Germany is not just any country. Its history is unique and vitally important for everyone. It’s not like a random South American country that elects a corrupt fascist government this year and a corrupt marxist one next. Germany is the most important member of the European Union, a group which is the last bastion of democracy in the current world order. It’s flawed, it’s inefficient and weak, but it at least strives towards democratic ideals that are dead in the US and never existed in Russia and China. What happens in Germany is globally significant.
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Ah I see. Why the discrepency between state and federal last time? Any reason?
Apart from the symbolics, from a national point of view the consequences for Merz inside the CDU are maybe the most interesting to watch bit. He’s already at record low levels of approval for a chancellor after little more than a year in office, there are more state elections coming up in 2 weeks that look bound to be disasters for the CDU. Not sure anyone in the CDU is ready to be the King’s murderer, but his power base inside the party is eroding and there are heads in inportant states that have always been opposed to Merz’s direction, from both sides/wings. I suspect a hell of a lot of infighting coming up. Also their federal coalition partner SPD might be emboldened to challenge him more.
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Time. I think the previous state election was in 2021. The federal election was early in 2025.
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Ah yeah makes sense really. Sentiment has changed or been focused much more recently. Cheers.
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On a symbolic level, I agree with you. But look at France: they too have a long-standing tradition of democracy, although expressed a bit differently, and yet they could be ruled by the FN as soon as next spring.
As far as Germany is concerned, I don’t think that there is any room left for a feeling of exceptionalism. The far right progresses everywhere, and there is no reason that it shouldn’t make progress in Germany as well, apart from a dark history. But for many people, that past becomes more and more a thing of abstraction, or even worse, of fascination, mainly based on ignorance. Just like in the US, in Italy and many other countries.
It’s as sad as it gets, but the truth is that fascism is raising everyhwere. There is no bastion against it as far as I can see. The best case is if its worst effects can be dampened by a tempering effect from institutions still free of it (EU, federal state, juridiction). Of course, you could imagin fascism taking over all institutions, and taking full power of Europe. But that’s a long shot, and I’m not sure that a majority of citizens in Europe want such a reverse movement in terms of social evolution.
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I can’t agree. Germany tried fascism. They took it to its logical extreme and their society was brutalised and decimated.
Berlin was a vibrant, thriving cosmopolitan metropolis. In a dozen years it was a smouldering pile of rubble. Since then the country has dedicated itself to never forgetting and never repeating the crimes of the past, but now, here we are. It’s not comparable to any other country, not France, not Britain, not the US. None of them had the Third Reich.
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This doom stuff doesn’t help either. Sachsen-Anhalt is a small, shrinking state that is projected to have less people than Hamburg in a few years. The East/West split is terrible, but the AfD still has a very long way to go if they want to take over Germany on a national level.
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Good
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About the election in the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt: I am very angry and i am very in alert modus
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Yeah, me too.
The thing is, the vast majority of their voters don’t think they’re voting for a fascist party. And good luck trying to tell them that.
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I saw Merz saying they are “all shocked” by this.
How on Earth can he be shocked at all? Writing was on the wall for a long time.
Expecting similar in France and probably Spain soon. For the exact same reasons. How are politicans so out of touch with public sentiment?
It’s political rhetoric. He has to say he is shocked, although everyone has been talking about that state election forever and it was all about whether the AfD could get an absolute majority.
If anything he’s shocked by the performance of his own party. Though he shouldn’t be either. He’s the main reason why they get that result, no one in his own party wanted him to campaign there.
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Yeah true you´re right. Good point.
Perhaps I should have more said how silly it is, or cowardly, that he´s plays these games instead of acknowledging where he went wrong and why so many people want this change.
This denial of reality is likely why he´s in this position, funnily enough.
What exact same reasons are these?
I haven’t a clue what the motivations are in Germany or Spain.
I’d like to know what your knowledge of France is over this. What have they said to you?
Being against mass migration.
From my own reading and from French people who I talk about it with but even if I didn´t, Le Pen is winning in the polls and her main ideas are similar - reducing immigration and less control over them by the EU.
In Germany the lower the percentage of migrants in the state the higher the AfD votes seem to be.
Like Sachsen-Anhalt. On top of them demographically dying/massively shrinking. Good luck with that strategy in Sachsen-Anhalt.
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Surely you’d expect that to some degree, given that second generation or nationalised immigrants can vote and will overwhelmingly vote pro immigration in areas where they are
Even if that’s not the whole story