Thursday 12th of December 2024

zu bequem, aber unglücklich bei olaf scholz....


The coalition government has collapsed at a moment when Germany's mood is already down. Many people are feeling unsettled by multiple crises.

Germany's first-ever three-way coalition — comprising the center-left Social Democrats (SPD)Greensand neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) — has collapsed, signaling the end of what the polls say is the most unpopular government of all time. In September, only 3% of respondents to a survey carried out by the pollster Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research said they believed this government was still good for Germany.

 

German coalition's demise hits unsettled nation
Oliver Pieper

 

Yet studies such as the Happiness Atlas 2024, the German government's Equality Report and a new survey by the German Institute for Economic Research have found that, with inflation improving and the pandemic restrictions long past, people in Germany say they are increasingly satisfied with life.

John Kampfner, the Reuters news agency's former correspondent in Germany, has observed that the mood is always much worse than the actual situation in the country. He argues that Germans have a basic tendency to complain.

"This tendency to complain always gives people an excuse to exempt themselves from responsibility — it's a kind of paralysis," he said. Kampfner believes "Germans have become too comfortable. They have always had it very good — there was stability, and everything was solid. But there is no culture of innovation; of taking a risk; of starting something new. When it comes to digitalization, for example, they're stuck in the Middle Ages."

Resistant to change

Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist, recently summed it up as follows: The last 30 years have been so good for Germany, people want to continue living this way. But the world has radically changed, not least because of the war in Ukraine. Now Germans, spoiled by success, are being forced to change their lifestyle. This goes against their mindset, which says that all should remain as it is.

So what does it take to reform a country unwilling to change? Kampfner believes he knows: above all, a strong chancellor acting like a captain, not a referee. A good example of this was on Wednesday evening, when Chancellor Olaf Scholz explained his decision to fire Finance Minister Christian Lindner in clear terms. Kampfner said this was far too rarely done in the past, and believes 80% or 90% of the government's problems came down to Scholz's leadership style.

"Olaf Scholz was very courageous in his speech about a turning point — he took a risk," he said, referring to the February 2022 speech the chancellor gave shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "The chancellor had decided that Germany needs many radical changes. His popularity soared following that speech. But then, too little happened. Two steps forward were followed by two steps back. This government lacks leadership."

Hedwig Richter, professor of history at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, believes the government's poor communication skills are also to blame for the political distress. She said the government treated the population like children, and that its only response to opinion polls was to worry about them.

"It would have been important to say: OK, we live in a democracy: We have to talk to people like adults," Richter told DW. "We have to say what's going on, which is what the Greens tried to do for a while. We have to say that the renewal will be painful. But that such change is absolutely worthwhile. And if we refuse to embrace both an ecological transformation and a new security policy, it will end up being much more expensive, and it will destroy our security."

However, she also said the government's failures had much earlier origins: in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which formed in 2005. Under Merkel, the country rested on the bolster it had, and on its prosperity. Now Germany has multiple crises — and the repercussions are harsh.

"For a long time, we Germans thought we could outsource security," she said. "We also thought we could just ignore migration, without needing to find a real solution. And we thought we could simply postpone all of the ecological disasters. But now we're living in a time when all the side effects of our actions are suddenly backfiring on us."

 Germans need to hear 'stories of success'

Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, recently called for a "German Kennedy moment," referring to the moment when, during his inaugural speech for the US presidency in 1961, Kennedy said: "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." In other words, Fratzscher said the country needs a positive narrative to bring Germany out of its malaise.

Sociologist Harald Welzer has been working on the idea of telling "stories of success," as he calls them, for a while now. Welzer and his fellow campaigners aim to look to the future; to motivate people and show that a lot of change is possible, even on a small scale — with constructive ideas. How does he explain Germany's steadfast attachment to the past?

"We were, of course, the winners of the postwar period — especially West Germany," he said. "It was a story of economic advancement and prosperity lasting two generations, which was fueled by globalization. And everyone thought it would go on like that forever. Once you're stuck in a model of prosperity, you naturally don't want to give up any of it."

Welzer also blames the media for the negative mood in Germany: Conservative media outlets — especially German dailies such as Bild, Welt and the FAZ — have launched a media campaign targeting the Greens, the party that is emphasizing that Germany needs to modernize its economy in the 21st century.

