German elections

[hollodero]

(09-25-2017, 05:07 PM)Dill Wrote: Verstehe kein auslandisch . . . hier wird Englisch gesprochen!

Halt die Klappe, Yankee.

(09-25-2017, 05:07 PM)Dill Wrote: Is it your view that with SPD out, a CDU-Green-FDP coalition will start eroding the social net? You say the results will be tough for low-come Germans, but who is voting for the AfD?  They seem to have gained from from former SPD and CDU voters.

(09-25-2017, 05:30 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I think one of my failings in trying to understand the German politics is not knowing enough of the history. Knowing that would help me out a bit more, it seems.

As for Schulz, as much as I was shouting "Keine Bremsen!", it was more for the party than Schulz himself. Schulz has some great qualities, but if the SPD needed someone more charismatic to really have a chance. Plus, I had some issues with him policy-wise.

Allow me to give kind of an abbreviated, summed up response to these points. First, my SPD remarks weren't so much a historic stance then a political one; there's often two viewpoints, what one person refuses as betrayal the other person praises as being pragmatic. SPD was "pragmatic", at least that's what they tried to communicate, and lifelong voters didn't take that too well. The social net was already eroding under Schröder/Fischer, a government left leaning people have put high hopes in, only to be disappointed. After that, SPD was junior partner in a big coalition, and there is never anything to gain in that role ever. Plus they had some awful leadership in recent years, names like Kurt Beck or Sigmar Gabriel and then some.

A first counter-reaction was the founding of "Die Linke" (meaning "the left"), formed by a former SPD populist named Lafontaine and some PDS members (PDS started as the SED successor, SED was East Germany's governing party). Many voters were lost there for the SPD, true left leaning folk who couldn't go Grüne because, as mentioned, they are only left by cover, but really make policies for the wealthy. - AfD also feeds from disappointed socialist voters, like in many countries in Europe. The right-wing populists use those people who are in alliance with true nationalists. Now there's plenty to say about AfD, the German right-wing populism branch; they are, as everywhere, a force that doesn't go for the constructive vote, but for the angry, destructive, anti-elite, anti-establishment vote. Who votes for them are a) Nazis and sympathetic people and b) disappointed SPD voters who want to light a fuse. Because AfD have given them a scapegoat, a reason for the aölleged downward spiral, and it's refugees (and elites and media lies and so on, but mainly muslims).

(09-25-2017, 11:24 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: And Why have they came out and gotten support.....  oh yeah the epidemic of rape, violence, assault, and overall public nusance by these Muslim migrants.

...as mentioned.
Mr. Lucie, I try to respect everyone's position and plan to keep doing so. That being said, your statement still is a lie, and I won't grow tired telling you so. There is no rape epidemic, violence epidemic etc., caused by refugees. It is just a right-wing lie, and how openly American outlets outright lie abuout Europe is astonishing. You parroting these points doesn't shed the best of lights. And of course some migrants cause trouble and there's also no need to hide that away; an anti-immigration line isn't per se out of the scope of legit democratic opinions. But "epidemics", this is classical right-wing agitation speech, solving nothing and enraging people, being only destructive and accomplishing nothing good.
Support for the AfD mainly stems from people scapegoating and believing lies, from xenophobes, reactionaries and naive, low-educated folk. And some AfD voters, I assume, are good people.