According to the latest poll from today, the AfD has caught up with the CDU, both are now tied at 24%. The CDU has lost ground, the AfD has gained. The CDU party base is on the verge of going for Merz's throat. In some cases, entire city associations have left the party. The youth organization JU is literally seeing red. Which is no wonder, because it sees Merz, and Merz is as red as it has to be to be allowed to play chancellor: ultra-SPD red. With green stripes and, more recently, with an opportunistic feminist attitude. He has served up the CDU to the SPD for slaughter.

As predicted, the AfD will become strongest party. Just much, much sooner than even I anticipated.

It does not need that stupid firewall. It needs red lines that are not to be overstepped in negotiations with them. Put the AfD to the test! Either they fit in and prove themselves (unlikely, but I say one has to test them at least once, that would be the left's nightmare scenario in Germany because then they are done for the forseeable future), or they disenchant themselves, then Germany red-socialist future and fate is sealed and forever decided.

But for heaven's sake - test them at least ONCE.

Merkel's lobotomy of the CDU was total and more than just complete: She not only severed the corpus callosum and left it to that, but extracted both hemispheres of the brain and fed them to the pigs to ensure that the CDU would never recover.

What my fear is, is that your Justice will make AfD. illegal as a party.

I know you, Skybird and German articles, has mentioned this before - A ban on the AfD..

Markus

The NPD (basically the successor of the Nsdap) has also first been ignored and then declared illegal, and rightly so. What would Denmark or Sweden do with a 'party' that has the destruction of their constitution in its program?

I don't know if there is a party in Sweden who has the destruction of the country in its program. The biggest right wing party The Sweden Democrats does not have any destruction in their program.

I know there's left wing party in Denmark who has a kind of demolish the Danish constitution, such as remove the Royal Family in their manifest.

Some years ago they were also against EU-Now they are for EU.

Markus

Germany should step up and make a deal with the US to take in all the illegals we are trying to deport. It would help with their DEI image as well.

You better solve your own problems and stay the F out of our affaires!

lol :shucks:

and the majority of them are of military age! Solve your soldier problem!
https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxne...antselpaso.jpg

Catfish seems to impoly that the AfD stands up for a destruction of the constitutional order in Germany, and has this goal in its party program. That is wrong.


The AfD party platform does not explicitly state that it wants to abolish Germany's constitutional order. However, the AfD does suggest a number of - urgently needed - changes to Germany's political structure and existing institutions. It criticizes the current constitutional order and certain aspects of political integration in Europe, particularly the EU, and calls for greater national sovereignty.


One example is the AfD's call for a reform of the EU or even for Germany to leave the European Union, which is seen by many as a challenge to the existing constitutional order. Mind you, Germany is the oinylo country worldwide that has put it into its constitution that it enats to abolsh an independent German enety/state and wants in stead melt into a higher supranationbal order. No other nation on Earth has something so self-denying in its constiuition. In addition, issues such as national identity, asylum law and European integration are repeatedly called into question, which could have an impact on the fundamental values and principles of the constitution. However, the AfD does not explicitly call for the abolition of the constitution itself.


It is important to consider such statements in context, as the party does not completely reject the constitution in its current form, but criticizes it primarily in relation to European integration and immigration policy.


Get a new compass, Catfish, yours points south, not north.


I also remind of that a few weeks ago before the elections there was a comparing analysis done on what the parties claimed they want to do, and this analysis showed that there is no party, not even the FDP, with which the CDU shares so much common views and common ground on so many factual issues.



Finally, I claim that the current and poast governments explicitly bend, betray, and violate the constitution themselves, that the coinsutitutojbnal high court is nio more independent itslef and instea dbows kneews to extranational insitutions and politicla demands, and that the state violates deliberately compe obligations that are the mandatory duty of it in exhcnage of rthe citizens havign to pay for it. All givernbments unti, today deliberately reject to protetc the borders, they deliebrately reject to prtect the German culture beign the lead culture in this place called Germany, they dlejebrately regfuse to work for the securing of the social and ficnialm stability of the state and society. Ther eis a social treaty between "state" anbd "people", and when one side refuses to fulfill its obligations like this state does, it has no longer any claim to mayike for the obedience and loyalty of the people.



