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Gets my vote…..
Current Affairs German far right in the former East Germany
- Thread starter davek
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Gets my vote…..
Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
You should have kept that for the Bavarian politics thread. You've shot your bolt now.This might get it going...
Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
The East German länder have the lowest rates of immigration in all of Germany...
Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
Nazis will be nazis. A third of the population in most countries is reliably attracted to this kind of thing - and they come out to play when it becomes expedient. Sahra Wagenknecht is simply the other shade of totalitarian: she was defending Stalin even as the wall collapsed.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Well, what are the new left party in eastern Germany doing with regard to migrants that Starmer's Labour haven't been doing? They're each emphasising the pressures on welfare and housing and promote native workers to fill employment skills gap.
It's not nazism, it's the blurring of traditional left-right lines common now in a lot of European nations.
Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
Sahra Wagenknecht is a Stalinist, Dave. Let's not try to present this authoritarian as progressive. She isn't. The British Labour party has been a reactionary force for years - and I agree with you. They have been demonising immigrants to pander to the backwoodsmen of British politics in the very same despicable manner.
In the end, when the extreme left - Wagenknecht - agrees with the extreme right - the AfD - on immigration and Ukraine/Russia, there is no difference between them. Swap out Starmer for Wagenknecht and Farage and Johnson for the AfD and you have the same result under the guise of "listening to people's concerns". Except, I call it for what it is. It's not the "blurring of traditional left-right lines", it is the Hitler-Stalin Pact all over again where the extreme left and the extreme right can find common ground to other others. That ground is totalitarianism. Wagenknecht and the AfD are both totalitarians.
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Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
Wagenknecht and the AfD are both totalitarians. That is why Bjorn Höcke, the leader of the Thuringian AfD who the highest court in Germany said can be called a "fascist" without libelling him, implored Wagenknecht last year to join him in the AfD. She is what they want to be: the respectable face of extremism.
I live in East Berlin. My other half lived behind the wall until she was 14. The truth is the denizens of the DDR never had a reckoning with their Nazi past. They were encouraged by the Soviets and their own totalitarian leaders - Ulbricht and Honecker - to point the finger at the West and West Germany for Nazism, while they presented the entirety of the GDR as the workers' and peasants' paradise. The Wall itself was known as the anti-fascist protection barrier, ostensibly to keep the West German Nazis out (rather than to keep the Easterners in their Soviet prison).
In West Germany, there was a reckoning with the past - imperfect, to be sure - but a reckoning nevertheless. In the East, hands were washed and fingers were pointed. That's one of the reasons it is more acceptable in the East to vote Nazi - and that is precisely what the AfD is - than it still is in the West.
I live in East Berlin. My other half lived behind the wall until she was 14. The truth is the denizens of the DDR never had a reckoning with their Nazi past. They were encouraged by the Soviets and their own totalitarian leaders - Ulbricht and Honecker - to point the finger at the West and West Germany for Nazism, while they presented the entirety of the GDR as the workers' and peasants' paradise. The Wall itself was known as the anti-fascist protection barrier, ostensibly to keep the West German Nazis out (rather than to keep the Easterners in their Soviet prison).
In West Germany, there was a reckoning with the past - imperfect, to be sure - but a reckoning nevertheless. In the East, hands were washed and fingers were pointed. That's one of the reasons it is more acceptable in the East to vote Nazi - and that is precisely what the AfD is - than it still is in the West.
Thomasc
Formerly known as By God I'm Blue
I’d goose step 50 miles over broken glass barefoot to attend a party with those lovely frauleins!
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Im not presenting here as anything. You called her and her party 'nazi'. Well if that's the case Starmer's 'Labour' Party are also nazi.
They sing from the same hymn sheet on lots of things...in fact, the SWA are a lot more progressive (or at least workerist) than Starmer's Gang are on certain issues.
Those Prussians, eh?
Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
No, I called her "Stalinist" and "totalitarian" - which she is. She exemplifies the horse-shoe theory where the extemes of left and right eventually meet. She might be "left" on economic issues and believe in "society", but she was asked to join the AfD by their fascist Thuringian leader.
She railed against the fall of the wall as a young woman and defended Stalin as it fell. A headbanging opportunist.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
She is defo Stalinoid, yes. I agree.
But she's representative of a growing number of workers in the former East Germany in that she distrusts Washington and sees their part of Germany as having received the dirty end of the stick (rightly or wrongly on same issues). And she also echoes the views of many who see immigration as a problem. Which is not a major factor in the east...I'd part company big time with her on that.
Drico
Player Valuation: £70m
Yes, she is preying on the "concerns" of these voters - many of whom, it has to be said, like a strongman leader, want the state to do everything for them, want somebody else to pay for it, and want all the benefits of capitalism - holidays in Mallorca, bling, etc. - with none of its risks and responsibilities.
I live in an apartment complex that was built for the Stasi. Many of my elderly neighbours were former Stasi men and women. Some of them are personable and friendly, but most still hark back to the good old days and resent what became of them after 1989. They were reliable Linke voters here in this district of East Berlin since that party was founded as the successor party to the old SED of Erich Honecker. Now, I am pretty certain that they will switch votes to Sahra Wagenknecht because she dares do what the Linke tended to avoid: demonising minorities. She espouses a wish for "peace" - but that means complete capitulation for Ukraine and renewed gas deals and trade with Russia. Both are expedient outcomes for a certain type of East German who was never much used to democracy, admired the Russian boot, and thrived under totalitarianism.
It's not like the parts of East Germany that gave 30% of the vote to the AfD even have substantial immigration. They just want to kick back at their "conquerers" and have Stockholm Syndrome for Putin who once lived amongst them in Dresden.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Well, that attitude (and how prevalent it is I dont know) is not an outcome of living in the old GDR system. The foundations of the East German state was built upon the enormous effort of the East German working class who were well used to making sacrifices to get production levels where the Party wanted them to be. They didn't exactly have it easy under that system.
I think you're under-playing the still existant gaps between west and east Germany and making this sound like moaning Ossi's.
The gap between east and west has narrowed but is still significant. Salaries remain higher in the western states than in the eastern states, and unemployment is also higher in the east. Also, the young and the qualified still drift from east to west German towns and cities. Between 1990 and 2022 the east's population declined by 12%. That has to have a psychic effect on confidence. Fear then fills the vacuum and the belief that young immigrants will take up jobs in welfare especially and replace those natives who have left.
All of this has fuelled the so called 'extremism'.
jaspercabbage
Player Valuation: £8m
So called???
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