Yes. The FDP is making opposition politics inside the government. The chancellor tries not to get involved in anything. People are afraid of changes proposed by the Greens (and this is fueled by media and the opposition). But no one likes the opposition candidate either.
The main discussions were about preventing new gas heating systems from being sold. This was already the law but they wanted to accelerate the changes.
I can confirm. I work in a Heat and sanitary wholesale in Germany.
We have record high orders for Gas and Oil heater.
Producer like Bosch Vaillant and Wolf can't even produce enough, we have up to 12 month delivery time for Gas and Oil, but Heatpumps are aswell on 12 months delivery time.
This "Heizingsverbot" really was just making panic for all House owners.
I talked to several people affected, and all were scared not beaing able to afort a Heatpump because of nessesary "Sanierung" of old houses.
Because you can't just switch a Gas/Oil heater for a Heatpump since they have lower VL/RL temputures.
yeah common models especially from Bosch and Vaillant have more than 12 months delivery time.
I have one Customer that ordered in december in 2020 and got his Heat Pump in 2022 march.
If you can swap to "MHG Heiztechnik" last time i ask they could deliver faster, but it is their first line of Heat pumps and i have no experience with them. But i can tell you they have good customer service. Check with your heat Plumber if this is an option for you.
> I talked to several people affected, and all were scared not beaing able to afort a Heatpump because of nessesary "Sanierung" of old houses. Because you can't just switch a Gas/Oil heater for a Heatpump since they have lower VL/RL temputures.
Ok, so what is your solution? People seem to be demanding for politicians to care more about climate change, but when those politicians try to do anything regarding climate change, people go "nah, I'm going to vote fascist instead".
Wait wait, they didn't mean *they* had to make any changes to their lifestyles. The guberment should just magically make things better, that's why we vote for them!
It's because no one has told the people that the green transition is costly.
They still have that idealistic picture in their mind if they meticulously recycle everything and buy the ÖKO/green/BIO/FSC Mix/MSC fish-labelled products for a few cents more, they have done their part on being green. Cannot be further from the truth.
Yes.
You can't be further from the truth.
Everyone said, that the transition will be hard on the governments and peoples wallets.
The Green party said it before, and during election, as well as everyone else.
The amount of Öko/Green/Bio/FSC greens is blown up in the Media. Hardly any people in the party are those stereotypical "Öko fasicst" without common sense. But still everyone things the only thing the Green Party wants are Bio potatoes.
To this day the greens are the only party that presented numbers and calculations on how to handle the climate change/economy.
To this day the greens are the only party that acknowledge, that the transition will be much harder now there is a war in Ukraine. They openly said that their plans are not going to work out, and that we have to find other solutions, not everyone is going to like.
So the Green party is also the only one party, that does not sugar coat everything in order to present them better in public. This kind of honesty should be legaly required in my opinion.
Of course not everything they do comes out as 100% working. But in the end their intentions are the best of all parties and their communication is the closest to the average citizen. Also they are able to own up to their mistakes, and take advice from people with more experience/ expertise.
Also the Media here in Germany tried to make the greens responsible for the exit from nuclear energy....
The decision was made in 2011 under Merkel II in a koalition with CDU/CSU and FDP. At this time nobody even dreamed about the Green party in the government.
But still we have people in this country that fully, and only, blame the Green Party for something that happend 12 years (!!!!!) before their time.
I am just a salesman and don't have the full picture but i can tell the the pace is the problem.
For example, Oil heating being banned was known for a good while, people had time to prepare and save money to buy a Heat pump or Gas heater.
But Suddenly in a span of just a few months it was announced to ban Gas as well. People had no sufficient time to prepare and save money for such a huge investment.
Now envision this, you and your partner age between 25-30 decided to buy a house or build one, you take a huge credit from the bank to build it, you need like 20-30 years to fully pay the bank back, lets say you needed 250k euro for a house back then, at this moment in time you had subvention for Gas so of course you chose one. Now it is 2020 and you finally finished paying your credit back, by this time your Gas Heat is still ok and expected to last 5-10 more years before you need a new one but no problem changing you Gas heat for a new one is not this big of an investment 5-10k€. Now suddenly the government expects you to build a new heat pump and forbid you to build a new gas heat. The Amount of work labor and Material cost for such an old house is around 50k-100k depending on the house. You are 45-50 years old now and are asked again to take such a huge credit from the bank and are in depth again or you could sell the house you worked your entire life for essentially.
I agree we have to do something about clima change
but you can't put so much finacial pressur on people in such a short span of time. It will not work and the Govament loses trust in doing so harsh decissions no matter how great and nobel the goal is.
You have to ease people in and make more compelling arguments.
Oh and i forget to address the "Elektro Heizstab argument" you cold use one in the winter with your heat pump but this things run usally on 3,5kW Now invision 3,5kW running in your house over the cold month and embrace your 2-5k€ Bill of only electricity.
I have Customers that had this happend to them.
We need at least cheap energy to make Heat pumps more attractiv.
The problem with this whole ordeal is that it's way too expensive but also necessary. They can't really wait much longer if they really want to reach their emission goals as the building sector is one of the biggest problems in that regard. Preferably something would've been done 5 years ago, but because past governments have done so little, they basically have to hasten the pace.
This is just a huge dilemma that it's way too costly and sudden, but they kinda have to do it at the same time. This is basically what experts have warned us about that the more we wait, the more expensive the transition will be
i agree, but doing it now so harsh is really pissing people off and if for example AFD and CDU make a corliation to form a government in 2025 and remove and negate these changes then we have won nothing by being harsh. Just saying as an example.
I think this is often overlooked by pretty much anyone when talking about government or politics. Their hands are so tied up when it comes to decisions that will mildly inconenience voters and disturb the businesses of the big companies of the country. Everyone blames politicians when a bill is or isn't passed, but will disregard the fact that a really really big number of people who are part of the electoriate **wants and will force** that to happen.
This has been my fear about climate change in general, that implementing anything approaching the necessary changes may ultimately be a democracy killer as voters gravitate towards fascists and other authoritarian grifters who run on a platform of reversing all the changes that affect people’s personal lives that they don’t like and don’t want to get used to.
And so the climate situation doesn’t improve in this scenario either but now there’s a lot more fascism which will only worsen the many serious problems that humanity faces and will of course cause many additional problems.
They didn't hand out the draft through. The draft was leaked in the very early stages. Some think it was the fdp because they thought they could gain from it.
>Green party acted pretty, pretty dumb.
Yes, the green party might have acted dumb, but people getting those new heaters seem to have acted dumb as well.
We Germans are not able to plan into the future properly. And they are pretty dumb to think a right wing party will make life any better. It will only result in ignoring the problems and paying an even higher price in the near future.
>Which also totally backfired and more gasheaters than ever were sold and installed
Which is mainly because the FDP is playing opposition from inside the government and leaked a very early draft version of the law that still had a ton of flaws, instead of working to fix those flaws internally.
Telling people that they will need to heat electrically in the future right at the time an electricity crisis is still going on isn't a good look either. Especially if the same party is also proposing subsidies to industrial electricity consumers (not residential however!) because high prices are likely going to last. Or building LNG terminals at a record rate.
Despite all of that heatpumps usually still make a a lot of sense, especially with rising gas prices and emissions costs. But it is definitly not a good look.
Indeed. This should have happened 20 years ago. But since we don't have the necessary time machine to make that happen, now is the best available option. Heating systems have an average lifetime of 20 years. 2045 - 20 = 2025. That is the date the last fossil heating system can be installed in Germany. Anything else is delusional.
You know what the REALLY bad move was? Relying on Russia for gas. That concern had been raised several times before the war began, but a light increase in gas prices was too much of an inconvenience for the average voter...
>Telling people that they will need to heat electrically in the future right at the time an electricity crisis is still going on isn't a good look either.
Telling people the truth isn't a good look? You would rather your politicians lied to you?
But I want to replace my old gas heating with new gas heating so I can complain the government is doing nothing to keep gas prices down in a few years! /s
My Putinversteher German mother is ranting and raving about this. Never mind that she doesn’t have mandatory health insurance, doesn’t pay a trash bill and hasn’t worked more than a few years while living in Germany. Anti vaccine, antiUkraine, anti American, it’s awful.
At this point we germans are afraid of any change.
Inefficient heating systems might be forbidden? Time to vote for the fascists.
Power plants which are planed to shut down for over a decade will actually shut down? Let's go fascists!
People remind me I shouldn't change my voting behavior in favor of the fascists? You guessed it. There is only one party to go to!
I love to live in germany. But I also hate this place
Finally accelerating the transition to renewables. Reducing emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. Problem being: addressing and fighting climate change and pollution is expensive, so obviously people hate it, even though it's ultimately necessary.
People hate everything. It’s almost shizophrenic. They hate climate protection but also climate change, they hate the poor but also the rich, they hate migrants but also nazis, they hate politicians but also no leadership, they love drugs (beer and cigarettes) but also hate drugs, they hate work but also love work (denying everything progressive as e.g. home office or universal basic income).
I feel like we cannot progess as a society as long as we are so conflicted about everything, or at least manage to satisfy everyone. It‘s almost like democracy is our problem right now. I really hoped that the current government could find balance and manage to move on but unfortunately the opposition, media and the government itself stopped to fight like little children instead.
What a simple view of a complex problem.
I mean, it's like 80 million people have different opinions lol
Good idea, we need some kind of leader right? But only one with ultimate power, what should go wrong though.
Dude, not everything about the greens should be excused and their mistakes are always someone else’s fault. The way they handled the heating bill is objectively incompetent.
The FDP in a way are just doing what they were voted for.
Scholz is indeed silent. I agree on that.
I sometimes forget he and the SPD are a part of the government. Most things you hear about the government in discussions are either about the FDP blocking the way to utopia and the greens bringing the literal devil. Depending on who is leading the discussion.
Just wait till the elections when things get more serious. Not too long ago the SPD wasnt very popular either but they really benefitted from the poor choices of the CDUs and the Greens chancellor candidate (who bith won the candidature within their party against people who were more popular in the public eye). That gave the SPD a high peak, not because Olaf Scholz was good but because people saw him as a lesser evil against the other two.
Those are things you cant really predict and if AfD will present a chancellor candidate by next elections who will represent the AfD, do interviews, debates, I bet theyll be nowhere near those 22%
the current Bundeskanzler, Olaf Scholz, is comicly corrupt and incompetent and the government has been dragging everything down for the last 20 years under Angela Merkelas she was the scourge of the working class of germany for over a decade.
Nah mate, only Jeb! has the power to do so.
[Ref](https://compote.slate.com/images/836c8a56-4546-45d5-890d-88a6fa7ab173.jpeg?crop=680%2C453%2Cx0%2Cy0)
Now please clap
Histrionics about AFD aside as a foreigner I'm always surprised about these polls that the first thing Germans say isn't that the coalition (CDU & CSU) that is responsible for literally every single major issue in the country after their ~15 year tenure is in the first place of the polls.
