Traditional parties have failed badly in economic and migration policies, and Russia does its best to exploit this. They can't win on a battlefield against united Europe, but if small Eastern European countries are left without support, then Russia has much better odds against them.
We see that in Ukraine. No other European country would send their soldiers to die in a battle fields to protect Ukrainians
transforming a cold war into an full war.
So that they can secure more and more fanatic followers who will vote for them no matter what. And so that they can remain in power for as long as possible.
To them, the "illegal immigration issue" is just a vehicle to gain power. Nothing more.
Because, from what I can see, their only and actual goal is to get in power. No matter the cost. Then abuse it to the benefit of them and their friends. And never ever give it up ever again.
If what you said made any sense whatsoever, then the parties currently in charge would have stopped it along time ago. Because if according to you that makes the far-right parties grow stronger, then why would anyone in their right mind not do anything about it?
Why wait for these parties to use this issue to fuel their growth?
That issue is just one of many that they use and abuse to gain popularity. They have also spread lies about vaccines. They promote antisemitism, xenophobia, hate against the LGBTI people, historical revisionism (e.g. they say nice things about the Nazis), etc. They are even fighting against the wind turbines (or, as Donald Trump calls them, the "wind mills"). You cannot satisfy their demands by "fixing" one issue. Because they will always find another. The more absurd one, the better, it seems. I think that the reason is that those absurd causes are supported by people who are easy to manipulate. They know it. And they abuse it.
> Why wait for these parties to use this issue to fuel their growth?
No one wants to wait. But at the same time, I have not yet seen a successful recipe on how to root out their populist practices and render them ineffective against the general population at large. Because, unfortunately, there is still a considerable number of people who are falling for it. And it seems to me that no politician or party so far has been able to figure out a reliable way to protect those who are most vulnerable from being manipulated this way.
However, as soon as he came to power, he broke the promise of fiscal discipline and cutting spending and the first thing he did was passed a bill to burrow more than half a trillion Euros under the votes of old parliament even changing the constitution.
Also because of the firewall they have imposed to AfD, for him the only coalition partner was SPD( which is more of a left leaning party) and they formed a government and since then it has been internal conflicts to pass the important legislations to get the country back on track.
All these has worked as a boost for the AfD because people realised that apart from AfD the only other main right conservative party in Germany is CDU/CSU (which is the party of the chancellor) and voting for them hasn’t resulted in the change they voted in last election and now, they don’t have any other choice than voting for AfD because voting for the same old parties expecting a different result would be the definition of insanity.
Here in the US, there's a dumber revival of the Red Scare. The scare mongering isn't as effective this go round because there's no existing abundance for the people. All people want is affordable housing, jobs that let you plan for the future, and healthcare that won't bankrupt you. But there's no solution to any of those problems that don't involve some class of investors losing money/power. So we're stuck with MAGA. Incoherent ideology for incoherent times. When I look at the AfD, I see the same helpless thrashing taking hold.
Right. I want to see the Democrats campaigning on those things. Midterm is near, they should be getting their We-Wont-Let-AI-Take-Your-Jobs campaign in motion.
> But there's no solution to any of those problems that don't involve some class of investors losing money/power. So we're stuck with MAGA.
You got MAGA because the Dems specifically went the diversity route, instead of at least pretending to address the concerns of the voters.
This time round they've been handed an opportunity on a golden platter: Go anti-AI, at least enough so that people aren't worried about losing their jobs to AI.
They will not see an opportunity like this for a long time, and if MAGA wins again, blame will lie squarely on Dems who decided that arguing about men in women's sport is a productive use of their voter goodwill.
- The Ukraine war will continue to be supported for the benefit of Blackrock and to tie up Russia for the middle east plans of the US.
- There will be a lot of noise about immigration. Some 1000 people will be deported for the headlines, but Weidel will obey the industry that uses immigration for union busting, driving down salaries and driving up rents.
- Social services will be cut for everyone, including AfD voters.
- Weidel will discover that she can use state TV and refrain from abolishing it.
