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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1120 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 30, 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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Surprised this hasn't been posted yet(mods if it's better suited for culture war thread please just move it)- the AFD and CDU have just voted together in the German parliament on immigration. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germanys-far-right-upends-convention-landmark-vote-immigration-rcna189959

Now it was a non-binding vote, but the German left is already posturing about it:

With Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens opposed to the motions, however, Merz knew he would have to rely on support of the AfD. The land border measure passed with a slim majority of just three votes, while the security proposal was rejected.

Critics including Scholz argue that Merz’s tactics shatter the taboo among mainstream parties against working with the AfD — a party that is monitored by German security services on suspicion of being right-wing extremist — in an effort to keep it from power.

“Since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany over 75 years ago, there has always been a clear consensus among all democrats: We do not make common cause with the extreme right,” Scholz said in a speech to parliament.

“You have broken this basic consensus of our republic in the heat of the moment,” he told Merz.

Relevantly, there are elections coming up- and if the CDU wins the most seats, but nowhere near a majority, as seems likely, this move seems to render it much more difficult to get coalition partners from the German left. Especially if- as also seems likely- AfD is the second biggest party.

Finally. The CDU painted itself into a corner by simultaneously claiming that the state of the welfare & migrant issues is germany's greatest crisis, but also that they will not work together with the only party which is both large enough and actually agrees on this. This went as far as that they took a (binding!) vote back after they realized only the CDU & AfD would vote in favor, pretty much just to avoid the bad optics. They seriously claimed that the voters just have to vote CDU (or at least CDU+FDP) into an absolute majority.

This was just not very credible, especially since Merkel (CDU) arguably started the whole mess. Correspondingly many AfD-voters explicitly said that they don't really agree with the AfD's platform on many issues, but they consider solving the welfare & migrant crisis so important that they're willing to bite the bullet. Hell, I've never voted AfD but strongly consider it for basically the same reasons, but the AfD's platform is just very unappealing to me overall except for those two points of agreement.

Worse yet, before this vote it was heavily implied that the CDU would coalition with the greens or the SPD, neither of which would vote with them, and the AfD was already steadily gaining in the polls. Imo if they had kept the Brandmauer up, the most likely outcome would be a lame duck 2025 government, with an ever-increasing risk of an absolute AfD majority. Which isn't even something most AfD voters want. They were basically just redoing the Weimar Republic.

Now, we can move forward. A CDU-AfD (maybe +FDP) government would still clearly be dominated by the CDU both in terms of votes and in experience & knowledge. It would most likely result in a significant loss of votes for the AfD unless the CDU does some very stupid things, though it would also likely cement the AfD as a long-term mainstream party (probably in the 10% range), again unless the AfD is very stupid. But as you say, the vote is non-binding, and Merz is known to be a little chicken who is eager to be accepted by mainstream journalism, which still leans heavily left.

Correspondingly many AfD-voters explicitly said that they don't really agree with the AfD's platform on many issues, but they consider solving the welfare & migrant crisis so important that they're willing to bite the bullet.

Yep. Doesn't matter how incompetent or odious the party is; if they're the only ones opposing the national suicide pact, then for the time being they have my vote.

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