The Duran Podcast
Scholz escapes Brandenberg disaster, Greens crushed
All right, I am here with Alexander Mercuris. We are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and today Alexander, we're going to talk about the elections in Germany, in Brandenburg. So my first question to you is, what are your thoughts about the elections? Well, I think the first thing to say is that the IF did it very well and Saav Aganek's party again have done extremely well. It's a new party and it's surged and it's managed to come third. And if you actually look at the overall result, basically the SPD, oh that's Sholter's party, they eked out a win but they did so once more by basically consolidating the entire establishment vote because the IF did almost got the same amount as they did. So really it is another defeat for the German establishment. Now can I just say a few things about Brandenburg? Because this is the most interesting area of Germany. It's basically the territory around Berlin. It is the core of the Old Kingdom of Prussia. The king of Prussia, people that we know who eventually united Germany, originally they were the Magraffs, the Markwises of Brandenburg. That was their original core territory. Now, so it's very historic. It's a place of castles and estates and small towns. It's very much, as I said, the area of, it's very Prussian. It is also historically been politically very, very much on the left. It's an oddity about German politics but going way back to the before the First World War, this was an area which consistently voted left and it was historically a social democratic stronghold. It was part of the former East Germany when Vili Brandt did Ospolitic in the 1960s and established relations between western East Germany. He came to East Germany. He was enormously well received in Brandenburg as I said, very much an SBD area. It's the place where you would expect the SBD and parties of the left to do really well. And yet we see that the IFD has broken through. It's almost one as much as many votes as the SBD did, but entirely predictably, so I've argued next party has come from nowhere and is now third and they are in a pole position. 13%. 13% pole position now to decide who actually rules in Brandenburg. So before we get into the actual election, I've got a history question to ask you. I'm interested in it and I think maybe our viewers will be interested. Prussia. Can you explain Prussia? Right. A bit. So Prussia. Just briefly. Right. Prussia is this area that was, this kingdom that was established in northeast Germany, basically from the late 17th to the early 18th century. Economically, rather poor, sandy soil, tough farmers, strongly Protestant, and the area that was belonged or was controlled by the House of Hohenzollum, which was one of the leading Protestant families in Germany. Now, starting in the 17th century, late 17th century, it began to grow in power, but the real breakout point came in the early 18th century. When Prussia had a ruler, Wilhelm I, extraordinary man, very close friend of Peter the Great, they got on incredibly well at very similar personalities, very strong personalities, and they both carried out extensive reforms in their own countries, which paralleled each other. And Wilhelm is always referred to as the soldier king. He reorganized Prussia, made it very, very tightly run, ensured that it was completely free of corruption. He assumed a very modest lifestyle for himself, and he created in Prussia the best army in Europe. His son was Frederick the Great, who then went ahead and made Prussia this inherently poor country into a major European power by using the army that his father created and combining it with his own genius. And then after that, in the 19th century Prussia always very closely allied to Russia. I said the soldier king and Peter the Great, very close friends, the two families, the Romanovs in Russia and the Hohenzollens, often into marriage. So they were very close. They fought together against Napoleon. They maintained very close relations. The minister, president of Prussia in the 1850s and 1860s, was Bismarck. Bismarck intensely russifile. He spoke Russian. He was for a while ambassador in St. Petersburg, and he was able to use to leverage the alliance with Russia to unite Germany. Good. I've always been interested in Prussia. I don't know why I've always found it interesting in the connection of Prussia to Russia. And I think it carries over today and maybe it reflects a bit on the election results that we're seeing from East Germany. So we're talking about an area that is its tremendous military tradition. It's actually at the same time, rather left wing. It's historically russifile. So let's get into the election results. Is it a win for the SPDR for all of shots? Is it a win for I've dare and talk a bit about Sada Wageneg? I believe it's BSW. That's right. And also talk a bit about the Greens and the other partner in the coalition, which ended up with zero representation. And Alina 360. She got her party got clobbered anyway. Let's talk about the actual results and what they mean. Well, I'm going to start with the IFD. I think they've done incredibly well. Bear in mind that we're talking about a region which is historically a left-wing region. Oh, 30%. Absolutely. Absolutely. And as PTU was about 31-32 years. So, I mean, this is a breakthrough in this territory. I mean, this is something which is remarkable. Also, they did particularly well amongst young people apparently, which is again very, very remote. Number one, I got the number one for under 24-year exactly, which is again remarkable in this area. So, you see that the young people voting for anti-establishment parties voting for the IFD, a party that is characterized as far right, Brandenburg has never been good ground for the right. And yet, the IFD has done really well. SPD strong. The SPD strong hold. Left-wing strong hold. Before in the 1920s, an area where the KPD, the Communist Party in Germany, was quite strong as well. So, that gives you some idea of the success the IFD has done. Shultz personally has done well, because if he had lost in Brandenburg, there was real possibilities that he might cease to be Chancellor. And that would have opened up all sorts of interesting and rather worrying possibilities, because if he'd had to stand down as Chancellor, the buildup was the Morris Pistorius, who was his Defense Minister, who was an extreme hawk and very anti-Russian and a major fervent supporter of Ukraine that he would have taken over. So, Shultz has survived, I think, from the perspective of the Russians, if I can put it like this, it's better that they have Shultz than Pistorius, just to make that quick point. So, they will probably be, well, not unhappy with this result, but then they're not very interested, I think, in the internal mechanics of German politics. So, Shultz did well. SPD can breathe a sigh of relief that they have not imploded in their own stronghold. The only reason I think why they came out first is because they managed to persuade everybody, or the other sort of left or left of centre establishment parties, the Greens, the FBD, and all of those, that they were the