- Military spending will increase according to Hegseth's wishes.
This is the biggest con in post-war German election history.
After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World
https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/publications/books/after-...
Do we all think that another 8, 10 years of being "firewalled" out of national poltitics and being told they're all nazis (I'm sure some of them are, but nowhere near all) is going to make them less or more extreme?
It's hard work making a society that caters to everyone, but the approach of ignoring and belittling a large group and ignoring their concerns entirely has a shelf life, and we aren't going to like the results.
But hey, the boomers will all get their pensions and continue to vote CDU so that's all that matters.
I think that was a mistake and they should have form coalition with AfD and let them try to fulfil their promises to their voters. After delivering either little or dead on arrival laws they would be effectively self-defused.
So we get to work for the state about half the time (including VAT etc), and on-top of it thanks to the Merz masterstroke we're getting an additional 800bn debt between now-2030.
Meanwhile, everything seems to be getting worse.
We need significant reductions in spending, and I don't think anyone has any clue how to achieve it before the house of cards falls down completely.
Dreadful framing. You work for the benefit of the entirety of Germany including yourself half the time.
Instead of viewing it as money you've lost, do this: look at the fractions of what the German (federal, municipal, etc) government spends its budget on, then apply these to what you pay yearly in taxes. Then compare that to the other things you spend money on privately and what value you directly or indirectly get out of what you 'worked for for the state'.
> There was a lot of hope when the current German government was elected. The current chancellor did his campaign saying the leftist-green ideological politics would be over and he is going to drastically reduce the government spending and cut bureaucracy and lift up the economy. People believed him and majority voted for a center right government.
The current chancellor is from the CDU, the same party that led the government 16 out of the last 20 years (and the majority of Germany's existence), and they offered nothing but populist non-solutions. Now they're implementing them, and it turns out they're just pushing Germany deeper into the hole the CDU dug for us.
> However, as soon as he came to power, he broke the promise of fiscal discipline and cutting spending and the first thing he did was passed a bill to burrow more than half a trillion Euros under the votes of old parliament even changing the constitution.
This is a non-argument, since it's just pointing at a Euro amount without arguing why it's not fiscally responsible or how it doesn't align with their campaign promises. I actually agree that it's fiscally irresponsible, but it definitely aligns with Merz's campaign promises. When you vote for a party that promises both fiscal responsibility AND to funnel lots of money to the rich, you're gonna break one of them no matter what - but that's on the voters for believing in both.
> Also because of the firewall they have imposed to AfD, for him the only coalition partner was SPD( which is more of a left leaning party) and they formed a government and since then it has been internal conflicts to pass the important legislations to get the country back on track.
For the record, the SPD lost >80% of their voters because they have been the CDU's little lapdog for more than a decade, and are actively pushing against non-centrist policies. The "important legislations to get the country back on track" are things like "allowing employers to demand 8 additional hours of work each week" or "allowing employers to force employees to get a sick note on the first day AND no longer paying for single sick days, WHILE ALSO banning sick notes over video appointments AND no longer reimbursing physicians for 'open hours', so if you can't get that sick note, sucks to be you".
In comparison, the party FDP (who literally let the richest capitalists directly participate in their decisions) actually blocked a bunch of agreed-upon things in the only recent left-of-center government. After the coalition fell apart, investigative journalism revealed that they literally planned on entering the government with the intention of blocking as much as possible before blowing up the coalition.
Can you share the link or source for this? This is the first time I’m hearing this
Many of their senior leaders are Nazis. The head of the party in the state of Thuringia used to write pro-Hitler articles under a pseudonym.
> ignoring and belittling a large group and ignoring their concerns entirely
The AfD doesn't address their problems either. It tells them that all of their problems are because of foreigners and immigrants.
What's the AfD's solution for affordable housing? Deport immigrants to free up apartments. What's their solution for creating jobs? Deport immigrants.
This is a party that wants to deport all German citizens who don't have a sufficient quantum of German blood. There's no need to pretend the party is anything other than what it is: a fascist party.
