This election marks the end of Germany’s post-war political era
Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE
In Sunday’s general election the three German far-right parties succeeded in winning sixty percent of the vote. The Christian Union, Merkel’s party, won the election with 28 percent, the AfD was second, receiving just over 20 percent, and the Greens came in at 11.6 percent. All three parties are strongly anti-immigration, frenzied supporters of the Israeli genocide in Palestine, staunchly neo-liberal, willing to radically reduce citizens’ rights, while two, the Union and Greens, are fervent supporters of the proxy war in Ukraine. This result reflects the climate of hate and fanaticism that currently dominates German society
Behind all the headlines that will appear in mainstream media, there is a much more dramatic one, which will probably be ignored: the four German legacy political parties’ combined vote dropped to 60 percent after they received 76 percent in the previous election. Although they can still marshal a majority in the Bundestag, it marks the end of Germany’s post-war political era. Interestingly, the voter participation, 86 percent, is the highest since German reunification.
For the German authoritarian liberal legacy political parties it was disappointment all round. Although the Christian Union obtained the most votes, the result was a debacle. It was by far the second worst election result in the history of the party and just a few percent points above its election disaster three years ago. This is all the more astounding as the previous traffic-light-coalition was historically the most unpopular post-war government. The Union should have easily been at forty percent. The decision of the Union’s lead candidate, Friedrich Merz, to move to the far-right may not have won many voters, but probably avoided an even worse election result. The Union once had a motto that it could not permit any party to develop to the right of it. It ignored this in its hubris under Merkel, permitting the AfD to rise, and is no longer able to correct this lapse. Another factor that harmed the Union is that voters simply do not like Merz. The former BlackRock manager embodies the trend in German politics in which great moral failure meets massive intellectual deficiency.
The Social Democrats had their worst election result ever (beginning in 1867) at 16 percent, having lost 40 percent of its voters since the previous election. The Greens suffered less dramatic losses, coming in at 11.6 percent, having lost many voters to the Left Party and the BSW, which ran on a peace platform, due to Greens having moved to the far-right. The Liberals (FDP) suffered the most severe defeat falling from 11.5 percent to 4.3 percent, which is not enough votes to re-enter the Bundestag. A fitting end for a party whose raison d’être is corruption.
Among the post-reunification political parties the AfD was able to double its votes to over 20 percent. Interestingly it won 38 percent of the votes from workers, the Social Democrats only 12 percent (less than half in comparison to the previous general election). As the future coalition of legacy parties is destined to fail, the AfD will have good chances of winning the next general election. The Left Party made a remarkable comeback from imminent extinction, almost doubling its votes to 8.7 percent. The party benefited from the large number of left-wing voters who abandoned the Greens and Social Democrats. It also won a quarter of the youth vote. This is all the more surprising, as the party had lost all its credentials as leftists, having transformed into a centrist party in the hope of eventually integrating itself into the SPD. However the new leadership spouted a series of radical promises such as taxing the rich, knowing it would never be part of a government coalition. The BSW, around Sahra Wagenknecht just missed entering the Bundestag with the obligatory 5 percent of the vote. The party’s problem is probably Wagenknecht herself, who likes to present herself as a non-radical populist, which is something of a contradiction and not terribly motivating. Following the party’s recent success in state elections in the autumn, Wagenknecht decided to have the BSW join coalitions with the legacy political parties. As nothing has since changed in those states, many have come to the conclusion that the BSW is just another snout-in-the-trough political party, which was reflected in the party’s disappointing election result.
It is important to understand which groups were most influential in this election. Around forty percent of active voters are 60 years old or older (the strongest voting group are over 70 with well over 20 percent). That is slightly less than all voters under 50. That means that a group who has little interest in change, in fact opposes it and clings to the past, were a major determinant of the election outcome. The group of voters under thirty constitute only round 14 percent of voters and tend to vote less than those over sixty. 42 percent of the over 70 year olds voted for the far-right Union, of the 18-24 year olds only 13 percent cast their ballots for the Union. Another major force in German elections are the well off, of whom over 90 percent vote in elections, compared to only around 40 percent of the poorer voters. Almost twice as many of those well off voted for the Union than those who are considered poor. Thus the elections are skewed to a conservative/far-right outlook.
Not that it really matters. In the end there is no real difference between the ethics free legacy parties and the parties that later joined Germany’s political life. Despite claims to the contrary, they are all committed to neo-liberalism and authoritarianism. Behind the promises and virtue signalling there are no policies for Germany’s economic or social problems. German politics, like most of Europe, is dominated by predatory mediocrities with a reckless disregard for reality.
Merz and the Union are now faced with the dilemma of forming a coalition. Merz would love to join up with the AfD to form a super neo-liberal coalition, but his party will not permit that. That leaves him with the Social Democrats. The Union and SPD have often been in coalitions in the past twenty years, as the snout-in-the trough rationale has prevailed over all differences, but this pathology of self-interest is no solution for the myriad problems currently confronting Germany. In fact it has been the cause.
Nothing demonstrates this better than the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. The delusional legacy parties, supported by state and corporate media, are still claiming that Ukraine can win the war, so most Germans are not even informed of the latest developments. Plans are even being made to increase the financial support for the lost war as German politicians bury their heads in the sand. All the more so since Trump has admitted that Ukraine has been defeated, which is apparently resulting in the US withdrawing from the conflict.
Fascinating is the fact that the German discourse towards Trump propagated by the legacy political parties as well as most corporate and state media is increasingly resembling that used against Putin after his military incursion into Ukraine. Trump is portrayed as a despot who lacks any sort of moral compass, unlike the Germans – although they are fanatical supporters of the Israelis’ holocaust against the Palestinians. Germany, always one of the closest US allies, is portraying itself as the leading trans-atlanticist now that the US is abandoning Europe. The question is, what does transatlantic mean if the US is not part of the partnership?
This repeats itself with regard to the German economy that is in crisis and what appears to be a long-term recession, already the longest in its post-war history. After doing itself inestimable damage by ending trade relations with Russia, and currently doing the same with China at the behest of the United States, it has come to rely on the United States as the main consumer of its exports to maintain its mercantilist policy. With Trump already introducing the first tariffs against Europe and threatening to impose even more massive ones, especially on cars, on which the German economy is heavily reliant, they have gone on the offensive against the US president, which they had already done during the US election, but were hoping Trump would forget. Otherwise the German legacy authoritarian liberal political parties have no economic policies besides austerity, and we know where that leads.
It is simply incomprehensible that a self-appointed vassal state suddenly turns on its hegemon. At the same time they have no policies or a political class capable of re-asserting Germany’s autonomy. This epitomises the current state of thinking in German politics – or lack of it – when hate becomes a substitute for intellect and moral posturing is held for policy.