The following op-ed analyzes the political prospects of Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrats, and the Socialists in the wake of the Great Refugee Crisis of 2015.
Many thanks to JLH for the translation from Junge Freiheit:
The Evil Stepmother
by Werner PatzeltFor decades, Germany has been fortunate with the CDU — and its chairpersons. But much is now hanging in the balance: trust in the chancellor, the role of the CDU and CSU as the only electable right-of-center parties, Germany’s prosperity. There have been four factors contributing to this.
There is the “social-democratizing” of the CDU. It has made the party as good as unassailable from the left. That pays off in polls and talk shows. But many non-left, non-middle, right-of-center Germans no longer feel they are represented by the CDU. Anyone who is truly on the right is rejected and closed out by the CDU.
“Moving cautiously” as a distinguishing feature
This draws many to the AfD (Alternative for Germany). As the SPD — which had moved to the middle under Helmut Schmidt — thus made place for the Greens, so Merkel is leaving space for the AfD. And is hoping that its mobilization by-words — euro crisis, immigration, integration — will not have the long life enjoyed by the Green battle against nuclear power. If they do, there is the danger of the CDU repeating the history of the Social Democrats’ shrinking.
That is the chancellor’s leadership style. That is how she has managed to be only a little attractive for everyone but a horror for no one. “Moving cautiously” became a confidence-inspiring version of “relying on trial and error.” And approaching something from the end did not have the sound of starting off into the unknown or of adventurousness.
A unity coalition against the people
But precisely this is what the chancellor’s refugee policy has forced upon the country. Since then, she has ruled in matters of immigration with a kind of unified, all-party coalition against the majority of the population. And the question must be asked: is she really increasing the people’s advantage, or at least shielding them from harm?
And there are the real challenges for our country: a shortage of young people as a risk for the social system; guarantees in the euro zone as a risk for the treasury; sending military units into a war zone as a risk to life and limb, and not only for the soldiers; immigration as a risk to social stability; the behavior of German leadership as a risk for the EU.
The Eurozone has already had its problems with Germany as its enforcer, and is quite annoyed by our morality-intoxicated behavior as a hippie state. But the CDU and SPD give very different answers to the many questions about how these challenges are to be weathered. Or just short-term ones, because it is necessary to continue to govern together. What a payoff for statecraft.
The chancellor to whom there is no alternative
And then there is the fact that there is no alternative to the chancellor. No longer at the top of the popularity scale, to be sure, but there is no comprehensively convincing reason to topple her. She has the knack of rebounding, and that is why so many are hoping for a kind of Fukushima experience. Also, the CDU is far ahead of the SPD in the polls. Why change horses when the wagon has gone along fine this far? And — in the eventuality of a forced retirement during the election period — who would join with whom as her successor?
Tactically, these are difficult times for conspirators. And the chancellor has not yet exhausted her strategic possibilities. Could not some disagreement with the SPD intensify to the point that they would have to either knuckle under or renounce the coalition? So that, after the requisite vote of confidence including the initiation of premature new elections, the CDU chair could announce (her candidacy);
Freed through no disloyalty on her part from the SPD’s hindrance of necessary decision-making, she would undertake a thoroughgoing correction of our immigration and integration policy — and indeed not casually: for no one could reproach her with not having tried everything that the Left, the Social Democrats and the Greens considered proper.
An immigration land acting sensibly
The election campaign would align the two “Unions” side-by-side again and Merkel’s destiny would polarize the country, as happened in 1972 with the destiny of Willy Brandt, and in 1983 with the destiny of Helmut Kohl. It would come to a kind of plebiscite on the changing of our country to a rationally acting immigration land, and the chancellor would be assured of extending her time in office — even if in an unloved coalition with the AfD. That would be a fair penalty for negligence of the right fringe.
The competition on the left would foam at the mouth, but — faced with a realistic immigration and integration policy with which our country was managing the challenges presented to it — would have to set out on the road to Godesberg.[1] That is, nothing is more irresistible than political success.
Propelling Germany’s transformation
Ultimately, the chancellor would not have matters driven, but rather shaped by a happy ending. We still don’t know whether she could come up with the chutzpah for such a maneuver, the courage to implement it. We don’t even know if the advance of trust in her — severely taxed within the party — would support such chess moves.