My only point was that, perhaps, we should think about these causes and why the core political parties can't solve them; otherwise it's only going to get worse -- hell at this rate they'll actually get enough people onboard to achieve their goals within a few cycles.
if you could make them powerless by just addressing the issue, why have no parties done that? why hand power to the AfD?
It is true that the issues of people who vote far-right are ridiculed, and they themselves are demonised, which the parent holds, and I agree, is unproductive.
Far-right voters are largely the losers of globalisation/economic growth trying whatever they can to improve their situation: the phenomenon of many of these voters alternating between far-right and far-left from one election to the other is one of many indicators of what their real goal is, ie improving their situation.
Re migration: it does have negative effects on the economically marginalised, which the readership of HN and the talking heads in mainstream media are largely not. Among these are increasing housing costs, downward pressure on salaries, rapid and alienating shifts in cultural (and I mean cultural, not racial) makeup of cities and neighbourhoods: none of this should be controversial.
The establishment parties (so right and "left" like SPD, Labour, PS) have financial incentives to increase migration, which they do (see the Boris wave in the UK).
While migration is not an inherent evil at all, the way it's done by these parties does lead to negative effects, which adds one reason among many to vote for the far-right. So the short-term solution (curbing migration) is the simple and popular answer. The long-term solution (curbing capitalism) is harder and unpopular, so radical left parties unfortunately get fewer votes (except in France, where there's a real chance of the LFI showing a better path).
Let's be real: this "issue" is a strawman. It doesn't really exist, especially in that part of Germany. Just like pretty much everywhere else, the German anti-immigrant far right is strongest in the areas with the fewest immigrants.
This is not to say that the wave of immigration that is now more than 10 years past didn't have its challenges, and they were downplayed by some.
But at its core, the immigration scare is just the classic playbook of offering simple but wrong explanations to distract from the class warfare that's being waged by the wealthy.
Ideally, we'd turn down the temperature and have patient conversations, but the media environment was made very counterproductive over the last few decades.
I'm pretty convinced at this point there's almost nothing we can do about it.
This is not a strawman. Even if you believe that the AFD is not correct in its diagnosis of the problems, why are you saying something that is a complete lie: https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/54441/germany-net-migra...
According to this organization which sits on the complete on opposite spectrum of the right/far-right, they write that 2.7M people immigrants moved to Germany in 2022 with a net inflow of 1.5M in a single year.
According to the same organization, today, immigrants make-up at least 20% of the German population and that's from an article from 2024 so that number is probably low. So if we extrapolate roughly 1 in 4 people living in Germany are not German.
That is exactly why the AFD is rising, people just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that there is no problem at all.
But I guess its easier to think that 44% of the inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt are secretly Nazies than admitting that something must change. Lets continue doing that, its been working so well so far!
It does not mean fringe or rare or low-in-numbers - unfortunately, "far right politics" have frequently been in the majority in our history and will certainly be again :-/
As for a resurgence of the nazi horror: their leader is in a mixed race lesbian relationship.
Just because authoritarianism has emerged from the fringes doesn't make it any less authoritarian.
Also, the Free State of Anhalt was the first Weimar state to elect a local parliament with a Nazi leader. History sure does rhyme.
Getting a lot of votes does not mean a party is not far-right. Germans of all people know that.
In normal English, it would be from the average (median) voter. A party is "far-right" (or "far-left") if it is substantially to the right (left) of the average voter.
Assume that people vote for the person/party closest to their own view on an issue. 44% of voters choose the far-right candidate, meaning 44% of voters are closer to the far-right candidate than any other option.
How can this happen? Several ways, but only one is realistic: the other candidates are even farther away (to the left or right) from the position of the median voter. 40%+ of voters are themselves "far-right".
> The Nazi party got 37% of votes nationwide (not just in one state).
The Nazi party was not that far to the right of the median German voter at the time.