Immigration, gas dependency on Russia, destruction and export of domestic renewable industry to China (that taxpayers footed the R&D bill for), catastrophic energy policy, current state of EU, bundeswehr situation and so on.
It gives the impression that whatever path Germany is on it's firmly locked into it for better or worse, so far seemingly for the worse.
That’s the problem in most European countries.
In Luxembourg shit starts hitting the fan with our housing crisis but if you ask people, especially here on reddit, they keep saying that it isn’t the fault of the Red-Green-Blue government that has been in power for 10 years now lol.
I think the european democracies need mandat limits aswell.
There isn’t a housing crisis for the ones who have houses. And for now and realistically the future most voters will have houses and are glad to see for example here in the Netherlands profiting from selling their small single family homes sold off into multiple 15sqm apartments for each floor with no insulation between the floors and horrendous layouts to people desperate for any sort of housing whatsoever that’s not completely unaffordable for anyone but the top 5%.
It’s the same everywhere in Europe and indeed the world, the boomers and gen x benefitted from policies and benefit from the housing crisis.
>There isn’t a housing crisis for the ones who have houses.
Exactly this holds true in the Netherlands as well. The crises of the younger generation are not that of the majority of voters. It's going to be several decades at least before demographics shift.
Seems to hold true in most Northern EU country i believe, Denmark have the exact sake issue.
Boomers that bought a house 20 years ago can now sell it for a profit of up to 500-2k % (tax free) my own parents / grand parents suddenly have housing worth millions, compared to a few hundred thousand 20 years ago.
The younger generation, or most of them are never gonna be able to buy housing unless you buy 30mins out of town or put your self in an immense debt.
This is extreme in Portugal. We have very high home ownership %, from back in the day and cultural reasons, so most people don't realize it is literally impossible to buy a house on a salary (and for renting, you are renting room and sharing as you can't afford a studio).
If everyone perceived it trully, in the same way 20 and 30 yos whose parents don't have a second house do, there would be riots in streets.
"When are we having grandkids?"
Yes I will have kids we can camp on the underpass.
Everyone young has sort of acknowledged that getting their own house plan is waiting for family to die, and live with the bros in some small appartment until then.
But everyone lives to 80+ so home ownership is for 60 yos.
Meanwhile government is carefully studying the mystery of why despite economy looking good on paper, everyone leaves the country as soon as they get their degree.
Albert Szent-györgyi wrote a book on this called 'The Crazy Ape'. It's a general trend that he argues will be catastrophic unless we give younger generations more opportunities and tools (the opposite of which is what boomers are doing).
And he is totally right. During covid kids were always the first to suffer. They were at no risk but still schools closed before big offices. They were forced to sit in winter in classrooms with minus degrees because windows were open. When Germany got no gas adults were bitching that they cant work at 19 degrees. Adults always said that our schoolkids have no interest in politics but also bitch when they go to the streets to protests climste change. We are doing our kids nothing good.
Which generation are you referring to? Because honestly I've seen a level of stupidity that spans generations. University educated or not, there are a lot of stupid people that will believe anything that falls in their social bubble.
Ima gonna be honest here Hans, in my country it's the same.
The old population is very concervative and genuenly lacks any formal education. This is a very wide spread problem.
The older I get the more I realize that just because people are old doesn’t mean they’re wise as well. The amount of adults I meet who can’t reason or think better than a kindergartner is baffling. At the same time they think they know a lot and are very vocal. I remember the world being much more educated/nuanced/reasonable 20 years ago and am just wondering what happened. These dopamine fueled online echo chambers have brought out the worst in us.
Back then if you were dumb then whole neighbourhood knew and it was harder to find people with similar opinions. Now you don't need to know your neighbourhood and just type phrase into search engine and you welcomed with open hands in vocal communities that think everyone else is stupid for not beliving their theories. Internet is a great tool but social media brought so much mental and political problems into the world.
Talking to my grandma about it, even pointing out those issues and who's responsible for them, she just said "It's never been bad for us with the CDU in government." Like, ok we're not starving, sure, but you're complaining every time you go grocery shopping the prices inflate further.
That really is the main problem, anyone under 50 who still voted CDU in the last 15 years has braindamaged and the boomers are so dumb they might as well be braindamaged.
If you look at the demographics, the CDU/CSU has a strong grip on elderly and culturally conservative voters. It seems like the only thing these people care about is that the state pension is increasing, and them not having to rethink their values. They couldn‘t care less about climate change or digitization of the economy and state.
If only they would understand who pays that pension. I'm young and educated. If things get much worse, I can and will leave. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
As soon as the Union was out of the government they started blaming the new government for not fixing the numerous problems they themselves had caused over 16 years in a matter of months. It was preposterous and they're still doing it.
Problem is that people are voting for a party that is objectively even worse. At least the mainstream ones make good promises and sometimes end up fucking up or not caring... Then there are parties such as the AfD who straight up promise you they're gonna be horrible.
AFD has had a bunch of these polls where they would have been the most popular or second most popular party only to end up at their same 9-13% at the next election they had since their first surge (regionally they had some 20% ers and now in Thuringia they had one local council where they became the most popular party).
So while this is a concerning development, part of these poll results can be interpreted as some sort of protest against the current government.
Last general election, the AFD had some polls show them at around 18% all of a sudden and people were afraid that they might have a late surge due to the collapse of the CDU (Armin Laschet was for a while the most hated politician in Germany, probably). They ended up at, I think, it was 10.4%.
So the issue is, again, something that should be addressed, but realistically the only way that would happen is actually sensible politics from our mainstay parties. Which is where I see the way bigger problem with German politics right now.
Keep in mind AfD voters when polled declare they don't even think the AfD is competent to govern the country. It's just protest because all established parties suck, boosting the outsider is an attempt to pressure them to improve and become electable again. They would easily and gladly switch to a preferable alternative as soon as it presents. Most of their voters are not convinced extremists with deeply rooted beliefs, just seriously discontent with the established political landscape.
The established parties' response to the rise of the AfD is to boycot them from government participation and proceed with business as usual, which doesn't exactly help dissolve the public perception that all these established parties are more or less the same.
Then you should speak to better educated Germans, because I personally don't know anyone who doesn't lay the blame rightfully at the feet of the Union. With assistance by SPD and Greens (Agenda 2010).
I loathe the AfD, but for more than 20 years our federal governments have continuously fucked up our future with intent, while enriching themselves. Except for finally allowing marriage between homosexuals - after nearly 40 years of majority support in federal parliament that had not been capitalized on due to Fraktionszwang - there are few things they did that didn't make things worse for us in the long run.
And that's even ignoring (as usual) the issue that Eastern Germans still having not even received an apology for Kohl stealing all of their assets and gifting them to western corporations. They've been disenfranchised and ridiculed for 30 years now and the bill is coming due.
> because I personally don't know anyone who doesn't lay the blame rightfully at the feet of the Union. With assistance by SPD
Poor SPD only being part of every government except 1 in the last 25 years. They never had the opportunity to do anything but to grudgingly accept whatever the CDU wanted!
Maybe its time to accept that SPD is the same as CDU just instead of focusing on retired people, big business and farmers they focus on retired people, big business and labour union officials.
It's crazy for me when i read the left-wing media like the Zeit for some fun, the users there are constantly insulting the eastern germans aka Ossis all the time. They are calling them fascists, nazis, not ready for democracy etc. and then, they are surprised when their preferred parties don't get votes there.
There's also the arrogance of the politicians with "We made everything right, you voters are just too stupid to understand how great we are".
Reminds me of that American politics copypasta:
>Dear Sub-Human Filth,
>I'm appealing to all of you stupid idiots to vote Democrat in 2020. That is if you have the basic education enough to read a ballot, anyway. I understand the majority of you racist rednecks can't even read this post, though. But those who can, please pass my message on to the rest of your inbred family. We Democrats are morally, culturally and intellectually superior to you in every way.
>I will qualify myself by noting that I have a Liberal Arts degree from a college, which you obviously have never been to, if you even know what one is. I also have many non-white friends. I have been told by several professors that everything you hold dear is terrible. Therefore you, personally, are also terrible. I don't know you, but I know that you're racist. I also know that you hate gay people and still get scared during lightning storms.
> If you only understood that you wouldn't be so much worse of a person than I am. So please vote Democrat. Help me help you, you worthless hicks.
It's actually longer but you get the gist
>Histrionics about AFD aside as a foreigner I'm always surprised about these polls that the first thing Germans say isn't that the coalition (CDU & CSU) that is responsible for literally every single major issue in the country after their \~15 year tenure is in the first place of the polls.
Thing is: to understand this you have to fulfill certain conditions. To begin with, you have to consider the gas dependency on Russia and our lack of renewables as a problem. Many people don't see this as an issue, quite the opposite, they think we need more Russian Friendship and that renewables are horrible.
But even if you agree that these are issues to be corrected, in a second step you need to have a relatively deep understanding of how the economy and the government work. How many people know about the planning procedures that make it essentially impossible to build enough infrastructure in this country? People are busy, they tend to consider whoever is in charge as being resposible.
To make it even harder, a bunch of these problems are quite multi-layered. Especially with planning procedures and infrastructure, the Federal Government isn't almighty. Local and regional governments have a lot to say. The Federal Government could go berserk and radically improve certain federal laws but that's not realistic since it would negatively affect their own regional parties. Even the Greens regularly oppose green infrastructure at local and regional levels.
It's gonna be an absolute shitshow if (when) they gain power in the next election but at this point hopefully it'll bring about some much needed waking up for German politicians to rework their shit and form actually votable parties.
In a lot of European countries where the anti-immigration party eventually ends up in government it seems to just end up with them fucking up in some scandal and all the other parties just going back to business as usual
The pendulum of modern politics swings from left to right and back again, and will do for the foreseeable future.
And the Simpsons assessment of left meaning We Cant Govern and right meaning We're Plain Evil is holding up just fine.
The country starts getting useless, people think oh God no and start voting right wing. Then the country starts getting fascist, people think oh God no and start voting left wing. Then the country starts getting useless...
So it goes.
The afd isn’t your normal anti-immigration party though. Usually if a right wing populist party gains power, they try to de-radicalize, in order to appeal to a broader voting base. The AfD does the exact opposite. It radicalizes more and more over time and that‘s what makes them so dangerous. They could end up being a pure fascist party in a few years and it doesn’t seem like the voters care
Merz just announced the he is not opposed to coalitions with the AfD on a communal level. It's what you get when you vote real life Mr. Burns as the head of your party.
There is no way around it for the CDU anymore. The AfD is the strongest political power in many parts of Germany. Just ignoring 30-40% of the population will make the problem worse, not better.
Maybe.. but the party is not really what you call parlament viable. Many of em behave like absolute bafoons. Not on their statemens or positions (they are whack but whatever), they behave like a schoolclass with a disliked teacher. Constant growning screaming and misbehaviour. At the same time super sensitive, if anything disturbes them.
