QN32 ENG A triple slap for Merz

Happy to be back online. Oh, no, but not back on the internet again. That sounds very unpoint. And I just returned the blissful ignorance. So first welcome back to Quirrocracy now. Today we have a huge array of topics, three middle-eutsch state elections in Germany. And one American who is asking questions about it. That's me. I'm the American. Yeah, and as we promised beforehand, or like in the past now, the idea is that we are talking about what the fuck has been going on in this godforsaken country. And yeah, there have been elections. And there have been, how did you take the parliamentary, like the budgeting thing in Israel? Ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja. I would discuss it in the end. Or maybe let's discuss it with Saxony-Anhalt election. Sweet. Was an reaction to that. So, we had three elections. It is rather small states, right? It was one state, two million people, one, one and a half million. And the biggest one in Berlin itself, almost four million people. So it's not the biggest states in the world. And I listened to, expanded to Americans compared Saxony-Anhalt to Idaho. It is rather fringe German states, even for German comparisons, where we have less people in general. If Saxony-Anhalt is already fringe, what the fuck is in Mecklenburg warpum on? What is the smaller part of Idaho? You're asking me the wrong question right now. Is it maybe Washington state? Washington state is extremely liberal, so I don't know what you're talking. No, there is backwoods that are with a lot of Nazis there. Ah, yeah, I keep on forgetting that the white nationalists tried to take over that place. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, Matz is still in power, even though he was, I think we're gonna call this episode maybe a triple slap for Friedrich Martz. He's still alive. He's still there though. Don't count on it when this episode comes out. He might be gone every day, but he's still there. And it's the only reason he's still there is that nobody wants his job, because the coalition is so fucked up that everybody knows if I'm in this position, I would be gone in two weeks to know what's the ball. Yeah, I mean, it's also kind of funny. So, just to establish a bit of a timeline here. The election in Saxony-Anhalt was in the beginning, like on the 6th of September. Berlin and McDonough-Boch-Faub-Homann were on the 20th, so about two weeks later. So we had a two-week hiatus between the elections, which was fun. And Merz was already kind of hedging his bets on the 20th. At 6 o'clock, you get the estimates, and he went in front of the cameras and was like, yes, it's grim. Effectively, everybody ... It's a disaster, he said. It's a disaster, and everybody that I've talked to is like, yeah, he kind of did this in order to just one up or be the first to talk about it and be like, yes, it's fucked. He wanted to get ahead of the wave. He wanted to say, it's a disaster before there were even results. Just to inform everybody I'm going to stay. Don't bring up any talks about me not staying. And it was mostly ... This is what everybody said. It was mostly communication to the leadership of the CDU. That they are not supposed to say, oh, I would rather like this one. Oh, I would rather like that one. Because he talked to everyone and nobody wanted to do it. So he has to stay and they should rather shut up because it would make it worse for them. Yep. So he's in a really weak place. I mean, as much as I would like to dance on the grave of his career. Yeah, let's talk first about Saxony Anhardt, because this was the first election. And this was, let's say, the most grim one of those. The AfD almost won. They almost got an outright majority. They got almost 44%. We have a proportional system of voting. This means nobody ever gets absolute majorities. Most of the times there are some examples in history where it happens, but it's very unlikely. And almost 44 is a huge, huge, huge thing that didn't happen for a while. I have the detailed accounts here or like the detailed results. The AfD got 43.8%, so effectively 44%. The CDU, so the Conservative Party got 17.2%. This is also way lower than they expected. In the first pollings, they were still around 20. And they dropped even further down. So it was still worse than what they expected. And 20% would have been bad for them, too, because they were the leadership of this state before. On third place, we have the SPD with 9.3%, so the Social Democrats. This is very surprising. In the beginning, everybody thought they were going to drop out of the parliament. They were really low. And the Green Party is similar. 