The far-left is using scary words ("Nazi", "Far-right", etc.) to tar a group they dislike (see what I did there?) They are counting on the fact that most voters can be influenced by group-think and name-calling. They are probably correct. But this is Hacker News, and the people here ought to be smart enough to see this for the stupid political smear that it obviously is. If you don't like a party, make the case that their policy is wrong. If vague analogy to the Nazis is the best argument you have, then you have no argument at all.
If https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II had not done such a comprehensive job of discrediting hereditary nobility, it might be healthier if German voters had the option to replace their elected government with a ruling Kaiser for 4 or 5 years. Ideally, that would lessen the appeal of more-extreme political parties. And the threat of indefinite irrelevance (the Kaiser could be reelected) might even motivate the politicians to occasional competence.
Labelling or bullying people because they have exercised their right and calling them Nazis is not gonna make them change their mind at all.
After all who are you or anyone else to say that what other person has voted is right or wrong. You can have your opinion, but you cannot judge them
Illegal immigrants are a source of cheap labor. Business interests tell politicians that without a pool of cheap workers, costs will go up, voters will feel inflation, and the politicians will get the blame.
The overall cost is not low. Some illegal immigrants get benefits. Some illegal immigrants commit crimes. Almost all illegal immigrants will use the healthcare system eventually. But those costs are not seen by the businesses that push illegal immigration.
> But those costs are not seen by the businesses that push illegal immigration.
Do you have a source about the cost? As of 2023, noncitizen immigrants generally and illegal immigrants specifically were a net positive to fiscal burden [1]:
> Illegal noncitizens were only somewhat less fiscally positive per capita than noncitizens generally, and they likely reduced the deficit by at least $1.7 trillion from 1994 to 2023. Illegal immigrants of all educational attainments are also likely to have paid more in taxes than they received in government benefits. Although we adopt simple assumptions, it is difficult to arrive at a conclusion significantly different from the one below. Even if illegal immigrants used benefits at the exact same rate as all noncitizens, they would still be, on average, fiscally beneficial to the United States—both by reducing the debt in real terms and by lowering debt-to-GDP.
> Almost all illegal immigrants will use the healthcare system eventually.
If by almost all you mean that most illegal immigrants get pathways to permanent residence/citizenship (unclear to me whether that's true), it's not very relevant unless you propose that after becoming legal residents illegal immigrants burden the economy/budget more than always-legal residents do. Otherwise, I would wonder whether the national birth rate issue [2] is as urgent as I've heard.
[1] https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-g...
[2] https://phys.org/news/2026-06-birth-declining-world.html
It's kind of a shame - if the mainstream politicians followed the views of the mainstream voters you wouldn't have the far right lot getting in.
For me it's a shame because I believe in democracy, human rights and rule of law and most of the anti - immigrant parties also believe in letting Russia trample those, probably because Russia funds them.
"People I disagree with should not have a right to speak"
I don't know about you, but to me this sounds exactly like the type of fascist rhetoric everyone warns about.
If I don't put out a fire, you can come along and suggest pouring kerosene on it, and if I handle shit badly enough, people might say hey, why not. But if I put the fire out while you're still a toddler, what can you do? Suggest to start a fire and pour kerosene on it?
> to me this sounds exactly like the type of fascist rhetoric everyone warns about
Well going by what you just did, I would have to guess you would say this about just about anything except fascist rhetoric. To try to twist something to harmless and banally true as the above into some sinister fascist ideology, while shrugging off people calling the Holocaust a "Fliegenschiss", who plan to abolish education about that time, does have a Gschmäckle.
Suggesting they abandon a core part of their platform is a non-starter. At least in the US, the left isn't silent or neutral on illegal immigration, they are enthusiastically pro illegal immigration. One of the biggest reasons centrists have drifted to supporting the right is realizing the left no longer supports their values.
"They're not afraid to say climate change is fake".
"They're going to kick out the refugees".
"They're going to fix the retirement pensions".
"Back to the good old days".
I'm now reading that the AfD are saying in the press that "democracy demands the other parties work with them". I mean if someone got into power on the promise of taking away the right for women to vote, I guess all the adults in the room have to bow down to 'democracy'.