A failing politicla caste that hijaqcks the state for its own powerinterests in the meanign of vo Weiozsäcker'S often quoted words accrdoijg to wh8icb the boarty made the state their prey, has no more claim for loyalty of those it governs. Or to say it more clearly: those it abuses. The CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD, the Greens, the SED follow-ups - they all are guioty of this, and they show absolutel ynio signs to correct their misdoings. Inmstead, every idndivudal of them is mostyl cioncerned with hiw it can milk the most out of it for him himself and his party.


This system deserves neither loyalty nor respect. Its rotten and denegernated firm skin to bone marrow, and it is set to implode on an internatinal level.



The situation is desperate. I dont thi9nk ther AfD will save it. But we must at leats try them once. Else we cnanto say we tried everythign we could.


And you cannot forbid every fourth voter without establishing a dictatorship yorself. You can dress it in fancy clothes and have it wearing a grinning mask - but it remains to be a dictatorship of some sort. Ich nenne es staatlich verordneten linken Gesinnungsterror. And that definitely already is a fact in present Germany, we see it in the media, the newspapers, the universities, the suffocating network of NGOs that have covered German politics completely and also drive their tentacles into ministries, that way their ideology prevails even if governments change. You risk your job, academic career, banking access, state-ordered chicanes, legal prosecutuon, if you do not howl with the one-eyed wolves who all have lost their left eyes.


Only if you yourself have a correspondingly woke and left-wing bias can you still claim with conviction that you would be free to say whatever you want in Germany. But you are not. In fact, dissent is increasingly being harassed and persecuted by the state, even below the threshold of criminal prosecution, and criminalized. The SPD has set up state-run denunciation centers where you can even denounce others anonymously without having to expose yourself to the indignity of having to provide evidence; similar things happen at company level. Stand up to the left-wing pack and you will be ostracized, shunned and beaten up, I now know of three such cases in my quite burgeoise neighborhood, ordinary people: pensionerrs, family fathers, who got socially and in their jobs sanctioned or approached by the police for a "talk". This is the current German present - and for years now, surveys have shown that the proportion of Germans who anonymously agree that you have to be careful what you say in public in Germany is rising, last pol,I remember had the value of agreement at 45%. All the while the TV stations are openly lying when they claim that nobody is forced to take part in gender-speak - in fact, several people have lost their jobs in recent years because they refused to use gender-speak. No matter which party, no politician dares not to use gender-speak in front of the microphone. The vast majority of people, even women, find gender politics to be a puke. Nevertheless, the small fanatical minority imposes it on them with unyielding severity. Lying fanatical scumbags.


According to the constitution, we are a secular state, i.e. there is supposed to be a separation between state and religion. Nevertheless, there is a church tax in Germany, which the state collects, state money is used to subsidize enormous social institutions run by the church, enormous tax contributions are used to subsidize church real estate (the German Catholic Church is considered the richest national church in the world, only the Vatican State itself is considered even wealthier), and the judiciary has long applied double standards and all too often grants those accused with an Islamic background more lenient treatment and sentences, taking into account their culturally deviant Islamic background, while the proliferation of parallel Sharia-based justices of the peace is accepted: a foreign parallel justice, which is a clear violation of the constitution.


I would never post what I write in this American forum and in English about Germany in German in a German forum. That's where we are. Given the frequency with which I post, sooner or later I would be denounced and/or reported.


Things slide. Germany falls. That's no pessimism, no exaggeraiton, and no wishful thinking, but simply a sober observation covering that past 20-25 years.

Wow that is really scary

Can you tell me where this is written -

re the AfD maybe you like to make some physical contact to AfD's Hoecke's skinheads and their boots, but not me. Letting them loose once you have given away the chance to put them back in Pandora's box. We have been there. When the german government made the NPD illegal in the 1950ies it was not giving up democracy, but protecting it.

I understand that you want to destroy all because in your mind and obviously your perception it is all so rotten and bad and whatnot, but I wonder if you are living in another country or what is going on in your mind.
There are challenges, but also chances and solutions.