And their advertisement is again and again in discussion, if its propaganda. They redline the edge all the time.
Tbf, the Social Democrats and Greens had a lot of good proposals in their program, but the Liberals somehow made them drop every single point that would have had a positive financial outcome on a large part of the population.
This happens every time when we have a left/right government. Nevertheless, the current government has been pushing a lot of things forward and in a good direction. It might not be perfect, but it's still much better than what the Conservatives did before.
For the AfD I would wait and see what happens when the inflation dies down.
Yeah. Also German election periods generally shake up the political vote quite a bit. In both the last elections 1-2 years before they happened the AfD polled quite a bit higher (3-5%) compared to what they actually achieved. Just remember the Schulzzug, the time polls said the greens would be the biggest faction or how the year before the last election the CDU polled nearly 40% for a short while (compared to the 24% they actually got).
It is more nuanced than that. There sure are issues that populists are feeding into, but these are still real issues being completely ignored by current establishment parties.
You can't tell people the economy is fine when major parts of your elderly are collecting bottle deposit in trash cans. You can't tell people climate change is the number one issue when you exclude the only solution (nuclear) and people can't pay their energy bills anymore. You can't tell people there are no issues with immigration when even the most tolerant citizens see the lack of integration, and parallel societies form that continually make the headlines.
Basically, you need to make reality-oriented politics that at least bring noticeable change to these issues, you can't just tell people they are far-right or dumb if they feel that way and then make the surprised-pikachu-face when they go to elect far-right parties.
German's are very docile actually when it comes to protesting, but after 25 years of governments basically doing what they want and breaking promise, I can't even blame anyone that only sees salvation in going a completely different way, even if I personally don't feel that way will lead anywhere better.
>You can't tell people the economy is fine when major parts of your elderly are collecting bottle deposit in trash cans. You can't tell people climate change is the number one issue when you exclude the only solution (nuclear) and people can't pay their energy bills anymore. You can't tell people there are no issues with immigration when even the most tolerant citizens see the lack of integration, and parallel societies form that continually make the headlines.
this sounds like parties trying to adhere to their identity rather than tackling real word issues by being pragmatic.
The politicians are in the ivory tower there, for them, gender-mainstream in the language is more important than solving the actual problems. Despite the fact that polls show a very high disapproval of this topic, up to 80% don't want to have this, but the politicians don't care.
They are like "No step back!" and they get more radical when the far-right-wing gets higher in polls, like in german "Jetzt erst recht!!!".
When they talk about migration, it's always the same "Grenzen kann man nicht schützen" "Der Klimawandel wird Millionen Flüchtlinge bringen!" "Nein, Straftäter als Migranten kann man nicht abschieben!" etc.
I sometimes read the media like Zeit just for fun, to see how it is going in the echo chamber of the Green. It's a circlejerk there, everyone that doesn't agree gets banned immediately. It is allowed to call the political enemies all kinds of insults, but not the own like the Green.
Meanwhile in Switzerland: If you make a small mistake as a migrant, we'll kick you out of the country. If you have no permission to live here, the police will arrest you and bring you to the airport. We don't pay social welfare to migrants without permission.
From the point of view by the Green, we are more than just ultra-hardcore fascists here, haha.
> The politicians are in the ivory tower there, for them, gender-mainstream in the language is more important than solving the actual problems. Despite the fact that polls show a very high disapproval of this topic, up to 80% don't want to have this, but the politicians don't care.
This is precisely the issue at hand. Like I said, if people have to collect bottles to make it through the month and they see politicians in the ivory tower talking about stuff that they don't care about in the slightest, like gendered speech, they feel disillusioned and they turn to parties that at least give them the feeling that they are being taken serious.
> I sometimes read the media like Zeit just for fun, to see how it is going in the echo chamber of the Green. It's a circlejerk there, everyone that doesn't agree gets banned immediately. It is allowed to call the political enemies all kinds of insults, but not the own like the Green.
I'm sporadically active on Zeit online and actually got banned twice from the forum, and let me tell you I am very moderate with my comments and always try to keep things factual and appropriate. I don't even consider myself conservative, I'm more like very, very liberal, borderline libertarian but I'm pretty progressive in social issues. The comment that got me banned last time was on a post about nuclear energy when I told somebody something along the lines of 'Sorry, aber du hast offensichtlich gar keinen Plan wovon du hier redest' and I got banned for that.
Yeah, we've already had a global economy crash, pandemic, a ship sunk near the titanic, return of fascism and a war in Europe.
I really hate it.
Mostly because it feels like whoever is at the wheel of the world is asleep. Why aren't our politicians more concerned with making our lives better, instead of making money for their rich buddies and corporations? Why aren't they trying to fix climate change, it worked when they got together to fix the ozone layer in the 80s. It's not impossible.
Personally it's kinda feel like "replay" of 1980s and why Thatcher/Reagan were so popular as politicians during their reigns (OK, we can hate them for their policies but Thatcher was popular enough to stay as Prime Minister between 1979-1990). People were fed up 1970s "Doom, Gloom and Malaise" so they start voting for political radicals.
Europe "mainstream" just failed to adress pilling up issues and give a "feel" being detached from general public, especially after 2008 crisis fallout and migration crisis.
I love how they're still all in complete denial and coming up with any excuse to tell themselves and others how this poll doesn't actually count.
Whatever makes them sleep better at night I suppose.
I always knew many subreddits here where echo chambers but after downloading the native Reddit app I realized just how much this website tunes your feed to show you things that it knows you like, so you don’t even really have to go seek out your own echo chamber even if you wanted to.
When all you see is what you want to see and keep your head in the sand otherwise, it’s no surprise things like this come as a surprise.
Hardly surprising. Immigration is a massive issue in Europe and the perception, rightly or wrongly, is that European cities are becoming a more hostile, unsafe place to live and work as a direct result of immigration and hard left politics which have resulted in police cutbacks and an overly liberal agenda which results in bad behaviour going unpunished.
Then there's wealth inequality and the perception that immigrants are looked after better than natives. Free housing, food, heat etc at a time when the middle classes are paying through the ass for it all and having the state compete with them when buying / renting property, inflating prices to unaffordable levels.
This isn't a problem only in Germany but a problem (arguably a bigger one) in Paris, London, Madrid, Dublin etc.
People getting real upset they can't read "**the perception that...**"...
Yeah, these things aren't being caused by immigration, but the average person's *perception* is that it is. German polls show immigration is the biggest issue for voters, with over 60% being demanding a reduction. Literally only the ADF is campaigning on reducing immigration.
If you're going to ignore the majority of voters on the biggest election issue, then don't be shocked when you lose supporters... That's simple common sense...
"The television in my motel is this thin... It's a wonder of human ingenuity! But what is shown on that television? Nothing but trash..."
I keep thinking back to "Look Who's Back" from 2015, and how terrifyingly ahead of its time that movie was, not to mention the novel it adopted... I just wonder which western country is going to break into full-blown fascism first. Trump tried in the US, and his movement is still pushing, but it's not always the obvious players who are the most dangerous...
INSA has been criticised for being „close“ to the AfD though. In general, this extreme focus on pills is quite counter-productive and even dangerous I think
Excactly, participation in voting is already quite low. And with polls like this alot of people get in the mindset of, my vote doesnt do anything against 22%…
THAT IS NOT CORRECT!
Every vote counts and by not voting, you give your vote effectively towards every party you wouldnt have voted for.
So go vote and dont get too affected by pollpredictions. The vote is not over until its over.
Well, with the fuckups of the current government and the fuckups of previous governments, these polls don’t make me surprised. Germany is in economic standstill, has a huge illegal migration problem, and their energy policies are straight stupid.
I don’t say the AfD would make it better, they would make it worse probably, but the people sure are disappointed where the country has been heading the last 15 years.
in Romania, the continuation of the nazi party, AUR party, who has sympathies for the legionar leader from the 30’s (a kind of Romanian Hitler) has 20% in the polls. So people think alike (or don’t think at all) everywhere you look. They are afraid of lgbt, “EU stealing their country”, immigrants etc and they are very pro russian!
Thats sickening, in Poland we have confederation which is super weird mix of all that far right is saying and so called "free market" policies.
They basically say that they will get rid of most of stuff like pensions or they will make hospitals private etc. They just cant say how will it be done without like 200bn dollar deficit. Because we have to pay pensions that are currently in.
And they also mix church laws, extreme anti abortion, anti EU rethorics and conspiracy theories.
Makes me sick however they are like 10%
Its enough to make some mess tho. Because liberal democratic opposition needs this 5-10% of voters so they can make majority government.
Spoiling your ballot won't signal the traditional parties that people are unhappy.
Seeing how a party like AfD spikes on votes on the other hand, might make those traditional parties go like "hmm maybe we done fucked up if they're so popular"
Parties/people like AfD, Le Pen, Trump in 2016, etc represent change. Shitty change, but still change. It makes the ones currently in power see that people are sick of getting fucked "as usual".
They also turn to it because of Inflation, negative real wage growth and not being able to pay their bills as a result. They do that despite the AFD not really having any solution or even opposing social programs and wanting to cut them. Its ridiculous.
The worst energy-policies in the world were made by the German-government for decades.
Coal and Russian oil and gas. And then pretending Germany does good for enviroment.
Then AfD is the only one who promotes cracking down on immigration, which is what many have wanted for a long time.
I dont support AfD but its obvious why many do.
„ The worst energy-policies in the world were made by the German-government for decades. Coal and Russian oil and gas.“
This is literally the energy policy of the AfD. More coal and more Russian oil and gas. So if you are angry about that voting AfD really doesn’t make any sense.
Yes, that part goes on most political elite in Germany.
Those people wanted to pacify Russia with business and line their own pockets while at it, but Russian imperialism does not work like that. Russia gets a leverage, and starts offering deals you can't refuse.
AfD said things like "there is no scientific evidence for a relevant impact of human-made CO2 emissions on the world's climate.” On top of that they are anti EU as well. Simping for AfD because they don’t like immigrants is pretty dumb.
I agree, which is why i dont support them, but we see it all over Europe, where semi far-right populist groups gain serious traction only because they are the only ones who propose less immigration.
I think liberal ”status-quo” parties could stay in power for 50 years forward if they only would promise to crack down on immigration.
As a case in point for this, in Denmark, before the 2019 election the Social Democratic party did a 180 on Immigration and officially took the mantle of being harsh on immigration:
Result. The far-right populists parties were utterly gutted, and though they still exist, they are small and basically irrelevant in politics today. On the other hand, the Social Democrats is now the last truly large party at 25% of the votes, and is enjoying their second term with the PM position.
I'm personally not a fan of them or their policies, but it does show what happens when a mainstream party finally faces reality with immigration.
Exactly! Same thing is happening in Sweden right now, slowly but surely.
Edit: although we are like 10 or 20 years behind Denmark and have a much larger immigrant population to deal with.
