The German Election Thread - now for real.

6 posts

Kebab Removal Service
AfD warns state leader Poggenburg over WhatsApp chat leak
Andre Poggenburg, the leader of Alternative for Germany in Saxony-Anhalt, has received an official warning from his party leadership. He was caught using far-right slogans in an AfD WhatsApp Chat leaked last week.

The leadership of populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has issued an official warning to Andre Poggenburg on Friday after comments found in an internal WhatsApp chat leaked last week .

Party leaders Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland issued the official warning, telling the Deutsche Presse Agentur his comments "massively damaged" the party's image and "pushed the party closer to right extremism."

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AfD leader Alice Weidel says blunt slogans do not help the party

The left-wing news site "linksunten" published a WhatsApp group chat last Monday containing AfD members, called "AfD Info LSA." Federal police and domestic intelligence is combing through the chat dated from February to May of this year.

Poggenburg was found using the slogan "Deutschland den Deutschen" (roughly: "Germany for the Germans") - a phrase commonly used by neo-Nazi groups in Germany and often used by the far-right NPD party. The AfD warned its deputy chairman in Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania, Ralph Weber, in April for using the same slogan on Facebook.

AfD leaders have sought to distance themselves from the NPD.

Facing initial criticism last week after the leak, Poggenburg at first defended his use of the slogan in a tweet: "Why should this put pressure on me? Of course ' Germany belongs to the Germans ,' and that's how it should stay!" ( Ask yourself in what times we live that this is considered highly controversial )

He also suggested AfD members receive a seminar on "Erweiterung der Aussengrenzen" ("expanding external borders"), a suggestion that another unnamed WhatsApp group member responded with thumbs up signs and flexed biceps emojis. Leadership has condemned this exchange as well, saying it was inconsistent with the AfD's platform.

He has said he was referring to securing Europe's borders.

Weidel, AfD's candidate for chancellor along with Gauland in Germany's election later this year, said the AfD sees itself as a "party for political realism" and "blunt sayings do not help [this image] and hurt the party. Whoever doesn't understand that has no place at the AfD."


AfD: started with such good chances, will now probably end like "The Pirate Party".
Kebab Removal Service
Gay marriage and the six rules behind Angela Merkel's political longevity

ON SUNDAY Martin Schulz declared that he would sign no coalition agreement that did not introduce equal marriage in Germany. The Social Democrat (SPD) chancellor candidate was not alone. The Greens and the free-market Free Democrats (FDP) have made similar pledges. At “Brigitte Live", an event hosted by a lifestyle magazine in Berlin, last night Angela Merkel was asked where she stood. Germany’s chancellor had previously rejected equal marriage. In 2005 she told an interviewer: “man and wife, marriage and family, stand at the centre of our social model, so other lifestyles should not receive comparable constitutional protections.” But this time she called the issue a “question of conscience”.

At an SPD press conference this morning Mr Schulz asked how the chancellor could deny MPs a choice over such a “question of conscience”. He announced that the SPD would table a vote on an equal-marriage proposal, brought in 2015 by the SPD-FDP-Green government of Rhineland-Palatinate. This afternoon Mrs Merkel released her parliamentary party from its constraints. It looks entirely possible that the Bundestag will back equal marriage when it votes on Friday.

The events of the past 48 hours lay bare the way Mrs Merkel runs Germany. That the chancellor still dominates her country's politics after 12 years at its helm is impressive. Six golden rules underpin her success:

Learn from past elections . Mrs Merkel’s political method is a compendium of lessons acquired during past encounters with the German electorate. In 2002 her party was outflanked by a centre-left chancellor (Gerhard Schröder) willing to rail against a right-wing American president; today she pointedly distances herself from Donald Trump. In 2005 the CDU’s small-state tax plan almost cost her the chancellorship; since then she has never strayed from the economic centre. In 2009 she successfully ran on a platform of stability, then redeployed this in 2013 and in the current electoral campaign. In a TV show during the 2013 campaign Mrs Merkel was eloquently skewered by Patrick Pronk, a prospective CDU voter who wanted to know why she would not let him adopt a child with his male partner. The chancellor waffled, concluding: “I struggle with this. I know I cannot fulfil your hopes”. She seems to have learned from this awkward moment, and thus moved to close off gay rights as a cause of difficulty during this campaign.