Article 23 of the Basic Law regulates “European integration”, and Article 24 the transfer of sovereign rights. Because it appears that both acts are voluntary, it was pointed out even before Merkel (I believe the first reference of this kind came from Kohl and was deepened by Giscard d'Estaing in the context of his criticism of the draft EU constitution) that there was a process of increasing competence of the EU institutions for national policy matters, which would result from an increase in the application of customary law by the EU proclaiming for itself a competence which it has not even been granted and from which, if it remains unchallenged, it deduces that this is now also subject to an obligation to apply it in the future for similar situations. For example, the principle that appointed EU courts have the power to issue instructions to the highest national courts is derived this way because it has never, to my knowledge at least, been backed up by a treaty text that would have had to be revised by the parties and ultimately approved by the voters in the Member States. Hungary and Poland, for example, derive their opposition to such courts from this - and they are absolutely right to do so. Still the EU Highest court claims it has been given superior power over the national high courts. But that is wrong. This power was indirectly ursurped, not given freely.

Articles 23 and 24 thus pave the way for the application of this habit-forming self-legitimization of supranational institutions, namely the EU, which is steadily eroding the sovereignty and responsibility of government and parliament at the national level and transferring these powers to the EU. Put simply, German affords itself two constitutional amendments, added in the 1990s and the 2000s, by means of which it ensures that there is a constant process of self-disempowerment, which not only represents the de-legitimization of parliament at federal level and the disempowerment of the supreme sovereign: the citizen, but at the end of which there must inevitably be full German self-disempowerment and the transfer of power to a supranational entity, the EU. Thus, the self-abolition of Germany is the raison d'etre of the German state as laid down in the Basic Law.

I am not the first one pointing this out, Catfish. Amongst critics of this EU power grab were Roman Herzog, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and some more. Herzog specifically criticised the tuning of the Basic Law for letting this happen, and the silent disempowerement of the parliament and the citizens. He was very right in his (many) criticisms of the EU.

Beyond all that, I do not share your optimism on "chances and solutions". Thats because of what I had to witness in the past 30 years. and I can not, not in in good faith, conclude from that that suddenly the trend wil reverse and all what got bended will get mended. That is not possible. It was not done and possible already decadesd ago when the conditions where much much more positive to succeed with that, they are much worse today, by factors, and the needs and obstacles and resistances are much bigger today than back then. The deficits and losses have accumulated in that time, and the time there may have been in reserve has been wasted. Now we are where we are . And suddenly all will fall in a fitting place and things will go smooth and well again? I dont believe in miracles and wonders. The ships have left, I saw them leaving for sure.

A thought experiment in the NZZ. It is probably realistic and I said myself that a coaltiion of CDU and AfD liekly would fail and that Russia is a big hurdle for them to come together. However, i sticxk to it: it must be tried at least once. How else to ever overcome the left woke red and green misery in German poltics?

https://www.nzz.ch/international/afd...erz-ld.1878380

AfD in government: Fiction or conceivable possibility for Friedrich Merz's CDU?

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has for the first time drawn level with the CDU/CSU in a poll. The candidate for chancellor is therefore under pressure. Would a coalition with the far-right achieve more than with the SPD? A thought experiment.

"As far as the departments are concerned, we have clear ideas," says Alice Weidel. "I expect that we will take over the Ministry of the Interior and Homeland. It's about safeguarding our national identity and a decisive border policy." Friedrich Merz has no problem with that: "That's how it will be." He had previously appeared before the press with the AfD leadership. "Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for our country. After intensive discussions over the past few weeks, we have formed a historic coalition government. We are running to make Germany strong and capable of governing."

The CDU in a government with the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party? It's a fictional scenario. Chat-GPT, the artificial intelligence-based chatbot, also writes a script on instruction about the formation of a coalition between Christian Democrats and right-wing extremists, complete with dialogues. In a matter of seconds and without inhibitions. All fake.

