The Duran Podcast
AfD & Sahra rise. Scholz & Greens defeated
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the German elections that took place yesterday, and the results are shocking, but predictable. I have been winning in Thuringia, coming in second, slightly behind the CDU, and the only reason that the I have been appears to have come in second place in Saxony is because the support was thrown to the CDU in order to prevent I have to have from winning, not because the CDU had had the support to come in first place, it was more of a preventive measure to stop I have to have from winning in Saxony as well, but a historic day in Germany, what are your thoughts? Absolutely, a historic day. I mean, we are talking about two regions of Germany, I mean, they're not the most populous or the most economically developed regions in Germany, I mean, putting aside that there is German regions, but they are, I mean, if we're talking about Thuringia, Thuringia is seen by many people as a kind of cultural heartland of Germany, it contains many of the most beautiful and scenic areas of Germany, it also contains places that, you know, intellectual powerhouses of Germany, like Weimar and Eiffelts, places of this kind, and of course Saxony as a major region within the former East Germany, major economic centre, the two great cities of Leipzig and Dresden are located in Saxony. So what we've seen in these two German states is the collapse of the established parties, the SBD Liberals, the Greens, they've done shockingly badly, the Greens and the Liberals will no longer be represented, apparently, in the parliaments of either of these two states, the SBD's just clinging on, it's just got minimal representation in Saxony and it's seen it fall even further in Thuringia. At an immediate political level, it's clear that I think Chancellor Scholz's coalition government is known in a very advanced state of collapse, I mean, there is no return from this. The European elections a few months ago were registered, that disaster caps it, it shows that the IFDA obviously is on the march in eastern Germany. What is overlooked, people don't talk about it as much, is that the left is on the march in these regions in eastern Germany as well. And obviously, the galvanising figure has been Saravaganet, who's created this new party around herself, which is by the way an old-fashioned, if I can put it like this, social democratic party of a kind that we used to see very commonly in Europe, the old German SBD, when it was led by people like Vili Brant and Helmut Schmidt and others and going back in history even further, its policy positions were not so different from those that Saravaganet now has. Anyway, she got 16% of the vote in Thuringia, about the same, about 11% in Saxony. If you combine Saravaganet's 16% with I believe it was the 11% or so that the old left party, the former communist party, got in Thuringia and remember she's the party that she's formed is a break away from that old party. Well, the combined left got almost as many votes as the IFDA did in Thuringia. In fact, which people are overlooking, but of course it's a left which is not in any conceivable sense the sort of neoliberal globalist left that we become used to. This is a much more hard-line, working-class-oriented, socialistic left of the old type of a kind that we used to see in Europe. They've done very well in Thuringia. They've done a little less well in Saxony, but that's probably because in Saxony you have these two cities, Leipzig and Dresden, and I'm guessing these are probably more connected with the global world, so you're going to get more liberal-minded people there, and that's probably having some effect. But even there, the left is now well on the move, and I think repudiation, obviously, of Chancellor Schultz's bankrupt coalition, but also no real enthusiasm for the mainstream alternative in classical politics, electoral politics, when a coalition made up of left-wing parties, which is what the Schultz coalition is supposed to be, is doing badly, and it's perceived as being doing badly, there is a swing to the centre-right, to the CDU, but in Germany that isn't happening. So they failed in Thuringia, they clinging on by their nails in Saxony, as you absolutely rightly say, they only won in Saxony because the other mainstream parties basically arranged for their voters to go and vote for the CDU. What we're seeing is, in other words, in East Germany, a repudiation across East German society, of the German political establishment, and by the way, we've got votes in other East Germans, at Lander, in Berlin, in Brandenburg, I think the results would be the same. But, and this is where I think so much analysis of these results is wrong. The same disaffection and malaise exists in the form of West Germany as well. We have a Germany whose economy is going from bad to worse. We did a recent programme about this, about how the pace of de-industrialization in Germany is accelerating. The country is constantly slipping. It's probably only a statistical quirks. It's just sort of hovering on the brink of a recession, except probably there is, in fact, already a recession. Its growth rates, even before the crisis that we're just seeing now, the one that started in 2022, has been low. There is, I think, a widespread feeling across German society that the political system has failed, that it is breaking down. The problems that Germany has on not being addressed, and that the political class has no understanding of it, of this, and no clear idea of what to do. It's just that in East Germany, which doesn't have the sense of ownership of the political system, the system that they still have in West Germany, the political system, the political mainstream in Germany, is ultimately the old West German political mainstream. The East Germans don't feel the same connection to it as the West Germans do. It's that in East Germany, people are prepared to look at alternatives. Whereas in West Germany, they are slower to do so. But eventually, I predict they will do so in West Germany as well, because the underlying story in Germany, we've discussed it in program after program, going all the way back to the start of our channel, is that we have an ossified political system. We've had mercilism that was created, which caused total stagnation in the German political system. This goes back, obviously, right through Merkel's time, but further back still, through decades, we've had a system where the structural immobilism that exists in Germany was concealed for a long time, because Germany was able to capitalize on the captive markets that it had within the EU, and it was also able to capitalize on imports of cheap energy from Russia, which has now been stopped. Now, the capital, the captured markets within the EU are exhausted. The energy flows, the cheap energy flows from Russia have stopped, and the immobilism, the stagnation of the system, which is ultimately a product of the stagnation of the political system in Germany, is now becoming ever