I personally think the general population is some small percentage of saintly people. And a small percentage of evil people. And a huge mass in the middle. That mass in the middle can be swayed to vote for almost anything.
Without immigrants the ageing German population has no chance to keep their social safety net and as we see in the US, even when the social safety net is significantly reduced, the immigrant scarecrow will still have the desired effect for the populists because the immigrants are not the problem, they make, however a phenomenal scapegoat and will always appeal to the general populace. In consequence, focussing solely on immigration won't solve the fundamental problems and certainly won't help when the first waves of hungry climate refugees march north.
The consequences are border tightening and rearming and repopulating the military and marching confidently in the completely wrong direction. Dialog is dead and so is diplomacy.
Re-establish communication, not twitter. Collaborate on a wide front, analyse the data, compile potential solutions, discuss them, etablish them. Talk to Russia, talk to Ukraine, Defang NATO or abolish it. Talk to Iran. Stop the US propagating pseudo diplomacy via Kushner and send real diplomats. Look to invest in R&D for recycling techniques, carbon sequestering, substitutes for plastics, redirect military funding to massively expand renewable energy. Close all European borders the next time the US starts a war. There is so much to do.
It also doesn't explain the regional correlations. If immigrants are objectively a problem, why is anti-immigration sentiment highest in regions with the least immigration?
Make it make sense...
Very few of them go to Saxony-Anhalt. Less than 10% of the population of the state is foreign-born. As GP said, anti-immigrant sentiment is strongest where there are the fewest immigrants.
> But I guess its easier to think that 44% of the inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt are secretly Nazies
People have a hard time imagining that any person ever voted for the Nazis. 37% of Germans did. It's entirely possible for large parts of the population to vote for fascist parties. It has happened in history before.
The Thatcher-Reagan-style reforms that the Social Democrats and Greens pushed through in the early 2000s, which reduced the social safety net and created new types of less-secure temporary work. In particular, these reforms ended the Social Democrats as a mass party in Germany.
The 2008 financial crisis, which weighed heavily on Europe for years.
The rise in inflation, caused by Covid and wars in Ukraine and Iran.
As in the 1930s, right-wing parties blame everything on immigrants, foreigners and minorities, even though they're not responsible for any of the above.
I'm calling the AfD Nazis because that's exactly what they are.
Of course when people vote for a Nazi party, that's extremely alarming, and I have every right to say that they're wrong to do so.
If the AfD comes to power in Germany, it will be a disaster for the country, and not only for the country. Germany tried fascism once before in its history, and we all know how that turned out.
The immigrants that become naturalised are 99% of the cases hard working people that build their lives from scratch and want the prosperity for their families. That way they don’t need any freebies and just wants a functioning and growing economy where their children would have a better future
> this keeps only strengthening the AfD
I am unfamiliar with the details of German politics but if what you say is true, I am not surprised at all. I do not think that one can "win" against those parties by using their methods or adopting their positions. Because they are genuine at it. While the others would only fake it.
If the voters have a choice between a fake populist and a genuine populist, they would, in my opinion, naturally pick the genuine one.
I think that one of the reasons is that the "fakeness" is not very appealing to anyone. So they prefer the "real deal".
You putting words into the mouth of others is not you speaking, it's you making noises to drown out the speech of others. So fuck this pretense of caring for free speech. You are what you do.
Anyway this topic shouldn't even be on HN. The story will likely be flagged soon.
Oh, it should. Where should we discuss it? Because we really should discuss it.
We are building a literal surveillance state tech dystopia funded by the sorts of VCs that employ a lot of the people in this site and you think that news about who will have control over this and what they plan to do with it is off-topic?
In 2020, florida was called for trump and biden won. Saying florida was a sign of things to come was simply not true.
What a weird position to be in, where you acknowledge the fascism but think Nazi comparisons go too far...
You're the problem here. I'm not on the side of the AFD, never will be -- and let me be clear: I and my family are directly impacted if they take power.