Constantly revisit your past positions . Mrs Merkel is not a liberal. She is a Christian democrat. So her past opposition to equal marriage and to adoption by same-sex couples was probably sincere. But for one who has held Germany’s chancellorship for 12 years, she travels light and little burdened by previous policy commitments. One critic, Gertrud Höhler, claims that Mrs Merkel runs Germany as a permanent focus group; trying out new policies and ideological propositions as frequently and casually as a grocer tests new products on his shelves. To Ms Höhler this betokens a values-free opportunism, but to the chancellor’s supporters it speaks of Mrs Merkel's sensitivity to the changing needs and attitudes of her electorate. Either way, the chancellor used her turn on “Brigitte” to explain how a meeting with a lesbian couple in her Baltic Sea constituency changed her perspective. The chancellor has honed the art of u-turning in style.

Don’t move faster than public opinion . Mrs Merkel obsessively commissions and consumes polls. Her political genius is to anticipate shifts in opinion at certain dramatic moments, but also to judge when a long-term shift has reached the point of general acceptance. Allensbach, a polling agency, suggests that the number of Germans backing equal rights for homosexuals first exceeded the number opposing them in about 2010 (Germany lags behind most western European countries on measures of social liberalism). Today about two-thirds of voters back gay marriage. The chancellor has swept in behind this shift, as is her wont.

Close down reasons for people to dislike you . In the Anglo-Saxon world it is typical to think of election campaigns as being about persuading people and making them like you. This ignores another side of campaigning: lowering the turnout of people who support your opponents. Mrs Merkel excels at this, to the frustration of the SPD. At the party’s pre-election conference in Dortmund last Sunday Mr Schulz termed this “asymmetric demobilisation” an attack on democracy. Yet this week Mrs Merkel’s shift on gay marriage neutralised another subject that might otherwise have motivated social liberals to go to the polls in support of her opponents.

Triangulate endlessly . Last month Mrs Merkel spoke at a women’s summit in Berlin, linked to Germany’s G20 presidency. She was asked whether she was a feminist. Most politicians would have said yes or no and done their best job of explaining their position. But the chancellor merely invited delegates to vote on the matter. She refused to define herself. Look, too, at her position on Europe. In the coming election the chancellor needs to compete with a keenly pro-European rival without offending more nationalist voters. The CDU slogan is a study in triangulation: “a strong Europe means a strong Germany”. Pick almost any debate in Germany today—eurozone integration, defence spending, tax cuts v spending increases—and you will find Mrs Merkel almost exactly half-way between the two poles of the debate. This is the foundation of her political success. Whatever the subject, she owns the interstitial terrain in which compromises are forged. By giving a free vote on gay marriage but not endorsing it, she is doing that just one more time.

Move fast when events demand it . Mrs Merkel is typically ponderous and reflective. In colloquial German, the verb “merkeln” now means “to prevaricate”. Yet the chancellor can make sudden moves, bolting to close off rivals’ political territory. She did so in 2011, when the Fukushima disaster prompted her to close down all of Germany’s nuclear plants; and in 2015, when she decided to keep the country’s borders open to refugees. She did so again today. Within 24 hours of the SPD’s announcement on gay marriage, she was signalling a shift. Within another 24 hours she had executed it. An SPD stance that might appeal, for example, to the sorts of voters loosened from the struggling Greens suddenly lost its distinctiveness.

These six laws illustrate the cases for and against Mrs Merkel. To her supporters, her responsiveness to public moods and her mix of caution and opportunism make her an exemplary democrat. She constantly calibrates and recalibrates, in a way that voters expect of their politicians. In this scheme one might ask: is it presumptive of a politician to impose gay marriage on a country before it is ready?

Yet the answer is surely “no”. It is not presumptive to expect a figure as powerful as Mrs Merkel to strive for something as fundamental as the universal right to marry. And herein lies the criticism of her method. To lead is not just to hedge for years, then move once your electorate has done so organically. It is also to shape opinion, edit the rules of the game one is playing and make change happen. Mrs Merkel’s shift on gay marriage is welcome and a neat illustration of her strengths. That it comes so late is a parable of her limitations.