8.9%. So basically the same. And the Link is 8.6%. So the left party is lower than Greens and Social Democrats. This is surprising because in Sachsen-E-Anhalt, they were traditionally strong. And the explanation for this is mostly that there was a huge campaign by a NGO called Tactical Voting and another one called Compact, that we're talking about we need to keep the Social Democrats and the Greens in the parliament to prevent an absolute majority of the AfD. So many of the left party and some of the CDU voters went to the Greens and the Social Democrats and kept them in power. And this is why they had momentum in this elections. And not necessarily because people were convinced with their positions or something like that. It was mostly to keep them in power against the AfD. Could you explain that a little bit more? Because as a US citizen, there's this whole attitude of oh, vote blue no matter who. And here it is, sort of like no, you have to vote for all the colors so they can stay in the crayon box. But there is this cutoff, isn't there? Just for the record, blue is the color of the AfD in Germany. So if you say vote blue no matter what, it doesn't apply to Germany. Yeah, it's a turn around here. But the issue is we have a proportional voting system. That means the person you are voting for gets into the parliament, even though they might be weak. But there is also the 5% threshold that was introduced in the 60s to make the German system more like the American. And to get rid of the smallest parties. And this 5% threshold motivates a lot of tactical voting and like strategic thinking because it makes a huge difference if 5% are completely cut out or if they go into the parliament. Because if they don't go to the parliament, the other ones are getting stronger. Like you can have an absolute majority with only 45% sometimes. Because 10% or so are under the 5% threshold. And then the majority is getting bigger for the other ones. So it is a threshold manipulates kind of the result of the rest of it. So there is an incentive to vote for parties that are small to strengthen them against the 5% threshold. And this is what the left party was losing votes on in this case. And I think it is, especially in the case of Saxony-Anhalt, it's a really relevant case. Because in the end the party that is calling the shot has 5.3% which is Bündnis-Sahra-Wagen-Knecht oder Bündnis-Stabilität und Wissenschaft. They are in the process of renaming because they are losing Sahra-Wagen-Knecht. Where are they on the political spectrum? We explained it already in another podcast, but we're going to do it again. They are a bit weird. Some people describe it when they want to explain it to the international audience. They say they are economically left-wing and culturally conservative or reactionary. But I think it's a wrong description because they are also economically rather right-wing. They were part of the left party for a while and their head, Sahra-Wagen-Knecht, is a charismatic leader of philosophy, academic that was in the, grew up in the German Democratic Republic, but was, had to leave, but then joined in the end the socialist unity party. Arabic Nationalism, Gaddafi, the Ba'f Party in Syria, Assadists, people with some sympathies for China, people with some sympathy for Russia, but also some split-offs of the FTP, the libertarian party. They all go there. So it's a weird fringe mixture of different ideologies that all have a kind of a kink on the Soviet past. Just for the record, in Thuringia, they used to be in the ruling government and they completely destroyed themselves because of internal factionalism effectively. And they are very much the sort of like, no, you're the spy, no, you're the spy, you're the operative. They have that and yeah. Sahra-Wagen-Knecht tried to make a huge campaign for the Saxony-Anhalt-Election because this was her last shot on gaining any importance. So she wanted to make it very clear that she is willing to cooperate with the AFD and nobody else is. So that maybe some AFD people vote for her tactically to push the AFD into government. And also that maybe some CDU people switch to her position. And by doing this, she destroyed this coalition that she had already in Thuringia because these were people that were really harshly against the AFD. And now she wants to empower AFD maybe, but she also wants to get a lot out of that. And AFD is not really interested, to be honest. They don't want to work with them. They called like the leadership of them. They made fun that one of them is called Mohammed Ali and the other one is a half an Italian and they made racist jokes about it. So they are really not so much interested in this cooperation. And they said like it's a zombie party. They are going to dissolve anyways. So it's rather unlikely that this is a stable government forming there. I mean, we'll be discussing or I might be, we might be mentioning a couple more of their slogans once we get to Berlin because they are just so unhinged. Just a couple of things that I wanted to add in. Sarah Wagenknecht ist ein artend Transfob und wirklich anti-trans and really anti-queer. She's genuinely the sort of anti-vogue leftist, like these young leftists who like, she calls them lifestyle leftists. And you can also see this in her campaign. Because one of the campaigns stands that they had, which I learned about and I was