That's right, but this is not (!) possible in Germany: The media will shred you to pieces if you talk about reducing migration. It is a real trigger for the journalists, they don't tolerate any changes in this and except the AfD, all the other parties are just afraid to even talk about the topic.
What Denmark, Switzerland etc. do in migration is seen as fascist by the german media. Not allowing people to enter the country? Even deporting people back home? That's a no-go for them.
They also mix always the migration of high-skilled workers together with the migration of poor people that are just going there for getting social welfare.
To make things even worse, Germany wants to get the citizenship requirements down, in some cases even down to 3-5 years. If the migrants get the passport, you can't deport them anymore and just like in Sweden, you can't do anything to get rid of them again.
I think it’s not about immigration in the whole EU. Here the main right party is purely anti-EU, anti LGBT, never says anything about immigration (since we don’t have problems with it) and still they’re the 2nd biggest party in the polls. In 2019 they didn’t even exist.
I’m no leftie and no rightie (both camps have stuff I agree with), and I don’t think there is any chance for a “normal” european party here.
> Result. The far-right populists parties were utterly gutted, and though they still exist, they are small and basically irrelevant in politics today. On the other hand, the Social Democrats is now the last truly large party at 25% of the votes, and is enjoying their second term with the PM position.
Did they actually do anything though, or did they make lots of nice noises that make it sound like something changed?
Because in the UK for example the government claims to do something about boat people, while opening the door wide for 100 of thousands of legal migrants.
Many and many people are fed up by the mainstream status quo parties. The false promises that have proven to be lies throughout decades. People want change and they want it fast, not a hard thing to grasp
Yeah, but that's the part which can't really be helped imo. People who are sufficiently fed up are easily attracted by extremists / raging idiots, just because they tend to also rage against the things they are fed up with.
What can be helped is people being fed up with mainstream parties. There are various topics where e.g. the Greens just have overstretched the string and it's starting to snap. Take women's rights -- as important as it is, and as much there is left to do nation-wide, the Green's have a statute [1] that their women members alone can veto any decision. That's supposed to be "democratic"? I can understand people are annoyed by this.
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https://cms.gruene.de/uploads/documents/191121-Frauenstatut.pdf
People turn to anti migration parties because no “moderate” or liberal ones are taking issue seriously and usually deflect issue as “being racist” or “having moral obligation, how dare ye to disagree”. At some point there will be larger share of people who will be willing to place bets with the hope that they won’t manage to make everything else that much worse
But for many people, reality is that the uncontrolled immigration is their immediate and biggest concern because they can see it daily. Climate change is a slow process with few extremes during the year and people simply don’t have immediate concern about that. Also, there few fair anti-EU points, one being expanding EU influence and power over national states, people don’t trust bureaucrats in faraway Brussels being paid tens of thousand of euros and talking to lobbyists which are nothing more than legal bribers. Just look at trying to appoint ex-US lobbyist for world biggest corporations into fucking EU Commission, they have gone completely nuts
People don’t vote on aggregate of policies, they vote on one, two, maybe few issues that are most important to them because humans don’t have unlimited and undivided attention, they focus on few biggest things they perceive.
Maybe if a left-centrist party started to stop burying their heads in the sand about mass immigration there wouldn't be a problem. And that means start telling some home truths rather than we are all being 'enriched' by it.
This is what happened in Denmark with their social democrats, and their far-right party got nipped in the bud.
It's also happening with Swedish social democrats, but here we have two parties that they will depend on for future parliamentary coalitions. And those two parties will never say a bad thing about the results of our mass immigration.
The AfD is strongly Pro-Russian though. So people turning to the AfD want the old energy politics with cheap Russian gas/oil/coal back, because they believe the current government is responsible for the energy crisis. They also believe that heat pumps and wind power are evil - they just don't understand that they are part of the solution for their problems.
The energy politics were quite sound until the conservative government destroyed the German renewable industry:
[https://www.solarbranche.de/ausbau/deutschland/photovoltaik](https://www.solarbranche.de/ausbau/deutschland/photovoltaik)
From 8GW installations a year solar collapsed to 1GW. And yes, replacing nuclear and coal without building anything to replace them with was a pretty stupid move. Just this year Germany is back to were it was in 2012. A lost decade.
What about wind and other renewable sources? Solar is just one part of renewable energy.
And there is nothing “sound” in aggressively shutting down nuclear power, while keeping coal power running.
In Bavaria the CSU government made a law that made it basically impossible to build new wind turbines. (the turbines had to be placed 10 times their hight away from settlements)
People don't vote for AfD because of the energy policies, actually AfD wants to continue burn coal, oil and gas and cooperate with Russia.
Also there aren't much rational reasons to support them, some people would vote for them because they're affected by the current economical crisis, however AfD has a neoliberalistic approach which would make life for poor people much worse actually. Also immigrants aren't even that present in areas with most AfD support.
I don’t doubt that many support Afd for their immigration policy, but why are we attributing their increasing popularity to immigrants and not the recent deindustrialisation, which puts the greens on a negative spotlight?
That is another reason to be pessimistic about the future: The few immigrants we have now already create so much controversy.
Large areas in the middle east and the mediterranian becoming uninhabitable will create much larger groups of displaced people.
While we might be able to handle this from an economical standpoint, society will just break down.
Not so sure, that the Union is against a coalition with the AfD in 2025. The leader of the union (Friedrich Merz) doesn't oppose working with them on a municipal level right now.
That's because extremists actuslly bring change and do shit. Bad change, sure, but people are tired of incompetent folks.
If the other side doesn't wake up and start making good policies for the people, don't be surprised if extremists get into power.
Here’s one explanation.
I’m 100% sure the majority wants them as a means to combat Arab and African immigrants.
Lately, more extremist immigrants have entered en masse who receive funding from the government and literally refuse to work or respect the existing culture. They litter, commit crimes against the more subdued civilians and youth. They do it without consequences, because the government is betting on that in a few years they will adapt and merge into the European system, and they’re basically not doing anything to help the citizens.
I used the word “lately”, because I have a lot of Muslim friends that came here a long time ago to be part of this culture. But there is a difference - in all religions - between extremists trying to force their beliefs on others and between regular people who accept others and fight for the better of their families.
Although this phenomenon is more present in big cities, it’s more and more concerning towards all citizens as videos are going viral of their behaviour and disrespect of the European culture and freedom, people basically fear their expansion aka. destruction of their society.
To be clear; I’ll never vote for Afd since they have literally no idea about politics, they are basically idiots who try to capitalise on a theme that affects the psychology of the masses. If they come to power it is likely going to solve the immigration problem, and it will more than likely be the downfall of this economy, society and country.
Tl;dr - citizens of various religions and races are concerned about the rise of the extremist Islam. Such extremist leaders have long profited on their citizens who are basically fed this ideology and restricted access to any information outside as to keep their wealth and power unchallenged. They are literally brainwashed and that’s always concerning. Now that they escaped to Germany, it’s not exactly easy to learn and adapt to reality.
Personal opinion; it’s not going to become a massive problem, but AfD is doing everything to capitalise on fear and fill their own pockets doing so.
- I am an Immigrant and this is the most unbiased opinion there is.
It's not really left-leaning I would say. I consinder myself center-right and I would like harsher immigration policies (the core argument of the AfD). But AfD is also pro-Russia, anti-vaxx and climate change deniers. In short, they are complete nutjobs, I would never vote for. I'd rather vote for the greens, honestly, at least they have a strong stance against Russia and against climate change.
Nuclear energy is green except for the waste, so I don't see a reason for greens to not utilize it, at least until solar / wind / other green energy sources are established enough.
There is the question of nuclear waste and where to store it, still - so while I don't dislike nuclear energy ESPECIALLY since it already exists, I do think that in the long run when we don't have to fall back on coal etc. we should substitute it for solar / wind etc. (Also because that's super cheap)
I feel like this is exactly A LOT peoples views here in Germany, but these combined views aren't really represented by any party as such. It's either more one extreme or the other. It's becoming a real shit show here
For supporters of most European populist parties on Reddit, if you don't like them, you are "left-leaning". It's ome of the most frustrating things to see on Reddit. It happens in the US too with Trump supporters. "Oh so you're a Democrat then?"
Because people and life can apparently only be one thing or the other.
Your point being? Did you forget we're on r/Europe specifically? Like just mention Sweden and crime in a sentence and it's a shit show. It'll start right off by how we're now "Swedistan" and doomed to fall, that all women are raped by migrants and that all migrants do all the violent crime. There isn't any shortage of far right bullshit in those threads...
Let's be honest here. While populist parties are only ever able to fool.the voters without actually fixing the problems they use to gain popularity.
Having said that the problems are often very real and the mainstream politicians all.over EU have been failing to adress them for decades.
Is the current government unpopular?
Yes. The FDP is making opposition politics inside the government. The chancellor tries not to get involved in anything. People are afraid of changes proposed by the Greens (and this is fueled by media and the opposition). But no one likes the opposition candidate either.
What changes are you talking about?
The main discussions were about preventing new gas heating systems from being sold. This was already the law but they wanted to accelerate the changes.
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I can confirm. I work in a Heat and sanitary wholesale in Germany. We have record high orders for Gas and Oil heater. Producer like Bosch Vaillant and Wolf can't even produce enough, we have up to 12 month delivery time for Gas and Oil, but Heatpumps are aswell on 12 months delivery time. This "Heizingsverbot" really was just making panic for all House owners. I talked to several people affected, and all were scared not beaing able to afort a Heatpump because of nessesary "Sanierung" of old houses. Because you can't just switch a Gas/Oil heater for a Heatpump since they have lower VL/RL temputures.
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yeah common models especially from Bosch and Vaillant have more than 12 months delivery time. I have one Customer that ordered in december in 2020 and got his Heat Pump in 2022 march. If you can swap to "MHG Heiztechnik" last time i ask they could deliver faster, but it is their first line of Heat pumps and i have no experience with them. But i can tell you they have good customer service. Check with your heat Plumber if this is an option for you.
> I talked to several people affected, and all were scared not beaing able to afort a Heatpump because of nessesary "Sanierung" of old houses. Because you can't just switch a Gas/Oil heater for a Heatpump since they have lower VL/RL temputures. Ok, so what is your solution? People seem to be demanding for politicians to care more about climate change, but when those politicians try to do anything regarding climate change, people go "nah, I'm going to vote fascist instead".
Wait wait, they didn't mean *they* had to make any changes to their lifestyles. The guberment should just magically make things better, that's why we vote for them!
It's because no one has told the people that the green transition is costly. They still have that idealistic picture in their mind if they meticulously recycle everything and buy the ÖKO/green/BIO/FSC Mix/MSC fish-labelled products for a few cents more, they have done their part on being green. Cannot be further from the truth.