"And the moment they start putting that into concrete terms, everyone screams that they are imposing rules and regulations. And of course, it's the messenger who in the end gets beaten up."

This article was originally written in German.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.

 

https://www.dw.com/en/german-coalitions-demise-hits-unsettled-nation/a-70735439

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

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SEE ALSO: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241109-germany-marks-1989-berlin-wall-fall-with-preserve-freedom-party

israel über alles......

 

It seems clear that after decades in the room, the elephant can no longer be hidden in the German political debate.

 Ricardo Nuno Costa

 

“Germany has only one place, and that’s on Israel’s side,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag, justifying the delivery of arms to Tel Aviv.

One wonders if this partial stance is what is expected of a country that claims to be the leader of the European project, with geopolitical ambitions in an increasingly multipolar world. For the global majority, the answer is no, but in Germany, the subject is thorny and shrouded in taboos. To top it off, the Federal Republic has just passed a law to prevent it from being debated.It’s a clear rift between real and institutional Germany.

Berlin’s inability to call Tel Aviv to account on its international obligations only confirms Germany’s increasingly secondary role in the international arena. If the “engine of Europe” is constrained in its military role, it could at least be a diplomatic power, making use of its economic status. But its role is diminishing. Why is that?

In his latest book, “Krieg ohne Ende?” (War without end?), international political scientist Michael Lüders masterfully summarises the hypocrisy surrounding Germany’s involvement in the Zionist project from the beginning to the present day. The author suggests, in the form of a subtitle, “why we need to change our attitude towards Israel if we are to have peace in the Middle East.”

Germany is losing the credibility it has built up over decades in the eyes of the global majority. Today, the country is no longer seen with the same seriousness that we have become accustomed to in recent decades, but rather as a mere instrumental piece of the US in international relations. This is also the visible result of the “feminist foreign policy” that Annalena Baerbock has pursued as foreign minister over the last three years.

Defence of Israel is ‘Staatsräson’ of the Federal Republic

Germany has adopted the defence of Israel’s existence as ‘Staatsräson’ (raison d’État). It was during a visit by Chancellor Merkel to the Israeli Knesset in 2008 that this concept was first mentioned.

In the above-mentioned bestseller, it becomes clear that this principle is no accident, as it corresponds to the fact that Israel’s ‘raison d’État’ is the Holocaust, for which Germany is to blame. According to Mr. Lüders, the Jewish state used the Eichmann case to launch its ‘raison d’État’, while many other Nazi officials responsible for the persecution of the Jews had passed into the new Bonn nomenclature without being called to account. The most notorious case was that of Hans Globke, the eminence grise of the new regime, a key player in the USA’s fight against the USSR. He had previously drafted the Nuremberg race laws and was now Adenauer’s number two, protected by the new BND intelligence services and the CIA.

The SS officer Adolf Eichmann, kidnapped in Argentina by the Israelis, symbolically bore all the blame for Germany’s 1933-45 National Socialist’s period. After his hanging in 1962 for crimes against the Jewish people during the Holocaust, in the only judicial execution carried out in Israel to date, the FRG finally officially recognised Israel in 1965, after years of collaboration (since 1952). This marked the beginning of a complex relationship that remains opaque to this day.

An important part of this relationship has been the multi-billion dollar military industry within the Atlanticist framework. The most significant case, again unclear, was the corruption scandal over the sale of three nuclear-capable submarines and four corvettes sold during the Merkel governments to the Netanyahu government in 2016 for almost 4 billion euros, which ended up being paid for in part by German taxpayers.

In a current example, political scientist Kristin Helberg, who specialises in the Middle East, expressed her surprise on the public channel in October that Berlin was not helping Israel with defensive weapons against a hypothetical Iranian attack – which in her view would be legitimate – but by delivering ammunition to be used on civilian populations, contrary to the Geneva Convention.

Germany involved in a genocide

With its arms support for Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, Germany is not only committing an international offence that is costing it the current cases opened at the ICC and ICJ, but is also seeing its reputation stained in the biggest international forums by the global majority, on which its industrial export model depends.