more evident. Yeah, Merkel has opened up the way for mediocre politicians, like all the Schultz to become Chancellor. That was Merkel's doing. And we talked about the industrialization. We were the first channel to bring up the word. You coined that phrase, that word, deindustrialization. Two, three years ago, the minute Germany started to sanction Russia and cut off the Russian energy supplies on the Duran, we talked about deindustrialization. A lot of people thought we were crazy. It's never going to happen. No way. Germany is an economic powerhouse. The Russian economy is going to sink. Nope, that's not what happened. What we are seeing now is deindustrialization of Germany in full effect. And Sarah Wagonect, her party, is the far right. Alexander's not the traditional left. The way the German political class rationalizes everything that's happened to them during this election. And everything that is happening to them over the past couple of years, the deindustrialization of Germany, the rise of these political parties, the idea of the inside wagon act is that they say this is just the far right. So what we need to do is we need to clamp down on the far right. Even all of Schultz said that they need to take action against after they need to do something about after they don't need to solve the sanctions against Russia. They don't need to wind down the Ukraine war. They don't need to tell Zelensky to negotiate. They don't need to bring Russian energy back somehow. Figure out a way of rep russian with Russia. If it's even possible, I doubt it's possible to figure out a way to bring the Russian gas back to Germany. Nope, it's a far right problem. That's how they're going about this. You're absolutely right. I mean, by the way, this narrative about Sarah Wagonect being the far right has spread to Britain as well. I was reading in the Guardian, an article which referred to her as being on the far right. I mean, it is beyond ridiculous. I mean, it is so stupid. Anyway, let's not waste time debunking that particular piece of absurdity. What you see is a stagnant political class which has presided over immobileism in Germany for a very long time, which is completely empty of ideas. It has no ideas and no personalities to speak of. What it is doing is that it is preparing to use repression. Still, those voices in Germany, which are trying to find alternative solutions, actual solutions to some real thinking about how to address Germany's problems, its deep-seated problems. You have people like the IFD who want a return to a more market-based system because that's what the IFD does. It's a more free-market right-wing system, but they also have perspectives about German foreign policy and how migration policy should be administered and all kinds of things are described. It's not just a one-size-fits-all problem. I mean, the whole far-right label is a ridiculous one. Again, just to say, much that the IFD is coming up with, most of what the IFD is coming out with, 90%, 99% of what the IFD is coming up with, and Ludwig Ehart, the titan figures of the CDU, who basically set up the CDU in the '50s and who presided over Germany's economic miracle of that period, they would have no problem with it. They weren't massively keen on migration in that kind, in the way that it's been conducted in recent years. They had their own, obviously, Atlantis's positions, but they were deeply sovereignty in their own way. Anyway, I'm not going to probe into this. So, the IFD has ideas about Germany, how to progress Germany, which might work. Saav Ageneff has some ideas about Germany, which also draw on German traditions, political and economic and cultural traditions. Germany was the place where social democracy began. The S. Bede was first created in Germany. In the 19th century, it was they who started systems like Social Security and things of this kind in a big way. Also, she wants, as you would expect, left-wing parties to do, more economic interventionism in the economy, trying to get the economy moving again by adopting more planning mechanisms and things of that kind, things which the Germans also once did. It's different, obviously, from what the IFD is proposing, but it has their ideas. I'm not saying these ideas are necessarily the right ones or the ideas that would work, but they are thinking. Now, what the German leadership, the political class wants to do is they want to close all those discussions down. They want to bring down the shutters. They want to perpetuate stagnation and immobilism in Germany, even as Germany, as a result, declines, because they have no ideas of their own, and they're using the Russia's scare and all the rest and the inspector of the far right and conjuring up the ghosts of the 1930s in order to do exactly that. To close down debate, to close down discussion in Germany, to keep themselves in power, to prolong mercilism, even as mercilism is destroying Germany and everything around it. Just a final thought, as Germany goes, so does the European Union. Absolutely. Can I just say something about this? Because again, once we said this, there's one of our very early programs. We made the point in it that, contrary to what many people say, Germany is not a beneficiary of the EU system in a different way, very different way from Greece and Spain and all of these other southern European countries. It has also been a victim of it, because what the EU system did was it made that immobilism in Germany possible. It fostered that culture of political stagnation and stagnation and economic thinking that we have seen in Germany. What we have also seen is that over the last 15 or so years, the EU centre has to, a great extent, slipped out of Berlin's control and how it controls Berlin, so that the Germans themselves are finding it very difficult to develop economic policies of their own. Because if they did so, they would come up against the same kind of opposition from the EU centre that everyone else is doing. The EU centre, we said many times, the EU centre does not like strong states or strong politicians leading those states. And Germany is no exception. That's something I think people have never understood. Now, with Merkel gone, because Merkel did understand the system very well, she had enormous skill in reconciling and papering over the contradictions. She was enormously clever at kicking the can down the road and keeping the project going, going, of course, always in the wrong direction. But with her gone, all the contradictions, all the problems in the system are starting to increase and you are absolutely right, despite the EU centre. Having slipped out of Berlin's control, if Germany goes down, so does the EU. Because without Germany, there is no EU. The whole project becomes unsustainable. We will end it there, the duran.locos.com. We are on Rumbolatus E. Bitch, her telegram rock fan and Twitter X and go to the Duran Shop. Pick up some merch like the shirts that we are wearing in this video. You will find a link in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]