Why did the SPD fall so far behind? What’s going on in Germany that’s causing this neo Nazi rise? Has the CDU gotten more extreme the last few decades?
The SPD is doing many thing against people especially their base voters plus hiding in the cirrent government. I guess, it’s no longer clearly what the SPD stands for. Their loss in votes begann with important but not well done reforms in the early 2000s. The CDU has gotten more right but the Problem is that the far right AFD collects all votes from frustrated people who thinks worlds end is better than the current state. So there are people on the far right side coming from CDU and CSU as well as FDP but also from the left parties.
It is still easyer to blame welfare recipients, foreign people and so one instead of using the brain.
The SPD has abolished itself. Basically, that Schröder character, who has recently risen to international notoriety for being in Putin’s pocket, reinvented the SPD as a centrist party (modeled after Tony Blair’s “New Labour”) in the early 2000s. They subsequently implemented the harshest social cutbacks in German post-WW2 history. This has led to them losing their credibility as a social democrat party, and they haven’t really changed since. That they scored relatively well in the last federal election was mostly due to the CDU picking Armin Laschet, who can best be described as a sad joke, as their frontrunner.
Currently, there is a giant hole gaping on the moderate left of the political spectrum.
Maybe the leftist party might be able to pull their head out of their own arse now that their most prominent Putin bootlicker and antivaxxer left the party and went on to singlehandedly prove the horseshoe theory right by founding a party instituionalised personality cult of her own that is residing on both the left and right end of the political spectrum at once.
Throughout the last decades, both the SPD under Schröder and the CDU under Merkel pursued a strategy of centrism to win over moderate voters from the other party. In the long run, the CDU was more successful with this strategy, mostly because leftwing voters were more willing to abandon the SPD for a smaller party (Die Linke/The Left) than rightwing voters the CDU. With the rise of the AfD though, this has changed somewhat.
The primary reason, in my opinion, why the SPD did relatively well in the last election (winning the plurality of votes, while being the weakest ever winner of the plurality) was that the CDU considered the Greens to be their primary challenger, focusing their attacks on them while sparing the SPD. As the Greens were in opposition while the SPD was in government alongside the CDU, there wasn’t really any easy attack strategy the CDU could have pursued against both simultaneously.
Now though, the SPD and Greens are part of the same government, a government that has to deal with a lot of crises at once while dealing with infighting. This gives the CDU an easy avenue of attack. At the time, the CDU seems to also pursue a strategy of being more conservative to win back voters from the AfD.
Current polling could either be interpreted as the CDU’s strategy succeeding, as the CDU leads while SPD and Greens trail far behind, or as a failure, as the AfD doesn’t appear to lose any support. The main question is: where would the CDU stand if it had continued with its centrist strategy?
First of all the CDU moved more to the center under Merkel, which squished the SPD. Now it is going back into full right wing, overshooting their previous positions.
The current government faces multiple crisis, that are excarberated by the lack of investment and political progress under Merkel, who governed succesfully on a basis of “go back to sleep, everything is fine” while infrastructure crumbled, energy dependence on Russia increased and the rising far right extremism was conveniently ignored.
Now all these crisis are used by the Nazis from the AfD and outside of parliament to attack the government for failing to make the issues go away in an instant. With that the CDU is joining force with the AfD, moving from conservative positions to far right populism and starting to work together with the AfD on local and state level.
Then the current government from the SPD - social democrats, green party and FDP - liberal party is strongly divided. The Green party tries to bring on necessary reforms that werent done in the past 16 years under Merkel. The FDP attacks them heavily and acts like an opposition inside the government, often violating agreements and changing their minds last minute. The SPD doesnt really have political positions anymore. They just want to have some power and government positions. So Scholz as a chancellor is sitting back, hiding from media and publicity in general. He then just follows who won the current issue between Green party and FDP. This tactic is failing of course because in times of crisis people want a leader that is present and they want a government that seems united.
Finally in Germany there is a lot of far right media, including the Axel Springer publisher, the one where the director of Bild Zeitung had to resign because of sexual misconduct at work and their head Döpfner, is claiming eastern Germans to either be communists or nazis, actively demand his newspapers to strengthen certain parties and last but not least claiming all other media to be like in former eastern Germany. But instead of taking position against such claims he was leader of the journalist association and most newspapers happily follow into the disinformation campaigns started by Springer against the current government.
So overall you have the same situation as in the 20s, where crisis meets a weak government and opportunistic conservative forces in politics and society, that believe they could use the Nazis to gain power and foolishly believe they could control them in the end.
Why did the SPD fall so far behind? What’s going on in Germany that’s causing this neo Nazi rise? Has the CDU gotten more extreme the last few decades?
