The following op-ed by Hans Heckel was written just before the German election, but the author’s take on the likely result turned out to be accurate.
Many thanks to JLH for translating this piece from Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung:
Rebirth of Parliament
Difference of opinion returns to the Bundestag — good for democracy
by Hans Heckel
September 20, 2017A great nervousness is rattling the final days before the election. We are approaching an historic date.
The 2017 Bundestag election will leave deeper marks on the history of the Federal Republic than any election since 1990, when Germans decided on the direction of their only recently united country.
The SPD may be facing its worst defeat since the end of the War. The CDU will win, but is reduced as a party to the dolorous task of carrying its leader’s train, which presages an uncertain future for it. According to polls, the AfD — nemesis of the establishment — can expect a result twice as good as that of the Greens when they first entered the Bundestag in 1983.[1]
The expectation that everything will remain the same is only superficial. Merkel will be chancellor again, with three possible coalition partners—SPD, FDP, and the Greens.
This bizarre juxtaposition of a serious unsettling of the party system on the one hand, and the governmental leadership’s predictable adjuration to “Keep on keeping on” on the other, is reflected in the mood of the people. Here, the poll-takers and opinion researchers recognize a calm and contentment in the foreground, behind which bubbles deep-seated insecurity, even fear — and great rage. This double disjointedness — both above and below — brings on an aggressive edginess that is palpable in the waning days of the campaign. Standing opposite those who shout “Merkel must go!” are the politicians and media who know no moderation when dealing with the AfD.
Several times, it looked as though people might be pulling themselves together. But Sigmar Gabriel’s outburst, that the AfD entering the Bundestag was the same as if the Nazis were entering, was only the visible tip of the coarsening of the discourse.
So what remains of the election of 2017 is clear. It will go into the history books as one of the roughest phases in the history of democracy in the Federal Republic, but also a time of paralyzing incrustation.
The optimistic view is that the entry of the AfD into parliament will mean more than just an answer to the long march to the left. It will strengthen the role of the Bundestag as the institution that does the business of every democratic parliament: controlling the government and giving the opposition a voice. In existential questions such as asylum, immigration, border controls or Euro politics, a large part — if not the majority — of the people have often had no representation in the Bundestag. Members of the “Grand Coalition” were in agreement on such things across party lines. This may well change with the entry of the “blues.”
As citizens we greet this development as the rebirth of our parliament.
Note:
| 1. | A 5% minimum of the total vote is required to enter the Bundestag. The Greens got 5.6% in 1983. | |
| Photo(not shown): The “Grand Coalition” gets some competition |
“Militant normality is growing as normals awaken to the indisputable truth of our enemy’s implacable hatred for us and everything we hold dear – like America. The sight of moron sportsball players disrespecting normals warms libs’ frigid little hearts – and make no mistake, that diss is aimed straight at us, not at some musical number. All these cultural aggressions are aimed at us, from demanding you obey their pronoun proclamations to requiring your daughter share a toilet with a dude in a skirt. This is how they seek to break us.”
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/09/25/conservative-inc-is-being-replaced-by-us-militant-normals-n2385943
It is fitting that you post an excerpt from Schlicter’s column because it is the same war in both countries: a venom filled war of the “elect” on the normals. I say let the debate begin in Germany, let it finally begin. Though I have no illusions that the “incrusted” power, to use the author’s term, will do anything but fire every imaginable and unimaginable salvo at AfD in an attempt to annihilate it in the minds of normal Germans. No, by debate I mean that AfD return fire. No quarter asked, no quarter given. That is all.
Why should anyone, most of all the President, cave in to morons supporting a terrorist organization that celebrates killing police and advocates further violence against whites?
If these sportsball players had any true convictions, they would quit their multimillion dollar contracts and leave the US ‘plantation’ for Africa.
Instead they stay on the plantation, because they would rather get rich while the race pimps guilt liberal white simps into rolling over and playing dead.
Kill whitey, indeed.
Who will replace Merkel? That should be the question on every German’s lips. Mutte’s influence has been waning ever since she allowed her arrogance to dictate that Germany be an open country to anyone willing to get there and from anywhere in the world.
What has befallen Germany is on her head, and those who supported her decisions will be having second thoughts in their support for her after suffering the biggest loss of confidence in their party by the voter since 1949.
There are worse fates than death, especially for the power hungry psychopath.