On 14 October, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer said at a press conference in Berlin that the German government “sees no signs that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza” and that “Israel undoubtedly has the right to self-defence against Hamas”, and two days later Chancellor Scholz said loudly in the Bundestag that “there will be more arms deliveries – Israel can always count on that.”

Criticising Israel will be banned

In its increasingly radical philo-Zionist course, the German political class passed a new resolution “to protect, preserve and strengthen Jewish life in Germany”, to which only the parties of the governing coalition and the CDU/CSU were called, without consulting the AfD and BSW. The controversial and non-transparent resolution promises to pursue “increasingly open and violent anti-Semitism in right-wing and Islamist extremist circles, as well as a relativising approach and the rise of Israel-related and left-wing anti-imperialist anti-Semitism.”

The document mentions that “cases of anti-Semitism have increased” since the Hamas attack on Israel a year ago, but fails to mention that German law has since come to consider anti-Semitic the manifestation of various expressions in favour of the Palestinian cause such as the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” among other slogans, chants, insignia or even posts published on the internet, which are now considered and counted as punishable anti-Semitic crimes.

“The German Bundestag reaffirms its decision to ensure that no organisation or project that spreads antisemitism, questions Israel’s right to exist, calls for a boycott of Israel or actively supports the BDS movement receives financial support,” the document goes on to say.

Recently, the rector of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, complained that the freedom of study of the scientific community is under massive threat. “What distinguishes antisemitism from legitimate criticism of the Israeli government?” she asked. “And above all, who defines what antisemitism is? This is not at all clear. The definition is vague and leaves enormous room for legal uncertainty,” she asserted.

The divorce between the political class and public perception

It’s clear that the text of the new law aims to exclude the AfD from public debate, using the magic buzzword of the “far right”, but it also weighs heavily on the BSW, where the Palestinian cause and the multipolarist vision are obvious. A recent study by the Forsa research institute for Stern/RTL corroborates the clear rift between real and institutional Germany. Whilst the former doesn’t want the country to be involved in the Middle East war, the political class has guaranteed its indispensable support for Israel as a ‘national interest’. Voters from all German parties are therefore unequivocally opposed to further arms deliveries to Tel Aviv. The BSW electorate (85 per cent) is in the lead, followed by the AfD (75 per cent), but also 60 per cent of SPD voters, 56 per cent of CDU/CSU voters and 52 per cent of FDP voters. Interestingly, the Greens’ electorate showed a 50-50 tie. In the national total, this corresponds to 60 per cent of the citizenry, with the difference in the east being more significant (75 per cent against).

The case of the AfD is more curious because as a party that was born out of contestation with the system on the issues not only of immigration, but also of foreign policy and others, and its electoral base is clearly critical of Berlin’s pro-Western policy, its leadership also has a disproportionate presence of the philo-Zionist element, which is no different from the rest of the political class.

According to another poll also from October, by Infratest Dimap for public television ARD and WELT daily, only 19 per cent of AfD supporters consider Israel to be a reliable partner, a noticeably lower percentage than in the CDU/CSU (34 per cent) the SPD (36 per cent) and the Greens (38 per cent).

AfD distances itself from the Zionist consensus

Probably because he knew how to interpret this discrepancy between leadership and base, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla called for an end to aid to Tel Aviv and Germany’s ‘one-sided’ relationship with the Jewish state. “By supplying arms to Israel, you are accepting the dehumanisation of all civilian victims on both sides. They are not contributing to détente, but rather throwing fuel on the fire”, he said. It is “time to take a critical and objective look at the Israeli government”.

These statements come at a time of a clear move towards multipolarity within the party. Moreover, the principle of neutrality is the AfD’s official line. Its 2024 European electoral programme states that “the supply of arms to war zones does not serve peace in Europe”. At the risk of becoming just another political party, the AfD seems to want to meet the feelings of the majority of Germans and its social support base on foreign policy issues, which are now much debated by the general public.

It seems clear that after decades in the room, the elephant can no longer be hidden in the German political debate.

 

Ricardo Nuno Costa  geopolitical expert, writer, columnist, and editor-in-chief of geopol.pt, especially for «New Eastern Outlook»

 

https://journal-neo.su/2024/11/08/israel-uber-alles/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without Germans…”

         Gus Leonisky