I don't think calling literal nazis nazis is a problem, my point, if you read it properly is that shutting down the (reasonable or not) concerns of a big chunk of the population and calling them all nazis only makes them more extreme, and grows their power. We need a better way.
Of course you should look at what you are getting out of it and scrutinize every euro spent by the state. This is the basis of the social contract between a country and its citizens.
Citizens pay money in the form of taxes and expect to receive decent services in return. If the state is no longer fulfilling its share of the agreement then what?
People are happy to pay high taxes if they see improvements in their lives but they do not: - Germany has had massive infrastructure backlog for the last 15 years that will not be resolved tomorrow - The German state is increasingly seen as a wasteful thing that still runs of paper and fax machines when we are well within the digital age - Germany's train system is so dysfunctional that only 60% of its trains are on time - Germany's healthcare system is one the most expensive in the world and people are paying more and more for a lesser service
This is the same problem that France is facing today.
Of course there is a judicial system.
Of course sewage is properly dealt with.
Of course there is a fire department, etc. etc.
The whole point of the exercise is realizing what your taxes are actually providing. All that shit ain't free: it costs a lot of money and a lot of constant work from a lot of people who don't do it for the fame or fortune, yet publicly mostly just get shit on and called "lazy".
Don't get me wrong: Government isn't perfect and a lot can be and should be improved, but the framing that it is somehow scandalous or immoral to have to spend half of your earnings on the collective (mostly) good, or even to call that theft (as so many do) is entitled, spoiled and ignorant of history.
Edit: as to the prosperity of Germany, on a global scale and compared to other points in history it is actually doing fucking fantastic. It's citizens lead lives that are easily top 1% of any lives that have ever been and easily top 5% of lives currently on this planet.
I'm less enthused about the growing debt pile my children will inherit, and obvious wastes (e.g - the F126 story, everything Claudia Roth ever touched, 2.6 million* euros on whatever 'antisemitism funding' is, etc).
edit: I was wrong, it was 2.6 million in antisemitism, not billion, so that's a pretty much irrelevant sum.
Why not 99% then? Or 90%? Or a bargain 85%, leaving you some money for bread and circuses ?
It's for the collective good, so how could you complain?
Right now it’s more like your tax is being used in wasteful spending, funding wars and corruption that doesn’t improve the quality of life at all
I am more than happy to pay the taxes and my share for the society, but only if it’s used for the good used and to make my living standards better. But since Covid times the opposite is happening
There are good reasons to still have a significant amount of personal freedom in spending earned money: we have an economic system that works faster with it. Citizens can vote with their wallets on matters where collective spending is not necessary, thereby steering development of technology (and society) in a certain direction in a crowdsourced way. Personal spending power is also used as a reward for doing things (although technically this does not have to be in terms of money in a hypothetical future society).
The crowdsourced part is important. Technically a government could buy all the stuff for its citizens, but that is very inefficient for certain things as the knowledge of what is needed is local to the citizens. Additionally in the way we currently structure our governments there is too little room for experimentation: A government that would regularly try multiple different approaches to serve the same market simultaneously would be hammered by its citizens in a democracy for "wasting money", even though that is exactly what a healthy free market would do (bankruptcies and failed projects are a feature of free markets).
Coming back to the question what the percentage should be: it is partially a question of which markets should be publicly funded and which shouldn't. Clearly things like defense, the fire department and the justice system should never be privately funded. I believe health care shouldn't either, btw. The point here is that we have reasonable grounds on which to make the decision, namely what amount of free market capitalism can be allowed in a market without detrimental effects to society (what are essential services and whatnot) or rather which way of funding produces the most desirable results for society.
Determining which market needs what amount of resources is much harder (technically you could spend 99% of GDP on defense), but also part of it. How much investment do these publicly funded markets need? Is that even the right question? There is clearly some minimum to facilitate bare functioning, but what is a reasonable amount/service level? I would say this is a matter of experts making decisions based on a democratic mandate.
