's a short term arrangement, it's a logistically effective way to deal with a large unexpected influx of people. Is that the suggestion that goes too far, or some insidious variation on that theme?
Noone knows. There is no actual plan. He is a conservative that is demanding populist things that he doesn't have to carry out, nor needs to actually have success with introducing because Austria has no islands. I am not sure he knows that, though. Complicated issues are not for those who throw away their education in favor of 69ing party members and rich lobbies.
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Island refugee camps sounds a lot like what Australia is doing in Nauru, and to call it inhumane is a euphemism.
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On June 22 2017 07:10 warding wrote:
Island refugee camps sounds a lot like what Australia is doing in Nauru, and to call it inhumane is a euphemism.
They are doing the right thing: protecting their people. Australia is a great country.
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Australia is a great country with one of the developed world's crappiest political class. Are you actually in support of indeterminate warehousing of people in remote islands in appalling conditions? Like a Guantanamo Bay for people whose crime was to desperately seek a better life for themselves and their families?
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EPT
