Welcome Back, Weimar Republic
Days after Germany began spying on its most popular political party as a prelude to banning it, it was unable to form a new government. Party Like it's 1933.
Quick show of hands: how many think that a quarter of the German population are wannabe Nazis?
A few days ago Germany’s intelligence service officially classified the populist anti-immigrant ‘Alternative for Germany’ party (AfD) as an “extremist right-wing” organization and that it would begin “surveilling” the AfD (which means spying on it):
The agency, or Verfassungsschutz, said specifically that the AfD did not consider citizens of a "migration background from predominantly Muslim countries" as equal members of the German people.
“Verfassungsschutz” is going to go down in my German vocabulary as a perfect example of my favorite German technical term: “Weltverschlechterer,” which stands for “world-worsener.” In any case, this designation is merely step one in a process of banning the AfD completely. The AfD came in second in the most recent German election but has been shut out of the new government, and the most recent opinion polls now show AfD leading all the other parties, now pulling nearly 25% support. But other polls also find that almost 50% of Germans favor banning the AfD. There’s a nice formula for national unity.
Another one:
But about that new government: shocking news out of Germany this morning. On what was supposed to be a pro-forma vote in the Bundestag to anoint Frederick Merz as the next chancellor, Merz and his coalition with the Socialist CSU Party failed to get the necessary votes on a secret ballot. This has never happened before since World War II:
In a critical vote on Tuesday morning, expected to be a formality, Merz failed to secure the necessary backing of 316 and returned only 310 votes in favour, meaning that 18 of the coalition parties’ parliamentarians failed to vote for him.
It was the first time in Germany’s postwar history that this had happened, and it was a huge personal embarrassment for Merz, who has repeatedly said that, with his government, “Germany is back” and ready to offer much needed stability in European politics.
But in a second vote later on Tuesday, he won 325 votes in the 630-member assembly, with 289 voting against, attaining an absolute majority.
A rousing start for a new government!
Another show of hands: How many people think the Democratic Party would ban the Republican Party in 10 seconds if they could? Liberals have been calling the Republicans extremists and Nazi-adjacent ever since Tom Dewey in 1948, with “political scientists” recently purporting to demonstrate with ginned-up statistics that the GOP is an “outlier” party that is a threat to “Our Democracy.”
Margaret Thatcher warned of the possibility of a collapse in public confidence in “centrist” governments in a 1992 speech she delivered in Washington, a year after she was forced from office. Her speech was a direct attack on the European Union, which was still at the beginning of its power-grabbing story arc at that point:
“The growth of extremist parties, battening on fears about mass immigration and unemployment, offer a real—if thoroughly unwelcome—alternative to the Euro-centrist political establishment. If, in addition, you were to create a supranational European federation, and the people could no longer hold their national parliaments to account, extremism could only grow further.”
P.S. Note how the Germans responded to our Secretary of State:
A reminder that for the establishments both here and abroad, “democracy” means “when we win elections.” “Populism” is when the “wrong” people win elections. My advice to Germans: cue up your favorite Weimar Republic mood music.
Chaser—AfD’s message from the last election:
Democrat Party "activists" in the U.S. are not only willing but eager to ban the Republican Party and any others who obstruct their paths to power. They've already accomplished that on many campuses and in certain West Coast cities. In some cities, they have assembled violent fascist bands to enforce their bans. It's KKK redux.
Funny how "right wing" equals "National Socialist;" the true political spectrum is not right versus left, or liberal versus conservative, it's liberty versus tyranny. In Germany's case, the tyrants are already in charge.