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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1260 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 23, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Yet another illegal immigrant who should've been expelled long ago went out and stabbed a child to death. Just our weekly bit of cultural enrichment here in Germany. This week it was in Aschaffenburg, not that it means anything to anyone. I for one have no idea where that is.

But wait, it's federal election time! The chancellor, leader of our much-maligned tripartite coalition government, recently called a vote of no-confidence and promptly got it. So now everyone is campaigning, and our conservative CDU party, led by the very un-merkelian Friedrich März Merz, is calling for blood stricter immigration laws and faster deportations. This kind of thing obviously does not sit right with the left-green parties, so it's a non-starter that can't make it through parliament.

...unless all the non-green-left members of parliament support it. Including those of the far-right AfD party. Cooperation with whom is a strict no-no for absolutely everyone above the municipal level. You can get figuratively shot and your political career ended just for getting the AfD's support by accident. Actually coordinating with them, or just talking to them, is absolutely verboten. They're normally not even allowed on public TV talk shows. We call it the "firewall".

And now the big thing in the papers is this: März said he'd do the right thing, walk the right path, "no matter who comes along". Is the firewall about to fall? Will the CDU actually accept the AfD's support? Are they perhaps even in actual talks with each other?

It would be hilarious if the most wishy-washy establishment party anywhere, ever, broke the cordon sanitaire around the AfD.

The Union is still more right-wing than the Tories, honestly.

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