But if Angela Merkel does not wish to be remembered as the matriarch of Europe, but as the stepmother of her party, then it is time not only to let herself be carried by the CDU, but to unite this party in the battle for a good cause: changing Germany to a cohesive immigration society.
Prof. Dr.Werner Patzelt is a political scientist and has held the chair for Political Systems and Comparison of Systems at the Technical University of Dresden. Further, he is a member of the board of trustees of the Saxon State Office for Political Education
| 1. | Reference to the ‘Godesberg Program of 1959, when the SPD renounced full-out Marxism and turned toward a reformed capitalism. The implication seems to be that the SPD will have to undergo another major change. |
I am not German but have lived there and know the country well. Why the hell should any German want to see Germany changed “to a cohesive immigration society?” As a foreigner, I want Germany to stay overwhelmingly German. Just as I want France to remain French, and England to remain English.
With you 100%. It is entirely normal and right for people to prefer to live among their own people. Why are immigrants encouraged to form their own ethnic and racial ‘communities’ while white nations are excoriated for wanting the same?
What does a ‘cohesive immigration society’ look like? With migrants from non-Western cultures in Germany, this is a contradiction in terms! Simply put, when have Muslims EVER integrated happily and seamlessly into a host Western culture? NEVER! And, unlike most other immigrant communities, the second generation of Muslims is less inclined to integrate than the first.
I believe immigration politics is not like Green politics. Immigration has riven every part of society, since 9/11. Immigration, much more than climate change, has become the flash-point for a revolutionary struggle between those who hold a different vision in their minds of what they want the future of the West and the world to look like, and those social and economic-engineering advocates in power now, who are trying to make concrete a secular, socialist, multi-cultural, green utopia.
Islam and globalized crime – much of which is Islamic (Albanians spring to mind)- has proved this dream is suicidal folly.
We are in a stage more comparable to that preceding the English and American civil wars and perhaps the French and Russian revolutions.
“As the philosopher Isaiah Berlin has argued, the belief that all human values and practices are compatible lies behind many of the evil acts that were perpetrated during the 20th Century.2According to Berlin, it has long been assumed that questions about how human beings should live their lives in this world must have correct and meaningful answers, and since those answers must be true, those answers must be compatible.3 It is therefore possible, according to this way of thinking, for a final solution to the question of how human beings ought to live on this earth to be found. After reading Machiavelli, Berlin came to realise that this was wrong.4 In fact, a moment’s thought will reveal to any honest thinker that many human values contradict one another, and ‘the notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution, in which all good things coexist, [is] not merely unattainable – that is a truism – but conceptually incoherent.’5”
Source: The Red and the Black
Why would AfD ever want to go into coalition with a traitor with the intent of transforming Germany into an immigration society?
I use the word traitor as that is what you call someone who misuses the power given to them to radically change society without any prior consultation with those who gave them that power.
It would be simpler to demand illegals be stopped at the border and then initiate a campaign to promote the necessity of having children to the native population, instead of telling them how horrible they are because of something that happened generations earlier and telling them how they can never be forgiven as a people.
Excellent reply. I would add that the means for this to happen is the reconversion of the German people. It would mean talking about Jesus and his substitutionary death on the cross for sins and guilt that does not have to be borne until the third and fourth generation.
That truth will set the Germans free.
She’s really nae a bonny quine at a, it has to be said … inside or oot.
We were told that there was no alternative to Mrs Thatcher in the UK then one day the scales fell from her own party members eyes as well as the electorate. Frau Merkel is out of the same mould as Thatcher. Ignorant, cunning, messianic and allowed to flourish because of the weakness of those that surround her. Hollande, Obama, and Cameron, who frankly makes me cringe every time I see his porcine features spewing plaitudes which fall on deaf ears, all political pygmies destined for the scrap heap. Like Thatcher she is going to fall suddenly and hopefully impeached for sedition and jailed for the incalculable damage she has wrought on Germany and the EU.
Thatcher did not cause “incalculable” damage to the British elective dictatorship according to nearly all economic measures for the period that she held power. Under the Labour Government Britain was enduring a mountain of debt, high unemployment and a stagnant economy, and all that the then Labour leader “Sunny Jim” Callaghan could think of at the time was to continue to increase government debt to pay for an ever increasing army of civil servants.
Merkel who holds the reins of power in the German elective dictatorship with her insane open door immigration policy is causing real, incalculable and long lasting damage to Germany, together with severe collateral damage to most of the elective dictatorships adjoining Germany.