The reality in Berlin, however, is bleak. Coalition negotiations between the CDU/CSU and SPD are dragging on, with no sign of a new beginning. This week marked the lowest point: polls show further losses for the CDU/CSU – and for the first time, the AfD is tied with the CDU/CSU nationwide. Both at 24 percent. A historic moment. The CDU is churning after the spectacular turnaround of its leader, Merz, who, along with the Social Democrats and the Greens, threw the debt brake out the window. A wave of resignations is underway. Friedrich Merz, the chancellor-to-be, is on the ropes before he even took office. Wouldn't that have been politically possible after the federal election in February?

Let's speculate: How exactly would one have imagined a coalition between the CDU/CSU and AfD parties? This greatest possible breach of taboo in German politics?

Two-thirds of Germans oppose such a coalition government. Merz has ruled it out. The AfD is being monitored nationwide by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case; in three federal states, it is considered "confirmed right-wing extremist." Nevertheless, 152 AfD MPs now sit in the new Bundestag. A governing majority with the CDU/CSU would be broad. According to Wahl-O-Mat, an app for comparing election platforms, the party's consensus is 61 percent. From asylum policy to massive tax breaks for workers to a rejection of "frivolous gender reassignment" for young people. So?

Nowhere could Friedrich Merz fulfill his promise of policy change more clearly and simply than in the area of ​​migration policy. He would make good on his announcement for his first day as Chancellor, to the cheers of the AfD: permanent border controls and the rejection of all those entering the country without valid documents, including asylum seekers. The opposition would accuse him of violating European law. But Merz doesn't have to worry about that for now; he has a strong majority. His other announcements of a shift in asylum policy largely coincide with the AfD's demands. Such as deportation detention for all migrants required to leave the country, or the revocation of German citizenship for those who have committed crimes.

For the AfD, migration is such a central issue that it would likely demand the position of Interior Minister, or at least a State Secretary in the Interior Ministry who would be entrusted with this area of ​​responsibility. Alice Weidel as Minister of the Interior and Homeland? Theoretically conceivable. Or Stephan Brandner, who was once chairman of the Bundestag's Legal Affairs Committee, but was then voted out of office – a first – for politically unacceptable tweets. Brandner is also the member of parliament with the most reprimands in parliament. "Pinocchio Fritz," he called Friedrich Merz when the aspiring chancellor stepped up to the podium recently.

Can Merz work with such people? "In a world where that were possible, quite a lot would have to be out of whack," says political scientist Christian Stecker of the Technical University of Darmstadt. The current top CDU personnel would then largely have to be gone. Because at the federal level, Merz would not be willing to form such a coalition, nor would CDU politicians at the state level, such as Saxony's Prime Minister MicHael Kretschmer or his colleague in Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff. Others would have to take their place.

Even on the issue of migration, as in economic and family policy, the common interests have their limits: The CDU absolutely refuses to acknowledge "remigration," the AfD's programmatic goal. If a coalition agreement were ever reached, the AfD might postpone this idea. It would be a compromise it would make for the sake of a share of power.

In fact, with its almost 21 percent of the vote, the AfD would be a powerful coalition partner, laying claim to more ministerial posts than the Social Democrats currently hold. Of the fifteen specialist ministers rumored for the intended CDU-SPD coalition, perhaps seven would go to the AfD. Alongside Weidel—one could imagine—co-party leader Tino Chrupalla would enter the cabinet as Minister of Economic Affairs, and Beatrix von Storch, who is similarly polemical to Brandner, would serve as Minister of Family Affairs. The coalition partners have agreed on a non-partisan figure for the critical Ministry of Justice – this was also what the FPÖ and ÖVP had planned in Austria during the ultimately failed negotiations.

The AfD is thin on staff. Added to this is the discord among state associations, which is affecting the parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The influence of Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke is also viewed with suspicion. He has placed his confidants in Berlin and would, of course, have a say in the formation of a government. But would a nationalist-minded Höcke minister, for example, be acceptable to the CDU/CSU? And to the German public?

One should not be fooled by the thematic overlap between the CDU/CSU and the AfD, says sociologist Marcel Schütz of the Northern Business School in Hamburg, who is working on a book about the AfD from an organizational sociology perspective. "There is also just as much material that divides these parties." Things that can't simply be left undecided, as the CDU and SPD would in negotiations, but rather real no-gos and contrasts, not least in tone and style."