party that needed to be supported to keep the IFD out. Now, that's why they brought together, in effect, the establishment vote in Brandenburg. The Greens, catastrophic results for them, are unsurprising. Again, if you know Brandenburg, as I said, a left-wing area, but a sort of tough working class left-wing area, a place where I think people are not going to be very impressed by the Greens. It's a rooster-file area. They won't like the belligerence of the Greens, either. More traditional left. More traditional left. Or the Greens are more won't work exactly. This isn't not the perfect territory for the Greens, but nonetheless, a disaster for them. I mean, they've seen themselves completely wiped out. And a breakthrough, again for the BSW, for Saavargic Connect's party, she is probably ultimately going to represent a major threat to the SBD in this area. And of course, what the SBD is now finding is that they can't govern Brandenburg without her. And that's going to be complicated, because these two parties fundamentally disagree on foreign policy at the present time, and on lots of other issues as well. Saavargic Connect, anti-woke, left. Much more skeptical. In fact, much more resistant to immigration altogether. It's going to be an uncomfortable alliance, and one where I think the BSW will have an interest in being a difficult coalition partner for the SBD. So it's unlikely that we're going to have a very stable SBD administration in Brandenburg going forward. The CDU, they got like 8%. Is that normal for them in this area? In this area, everything is not a good area for the CDU. But having said that, it's still a very bad result for them. I mean, they're the party that wants aspires to be the next government in Germany. And they're not doing well even at the time when the SBD is unpopular. But they're not doing well in an area like Brandenburg yourself. By the way, I said Brandenburg, historic territory for the left, Berlin, which is of course the capital, which is the big city in this area, is pretty left-wing also. And certainly in East Berlin, I imagine that the BSW will do pretty well as well. It's interesting that the BSW, as a new party, is doing so well. I mean, how long have they been in existence? Just a few months. No, they're not even not even in the year. Is this weird to see them getting this kind of traction? I mean, 13% is a lot. It is astonishing. Now, Sarvagetnecht himself is very well known in Germany. I mean, this is a point which people on the IFD are complaining about, that it's impossible, almost impossible, for people from the IFD, for example, in Germany to get onto the talk shows, to get the kind of visibility that politicians on the left do. Sarvagetnecht, however, is able to get onto the talk shows. She's very visible in Germany. She's been in German politics, involved in German politics for a long time. She was a major figure in Delinka, the left-wing party that existed in eastern Germany based on the former East German Communist Party, which was very strong in places like this. But against that, I mean, the BSW has no organisation to speak of. I mean, it's rapidly trying to create one, but it doesn't have the kinds of routes, the organisational routes that say Delinka used to have. It's understandable. So, given the fact that they're organisationally weak, the fact that they're able to grow so fast is astonishing. And it tells you that the original calculation that they made, that Sarvagetnecht made, that the left in Germany needs to go back to its routes is working. They're winning over working-class left-wing votes in places like Brandenburg and other places as well. We saw that in Saxon in Thuringia. I think they're going to break through in western Germany as well before long. I think it's only a match of time. In places like Hamburg, for example, I can imagine the BSW doing really well in parts of the Rhineland areas too. So, final question, west Germany, which a lot of people are saying, okay, the recent votes that have been taking place, we're talking about East Germany, so obviously Scholz is, well, for Brandenburg, no, Brandenburg is a stronghold, but obviously, the establishment parties are not doing so well, say the CDU, CSU. And these are places where the IFD and BSW, Sarvagetnecht can flourish. They can put on a good showing. In west Germany, do you think you're going to see different results or trends, or are we looking at this trend carrying over to parts of western Vietnam? But for the moment, it's going to be more difficult for the IFD and the BFW to break through in parts of west Germany. Berlin might be different, by the way. I mean, west Berlin, again, I can see them doing actually quite well there. But in parts of west Germany, it may take a little longer. Now, again, it needs to be explained why we've discussed this in the previous programme. It's not because dissatisfaction with the establishment isn't very strong in west Germany, too. It's probably as strong in many places as it is in the former East Germany. Germans East and West share many of the same concerns, and this economic gulf that people talk about has gradually eroded away. So that's not the factor that plays into this. The problem that the IFD especially has is that when the two Germanies unified, the establishment that took over East Germany was the Old West German establishment. So the East Germans, people, voters in East Germany, don't have the same tribal connection to these parties, the CDU, to some extent the SBD, that they have in west Germany, where in west Germany they are seen as the home parties, the parties that people's parents and grandparents voted for. So East German voters are more willing to vote against parties that haven't got deep-rooted allegiances. But in west Germany, dissatisfaction is very strong. It is growing all the time. I think the SBD is in serious trouble in many places in west Germany now. I think the BSW will probably start to eat into their votes very quickly. I think, you know, we perhaps give it a year, and you could start to see them doing pretty well, as I said, in places like Hamburg and places like this. With the CDU, because they are the main opposition party at the moment, and because they're strong in some of the more Catholic areas in the south of Germany, they probably will be more difficult to overturn. But even there, I think, given a while, you start to see the IFD eating into their votes. And if the CDU forms the next government of Germany and continues with the same policies that the current government is conducting, which it probably will, by the way, then I can certainly see people starting to vote for the IFD in conservative areas of western Germany as well. It will just take a little longer, and it will require a little more time. All right, that is the video from Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, the Duran.locals.com. We are on Rumbeladisee, Bitchute, Telegram, RockFit, and Twitter X. And go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch. Alexander's got his Duran holo with the, that's the Union job right there. Yeah, and I've got my Duran with the Greek flag. 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