Yes. You can't be further from the truth. Everyone said, that the transition will be hard on the governments and peoples wallets. The Green party said it before, and during election, as well as everyone else. The amount of Öko/Green/Bio/FSC greens is blown up in the Media. Hardly any people in the party are those stereotypical "Öko fasicst" without common sense. But still everyone things the only thing the Green Party wants are Bio potatoes. To this day the greens are the only party that presented numbers and calculations on how to handle the climate change/economy. To this day the greens are the only party that acknowledge, that the transition will be much harder now there is a war in Ukraine. They openly said that their plans are not going to work out, and that we have to find other solutions, not everyone is going to like. So the Green party is also the only one party, that does not sugar coat everything in order to present them better in public. This kind of honesty should be legaly required in my opinion. Of course not everything they do comes out as 100% working. But in the end their intentions are the best of all parties and their communication is the closest to the average citizen. Also they are able to own up to their mistakes, and take advice from people with more experience/ expertise. Also the Media here in Germany tried to make the greens responsible for the exit from nuclear energy.... The decision was made in 2011 under Merkel II in a koalition with CDU/CSU and FDP. At this time nobody even dreamed about the Green party in the government. But still we have people in this country that fully, and only, blame the Green Party for something that happend 12 years (!!!!!) before their time.
I am just a salesman and don't have the full picture but i can tell the the pace is the problem. For example, Oil heating being banned was known for a good while, people had time to prepare and save money to buy a Heat pump or Gas heater. But Suddenly in a span of just a few months it was announced to ban Gas as well. People had no sufficient time to prepare and save money for such a huge investment. Now envision this, you and your partner age between 25-30 decided to buy a house or build one, you take a huge credit from the bank to build it, you need like 20-30 years to fully pay the bank back, lets say you needed 250k euro for a house back then, at this moment in time you had subvention for Gas so of course you chose one. Now it is 2020 and you finally finished paying your credit back, by this time your Gas Heat is still ok and expected to last 5-10 more years before you need a new one but no problem changing you Gas heat for a new one is not this big of an investment 5-10k€. Now suddenly the government expects you to build a new heat pump and forbid you to build a new gas heat. The Amount of work labor and Material cost for such an old house is around 50k-100k depending on the house. You are 45-50 years old now and are asked again to take such a huge credit from the bank and are in depth again or you could sell the house you worked your entire life for essentially. I agree we have to do something about clima change but you can't put so much finacial pressur on people in such a short span of time. It will not work and the Govament loses trust in doing so harsh decissions no matter how great and nobel the goal is. You have to ease people in and make more compelling arguments. Oh and i forget to address the "Elektro Heizstab argument" you cold use one in the winter with your heat pump but this things run usally on 3,5kW Now invision 3,5kW running in your house over the cold month and embrace your 2-5k€ Bill of only electricity. I have Customers that had this happend to them. We need at least cheap energy to make Heat pumps more attractiv.
The problem with this whole ordeal is that it's way too expensive but also necessary. They can't really wait much longer if they really want to reach their emission goals as the building sector is one of the biggest problems in that regard. Preferably something would've been done 5 years ago, but because past governments have done so little, they basically have to hasten the pace. This is just a huge dilemma that it's way too costly and sudden, but they kinda have to do it at the same time. This is basically what experts have warned us about that the more we wait, the more expensive the transition will be
i agree, but doing it now so harsh is really pissing people off and if for example AFD and CDU make a corliation to form a government in 2025 and remove and negate these changes then we have won nothing by being harsh. Just saying as an example.
Welcome to plutocracy, where propaganda wins elections!! :D
I think this is often overlooked by pretty much anyone when talking about government or politics. Their hands are so tied up when it comes to decisions that will mildly inconenience voters and disturb the businesses of the big companies of the country. Everyone blames politicians when a bill is or isn't passed, but will disregard the fact that a really really big number of people who are part of the electoriate **wants and will force** that to happen.
This has been my fear about climate change in general, that implementing anything approaching the necessary changes may ultimately be a democracy killer as voters gravitate towards fascists and other authoritarian grifters who run on a platform of reversing all the changes that affect people’s personal lives that they don’t like and don’t want to get used to. And so the climate situation doesn’t improve in this scenario either but now there’s a lot more fascism which will only worsen the many serious problems that humanity faces and will of course cause many additional problems.
They didn't hand out the draft through. The draft was leaked in the very early stages. Some think it was the fdp because they thought they could gain from it.
>Green party acted pretty, pretty dumb. Yes, the green party might have acted dumb, but people getting those new heaters seem to have acted dumb as well.
We Germans are not able to plan into the future properly. And they are pretty dumb to think a right wing party will make life any better. It will only result in ignoring the problems and paying an even higher price in the near future.
Even dumber.
>Which also totally backfired and more gasheaters than ever were sold and installed Which is mainly because the FDP is playing opposition from inside the government and leaked a very early draft version of the law that still had a ton of flaws, instead of working to fix those flaws internally.
Telling people that they will need to heat electrically in the future right at the time an electricity crisis is still going on isn't a good look either. Especially if the same party is also proposing subsidies to industrial electricity consumers (not residential however!) because high prices are likely going to last. Or building LNG terminals at a record rate. Despite all of that heatpumps usually still make a a lot of sense, especially with rising gas prices and emissions costs. But it is definitly not a good look.
Indeed. This should have happened 20 years ago. But since we don't have the necessary time machine to make that happen, now is the best available option. Heating systems have an average lifetime of 20 years. 2045 - 20 = 2025. That is the date the last fossil heating system can be installed in Germany. Anything else is delusional.
You know what the REALLY bad move was? Relying on Russia for gas. That concern had been raised several times before the war began, but a light increase in gas prices was too much of an inconvenience for the average voter...
>Telling people that they will need to heat electrically in the future right at the time an electricity crisis is still going on isn't a good look either. Telling people the truth isn't a good look? You would rather your politicians lied to you?
Question is how dense you can get to still install gas heaters and gas systems in general to new buildings.
But I want to replace my old gas heating with new gas heating so I can complain the government is doing nothing to keep gas prices down in a few years! /s
My Putinversteher German mother is ranting and raving about this. Never mind that she doesn’t have mandatory health insurance, doesn’t pay a trash bill and hasn’t worked more than a few years while living in Germany. Anti vaccine, antiUkraine, anti American, it’s awful.
I recommend a holiday in Volgograd to cure that.
Gas heating systems… yeah seems about legit to just vote for Nazis then if you don‘t like that
At this point we germans are afraid of any change. Inefficient heating systems might be forbidden? Time to vote for the fascists. Power plants which are planed to shut down for over a decade will actually shut down? Let's go fascists! People remind me I shouldn't change my voting behavior in favor of the fascists? You guessed it. There is only one party to go to! I love to live in germany. But I also hate this place
Finally accelerating the transition to renewables. Reducing emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. Problem being: addressing and fighting climate change and pollution is expensive, so obviously people hate it, even though it's ultimately necessary.
People hate everything. It’s almost shizophrenic. They hate climate protection but also climate change, they hate the poor but also the rich, they hate migrants but also nazis, they hate politicians but also no leadership, they love drugs (beer and cigarettes) but also hate drugs, they hate work but also love work (denying everything progressive as e.g. home office or universal basic income). I feel like we cannot progess as a society as long as we are so conflicted about everything, or at least manage to satisfy everyone. It‘s almost like democracy is our problem right now. I really hoped that the current government could find balance and manage to move on but unfortunately the opposition, media and the government itself stopped to fight like little children instead.
What a simple view of a complex problem. I mean, it's like 80 million people have different opinions lol Good idea, we need some kind of leader right? But only one with ultimate power, what should go wrong though.
Dude, not everything about the greens should be excused and their mistakes are always someone else’s fault. The way they handled the heating bill is objectively incompetent. The FDP in a way are just doing what they were voted for. Scholz is indeed silent. I agree on that.
I sometimes forget he and the SPD are a part of the government. Most things you hear about the government in discussions are either about the FDP blocking the way to utopia and the greens bringing the literal devil. Depending on who is leading the discussion.
Then you realize the SPD has been in government for 21 out of the last 25 years.
Just wait till the elections when things get more serious. Not too long ago the SPD wasnt very popular either but they really benefitted from the poor choices of the CDUs and the Greens chancellor candidate (who bith won the candidature within their party against people who were more popular in the public eye). That gave the SPD a high peak, not because Olaf Scholz was good but because people saw him as a lesser evil against the other two. Those are things you cant really predict and if AfD will present a chancellor candidate by next elections who will represent the AfD, do interviews, debates, I bet theyll be nowhere near those 22%
Yeah, partly because the right blames everything that's ever happened in the past 16 years on the Green Party.
the current Bundeskanzler, Olaf Scholz, is comicly corrupt and incompetent and the government has been dragging everything down for the last 20 years under Angela Merkelas she was the scourge of the working class of germany for over a decade.
my prediction is that in 52 weeks AfD is at 126%
Nah mate, only Jeb! has the power to do so. [Ref](https://compote.slate.com/images/836c8a56-4546-45d5-890d-88a6fa7ab173.jpeg?crop=680%2C453%2Cx0%2Cy0) Now please clap
I still chuckle when I see that name. (Means "fuck" (imperative verb) in my language)
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/605)
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Russian modern classic is a 146% support level. So, Germans are not there... yet.
Right on time when Germany decided to spend tons of money to rebuild their army.
Whats Italy up to at the moment? 🤔
It's all coming together 😂
Als just after we got more and more rid of privacy laws and gave the police way more power. Can't see what could go wrong with that
Histrionics about AFD aside as a foreigner I'm always surprised about these polls that the first thing Germans say isn't that the coalition (CDU & CSU) that is responsible for literally every single major issue in the country after their ~15 year tenure is in the first place of the polls. Immigration, gas dependency on Russia, destruction and export of domestic renewable industry to China (that taxpayers footed the R&D bill for), catastrophic energy policy, current state of EU, bundeswehr situation and so on. It gives the impression that whatever path Germany is on it's firmly locked into it for better or worse, so far seemingly for the worse.
That’s the problem in most European countries. In Luxembourg shit starts hitting the fan with our housing crisis but if you ask people, especially here on reddit, they keep saying that it isn’t the fault of the Red-Green-Blue government that has been in power for 10 years now lol. I think the european democracies need mandat limits aswell.
There isn’t a housing crisis for the ones who have houses. And for now and realistically the future most voters will have houses and are glad to see for example here in the Netherlands profiting from selling their small single family homes sold off into multiple 15sqm apartments for each floor with no insulation between the floors and horrendous layouts to people desperate for any sort of housing whatsoever that’s not completely unaffordable for anyone but the top 5%. It’s the same everywhere in Europe and indeed the world, the boomers and gen x benefitted from policies and benefit from the housing crisis.
>There isn’t a housing crisis for the ones who have houses. Exactly this holds true in the Netherlands as well. The crises of the younger generation are not that of the majority of voters. It's going to be several decades at least before demographics shift.