The leftist loons who misrule the Swedish elective dictatorship are causing incalculable damage to one of the few countries that, in the 1960s and several decades beyond, came as close as any first world country of the period in managing to immanentize the eschaton.
Those days are long gone and probably gone forever. Europe and North America are heading for dystopian futures that will closely resemble the current Lebanese or Venezuelan models of government.
The main political problem is to find a substitute for the existing elective dictatorship model of government that can successfully keep power hungry political cultists out of power. I would rather be governed by a group of ordinary people than political fanatics, so a system based on selection by lot would be preferable to the current system.
It would be better to be governed by mediocrities than by lunatics.
He never said she did. He said he hoped Merkel would be.
Regarding Mrs Thatcher – remember her failed attempt to introduce the dreaded poll tax? Now enforced by the equally iniquitous bedroom tax by the her disciples with the even worse working tax credit tax credits yet to come. She is hardly remembered with any fondness by steel workers or coal miners either. Junior Doctors, nurses, civil servants and teachers are all being targetted by the current TORY government too.Figures released yesterday show that the top ONE percent in the UK have more wealth than the poorest 57%. A legacy she would drool over!
Merkel is ‘a little bit attractive’ ? To whom? Godzilla? Yikes!
I don’t know what the punishment for high treason is these days, but that ought to be the first of the charges leveled against her. If things do not change radically and quickly, you might as well add genocide to the list.
Same goes for all those useless empty suits in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden (talk about poisoning the wells!) , Norway, UK……
It’s not just the actual politicians, it’s those so-called ‘royal’ families, too.
Look at them. Do any of these people look Royal to you? Do any of them look like they ought to be the King or the Queen of something other than Barbie’s dream house?
They should be secretaries and waiters, that’s what they look like.
Or bingo callers at the senior center.
Sweden needs a Viking warrior king who will take back the country and make sure Swedish cities are 100% Swedish, not 40-60% Ethiopian.
Maybe the best thing for Germany would be if Bavaria – the German version of Texas – secedes, becomes its’ own country once again, expels all settlers and implements strict border checks. They are good at that, believe me.
I’ve long wondered what Queen Elizabeth thinks she’s queen of. Apparently some kind of glop of Paki-Wahhabi-Albanian-Jamaican-Welsh-Scots-Syro-Piltdown hunter-panderers.
She must love that melange because she watches it grow in utter silence. Britain’s turning into some Steven King landscape but all she can do is clap like a seal at Cameron’s betrayal.
The current Swedish guy – weakling descendant of a French soldier foisted upon Sweden by Napoleon – looks like he should be the stuffy senior head waiter at a Euro-Disney theme restaurant.
And his ‘Queen’ was a German stewardess, you should have seen the decade-long brouhaha they made over her in German tabloids of the 70’s and 80’s…..
Ms. Merkel is not a “Mutti” because she herself has no children. Mutti in German has a special connotation. If you love your own mother extraordinarily, than you may call your mother “Mutti”. Ms. Merkel has once told her audiences that multi-kulti is bogus. Ms.Merkel is behaving like a dictator in my opinion, she has nobody asked in Europe, let alone the Germans, whether they want to cater for the refugees and maltreated people of the world. She and the President invited them to come to Germany. And her “wir schaffen das” is an arrogant statement without any substance. A classic is the “Energiewende” in Germany. Nobody was asked in Europe wether it is intelligent to abandon coal,natural gas, oil and nuclear energy and rely fully on wind and sun-ernegy. This policy was imposed on Germany and all the other Europeans. Sometimes I just wonder who the hell she thinks she is, that she tries to determine our future for us.
She has kids now – a few hundred thousand of them, mostly boys under 40. How does she do it? And the family resemblance – remarkable!
Guess ‘Mutti’ telling the Germans that multikulti is bogus and then unleashing the latest version of the Sultan’s invasion force on them is cut from the same cloth as Barry O. from Hawaii (or Chicago, or Indonesia, depends on how you look at it) telling us that ISIL (IS,ISIS, Al-Qaeda 2.0, Hamas 34.8, PLO 457.987, whatever) is being hit harder than ever and under control.
WTF is a cohesive immigration society? The professor is another fake who obviously gained his position by parrot-learning PC propaganda. It’s way easier than the old-fashioned method of thinking for yourself.