Alternative for Germany

[clakclak]

If there were still any questions on who the AfD is working for and let’s be honest, there never was any question there to begin with, this should make everything more than clear. They feel no shame and people applaud it,

“[…]The new foreign policy spokesperson for the AfD parliamentary group, Matthias Moosdorf, has a part-time job in Moscow. He has been working as an honorary professor in Russia since September. As the news portal "T-Online" reports, the 59-year-old cellist will teach at the internationally renowned Moscow Gnessin Academy of Music for a fee in addition to his mandate in the Bundestag. The school is close to the Kremlin and represents its positions to the outside world, even in times of war. (Translated from German to English)[…]”

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/1f ... fessur_in/

At the same time there are more and more accusations against another AfD politician employing forced labor of political prisoners in fields he owns in Belarus. Prosecutors in Leibzig are now investigating and if there are further information I will update this.

Source: https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/welt/ost ... e-100.html

[chew-ie]

Surprised Pikachu .. not.

[Alerion_V.X3]

It is not for nothing that this ‘party’ is now more or less jokingly called Alternative against Germany, and not just by me. German short form ‘AgD’

I think that's all you need to know about the political aims of this party. It also applies to all European ‘sister’ parties. But even the right-wing extremists in France/Italy, for example, no longer find the AgD suitable enough to achieve their common, political goals: Undermining the majority for the personal lust for power and achieving the financial goals (get rich, let others suffer) of individuals. Like the kleptocracy of Russia and Co.

[Cpt.Jericho]

Not sure what you guys have been smoking during my hiatus. Germany isn't ruled via its federal states nor via the puppets in Berlin. It actually doesn't matter which party rules or who's head of the state - policy in Germany is made in D.C. and Davos.

[clakclak]

Not sure what you guys have been smoking during my hiatus. Germany isn't ruled via its federal states nor via the puppets in Berlin. It actually doesn't matter which party rules or who's head of the state - policy in Germany is made in D.C. and Davos.

No it is not. There really is not much else to be said and while I would be curious in what direction this conspiracy theory goes, it is in the end pointless to discuss ideas like that.

Germany is a sovereign nation, to the degree any nation is sovereign. It is bound by treaties, no more and no less.

[fiksal]

must be the aliens

[chew-ie]

Seems we all failed to see the -obvious- dragon. Volo won't be pleased

[clakclak]

The party is now jumping head first into the Israel-Palestine conflict. This may end up causing a similar process to the one that created the rift in the German Left.

For a bit of context to the non Germans or those Germans that do not care to much about the tranch warefare in Germany's left/far-left. While it seems that for example in America the Left (meaning all the groups left of the Democrats) are pretty staunchly Pro Palestine, this is not exactly the case with the German Left. Instead the Left is split into three main currents (and an uncountable number of smaller currents). Those are the people who refuse to touch the entire conflict with a ten foot pole, deeming it a toxic void and the end of all discourse, the Pro-Palestinian Left (also called Anti-Imperialists) and a unique flavour in the German speaking countries, the staunchly Pro-Israel Left (the so called Anti-Germans). At the ideological core of the believes held by the Anti-Germans lies the so called Frankfurt school, especially the work of Theodro Adorno, which they build upon and interpret a bit different than Adorno ever did. The name Anti-German comes from the idea that German identity, the identifaction with being German is, in itself, allready antisemitic. From that results a staunch support for Israel which is seen as a last hope for the Jewish people. Consequently, the Anti-Germans and Anti-Imperialists, HATE each other to the point where they extremist elements of both camps will attack one another from time to time. While many people are probably familiar with the very firm and at times extremist support for the Palestinian side from left wing groups, it is important to mention that the Anti-German movement has the same degree of militancy.

But what the hell does the German left have to do with the AfD? Nothing. On the surface at least. However it shows how a political movement, especially in Germany, can shatter itself over the conflict in the middle east, which makes what happened recently so remarkable.