Nice to see that Merkel solves the real problems:
Not the biggest low-payment sector in Europe, not poverty in old age, not our mono-culture in business.
Homosexual marriage - a problem which did keep me up all night.

Plus:
The Economists reads Salo or the guy who wrote the blog had a sharp, but nevertheless pozzed reception:
He tells us all the traits of Merkel, like I did some time ago, but he sells it positively. Very interesting.
5371

Germany, and the whole of western Europe, deserves some biblical plague or other.

Derrick

Merkel didn't actually need to bend on the issue to get a coalition.

auteur_theory
I was surprised to learn this wasn't due to Germany's official state panopticism regarding all private communication. Imagine how much worse it will get in the future. These are the "good old days" if you're a German and reading this. Never forget that.
J-Mask {107}
Die Lügenpresse und der Lauschangriff im Mutterland

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For two years, I’ve received reports on Germany from a friend in Frankfurt. Yesterday, Christian sent me his latest, and I responded with six emails, only three of which reached his mailbox. Never before has this happened. It’s ironic that Christian’s report is mostly about two new laws that allow the German state to monitor its citizens’ electronic communication and to criminalize online statements. One is popularly dubbed Lauschangriff [Bugging Operation], while the second is called Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz [Network Enforcement Law]. Since my emails to Christian suddenly couldn’t get through, I started to wonder if it was Lauschangriff at work? Whatever. We found another way to communicate. Grimly, Christian relates:

First, some happy news: Bild Zeitung, the German tabloid with the power to make or break politicians, is 65-years-old. Hurrah! Ein Tusch! Due to the joyous event, every household found a Bild in its mailbox. What did we find in there? Half the pages were advertisements and the rest were German politicians, businessmen or other contemporary idols telling us how wonderful our country is, and that we should constantly accept refugees, who will contribute to a better future, etc. Our chancellor, Mrs. Merkel, tells our happy citizens that Germany stands, above all, for two things: eternal responsibility for the Holocaust and the integration of immigrants. Maybe one needs not wonder why the circulation of Bild-Zeitung has dropped 50% in the last 15 years. Of course, we are told that this was the fault of the bad, bad internet, which makes people more stupid, hateful and misinformed.

While Bild Zeitung was just doing its job of keeping people REALLY dumb and misinformed, our Minister of Justice, Heiko Maas, was also busy. Last Thursday, Maas’ wet dream was achieved when the Bundestag decided on a new law for more surveillance of online and messenger services. Germans are now calling it the Lauschangriff [Bugging Operation]. Ah, die Wunder der deutschen Sprache! My beloved mother tongue is full of clear and precise words, and there is also this wonderful German ability to call things by its real names. Just as with the Lügenpresse [lying press], we now have the Lauschangriff. A liberal or leftist who cares more for foreigners than his own people is dubbed a Gutmensch [good man]. Thanks to academics and media pundits, however, we now learn that only bad, hateful people use such terms.

Back to topic: The new law allows the state to secretly hack into computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones and messenger services, etc., to look into all electronic communication, in short, on the pretext of identifying terrorists, a most nebulous term, for any critic of the state may now be labeled a “terrorist.” Our police and secret services now have legal access to the private data of all citizens. What a wonderful new world! When a similar law was introduced a decade ago, it was met by fierce resistance from the media and public. Not this time! Yes, there is the possibility that our highest court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, might yet decide that the new law is unconstitutional, and some in the press are complaining, but there are no street demonstrations or a serious debate about this manifestation of Big Brother. Zero, zilch, nix, nein. People are just too tired, wasted, kaput. They just want to have a good time. Let’s go clubbing or have a barbecue…

And it doesn’t end there, of course: the Bundestag also passed the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz [Network Enforcement Law], which can criminalize online statements as illegal hate postings. Great! The social media will be forced to delete hate speech immediately, but who defines hate speech? It’s a question for philosophers, not lawyers. In dubio pro hate speech. From now on, haters, baiters and Schlechtmenschen will have a hard time… Our Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere, actually declared, “It cannot be that there are areas where the state has no influence.” He really said that! The very foundations of our civil rights are openly destroyed, but no one sees it. It’s almost comical.

