What do the new elections mean for Germany?

Getting “second most votes” in a parliamentary system with many parties, is different from what it means in the US, a two-big-party-dominated idiocracy. i.e. It means about 20% of those who voted. To lead parliament, they’d need a coalition (other parties to join with them to gain an actual majority).

@Zaku Yes, I am aware how a parliamentary democracy works. CD still need a coalition to govern. So who will they govern with?

To be clear I’m not particularly worried about the Christian Democrats. It’s the AfD that should worry us.

The other “right” parties seem insistent on shunning the AFD, so for now I’m going with the AFD won’t gain more real political power, but it is nerve racking that so much of the population voted for them.

I haven’t read up on it, but I think part of the reason is the war in Ukraine and the threat of Russia moving onto more countries. A German friend of mine said she used to identify as a pacifist and now she feels Germany needs to ramp up their military.

The CDU can pick from a few different parties. Most likely, it’ll be the SPD (moderates, slightly left of center for Germany). The SPD got about 16% of the vote, which gives them 120 seats in parliament (of 630). Since the CDU has 208 seats, these two parties together would have the necessary >50% of seats to choose a chancellor and govern.

Alternatively, the CDU could coalition with two smaller parties, such as the Green Party and the Left Party (unlikely). Or they could pick the AfD, which they’ve repeatedly vowed not to do. If they end up with the AfD, that’s an emergency. I hope and believe there would be massive protests. My area is largely center or left-leaning, though, so my perspective is skewed. The AfD is much stronger in the East.

13 of 80 million Germans voted for a far-right party. Should we be worried? Yes, very.

@longgone That’s how I read it too. I’m curious to know Loli’s POV on it all. OTOH, “Only 20%” of people voted for the fascists while in the US over 50% voted for the fascists. So we can’t be the pot calling the kettle black.

@Caravanfan In the US we don’t have a choice of multiple “conservative” parties to vote for, although probably Trump still would have had more votes than another Republican if another could have run in the final.

@JLeslie lol according to hat we have two conservative parties to vote for, Democratic and Republican.

@Caravanfan Oh right. I forgot.

I watch a youtuber who is German and currently lives in the US. I’ve watched her on and off for a long time. Sometimes very lighthearted fun topics, like customs and food. Also, some videos about what she and other Germans learn about the Holocaust growing up in Germany. It varies a little around the country.

More recently she has spoken about the German government and the elections. If you’re interested here is a recent video or search through some others about the election and the political parties: https://youtu.be/jLtdQbkxvks?si=5T05DMG65f9kR5il She’s young, but seems very bright, and does research where warranted.

@Caravanfan “Only 20%” of people voted for the fascists while in the US over 50% voted for the fascists.

I guess. It just feels like we should really know better. We have actual concentration camps still around. 20 minutes from my house, there’s a former Nazi jail for political prisoners. People were left to starve there, and you can see the desperate scratches they made in the concrete floor. Places like this were turned into memorials precisely so that there’s no way around it: if you live in Germany, you know what happened, and you have to confront your country’s history. We have a word for those places, ”Mahnmal”, and it means “memorial site intended as a warning for future generations”.

Perversely, the AfD is using the attempts to commemorate and honour the victims for nefarious purposes, convincing followers of their fascist ideas. One of their leaders, full of indignation, claimed that Germany is the only country to put a 5 acre “monument of disgrace” (meaning the Holocaust Mahnmal) right in the middle of the capital. That was the end of his thought process. He didn’t stop to wonder why. Despite having worked as a history teacher, it apparently hasn’t occurred to him that to represent only the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany, the Mahnmal would need to be 10,000 acres large. Even then, we’d only have provided a concrete headstone for every victim. Far from appropriate restitution for taking a human life.

I think we have a few short years of respite, before the new coalition’s unpopular policies will drive even more people into the hands of the nazis, so that next time, they will be the strongest party, and with access to the mass surveillance state that Merz and the CDU intend to erect.
And that is only if he does not go fully insane by forming a coalition with the nazis this term.
We lost the last opportunity to initiate the ban procedure for this party last month, and we will reap disaster for that failure in due time.

To @longgone’s point. I do think a large percentage of Americans have no grasp of what war is really like and the after effects. They feel naively safe. They don’t believe anything really bad can ever happen in the US. They have no real understanding of how huge and systematic the mass killing of the Holocaust was. Their picture of it is Germany and maybe Poland, but no idea the countless countries involved. No idea how Hitler gained power and a population will support or look the other way at horrors if they think it will benefit themselves. Many Americans, in my opinion, are raised and groomed to follow leaders and not question.

@Caravanfan ”@JLeslie lol according to hat we have two conservative parties to vote for, Democratic and Republican.”

I would argue we have 2 right wing parties: pro war, pro business, anti-worker, anti-union, pro-monopoly, anti-consumer parties. Democrats are better on social issues, but are nearly identical on money.

What’s sad is the “moderate Democrat’s” inability to draw a direct causal line from the failures of these neoliberal policies and the shift to the fascist right here and abroad. There’s a desperate working class in America who have less opportunities than their parent’s generation. They’re desperate for FDR-like policies and the neoliberals keep knifing the progressives who could be leading the party to victory for the sake of their pals in the wine caves.

I have every reason to believe that we’d be seeing our 2nd term of Bernie Sanders right now if the DNC hadn’t engaged in their fuckery back in 2020. I warned you guys then that this would happen. Until you understand that the party would rather a fascist Trump and wine caves than be purged with a populist progressive movement then you will never understand how dangerous and extreme the “moderates” really are.

If the left doesn’t rise up to meet this moment, and capture these disaffected Trump supporters who realize they’ve been duped with significant, meaningful change that will noticeably improve their lives instead of this incrementalism bullshit that clearly hasn’t addressed the failures, then I fear we’re heading for way more fascism.

And I’m not saying it has to be Bernie, specifically, but a bona fide progressive, championing FDR-like policies for the working class. The DNC is fighting way harder against those people than they do Trump. Think about that.

@longgone and @ragingloli thanks for your perspectives. Let’s hope that the CD maintain their center-right policies and form a decent governable coalition. Europe has one currency now and is more unified than before so we can hope that can be a mitigating force against fascist tendencies.