I hope you’re right about the possibility of realignment but i am more pessimistic than you are about the chance of a government coming to power that will change course. Maybe as i’m living in Germany i can’t see the forest for the trees, but i can’t see any path toward another government that won’t behave just like this one.
Sure the SPD and Greens will lose the next elections, but who will win? Likely the CDU because they are the only alternative. They are who the pendulum swings back to as the default other choice when the SPD fucks up, and vice versa. They will then have to form another coalition government because they will not have a majority and chances are they will still pick one or more of the current government’s parties, because i don’t think that anyone will want to be seen entering into coalition with the AfD.
Even if the AfD won the elections they likely wouldn’t be able to form a government for this same reason. They have been successfully demonized by the media so that most Germans now see them as beyond the acceptable spectrum of political positions (as they should be, as they have a very xenophobic platform and a lot of "ex-"neo-Nazis in their ranks…the problem is that the “mainstream” parties are also full of Nazi sympathizers as the Ukraine conflict has shown) so we would still get the same mainstream parties in power.
I see no mainstream political force in Germany that wants to reverse the energy break with Russia, the Left party has essentially collapsed, the AfD will likely be kept at all costs from entering government and there is even talk of a ban on the entire party (too late if you ask me), and Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party is just getting started and we have no idea whether they will actually be able to get any significant amount of votes, and even if they do, it won’t be a majority so then they are in the same position as the AfD of needing coalition partners but being essentially shunned by the rest as they will be painted as “Putin puppets”.
And i hope that Wagenknecht will not consider joining forces with the AfD because that is just a very terrible and disgusting thought, and i don’t trust the AfD to not go the Meloni route anyway. So overall i don’t see the mainstream parties, CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP, losing their stranglehold on German politics and government.
I generally agree with your assessment in the near term. However, the establishment has no solutions to the problems they created, and that means that material conditions will continue to decline. That will be the main radicalizing force in my opinion. When push comes to shove people will care about being able to pay their bills and put food on the table more than any ideology. From what I’ve read, it seems that Germany doesn’t really have an alternative to Russian energy because LNG is far more expensive, and it simply can’t be delivered in the same volume as pipeline gas. So, the only way to stop the collapse of the economy will be to start normalizing relations with Russia. The alternative is going to be mass unemployment, and mass radicalization.
Unfortunately, I do expect that things will get worse before they get better. It’s going to take a critical mass of disenfranchised people to break away from the current political mainstream ans start charting a new course.
I hope you’re right about the possibility of realignment but i am more pessimistic than you are about the chance of a government coming to power that will change course. Maybe as i’m living in Germany i can’t see the forest for the trees, but i can’t see any path toward another government that won’t behave just like this one.
Sure the SPD and Greens will lose the next elections, but who will win? Likely the CDU because they are the only alternative. They are who the pendulum swings back to as the default other choice when the SPD fucks up, and vice versa. They will then have to form another coalition government because they will not have a majority and chances are they will still pick one or more of the current government’s parties, because i don’t think that anyone will want to be seen entering into coalition with the AfD.
Even if the AfD won the elections they likely wouldn’t be able to form a government for this same reason. They have been successfully demonized by the media so that most Germans now see them as beyond the acceptable spectrum of political positions (as they should be, as they have a very xenophobic platform and a lot of "ex-"neo-Nazis in their ranks…the problem is that the “mainstream” parties are also full of Nazi sympathizers as the Ukraine conflict has shown) so we would still get the same mainstream parties in power.
I see no mainstream political force in Germany that wants to reverse the energy break with Russia, the Left party has essentially collapsed, the AfD will likely be kept at all costs from entering government and there is even talk of a ban on the entire party (too late if you ask me), and Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party is just getting started and we have no idea whether they will actually be able to get any significant amount of votes, and even if they do, it won’t be a majority so then they are in the same position as the AfD of needing coalition partners but being essentially shunned by the rest as they will be painted as “Putin puppets”.
And i hope that Wagenknecht will not consider joining forces with the AfD because that is just a very terrible and disgusting thought, and i don’t trust the AfD to not go the Meloni route anyway. So overall i don’t see the mainstream parties, CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP, losing their stranglehold on German politics and government.
I generally agree with your assessment in the near term. However, the establishment has no solutions to the problems they created, and that means that material conditions will continue to decline. That will be the main radicalizing force in my opinion. When push comes to shove people will care about being able to pay their bills and put food on the table more than any ideology. From what I’ve read, it seems that Germany doesn’t really have an alternative to Russian energy because LNG is far more expensive, and it simply can’t be delivered in the same volume as pipeline gas. So, the only way to stop the collapse of the economy will be to start normalizing relations with Russia. The alternative is going to be mass unemployment, and mass radicalization.
Unfortunately, I do expect that things will get worse before they get better. It’s going to take a critical mass of disenfranchised people to break away from the current political mainstream ans start charting a new course.