Comments on: Sandy Brown Baltic Shores

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:42:22 +0000

“A brute with strong penchant for US-style militarism and racism”

Evidence, please?

By: Oliver

Oliver — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:59:05 +0000

The party won 15 percent of the proportional-representation votes in a constituency on the Polish border

And its main supporters were young, badly educated men. In a word, the losers of globalisation, victims of the Polish plumber, shopkeeper, etc..

And this is an important point. These people really are hurt by open borders and foreigners. No amount of “public education” is going to change their minds, only jobs with a living wage would.

If you will, you can split the German parties along these lines. You have the two internationalist parties FDP and the Greens, the latter for the bleeding hart internationalists, who in last consequence accept the neo-liberal answer or advocate policies that would end with that solution, the muddle through center (CDU and SPD) and the nationalist parties NPD et al. and the Left (La Fontaine’s remarks about alien workers were no accident).

Essentially, the state of public finances, unemployment and demographics, are making muddling through an unviable option. As long as the large parties don’t answer the challenge (eg. by making tariffs again a significant source of public revenue), they will keep shrinking.

By: name

name — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:00:31 +0000

Sorry dude, but Pflüger _is_ a bad guy. A brute with strong penchant for US-style militarism and racism, he really stood no chance in a city like Berlin!

By: Tobias

Tobias — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:29:45 +0000

Nobody had heared from that party before.

That’s not entirely true, Oliver. I did ;). While they may be mostly concerned with the plight f the elderly, in 1994 they seriously called me (and two friends who were part of a almost hugely successful project “let’s found a protest party out of the grammar-school classroom” (see Spiegel Super-Election-year Special 1994, p.88)) to run for the Bundestag as their constituency candidate when I was merely 18…

By: Tobias

Tobias — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:29:16 +0000

Nobody had heared from that party before.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:46:43 +0000

With the state facing such difficulties, the fact that so few people are signing on for a program of “a plague on all you politicians’ houses” is a sign of a responsible electorate

You should look at the results of Berlin. 7% far right isn’t that much. Berlin just avoided getting “Die Grauen” (Pensioners’ party) into parliament. Nobody had heared from that party before. Eliminating the opposition is taking its predictable toll.