Instead, media focus is on the danger coming from the RIGHT! Ja, we should fear the RIGHT for all time! The AfD, a party resembling the American Republican, are portrayed by the Lügenpresse as dangerous Nazis. Twisting reality, they are shown as the great danger, while it is THEIR men and women who are persecuted and attacked. Several cars of AfD-MPs have been burned, several AfD-members have been beaten by Antifa-thugs, windows of restaurants where AfD-members frequent have been smashed and employees dare not admit they voted for the AfD, etc. Meanwhile, foreigners are still flooding in. Official sources say we should expect 500,000 migrants and refugees for 2017. Who knows what the real figure will be? Yes, let them all come. Our cities change before our eyes.

And yet, the danger lurks from the RIGHT, we’re told. A soldier in the German Bundeswehr was found with Nazi memorabilia. Foaming, our minister of defense rightfully said that we should ban all signs of the Wehrmacht in German barracks. Yes, let’s scrub away the dirty past! On the other hand, we are constantly erecting Holocaust memorials in each city. In Frankfurt, where I live, three more have been built in recent weeks. Ja, ja, we should always be reminded of how bad and vicious Germans can be. An expert told us recently that wearing a pigtail might indicate a Nazi mindset. Another maven warned of Nazi teachers in German kindergartens! The same warning went out to schools, universities and companies, for Nazis are everywhere! Though invisible, they are literally everywhere!

Meanwhile, practically every week there are news of Muslim terrorists being arrested. An independent journalist found out that in the first three months of 2017, some 27 Muslims in Germany were seized by the police for planning a terror attack. As for the evil Nazis??? In one case, two Nazis with explosives were arrested. True, there are false flags, but there are now enough radical Islamists in Germany to destabilize our country. Muslim countries are bombed and demolished, so they flee to societies many of them won’t understand, where they’re even encouraged to NOT integrate. Therefore, the rift between Muslim immigrants and Christian natives will only widen.

Then you have the horrible job statistics of the refugees. Though a catastrophe in the making, it is depicted as an economic stimulus. What?! Most refugees will remain on social assistance and only contribute to the German workforce in about 10 years, and only if integration really works. Most of their skills and knowledge are not usable in the German job market. Ach, no worries! Wir schaffen das! We make it! So goes the slogan of our beloved Führer, I mean chancellor. Merkel says that it’s our duty to feed, clothe and work for people who, in their majority, will never work for us.

Do you believe in positive outcomes? Ja, we do! Let’s forget about the pension crisis with its obligations of about seven trillion euros, of which there are no funds. Let’s forget about the ever rising debts of nations, companies, households. Let’s forget about all these banks on the brink of bankruptcy. Let’s do what we have always done: work hard! As one of our great poets, Gottfried Benn, said so beautifully, “Dumm sein und Arbeit haben—das ist Glück” [“Being stupid and having work—that’s happiness”].

Back to topic: the country slowly resembles a Blade Runner scenario. In this society where most are poor and desperate, violence will reign so we will ask for protection, and it will be given to us! The Lauschangriff will protect us from the evil ones! As long as we consume, work hard, think less and have a good time, everything will be OK. We must never forget our past sins and, to atone for them, must always accept immigrants. We also need them. Amen.

Years ago, I read two great books: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Warlam Schalamow’s The Kolyma Tales. While the former portrays a society that, in the name of compassion and charity, strangles all initiatives and entrepreneurship by taxing and regulating them to death, the latter shows the logical next step: a prison system where everything is regulated by never-to-be-seen statisticians. The amount of work you have to do, the food you will receive for it, your clothing, how much money you may receive or spend, how many postcards you may write, your living space, etc., everything is regulated to the smallest details.

To me, these two depictions describe where we’re heading. Before our very eyes, society turns into a completely and utterly regulated and surveilled “thing,” where debts will rise constantly and liberties eroded, and as cost pressure for companies increases relentlessly, people will earn less and less. The end of the road is the super state, where we are told by officialdom what to do, what to think, how to behave, how to work and where to live, etc. It will resemble Ayn Rand’s vision of a bureaucratic hell and also Schalamow’s depiction of a brutal terror regime.

http://www.unz.com/ldinh/die-lugenpresse-und-der-lauschangriff-im-mutterland/