AfD chairman and lead spokesman Tino Chrupalla came out with a speech that was remarkable for a great many reasons. In it Chrupalla took an axe to the previous support of Israel which had never been a big point of contention before. To say that the Israel/Palestine conflict is a touchy subject is always true, but as you can maybe imagine in Germany it is doubly so, due to the history of the Shoa. Thus so far, despite all the WW2 rethoric, the AfD was staunchly in support of Israel in the conflict. Chrupalla however now questions said support, to quote an article by a conservative newspaper:

[...]In a speech in the Bundestag on Wednesday, he criticized “exclusive expressions of solidarity” and “one-sided partisanship”. He said there should be no more German arms deliveries to Israel and no more “blanket Islamophobia”. “With your arms deliveries to Israel, you are accepting the dehumanization of all civilian deaths on both sides,” he said. It was “time to take a critical and objective look at the Israeli government”.[...]

Source: Article originally published by WELT, but paywalled, MSN, for whatever reason, has the same article but without a paywall: https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/p ... r-AA1svsly

This is all still pretty fresh, but it allready seems as if Chrupalla kicked a hornets nest without any reason to do so. While it seems as if most of the AfD, at this point, is still firmly Pro-Israel, Chrupalla's push to a more nuanced approach could be enough to start internal debattes within the party that might become very painful for it. After all Chrupalla is well liked, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten to the position where he is now, but warning against Islamophobia makes it almost seem as if he forgot what party he is in, especially in a context where many Germans even outside his party enjoy to believe in the narrative that antisemitism is a purely Islamic phenomena, brought into Germany by migrants.

I doubt we see a similar split like the one that exists within Left groups, at least not in the near future, however at the same time this topic has the potential to lead to heated discussions within the party if Chrupalla does not backpaddle soon.

[notaterran]

Well, I'm sure many people in Germany were sweating today:

The polls, issued right after the last polling stations closed, put support for Merz’s Union bloc at 28.5-29% and Alternative for Germany at 19.5-20%

Link

So, back to normal?

[The Q]

So, back to normal?

Hopefully not.

The guy who re-started his political career with the aim of cutting the percentages of that afd party in half and who constantly claims to be a man of the middle class of society celebrates his win despite having had the second worst result of his party in a federal election while both the left and the right wing parties were strengthened.

[chew-ie]

It's more about the small wins for now - no FDP and no BSW is a big win (especially FDP). Everything else - time will tell.

AfD voters need a wake up call - not sure what can deliver that. And we surely have a media problem which has to be worked on. That's true for all countries though - there is a huge disorientation on what to do with the asocial media and traditional media is on their last legs, unable to change and reach the people. And what's left is bought by lobbyists. Basically the alt-right is establishing a new generation of tabloid press.

So the work is cut out for us.

[Chips]

Reminds me of seeing Reform rise in the UK. For context, BNP used to be the "nazi" party of the UK. Looking at it's results, it polled 0.1% for 20 years, then rose to around 1.8% at it's best performance, before slumping to oblivion.

Obviously, they get drawn to other parties - likely Reform, but probably started with UKIP. But the implication is that not all Reform voters are "nazi". Certainly if you're polling 15% that's not true such a large segment of the population is "nazi". People are drawn to the overweight "single topic" that they're riled up about, and the apparent inability to deal with this concern of the mainstream parties. Often they also think the main parties just... fail to achieve anything. Not so much a protest vote, just likely an absolute disconnect from what's really going on.

Is that remotely what's happened with AfD? It's not that 20% of the country suddenly went hard right, is it not possible that significant numbers of more mainstream aligned voters have voted for AfD due to single topic politic(s)? No matter how reprehensible that may be to us, the reality is while the party and leaders are vile, a decent proportion of people voting for them aren't bad'uns really - or certainly nothing to the extent of the party they've voted for leadership. There are ways to get them back - discussion, listen to their concerns, and then address them - either pointing out where they're not seeing the fuller picture, or how things "actually are", but engagement. Not with the party itself, screw that, but your voting public.

Having a quick look at their recent history, AfD membership (surely a sign of actual support of core party) has doubled to 34,000 since 2013, but their vote share had risen 5x over the same period. This can be turned around... unless folks do what *always* ensures further disenfranchisement, division, and segmentation. Call all the more moderate voters who "inexplicably" voted for them "nazis".

They've voted that way for a reason, and the history shows it's something recent. I know the usual way of dealing with that is just to start throwing insults, but we've seen that doesn't work with the likes of Reform, Brexit, Trump voters and so on. If anything, it appears to solidify as they draw battle lines of "us and them". It's tedious, predictable, and only helps foment extremes.