Schütz cites irreconcilable differences in social and foreign policy, for example, especially the AfD's friendly stance toward Russia. Stecker, the political science professor from Darmstadt, mentions the fundamental understanding of democracy and pluralism that distinguishes CDU/CSU and AfD politicians. "How do you want to work with people who ultimately delegitimize dissidents and defame them as out-of-touch traitors?"

For Friedrich Merz and the CDU/CSU, it's a dilemma. Time is on the AfD's side. Behind the firewall, far from participating in government, the Alternative for Germany is growing until it becomes the strongest political force. In parts of eastern Germany, it's already reached that point. There's still one option. The CDU/CSU could try it: a minority government, supported by shifting majorities, including the AfD, when it comes to migration. In Germany, minority governments are frowned upon and considered unstable. But how stable was the "traffic light" coalition?

---------------

An open market, a free trade union. EEC. A military defense union with coordinated defense planning and preparing. NATO, without the US. The rest of the EU, and the ECB: with all its identity policy, fraudulent money policy, corruption, Green deal policy, censorship policy: pack it together and dispose it at the next landfill. It never was needed and is not wanted.


A free trade zone. A military alliance. Thats it. Im all for both. Not more, not less.

The problem with these far right parties around Europe is that they have entered the political stage, way far to late.

Germany and the rest of the European countries has bypassed point-of-no-return decades ago.

If the people who are putting their vote on them for the immigration/refugee situation-A huge majority is voting far right for this reason.

Markus

[FOCUS] His tariffs demonstrate that Trump is an anti-liberal, nationalist sensationalist. However, that doesn't give the Germans the right to puff out their cheeks. Not the Germans, and not the Europeans either.

A small point to make first: Donald Trump is not an American patriot. Ronald Reagan, the Republican president to whom Germany owes the opportunity for reunification, was an American patriot. He was strictly against tariffs. He considered them ridiculous, stupid, and harmful to Americans.

Donald Trump is not a patriot, but a nationalist. If Trump had attended Reagan's school, he could have learned: tariffs are for dummies. In the hands of a US president, they are a means of impressing his own supporters. But only in the short term.

In the medium and long term, the glory of tariffs quickly fades. They harm Americans, cost prosperity and jobs, and cause inflation. Warren Buffett, the brilliant investor and strategist, calls tariffs what they truly are: "an act of war" – a declaration of war.

Buffett didn't mean a declaration of war like Putin's against Ukraine, but one against people's prosperity and freedom. Both are greater the freer trade is. And tariffs are a restriction on trade, a bazooka against the free exchange of goods and services.

National tariffs are protectionism. Protectionism – that is the opposite of globalization. Globalization is what has brought prosperity and freedom to humanity, especially to poorer countries. The best example is Vietnam, as historian, sociologist, and author Rainer Zitelmann points out. Never in history has a country become rich through protectionism. And the USA, too, will become poorer, not richer, with protectionism. It's simply just a matter of time.

Long before his first term in office, Trump complained that there were too many Mercedes cars driving around New York for his liking. However, the reason so many Swabian S-Class cars are driving around in Manhattan is because customers consider them to be among the best cars in the world. Unlike American products.

With one exception: Tesla. Therefore, Trump's remark – in a press statement aboard Air Force One – that Europeans don't buy American cars is also wrong. They bought Tesla cars because the owner of this automaker had succeeded – temporarily – in turning German cars into anti-modern antiques from an outdated analog world.

Now they're catching up again. And why? Certainly not because of nationalism. Not because of a slogan: Buy German! Consumers here haven't cared about that for a long time. They want good quality if they're going to pay a lot of money for it.

The Tesla story – first the upswing, now the downswing – could be a good lesson for Trump. What matters is the product first, then the market. And what's harmful is the disabling of the market through isolation. Specifically, through tariffs.

If Trump were to spend his time reading a book, he should study the teachings of American neoliberal thinker Milton Friedman on the international division of labor and its benefits. Tariffs, Friedman said, "protect the consumer very well from one thing (...): low prices."

In a famous video, Friedman explains why a pencil can only be cheap because it isn't an exclusively American product. That's the lesson of the international division of labor: it benefits everyone.