Germany has no history of intellects in favor of Liberty or Freedom. Britain does. America does. France does. Austria does. But, Germany?
Read the late Ralf Dahrendorf’s “Society and Democracy in Germany” published in 1967. I read it in college back in the 70’s. Dahrendorf later became the head of the London School of Economics.
In this, his seminal work on why Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists rose to power, he explains the lack of freedom and liberty of the German people. It simply is not in their nature or culture. That is why it can so easily be run over by Kaisers, Nazis. Communists, Bureaucrat, Muslime – you name it. The Kaiser and the WWI Germans were allied with Islam. Hitler and the National Socialists hated Christianity and loved Islam for his people.
Germany I fear is toast.
I hope I am wrong.
Tatiana Festerling, and I admire her a great,great deal, calls Merkel a Hausfrau. I actually think she’s a second rate Putzfrau.
Martin Luther ring any bells?
And Friedreich Schiller–outside of Wilhelm Tell which inspired Rossini, much of his drama and poetry cried out for or celebrated liberty; Heinrich Heine, whose untrammeled wit eventuall7 caused him to live in exile; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who risked his livelihood to counter the power of religious discrimination; Thomas Mann and others who fled Germany and lived and wrote in exile; Wolf Biermann, who mocked the East German government until they let him move to the West, where he did (and may still be doing) the same thing to the Bundesrepublik.
I partly object John Galts view.
Even the medieval kings from about 900 AD were elected, of course not by ” the people” ( it would be utterly unhistoric to presume this) but by the leading aristocracy and clerics. Furtheron, the emerging cities made their own law and coin to an increasing extent and were run by the ” citizens” who were taxpayers, something conservatives dream of today.
Frederic the Great of Prussia is said to have lost a lawsuit against a simple miller over a piece of land. And many rulers in the german states of the 19 th century welcomed back jews to the country and granted them privileges like in the middle ages. Some of the monarchs were ” progressive” – to use a term from our period. Think of the not at all so loony LudwigII of Bavaria who sponsored an avant- garde composer and rebellious activist by the name of Wagner.
The often quoted obidience to authority of the the Germans partly has its roots in the fact that there were ” good rulers” with human views about mankind.
Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” (“An die Freude”), set by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony, was originally to freedom (“Freiheit”), but in the wake of the French Revolution, the censors wouldn’t allow it. Bernstein performed it with the original words in Berlin in December 1989, following the dismantling of the Wall, with an orchestra from the East and West.
Thanks for proving my point – a few who don’t like to be slaves so they leave and make no lasting impression on the people who remain.
So the AfD gets to 13% of the vote and the the rest of Germany in massive protests sees the second coming of the NSDAP.
I rest my case
The generalizing of an entire population to suit one’s observations, does not prove any point at all.
There are many examples for why ‘your case’ is not valid and many of those examples that cause ‘your case’ to be invalid appear quite regularly on this site.
One needs to look at the bigger picture of what is now occurring in Germany and indeed, the rest of Europe, and especially France, before forming solid opinions on which to rest one’s case.
Yes, and I must point out that the German legislature has the only viable “Islamophobic” opposition of any major Western country. The USA doesn’t have any such opposition — not even Louis Gohmert dares to say anti-Islamic things such as those Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland have said. Canada doesn’t have any. The UK doesn’t have any. France doesn’t have any. Australia has Pauline Hanson, not much else.
Germany is actually better off than the rest of the West now (with the possible exception of the Netherlands) in having a true Counterjihad opposition in the Bundestag. It’s a stunning, major change. Few people have noticed the magnitude of what just occurred.
German art and philosophy are functions of freedom of thought, aren’t they?
“Austria does”
You know that Austraia was part (and head) of Germany until 1866? And that the Austrian parliament sought union with Germany in 1918?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_German-Austria#Failed_union_with_Germany
“he explains the lack of freedom and liberty of the German people. It simply is not in their nature”
Such [material I deprecate] simply is a relict of allied war propaganda.
AfD is often called a ‘Populist’ Party. Isn’t that nice! I wonder if the people who use this term as a pejorative realise that according to the Oxford Dictionary, ‘Populist’ means ‘Democratic’:
‘a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people.’
So, if they are against Populism, they must be in favour of Dictatorship. Now we know.!
Baron, Is that No-Pants Lanz hanging out the window in the background of the photo?
I have no idea what you’re talking about!
The photo is from last year, but I can’t remember anything else about it.