The SPD is doing many thing against people especially their base voters plus hiding in the cirrent government. I guess, it’s no longer clearly what the SPD stands for. Their loss in votes begann with important but not well done reforms in the early 2000s. The CDU has gotten more right but the Problem is that the far right AFD collects all votes from frustrated people who thinks worlds end is better than the current state. So there are people on the far right side coming from CDU and CSU as well as FDP but also from the left parties.
It is still easyer to blame welfare recipients, foreign people and so one instead of using the brain.
The SPD has abolished itself. Basically, that Schröder character, who has recently risen to international notoriety for being in Putin’s pocket, reinvented the SPD as a centrist party (modeled after Tony Blair’s “New Labour”) in the early 2000s. They subsequently implemented the harshest social cutbacks in German post-WW2 history. This has led to them losing their credibility as a social democrat party, and they haven’t really changed since. That they scored relatively well in the last federal election was mostly due to the CDU picking Armin Laschet, who can best be described as a sad joke, as their frontrunner.
So does Germany have a credible good left party? Or are you guys now stuck with right and far right?
Currently, there is a giant hole gaping on the moderate left of the political spectrum.
Maybe the leftist party might be able to pull their head out of their own arse now that their most prominent Putin bootlicker and antivaxxer left the party and went on to singlehandedly prove the horseshoe theory right by founding a
partyinstituionalised personality cult of her own that is residing on both the left and right end of the political spectrum at once.Wait the left in Germany is pro Putin?
Some are. No idea why, I suppose it’s some weird Soviet Union nostalgia paired with utter stupidity.
The green party is center left, and they are doing many things right. That’s why they are the primary target of the ever growing right.
Throughout the last decades, both the SPD under Schröder and the CDU under Merkel pursued a strategy of centrism to win over moderate voters from the other party. In the long run, the CDU was more successful with this strategy, mostly because leftwing voters were more willing to abandon the SPD for a smaller party (Die Linke/The Left) than rightwing voters the CDU. With the rise of the AfD though, this has changed somewhat.
The primary reason, in my opinion, why the SPD did relatively well in the last election (winning the plurality of votes, while being the weakest ever winner of the plurality) was that the CDU considered the Greens to be their primary challenger, focusing their attacks on them while sparing the SPD. As the Greens were in opposition while the SPD was in government alongside the CDU, there wasn’t really any easy attack strategy the CDU could have pursued against both simultaneously.
Now though, the SPD and Greens are part of the same government, a government that has to deal with a lot of crises at once while dealing with infighting. This gives the CDU an easy avenue of attack. At the time, the CDU seems to also pursue a strategy of being more conservative to win back voters from the AfD.
Current polling could either be interpreted as the CDU’s strategy succeeding, as the CDU leads while SPD and Greens trail far behind, or as a failure, as the AfD doesn’t appear to lose any support. The main question is: where would the CDU stand if it had continued with its centrist strategy?
We see a few trends here:
First of all the CDU moved more to the center under Merkel, which squished the SPD. Now it is going back into full right wing, overshooting their previous positions.
The current government faces multiple crisis, that are excarberated by the lack of investment and political progress under Merkel, who governed succesfully on a basis of “go back to sleep, everything is fine” while infrastructure crumbled, energy dependence on Russia increased and the rising far right extremism was conveniently ignored.
Now all these crisis are used by the Nazis from the AfD and outside of parliament to attack the government for failing to make the issues go away in an instant. With that the CDU is joining force with the AfD, moving from conservative positions to far right populism and starting to work together with the AfD on local and state level.
Then the current government from the SPD - social democrats, green party and FDP - liberal party is strongly divided. The Green party tries to bring on necessary reforms that werent done in the past 16 years under Merkel. The FDP attacks them heavily and acts like an opposition inside the government, often violating agreements and changing their minds last minute. The SPD doesnt really have political positions anymore. They just want to have some power and government positions. So Scholz as a chancellor is sitting back, hiding from media and publicity in general. He then just follows who won the current issue between Green party and FDP. This tactic is failing of course because in times of crisis people want a leader that is present and they want a government that seems united.
Finally in Germany there is a lot of far right media, including the Axel Springer publisher, the one where the director of Bild Zeitung had to resign because of sexual misconduct at work and their head Döpfner, is claiming eastern Germans to either be communists or nazis, actively demand his newspapers to strengthen certain parties and last but not least claiming all other media to be like in former eastern Germany. But instead of taking position against such claims he was leader of the journalist association and most newspapers happily follow into the disinformation campaigns started by Springer against the current government.
So overall you have the same situation as in the 20s, where crisis meets a weak government and opportunistic conservative forces in politics and society, that believe they could use the Nazis to gain power and foolishly believe they could control them in the end.