Elon Musk, unlike Trump, is not a pseudo-patriotic nationalist, but a liberal. That's why he had the courage to recommend to his president what he probably wants to hear least right now: conclude a free trade agreement with the Europeans based on zero tariffs. He hopes "for a zero-tariff situation with a free trade zone between Europe and North America." Tariffs are nationalist poison, even for hyper-globalizers.

Musk is a liberal free-market economist, Trump is an anti-liberal, nationalist sensationalist. That's the difference between the two. However, that doesn't give the Germans the right to puff out their cheeks. Not the Germans, and not the Europeans either.

Because they themselves impose tariffs. Worth around €23 billion a year. The Europeans aren't flawless free-market economists; they, too, are infected with the protectionist virus. And more than that: they brim with hyper-morality. Free trade is only acceptable to them if it contributes to saving the world—see the combustion engine ban and supply chain mentation.

Germany's outgoing red-green government is trumpeting its war on America. Current Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) speaks like an agitator of an "attack" on the global economy. His deputy, Robert Habeck from the Green Party, indirectly compares Trump to Putin, diagnosing an American "politics of fear" that can only be countered "with strength."

And the German Foreign Minister, who has not previously appeared as a global economist, countered Trump with this suggestion: "How often do we update our iPhone? Like, ten cents on it – that would bring in a lot of money for Europe, which others might not like so much."

Annalena Baerbock is only right about the latter. Among those who would certainly not like the update tax on iPhones are all iPhone owners – all but one, because Baerbock gets her work phone from the government. If you can't even pay your own hairdresser, it's easy to talk about a de facto tax increase as revenge for Trump's tariffs. The main thing is to create an enemy image.

Others are smarter. Taiwan offers the Americans a mutual zero interest rate. So does Israel, a leading digital power. Or Cambodia. The Europeans could do the same.

If tariff-free tariffs promote prosperity, then please not a petty, ugly trade war, especially with our ally, but rather: globalization and free trade.

Geostrategically, it would also be particularly dangerous to enter into a trade war with the Americans. We Germans aren't even in a position to protect our Christmas and other markets from terrorism. We can't even keep one of our most important trade routes free from terrorists, the Houthis. We'll need the Americans for our security for a long time to come – perhaps we should act like them. How about intelligence?

Free trade before protectionism, consumer freedom before consumer harassment.

Leftists, in particular, should be able to learn something about this topic. A few years ago, the SPD and the Greens torpedoed the TTIP free trade agreement with the Americans. All of Germany suddenly fell into a crazy "chlorine-treated chicken" hysteria.

It would have been better if the Americans had imported their chlorine-cleaned chickens into Europe and then let consumers here decide whether they wanted to buy these animals. Free trade before protectionism, consumer freedom before consumer harassment.

The same people who are upset about Trump's tariffs today prevented an agreement with the Americans to abolish tariffs. How hypocritical can one be?

The EU Commission is currently working on a long list of ways to make US products more expensive. It's possible – if you're indifferent to prosperity in Europe and want to demonstrate a strength you don't actually possess.

By the way, one would like to hear what the likely next Chancellor, Friedrich Merz (CDU), thinks about future trade policy with the Americans. Because it could be that this issue will be one of the most important during his term in office.

Never in recent years have chancellors been able to set an agenda. Angela Merkel's chancellorship was first dictated by the US-triggered financial crisis in 2008, then by the euro crisis surrounding Greece, then by the refugee crisis in 2015 and after that, and then by the coronavirus pandemic presumably triggered by the Chinese.

Scholz thwarted Moscow and Karlsruhe's plans. Putin when he invaded Ukraine, and Karlsruhe when it stopped his financial shenanigans – and Scholz suddenly had 60 billion less in his coffers.

In other words: chancellors have their agenda dictated from outside. It could happen again with Merz. He and the CDU/CSU talk about Germany's leadership in Europe. Well, in this looming trade war, one would have liked to know what the smart response of a Chancellor Friedrich Merz would be.

Can the CDU man think of anything better than the cheap tirades of Scholz and Habeck?

https://youtu.be/AODGmo4qh0A?si=tJX7mOBdinzXPiA5
no comment.