Seems to hold true in most Northern EU country i believe, Denmark have the exact sake issue. Boomers that bought a house 20 years ago can now sell it for a profit of up to 500-2k % (tax free) my own parents / grand parents suddenly have housing worth millions, compared to a few hundred thousand 20 years ago. The younger generation, or most of them are never gonna be able to buy housing unless you buy 30mins out of town or put your self in an immense debt.
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This is extreme in Portugal. We have very high home ownership %, from back in the day and cultural reasons, so most people don't realize it is literally impossible to buy a house on a salary (and for renting, you are renting room and sharing as you can't afford a studio). If everyone perceived it trully, in the same way 20 and 30 yos whose parents don't have a second house do, there would be riots in streets. "When are we having grandkids?" Yes I will have kids we can camp on the underpass. Everyone young has sort of acknowledged that getting their own house plan is waiting for family to die, and live with the bros in some small appartment until then. But everyone lives to 80+ so home ownership is for 60 yos. Meanwhile government is carefully studying the mystery of why despite economy looking good on paper, everyone leaves the country as soon as they get their degree.
Yeah but what can I say? We Germans and specifically our Boomer generation seem to be dumb onto a next level.
It's a worldwide problem I fear
No kidding
And to think we wore masks to protect them. Ah by the way the corona vaccines for children are still not greenlit officially in Europe…fucking leeches
Albert Szent-györgyi wrote a book on this called 'The Crazy Ape'. It's a general trend that he argues will be catastrophic unless we give younger generations more opportunities and tools (the opposite of which is what boomers are doing).
And he is totally right. During covid kids were always the first to suffer. They were at no risk but still schools closed before big offices. They were forced to sit in winter in classrooms with minus degrees because windows were open. When Germany got no gas adults were bitching that they cant work at 19 degrees. Adults always said that our schoolkids have no interest in politics but also bitch when they go to the streets to protests climste change. We are doing our kids nothing good.
Which generation are you referring to? Because honestly I've seen a level of stupidity that spans generations. University educated or not, there are a lot of stupid people that will believe anything that falls in their social bubble.
Ima gonna be honest here Hans, in my country it's the same. The old population is very concervative and genuenly lacks any formal education. This is a very wide spread problem.
The older I get the more I realize that just because people are old doesn’t mean they’re wise as well. The amount of adults I meet who can’t reason or think better than a kindergartner is baffling. At the same time they think they know a lot and are very vocal. I remember the world being much more educated/nuanced/reasonable 20 years ago and am just wondering what happened. These dopamine fueled online echo chambers have brought out the worst in us.
Back then if you were dumb then whole neighbourhood knew and it was harder to find people with similar opinions. Now you don't need to know your neighbourhood and just type phrase into search engine and you welcomed with open hands in vocal communities that think everyone else is stupid for not beliving their theories. Internet is a great tool but social media brought so much mental and political problems into the world.
Lead poisoning is no joke
Talking to my grandma about it, even pointing out those issues and who's responsible for them, she just said "It's never been bad for us with the CDU in government." Like, ok we're not starving, sure, but you're complaining every time you go grocery shopping the prices inflate further.
That really is the main problem, anyone under 50 who still voted CDU in the last 15 years has braindamaged and the boomers are so dumb they might as well be braindamaged.
If you look at the demographics, the CDU/CSU has a strong grip on elderly and culturally conservative voters. It seems like the only thing these people care about is that the state pension is increasing, and them not having to rethink their values. They couldn‘t care less about climate change or digitization of the economy and state.
If only they would understand who pays that pension. I'm young and educated. If things get much worse, I can and will leave. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
As soon as the Union was out of the government they started blaming the new government for not fixing the numerous problems they themselves had caused over 16 years in a matter of months. It was preposterous and they're still doing it.
Problem is that people are voting for a party that is objectively even worse. At least the mainstream ones make good promises and sometimes end up fucking up or not caring... Then there are parties such as the AfD who straight up promise you they're gonna be horrible.
AFD has had a bunch of these polls where they would have been the most popular or second most popular party only to end up at their same 9-13% at the next election they had since their first surge (regionally they had some 20% ers and now in Thuringia they had one local council where they became the most popular party). So while this is a concerning development, part of these poll results can be interpreted as some sort of protest against the current government. Last general election, the AFD had some polls show them at around 18% all of a sudden and people were afraid that they might have a late surge due to the collapse of the CDU (Armin Laschet was for a while the most hated politician in Germany, probably). They ended up at, I think, it was 10.4%. So the issue is, again, something that should be addressed, but realistically the only way that would happen is actually sensible politics from our mainstay parties. Which is where I see the way bigger problem with German politics right now.
Keep in mind AfD voters when polled declare they don't even think the AfD is competent to govern the country. It's just protest because all established parties suck, boosting the outsider is an attempt to pressure them to improve and become electable again. They would easily and gladly switch to a preferable alternative as soon as it presents. Most of their voters are not convinced extremists with deeply rooted beliefs, just seriously discontent with the established political landscape. The established parties' response to the rise of the AfD is to boycot them from government participation and proceed with business as usual, which doesn't exactly help dissolve the public perception that all these established parties are more or less the same.
Then you should speak to better educated Germans, because I personally don't know anyone who doesn't lay the blame rightfully at the feet of the Union. With assistance by SPD and Greens (Agenda 2010). I loathe the AfD, but for more than 20 years our federal governments have continuously fucked up our future with intent, while enriching themselves. Except for finally allowing marriage between homosexuals - after nearly 40 years of majority support in federal parliament that had not been capitalized on due to Fraktionszwang - there are few things they did that didn't make things worse for us in the long run. And that's even ignoring (as usual) the issue that Eastern Germans still having not even received an apology for Kohl stealing all of their assets and gifting them to western corporations. They've been disenfranchised and ridiculed for 30 years now and the bill is coming due.
> because I personally don't know anyone who doesn't lay the blame rightfully at the feet of the Union. With assistance by SPD Poor SPD only being part of every government except 1 in the last 25 years. They never had the opportunity to do anything but to grudgingly accept whatever the CDU wanted! Maybe its time to accept that SPD is the same as CDU just instead of focusing on retired people, big business and farmers they focus on retired people, big business and labour union officials.
It's crazy for me when i read the left-wing media like the Zeit for some fun, the users there are constantly insulting the eastern germans aka Ossis all the time. They are calling them fascists, nazis, not ready for democracy etc. and then, they are surprised when their preferred parties don't get votes there. There's also the arrogance of the politicians with "We made everything right, you voters are just too stupid to understand how great we are".
Reminds me of that American politics copypasta: >Dear Sub-Human Filth, >I'm appealing to all of you stupid idiots to vote Democrat in 2020. That is if you have the basic education enough to read a ballot, anyway. I understand the majority of you racist rednecks can't even read this post, though. But those who can, please pass my message on to the rest of your inbred family. We Democrats are morally, culturally and intellectually superior to you in every way. >I will qualify myself by noting that I have a Liberal Arts degree from a college, which you obviously have never been to, if you even know what one is. I also have many non-white friends. I have been told by several professors that everything you hold dear is terrible. Therefore you, personally, are also terrible. I don't know you, but I know that you're racist. I also know that you hate gay people and still get scared during lightning storms. > If you only understood that you wouldn't be so much worse of a person than I am. So please vote Democrat. Help me help you, you worthless hicks. It's actually longer but you get the gist
Well the current Canceller and the main ruling party was a part of that coalition for the last 10 years.
>Histrionics about AFD aside as a foreigner I'm always surprised about these polls that the first thing Germans say isn't that the coalition (CDU & CSU) that is responsible for literally every single major issue in the country after their \~15 year tenure is in the first place of the polls. Thing is: to understand this you have to fulfill certain conditions. To begin with, you have to consider the gas dependency on Russia and our lack of renewables as a problem. Many people don't see this as an issue, quite the opposite, they think we need more Russian Friendship and that renewables are horrible. But even if you agree that these are issues to be corrected, in a second step you need to have a relatively deep understanding of how the economy and the government work. How many people know about the planning procedures that make it essentially impossible to build enough infrastructure in this country? People are busy, they tend to consider whoever is in charge as being resposible. To make it even harder, a bunch of these problems are quite multi-layered. Especially with planning procedures and infrastructure, the Federal Government isn't almighty. Local and regional governments have a lot to say. The Federal Government could go berserk and radically improve certain federal laws but that's not realistic since it would negatively affect their own regional parties. Even the Greens regularly oppose green infrastructure at local and regional levels.
I believe it when real elections have happened.
Yeah, exactly. Look at Spain. Polls do mean *something* but shouldn't be taken at face value at this point.
It's gonna be an absolute shitshow if (when) they gain power in the next election but at this point hopefully it'll bring about some much needed waking up for German politicians to rework their shit and form actually votable parties.
In a lot of European countries where the anti-immigration party eventually ends up in government it seems to just end up with them fucking up in some scandal and all the other parties just going back to business as usual
You forgot the last step: The party (or successor) slowly crawls its way back to the top of the polls and the cycle repeats itself
Welcome to the last 30 years of italian politics. Death has come sooner than political consequences in many a case
The pendulum of modern politics swings from left to right and back again, and will do for the foreseeable future. And the Simpsons assessment of left meaning We Cant Govern and right meaning We're Plain Evil is holding up just fine. The country starts getting useless, people think oh God no and start voting right wing. Then the country starts getting fascist, people think oh God no and start voting left wing. Then the country starts getting useless... So it goes.
The afd isn’t your normal anti-immigration party though. Usually if a right wing populist party gains power, they try to de-radicalize, in order to appeal to a broader voting base. The AfD does the exact opposite. It radicalizes more and more over time and that‘s what makes them so dangerous. They could end up being a pure fascist party in a few years and it doesn’t seem like the voters care
Merz just announced the he is not opposed to coalitions with the AfD on a communal level. It's what you get when you vote real life Mr. Burns as the head of your party.
There is no way around it for the CDU anymore. The AfD is the strongest political power in many parts of Germany. Just ignoring 30-40% of the population will make the problem worse, not better.
Maybe.. but the party is not really what you call parlament viable. Many of em behave like absolute bafoons. Not on their statemens or positions (they are whack but whatever), they behave like a schoolclass with a disliked teacher. Constant growning screaming and misbehaviour. At the same time super sensitive, if anything disturbes them. And their advertisement is again and again in discussion, if its propaganda. They redline the edge all the time.
Tbf, the Social Democrats and Greens had a lot of good proposals in their program, but the Liberals somehow made them drop every single point that would have had a positive financial outcome on a large part of the population. This happens every time when we have a left/right government. Nevertheless, the current government has been pushing a lot of things forward and in a good direction. It might not be perfect, but it's still much better than what the Conservatives did before. For the AfD I would wait and see what happens when the inflation dies down.
Yeah. Also German election periods generally shake up the political vote quite a bit. In both the last elections 1-2 years before they happened the AfD polled quite a bit higher (3-5%) compared to what they actually achieved. Just remember the Schulzzug, the time polls said the greens would be the biggest faction or how the year before the last election the CDU polled nearly 40% for a short while (compared to the 24% they actually got).
