Exit polls have the far-right AfD leading the Social Democrats in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the Left Party ahead in Berlin. Merz referred to the outcome as “a disaster”. DW has more.
His reaction so far: “We will not change course.” Imagine being so detached that you don’t understand why your party is going under. Even in polls, like 80% of participants say he is damaging his party.
I can’t believe that he doesn’t understand what his actions are doing, he just doesn’t care. I think he is following the FDP-model: once you’re in government, pass as many neoliberal bullshit, so your rich buddies can become even richer and reward you with a cushy “job”, and don’t care about tanking your parties ratings in the process, because when it is in the opposition, your buddies that own the media will “help” the voters forget all your bullshit within 2-3 legislative periods.
Although with Merz the plan might be even more nefarious: Tank the CDU, so the AfD can establish a nice fascist dictatorship and pass as many anti-consumer and anti-worker laws as they want without having to worry about elections.
Merz doesn’t want to change anything, yet he wants different results. Insanity.
I’m against all neo-naszis, but he and his crony capitalism ensured the Nazis found open ears wanting anti-establishment messages at any cost.
And yet MV gets a red-red-green government by the looks of it. „Winning“ an election doesn‘t actually mean much these days it seems. At least according to mainstream media. Most voters decided against Nazis but man there are way too many fascists around these days.
You are right, but just look at what happened here in Italy.
To not let the Right win, the Left put together everyone else and once they won the elections they were stuck in their decision process because there are so many voices wanting something different that they cannot decide on nothing, so next election they lost bad.So yes, winning the election does not means you will govern but the alternative could be even worse: you are not able to do anything and when you inevitably fail you have served your opponent a perfect way to win.
Here in Italy most of the people who voted for the Right did it because the only thing that come out the Left was something “the Right (meaning, Giorgia Meloni) should not be allowed to do this and that”, nothing about what the Left would have done.
And the worst thing is that they are doing it again.
But why goes
Let’s stick it to the establishment with hate and rage
harder than
Let’s stick it to the establishment with love and compassion
? Plenty of options to challenge the establishment with progressive parties which would actually help people, who suffer from current politics.
I’ll never understand that.
Hard to have love and compassion when you life is shit
But…you don’t have to have it. Options are basically
- Your life stays shit (or probably gets shittier), but some other people’s life get (more) shittier
or
- We make your life and that of a lot of other people better.
Why choose the former?
This isn’t about logic - fascists don’t elect themselves by making people understand about what’s going on around them.
They elect themselves by telling lies on how they will improve things for you, while claiming the other side will/is doing the opposite, claiming them as untrustworthy, corrupt, or morally backwards despite being themselves the snakes in the house.
The predator never gets to eat when they show their teeth.
Some people seem to believe it to be a zero-sum situation. In order for their life to improve, someone elses has to become worse. That’s why the hateful messages of the far right AFD fall on fertile ground.
Life being shit also diminishes your ability to think rationally. And AfD does promise to make their life better (by getting rid of the immigrants), you and I know they are lying and spreading hate and are just there to enrich themselves. But to desperate people that can be their only hope.
my mama once told me, “pour hope in one hand and take a shit in the other, see which hand fills up faster.”
Propaganda, News Media telling you second option is literal hell, other parties picking up the talking point that someone else’s life is too good, so yours is bad and therefore legitimizing it. Some people are also just stupid.
Burning everything down right now feels better than putting in the work to build something up over a longer period of time.
Both states will get a left government because despite what headlines claim about victories, there are more than just two or three parties involved. Pretty much everyone is fed up with Merz though.
AfD doesn’t seem to be winning MeckPom though. They might have plurality, but not majority, and it’s looking like the christian conservatives won’t make it in, so they’ll have no allies in a parliament with SPD, Lefts and Greens.
Not a pretty result, but not yet disastrous.
“Christian conservatives”. You mean pseudo-Christian. Jesus taught to take care of the poor and disadvantaged. Meanwhile CDU is cutting social security and making things worse for people who are already poor. And another part where CDU fails to uphold “christian” values is it was said “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter heaven.” and “Go sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.”. Instead, the CDU does politics for the wealthy and makes things harder for the poor. So I’d prefer not to call the CDU christian.
christianity has made about a 180° degree flip since its inception. you can’t really argue that way. you have to look at what christianity said from 1500 to 1800, if you want a clearer historic picture.
Fully agreed on all points of substance.
I debated putting the “Christian” in quotes or using some epithet, but settled on calling them by the description they use for themselves in expectation that people here will see the parallel to their US idols, which are equally (un-)christian.
I’d personally call them Cunts Deceiving the Unwary, and their voterbase “Christians for Mammon” because I genuinely get the impression many people vote for them out of the dangerous combination of considering themselves Christian and being entirely uninformed about politics because it’s all so tedious and horrible what’s happening in the world and you can just pray and trust in God to lead you right. At least for those Christians I knew before I fled the faith and torched the ties, the idea of “wolves in sheep’s clothing” apparently didn’t extend to “wolves in shepherds’ clothing”.
I’ll confidently say that my blasphemous ass is still more Christian, because I attempt to be kind to people. Also, the fact that I’m not rich probably disqualifies me from their VIP lounge in hell anyway.
I’d also add another explicit point to your roster of accusation: Immigration. There’s obviously the story of the Good Samaritan making it clear that "your neighbour, whom you ought to love, includes foreigners. More scathingly, there’s Matthew 25:31-46, which mentions not just feeding and clothing the needy, but in v 43 also accuses: “I was a stranger and you did not invite me in”. I don’t know how much more explicit the bible could be about letting in and caring for strangers than Jesus telling people to go to hell because they didn’t.
Media will just keep spamming „Nazis are winning!!!“ until they do. We all know why…
But yeah red-red-green seemed to be the most likely according to all polls and it looks like they‘ll take it home. Headlines still claimed Nazis win bigly throughout and I don‘t expect them to stop any time soon sadly.
What Skave said: getting 30%+ is a significant gain in ground for them. If it was a CDU opposition, that would be less concerning, but the AfD will do what they can to obstruct RRG at getting anything done. I’m not gonna shed any tears over the CDU taking a giant L, but they would have been the lesser evil.
I’m just saying it’s not quite apocalyptic yet. The left(-ish) parties (compared to CDU and the Nazi reboot nobody needed) are still in the fight. The best hope now is for RRG to get their shit together, acknowledge the political implementations and actually improve things in ways people notice in time.
Politics shouldn’t be about short-term gains only, but right now, we need those to hamstring the populists’ “see, they’re not actually changing anything” rhetoric. If we can’t rely on the media to report fairly, the successes need to be so visible as to spread by word of mouth and social media.