like just wow. They got a fuel truck where they put her face on the back and were like we're going to lower the fuel prices. And that was effectively their campaign car. Yeah, yeah. The idea so is that they want to make peace with Russia and they will lower the prices. But how is Saxony Anhard going to make peace with Russia? It's completely absurd. Finally, we have discussions about secession again. But it catches a vibe because many people in East Germany are sick of the war and many of them lived in the German Democratic Republic and were not so much against it. They have favorable views of Russia. Sometimes they had some Russian in school. They went to some exchange to Russia. Sometimes they had family there, their friends there and so on. So it's a huge pain for them that we are in this war with Russia right now and they wish for a different situation. And she's just exploiting these kind of emotions with this kind of campaigning. Yeah. As you said, very populist. There's also something like they came out of the, or like the first thing they said were like, we're going to abstain in the third round of votes. So the thing is, if you don't like by the way. Super complicated again. Yeah. I'm trying to keep this short for the process that walks out there. The parliament does three rounds of voting at least and I'm oversimplifying this. And if you don't manage to get a full majority in the first two ones. For the Mr. President who is the leadership of the state. Yeah. And if in the third round of voting the party with the most votes regardless, it doesn't matter if you have a majority or not. A simple majority. A simple majority will win. And that would mean that the AFD gets in. No, no, no it doesn't. This was the campaign BSV did. Really? But now in the end it's not enough. Like there are so many small parties now in this parliament that it's undecided. All the other ones counted together have one vote more than the AFD. And so it's unclear what happens. It's just unclear what happens. It's completely random. It's kind of gridlock at this stage. It is absolute gridlock. But the only way out of the gridlock is some CDU people voting with AFD or some BSV people voting with AFD. This is the only way because otherwise every single other party would have to cooperate. And it's absurd. You cannot get left party, green party, social democrats, the tanky party and the CDU in one coalition. This is impossible. Just for the record, the CDU has very clearly said, and I think they are more likely to hold that one than the one about what they said regarding the AFD, that they will never work with the left. Die Linke. Ja, mit die Linke. They were not vote with the left party so there is no possibility. And people in Saxony Anathlöse are strictly against that. They want to go with the AFD, some of them. There were speculations that up to 12 of their candidates for parliament would be willing to succeed and go to the AFD. But now most of them didn't make it to the parliament because the CDU was so weak. Now, like, because CDU is so weak now, they don't even have enough people to succeed them to empower the AFD. When you lose so hard that you can't even desert your party anymore. Yeah, and also there is high pressure obviously. But now there is talk about, we will talk about Berlin, that they want to empower the AFD as a revenge for Berlin. This is a talk that is going on and I think this could happen. Oh, yeah. So we've already spent a fair bit of time on Saxony Anathlöse, but that's kind of the litmus test here as well. And after the election, one or two days after, there was the debate in the Bundestag about the budget. Ja, the federal budget. And this budget debate was mostly a reaction to the Saxony Anathlöse election in the end. Alice Weidel, the leader of the AFD, had the first speech as the opposition, the leader of the opposition. Just for the record, the token lesbian that has the party that is married to a POC person. And lives in Switzerland. And has adopted several children. Yes. By the way, my hometown is her election district because it's the one closest to Switzerland. Ja, ja. Ja, ja. Sie ist ein Libertarian. Sie war mit einer Professor, die sehr gelegalisiert hat, Organ Trade. Wie sagen Sie? So, dass Sie Ihre Kitten und Sonne verkaufen können. Ja, Organ Trade. Es war so eine große Sache. Und dann hat sie das Gute. Und was auch. Du hast eine dedicated Episode für sie zu einer Stelle. Somit. Sie hat eine große Spiege gemacht und hat fritrikmerz verabschiedet. Sie hat gesagt, dass sie, wie die Koalition, ausgewaltigt ist, dass sie sich auf die Economy verabschieden, dass alles schlecht ist. Vollstopp. Dann war Fritrik Merz das, und er war sehr stolz auf die AfD. Er hat gesagt, dass sie nicht die ultra-regionäre Führung gewinnen. Er hat gesagt, dass sie Pläne von Rheemigration, wie die Departementpläne, dass diese Pläne die ethnische Zäuberung konstituten. Ethnic Cleansing. Und dass sie die Basis der deutschen Demokratie und der konstituzionalfaktivität der breitlich-demokratischen Grundordnung, wie es in Deutschland sagt. Ah, okay. So in this situation is Alice Vito more similar to Trump and AfD to the MAGA movement and the city who is more like the Democrats or the old school Republicans, would you say? I think you could think like this blue-dog Democrats together with like the more like let's say the blue-dog Democrats together with like the lower the tax Republicans and the Christian nationalist Republicans. I think this is kind of the CDO, this kind of combination. I mean the Christian nationalist in the US also. I try. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is the difference. I think we have these Christians in Germany and they are in the CDO. And they are therefore sometimes a bit less radical than the ones in the US, but sometimes they are exactly that radical and they are just in the other party. And this is, this is, there's just divide in the German right. Yeah, there's it's effectively what I would say that the CDU and the AfD would form what like the Republican Party and MAGA are. Like they are one party in the United States here. They are two parties. And there is the sort of like, I mean, we'll get to that in Macdon Book, Qualcomm, in a moment, but it's this thing where it's like, if you look at it, the CDU has been spouting this kind of shit before Merkel came into power, like about 25 years ago, they were insanely racist. The Merkel years were kind of an exception where they kind of toned it down a bit. And they became a bit more mainstream. But they are now returning, like if you now hear like, oh, what happened to the CDU? So with them being like getting like this, because like we are not used to this from Merkel. No, they were always like this. They always had this. But on the other hand, you have to say this very neoliberal perspective, that is hegemonic right now in the CDU was never that strong. That is true. Like they were always more on the Christian social kind of thing, where they are very socially conservative and trying to enforce like this, all kind of family stuff. But they were less on this libertarianism. And a lot of the, and like we can see this a lot in the reforms that they are planning. It's a lot about the mental health, like the welfare sector and like healthcare and pension funds and stuff like this. Which are insane plans. And for example, like the air coalition partner being the social democrats. It's difficult for a fair amount of the social democrats who are actually in the party and not in the leadership to be like, yeah, I'm fine with what's going on. Yeah, because obviously social democrats are not libertarians to, even though they pivoted to be kind of this neoliberals that we have seen with Tony Blair and so on. Yeah, I was about to say, if you want to have a look around internationally, the social democrats in Germany would be more most likely to be compared to labor in Britain at the moment. Not any Burnham is, I would say any Burnham is more left wing than they are. Yeah, yeah. More like the Kirstar, my shot. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm talking about the one, the party in power as it is. No, any Burnham is the power. Really? Yeah, any Burnham is the power. I really have to catch up on my UK politics. Gonna have something on this following this episode. Yeah, we're gonna do an episode about UK. And the Netherlands. Nice. Okay, but let's go on with Germany. Mecklenburg, Vorbomen. So if you ever heard about Fusion Festival, oh, by the way, if you've ever heard about Hall Festival, Hall is in Sachsen-Anhalt. I've checked the district of the elections. There are about 40% who voted for the AFD in there. Shit. Yeah, so you have Hall in Sachsen-Anhalt and you have Fusion Festival, which I presume fair amount of the international audience might know. I don't know. Okay, okay. If you are into techno, you might know it. Yeah, that one is in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. And so what the fuck has been going on in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern? Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a rather rural state on the Baltic Sea. It has some bigger cities though. And AFD was polling strong. It's an East German rural state. So they are naturally strong. But the Social Democrats had her leader, Manuel La Schwesig, who became kind of iconic in the election campaign. They hired a kind of famous Chenzi media person to do a good campaign for her. And she was always wearing her red dresses. And she always made edgy statements about how the AFD candidates are. One was robbing a bank in the past and stuff like that. They were actually funny. And she just said, she coined the slogan, she is the Frau gegen Blau, the woman against the blues. So the AFD. And they kind of made it to... And she also opposed Friedrich Merz and the government heavily against the pension reforms. And also these reforms in general. And in general, she's also, let's say a little bit more close to Russia. She was the one who was responsible