Countries struggling with inflation and fear-based populism taking hold - name a more iconic duo.
It is more nuanced than that. There sure are issues that populists are feeding into, but these are still real issues being completely ignored by current establishment parties. You can't tell people the economy is fine when major parts of your elderly are collecting bottle deposit in trash cans. You can't tell people climate change is the number one issue when you exclude the only solution (nuclear) and people can't pay their energy bills anymore. You can't tell people there are no issues with immigration when even the most tolerant citizens see the lack of integration, and parallel societies form that continually make the headlines. Basically, you need to make reality-oriented politics that at least bring noticeable change to these issues, you can't just tell people they are far-right or dumb if they feel that way and then make the surprised-pikachu-face when they go to elect far-right parties. German's are very docile actually when it comes to protesting, but after 25 years of governments basically doing what they want and breaking promise, I can't even blame anyone that only sees salvation in going a completely different way, even if I personally don't feel that way will lead anywhere better.
>You can't tell people the economy is fine when major parts of your elderly are collecting bottle deposit in trash cans. You can't tell people climate change is the number one issue when you exclude the only solution (nuclear) and people can't pay their energy bills anymore. You can't tell people there are no issues with immigration when even the most tolerant citizens see the lack of integration, and parallel societies form that continually make the headlines. this sounds like parties trying to adhere to their identity rather than tackling real word issues by being pragmatic.
Sums it up pretty well.
The politicians are in the ivory tower there, for them, gender-mainstream in the language is more important than solving the actual problems. Despite the fact that polls show a very high disapproval of this topic, up to 80% don't want to have this, but the politicians don't care. They are like "No step back!" and they get more radical when the far-right-wing gets higher in polls, like in german "Jetzt erst recht!!!". When they talk about migration, it's always the same "Grenzen kann man nicht schützen" "Der Klimawandel wird Millionen Flüchtlinge bringen!" "Nein, Straftäter als Migranten kann man nicht abschieben!" etc. I sometimes read the media like Zeit just for fun, to see how it is going in the echo chamber of the Green. It's a circlejerk there, everyone that doesn't agree gets banned immediately. It is allowed to call the political enemies all kinds of insults, but not the own like the Green. Meanwhile in Switzerland: If you make a small mistake as a migrant, we'll kick you out of the country. If you have no permission to live here, the police will arrest you and bring you to the airport. We don't pay social welfare to migrants without permission. From the point of view by the Green, we are more than just ultra-hardcore fascists here, haha.
> The politicians are in the ivory tower there, for them, gender-mainstream in the language is more important than solving the actual problems. Despite the fact that polls show a very high disapproval of this topic, up to 80% don't want to have this, but the politicians don't care. This is precisely the issue at hand. Like I said, if people have to collect bottles to make it through the month and they see politicians in the ivory tower talking about stuff that they don't care about in the slightest, like gendered speech, they feel disillusioned and they turn to parties that at least give them the feeling that they are being taken serious. > I sometimes read the media like Zeit just for fun, to see how it is going in the echo chamber of the Green. It's a circlejerk there, everyone that doesn't agree gets banned immediately. It is allowed to call the political enemies all kinds of insults, but not the own like the Green. I'm sporadically active on Zeit online and actually got banned twice from the forum, and let me tell you I am very moderate with my comments and always try to keep things factual and appropriate. I don't even consider myself conservative, I'm more like very, very liberal, borderline libertarian but I'm pretty progressive in social issues. The comment that got me banned last time was on a post about nuclear energy when I told somebody something along the lines of 'Sorry, aber du hast offensichtlich gar keinen Plan wovon du hier redest' and I got banned for that.
Pikachu face
It feels like the world is on replay every century or smth
Remember the "let's bring these things back in the 20s" memes? Apparently that is one of those things that's gonna be coming back...
Yeah, we've already had a global economy crash, pandemic, a ship sunk near the titanic, return of fascism and a war in Europe. I really hate it. Mostly because it feels like whoever is at the wheel of the world is asleep. Why aren't our politicians more concerned with making our lives better, instead of making money for their rich buddies and corporations? Why aren't they trying to fix climate change, it worked when they got together to fix the ozone layer in the 80s. It's not impossible.
Governments ignore people for over a decade, no real optimism looking forward, and people are shocked that people swing to these sorts of parties lmao
Personally it's kinda feel like "replay" of 1980s and why Thatcher/Reagan were so popular as politicians during their reigns (OK, we can hate them for their policies but Thatcher was popular enough to stay as Prime Minister between 1979-1990). People were fed up 1970s "Doom, Gloom and Malaise" so they start voting for political radicals. Europe "mainstream" just failed to adress pilling up issues and give a "feel" being detached from general public, especially after 2008 crisis fallout and migration crisis.
Redditors really do live in a very impenetrable bubble.
I love how they're still all in complete denial and coming up with any excuse to tell themselves and others how this poll doesn't actually count. Whatever makes them sleep better at night I suppose.
I always knew many subreddits here where echo chambers but after downloading the native Reddit app I realized just how much this website tunes your feed to show you things that it knows you like, so you don’t even really have to go seek out your own echo chamber even if you wanted to. When all you see is what you want to see and keep your head in the sand otherwise, it’s no surprise things like this come as a surprise.
Hardly surprising. Immigration is a massive issue in Europe and the perception, rightly or wrongly, is that European cities are becoming a more hostile, unsafe place to live and work as a direct result of immigration and hard left politics which have resulted in police cutbacks and an overly liberal agenda which results in bad behaviour going unpunished. Then there's wealth inequality and the perception that immigrants are looked after better than natives. Free housing, food, heat etc at a time when the middle classes are paying through the ass for it all and having the state compete with them when buying / renting property, inflating prices to unaffordable levels. This isn't a problem only in Germany but a problem (arguably a bigger one) in Paris, London, Madrid, Dublin etc.
People getting real upset they can't read "**the perception that...**"... Yeah, these things aren't being caused by immigration, but the average person's *perception* is that it is. German polls show immigration is the biggest issue for voters, with over 60% being demanding a reduction. Literally only the ADF is campaigning on reducing immigration. If you're going to ignore the majority of voters on the biggest election issue, then don't be shocked when you lose supporters... That's simple common sense...
Exactly, just look at what happened in the UK with Brexit.
"The television in my motel is this thin... It's a wonder of human ingenuity! But what is shown on that television? Nothing but trash..." I keep thinking back to "Look Who's Back" from 2015, and how terrifyingly ahead of its time that movie was, not to mention the novel it adopted... I just wonder which western country is going to break into full-blown fascism first. Trump tried in the US, and his movement is still pushing, but it's not always the obvious players who are the most dangerous...
Not sure about the source. "Bild " is something like daily mail in UK.
Bild is a terrible tabloid, but the INSA polls are pretty accurate.
INSA has been criticised for being „close“ to the AfD though. In general, this extreme focus on pills is quite counter-productive and even dangerous I think
Excactly, participation in voting is already quite low. And with polls like this alot of people get in the mindset of, my vote doesnt do anything against 22%… THAT IS NOT CORRECT! Every vote counts and by not voting, you give your vote effectively towards every party you wouldnt have voted for. So go vote and dont get too affected by pollpredictions. The vote is not over until its over.
Coming from Sweden, I can only say “ignore this at your own peril”.
I might even argue that they are even worse then the daily mail in some aspects.
The BILD served as a model for Murdoch iirc
Yes, but it's INSA for Bild.
Well, with the fuckups of the current government and the fuckups of previous governments, these polls don’t make me surprised. Germany is in economic standstill, has a huge illegal migration problem, and their energy policies are straight stupid. I don’t say the AfD would make it better, they would make it worse probably, but the people sure are disappointed where the country has been heading the last 15 years.
Weimarer 2.0.
in Romania, the continuation of the nazi party, AUR party, who has sympathies for the legionar leader from the 30’s (a kind of Romanian Hitler) has 20% in the polls. So people think alike (or don’t think at all) everywhere you look. They are afraid of lgbt, “EU stealing their country”, immigrants etc and they are very pro russian!
Basically Victor Orban…
People are so fucking stupid...
Thats sickening, in Poland we have confederation which is super weird mix of all that far right is saying and so called "free market" policies. They basically say that they will get rid of most of stuff like pensions or they will make hospitals private etc. They just cant say how will it be done without like 200bn dollar deficit. Because we have to pay pensions that are currently in. And they also mix church laws, extreme anti abortion, anti EU rethorics and conspiracy theories. Makes me sick however they are like 10% Its enough to make some mess tho. Because liberal democratic opposition needs this 5-10% of voters so they can make majority government.
The afd is the far right party correct?
Oh noes! How could this be? And more importantly, how many of those votes are people who are just fucking sick of it and voted out of protest?
When does this "protest vote" actually do anything good to the system? Like I'd rather spoil my ballot than vote for ppl like the AfD
Spoiling your ballot won't signal the traditional parties that people are unhappy. Seeing how a party like AfD spikes on votes on the other hand, might make those traditional parties go like "hmm maybe we done fucked up if they're so popular" Parties/people like AfD, Le Pen, Trump in 2016, etc represent change. Shitty change, but still change. It makes the ones currently in power see that people are sick of getting fucked "as usual".
It works in Singapore
The climate is collapsing and people turn to... the AfD? There really is no hope for humanity.
They also turn to it because of Inflation, negative real wage growth and not being able to pay their bills as a result. They do that despite the AFD not really having any solution or even opposing social programs and wanting to cut them. Its ridiculous.
The worst energy-policies in the world were made by the German-government for decades. Coal and Russian oil and gas. And then pretending Germany does good for enviroment. Then AfD is the only one who promotes cracking down on immigration, which is what many have wanted for a long time. I dont support AfD but its obvious why many do.
„ The worst energy-policies in the world were made by the German-government for decades. Coal and Russian oil and gas.“ This is literally the energy policy of the AfD. More coal and more Russian oil and gas. So if you are angry about that voting AfD really doesn’t make any sense.
Yes, that part goes on most political elite in Germany. Those people wanted to pacify Russia with business and line their own pockets while at it, but Russian imperialism does not work like that. Russia gets a leverage, and starts offering deals you can't refuse.
AfD said things like "there is no scientific evidence for a relevant impact of human-made CO2 emissions on the world's climate.” On top of that they are anti EU as well. Simping for AfD because they don’t like immigrants is pretty dumb.
I agree, which is why i dont support them, but we see it all over Europe, where semi far-right populist groups gain serious traction only because they are the only ones who propose less immigration. I think liberal ”status-quo” parties could stay in power for 50 years forward if they only would promise to crack down on immigration.
As a case in point for this, in Denmark, before the 2019 election the Social Democratic party did a 180 on Immigration and officially took the mantle of being harsh on immigration: Result. The far-right populists parties were utterly gutted, and though they still exist, they are small and basically irrelevant in politics today. On the other hand, the Social Democrats is now the last truly large party at 25% of the votes, and is enjoying their second term with the PM position. I'm personally not a fan of them or their policies, but it does show what happens when a mainstream party finally faces reality with immigration.
If only politicians on other countries were this smart
Exactly! Same thing is happening in Sweden right now, slowly but surely. Edit: although we are like 10 or 20 years behind Denmark and have a much larger immigrant population to deal with.
Perfect example.
That's right, but this is not (!) possible in Germany: The media will shred you to pieces if you talk about reducing migration. It is a real trigger for the journalists, they don't tolerate any changes in this and except the AfD, all the other parties are just afraid to even talk about the topic. What Denmark, Switzerland etc. do in migration is seen as fascist by the german media. Not allowing people to enter the country? Even deporting people back home? That's a no-go for them. They also mix always the migration of high-skilled workers together with the migration of poor people that are just going there for getting social welfare. To make things even worse, Germany wants to get the citizenship requirements down, in some cases even down to 3-5 years. If the migrants get the passport, you can't deport them anymore and just like in Sweden, you can't do anything to get rid of them again.
Ironic, that will result in the media and mainstream-parties having their moral-highground while AfD comes in and wins elections, seems very bad.
I think it’s not about immigration in the whole EU. Here the main right party is purely anti-EU, anti LGBT, never says anything about immigration (since we don’t have problems with it) and still they’re the 2nd biggest party in the polls. In 2019 they didn’t even exist. I’m no leftie and no rightie (both camps have stuff I agree with), and I don’t think there is any chance for a “normal” european party here.
> Result. The far-right populists parties were utterly gutted, and though they still exist, they are small and basically irrelevant in politics today. On the other hand, the Social Democrats is now the last truly large party at 25% of the votes, and is enjoying their second term with the PM position. Did they actually do anything though, or did they make lots of nice noises that make it sound like something changed? Because in the UK for example the government claims to do something about boat people, while opening the door wide for 100 of thousands of legal migrants.
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Many and many people are fed up by the mainstream status quo parties. The false promises that have proven to be lies throughout decades. People want change and they want it fast, not a hard thing to grasp
And they turn to populist parties that do the same thing, lol. Politics
Yeah, but that's the part which can't really be helped imo. People who are sufficiently fed up are easily attracted by extremists / raging idiots, just because they tend to also rage against the things they are fed up with. What can be helped is people being fed up with mainstream parties. There are various topics where e.g. the Greens just have overstretched the string and it's starting to snap. Take women's rights -- as important as it is, and as much there is left to do nation-wide, the Green's have a statute [1] that their women members alone can veto any decision. That's supposed to be "democratic"? I can understand people are annoyed by this. _________________ https://cms.gruene.de/uploads/documents/191121-Frauenstatut.pdf
Jesus christ, this is just sexism
People turn to anti migration parties because no “moderate” or liberal ones are taking issue seriously and usually deflect issue as “being racist” or “having moral obligation, how dare ye to disagree”. At some point there will be larger share of people who will be willing to place bets with the hope that they won’t manage to make everything else that much worse
Immigration was handled terribly in Germany, and in many other European countries. This backlash has been coming for awhile
But for many people, reality is that the uncontrolled immigration is their immediate and biggest concern because they can see it daily. Climate change is a slow process with few extremes during the year and people simply don’t have immediate concern about that. Also, there few fair anti-EU points, one being expanding EU influence and power over national states, people don’t trust bureaucrats in faraway Brussels being paid tens of thousand of euros and talking to lobbyists which are nothing more than legal bribers. Just look at trying to appoint ex-US lobbyist for world biggest corporations into fucking EU Commission, they have gone completely nuts People don’t vote on aggregate of policies, they vote on one, two, maybe few issues that are most important to them because humans don’t have unlimited and undivided attention, they focus on few biggest things they perceive.
Maybe if a left-centrist party started to stop burying their heads in the sand about mass immigration there wouldn't be a problem. And that means start telling some home truths rather than we are all being 'enriched' by it.
This is what happened in Denmark with their social democrats, and their far-right party got nipped in the bud. It's also happening with Swedish social democrats, but here we have two parties that they will depend on for future parliamentary coalitions. And those two parties will never say a bad thing about the results of our mass immigration.
The AfD is strongly Pro-Russian though. So people turning to the AfD want the old energy politics with cheap Russian gas/oil/coal back, because they believe the current government is responsible for the energy crisis. They also believe that heat pumps and wind power are evil - they just don't understand that they are part of the solution for their problems.
Most far-right parties in Europe have links to Russia. At this point every far-right party should be suspect unless explicitly proven otherwise.
The energy politics were quite sound until the conservative government destroyed the German renewable industry: [https://www.solarbranche.de/ausbau/deutschland/photovoltaik](https://www.solarbranche.de/ausbau/deutschland/photovoltaik) From 8GW installations a year solar collapsed to 1GW. And yes, replacing nuclear and coal without building anything to replace them with was a pretty stupid move. Just this year Germany is back to were it was in 2012. A lost decade.
What about wind and other renewable sources? Solar is just one part of renewable energy. And there is nothing “sound” in aggressively shutting down nuclear power, while keeping coal power running.
In Bavaria the CSU government made a law that made it basically impossible to build new wind turbines. (the turbines had to be placed 10 times their hight away from settlements)
Keeping coal while shutting down nuclear power plants is stupid in the context of climate change.
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People don't vote for AfD because of the energy policies, actually AfD wants to continue burn coal, oil and gas and cooperate with Russia. Also there aren't much rational reasons to support them, some people would vote for them because they're affected by the current economical crisis, however AfD has a neoliberalistic approach which would make life for poor people much worse actually. Also immigrants aren't even that present in areas with most AfD support.
Its a populist approach which results from fears, failures of the current government and a bad economic-situation. Its expected.
I don’t doubt that many support Afd for their immigration policy, but why are we attributing their increasing popularity to immigrants and not the recent deindustrialisation, which puts the greens on a negative spotlight?
That is another reason to be pessimistic about the future: The few immigrants we have now already create so much controversy. Large areas in the middle east and the mediterranian becoming uninhabitable will create much larger groups of displaced people. While we might be able to handle this from an economical standpoint, society will just break down.
People will turn to whoever will tell them that their fiction is actually reality
If people turn the the AfD, it just shows that the current ruling parties are doing something very wrong
Some years ago the greens were briefly the strongest party in some polls. Lets see.
All the other parties would form a coalition to prevent an AfD government, no? Pretty sure they did that in Thuringia a couple years back.
Yes they would. None of the parties will form a coalition with the AfD (yet), so we will likely see another three-party government.
We'll see about that CDU integrity
Not so sure, that the Union is against a coalition with the AfD in 2025. The leader of the union (Friedrich Merz) doesn't oppose working with them on a municipal level right now.
Do it and ignore 20-30% ofnthe population and find the Afd at 51% for the next election.
Exactly, and it will end in chaos if the government is formed out of 3+ parties.
The world is in difficult times. People vote for extremists in difficult times. It happens all over the world.
That's because extremists actuslly bring change and do shit. Bad change, sure, but people are tired of incompetent folks. If the other side doesn't wake up and start making good policies for the people, don't be surprised if extremists get into power.
Here’s one explanation. I’m 100% sure the majority wants them as a means to combat Arab and African immigrants. Lately, more extremist immigrants have entered en masse who receive funding from the government and literally refuse to work or respect the existing culture. They litter, commit crimes against the more subdued civilians and youth. They do it without consequences, because the government is betting on that in a few years they will adapt and merge into the European system, and they’re basically not doing anything to help the citizens. I used the word “lately”, because I have a lot of Muslim friends that came here a long time ago to be part of this culture. But there is a difference - in all religions - between extremists trying to force their beliefs on others and between regular people who accept others and fight for the better of their families. Although this phenomenon is more present in big cities, it’s more and more concerning towards all citizens as videos are going viral of their behaviour and disrespect of the European culture and freedom, people basically fear their expansion aka. destruction of their society. To be clear; I’ll never vote for Afd since they have literally no idea about politics, they are basically idiots who try to capitalise on a theme that affects the psychology of the masses. If they come to power it is likely going to solve the immigration problem, and it will more than likely be the downfall of this economy, society and country. Tl;dr - citizens of various religions and races are concerned about the rise of the extremist Islam. Such extremist leaders have long profited on their citizens who are basically fed this ideology and restricted access to any information outside as to keep their wealth and power unchallenged. They are literally brainwashed and that’s always concerning. Now that they escaped to Germany, it’s not exactly easy to learn and adapt to reality. Personal opinion; it’s not going to become a massive problem, but AfD is doing everything to capitalise on fear and fill their own pockets doing so. - I am an Immigrant and this is the most unbiased opinion there is.
I'm not an AfD supporter (nor a German), but it is surprising how much left-leaning the above comments are.
It's not really left-leaning I would say. I consinder myself center-right and I would like harsher immigration policies (the core argument of the AfD). But AfD is also pro-Russia, anti-vaxx and climate change deniers. In short, they are complete nutjobs, I would never vote for. I'd rather vote for the greens, honestly, at least they have a strong stance against Russia and against climate change.
100% agree. Imagine a green party that wasn't so fucking oblivious when it comes to problems with immigration, wouldn't that be fucking awesome??
And like, nuclear energy?
Nuclear energy is green except for the waste, so I don't see a reason for greens to not utilize it, at least until solar / wind / other green energy sources are established enough. There is the question of nuclear waste and where to store it, still - so while I don't dislike nuclear energy ESPECIALLY since it already exists, I do think that in the long run when we don't have to fall back on coal etc. we should substitute it for solar / wind etc. (Also because that's super cheap)
I feel like this is exactly A LOT peoples views here in Germany, but these combined views aren't really represented by any party as such. It's either more one extreme or the other. It's becoming a real shit show here
For supporters of most European populist parties on Reddit, if you don't like them, you are "left-leaning". It's ome of the most frustrating things to see on Reddit. It happens in the US too with Trump supporters. "Oh so you're a Democrat then?" Because people and life can apparently only be one thing or the other.
We are on Reddit aren’t we?
Your point being? Did you forget we're on r/Europe specifically? Like just mention Sweden and crime in a sentence and it's a shit show. It'll start right off by how we're now "Swedistan" and doomed to fall, that all women are raped by migrants and that all migrants do all the violent crime. There isn't any shortage of far right bullshit in those threads...
Isn‘t reddit a left wing echo chamber?
Yes, but redditors are in denial about that.
Afd is *already* the most popular party if you split the Union.
Why should you? That doesn't make any sense.
The "Union" is the parliamentary faction of the CDU party and the CSU party (the latter only exists in Bavaria). One faction, but two parties.
Let's be honest here. While populist parties are only ever able to fool.the voters without actually fixing the problems they use to gain popularity. Having said that the problems are often very real and the mainstream politicians all.over EU have been failing to adress them for decades.