The other angle would be to think about what amount of personal spending money is beneficial to society: above what amount do people start spending it mostly on things they don't need and that don't make their lives or technology better? This is tricky, because it is highly intertwined with what services are provided publicly and because it's hard to come up with solid reasoning if there is an upper limit to what more spending does for (technological) progress. There is probably some value in stimulating the caviar and yacht markets, but I'd guess not that much.
All in all, it is tricky. Given all the above it may actually be a lot better if the tax rate was 80% for low earners and 95% for high earners. It may also be better if it was 20% and 35%. I don't think the latter is true, but I can't say with certainty that the former is either.
Again, it is a hard question.
Do you see how your initial feeling was far more extreme than the actual data show? That is the point of doing the actual work of looking at what your contribution funds: a scientific, solid basis for reasoning, rather than social media fueled primitive outrage. You should really try it.
> I'd like more control where my money goes.
Would you like everybody to have more control of that? What if people don't want to contribute to roads because they contribute to pollution (even though society would pretty much collapse without roads). Would you be okay with that?
Are you familiar with the Tragedy of the Commons [0]? Or perhaps any real world libertarian experiments?
Turns out individual people are generally selfish, highly incompetent and very fallible in making decisions on complex matters affecting lots of people. It's really, really hard to train individuals to make decisions that lead to collective prosperity, especially if they can choose options that are beneficial for them in the short term. The reason we effectively work towards collective prosperity at all is the evolution of systems and processes that mitigate individual incompetence (most voters really don't know how to run a sewage system), elevate individual specialization (experts), and push for a well-reasoned basis. This evolution took place over a long time and in the process a lot of people and systems died.
We can and must evolve it further, but that evolution should not ignore everything that went before it for the sake of feelings. See also Chesterton's Fence [1].
"Voters perceive problems. As is common in a democracy, voters elect people who propose solutions. Why is no other political party proposing solutions voters see as worth voting for?"
If you don't think the problems are real, make the case to the voters.
As far as I can tell, other political parties have no better answer than name-calling. Am I missing some politician/party that is actually making a real argument?
Let's say we could demonstrate the problems aren't real beyond any shadow of a doubt. Do you think that would change votes appreciably?
Tax paying citizens who want their concerns addressed absolutely LOVE hearing that "Ackchyually, your problem doesn't exist and is all in your head".
P.S. - I have no skin in the game regarding EU immigration policies, just making an honest observation about engaging with people who might have opposing views.
I approached it as a discussion on Hacker News, and I think my implicit assumption (which can be challenged!) is that taking a structured, logical approach benefits us all. When I saw what I perceive as a logical fallacy or assumption that takes us on an unproductive path, intended or not, I called it out.
In other venues, different approach may be more applicable.
To your other point, in case it wasn't clear:
* I absolutely do not think there's no problem, or that it's in anybody's head. I think there are a LOT of problems!
* At the same time, I strongly think that not-nice, dishonest people are working very very hard, very very consistently, to create an image that somehow immigrants are the root causes of these problems.
This has happened myriad times in history, and may sadly be repeating itself. The only answer I ever have for this is, to your point, a non-answer: it's education and information. I think most people propagating immigration as root of all evil are fairly aware that mathematically, socially, statistically, philosophically, logically, this is not supported. It's just intentional fallacy after intentional fallacy, starting with the "Lump of Labor Fallacy". It's clear on its face that if I had 100 people with 100 jobs yesterday, bringing 10 more people won't just magically take jobs without also creating/generating jobs! So I'm happy to discuss immigration problems at any length - but again, I think it's an intentional distraction. To your point, there ARE real problems, of housing and equality and prices and job market, and bad people are trying to make us think they're caused by immigrants, whether for personal profit or because they themselves are part of the actual root cause :-/
why can't I then migrate to the US or whatever country I wanna go to?
Im in Denmark and we have tried throwing money and ressources at the issue for 50 years, integration effort after integration effort, and for us the issue isnt money or jobs, we are a rich country with very little unemployment, the issue is gangs, violence, rape, where immigrants are far ahead of anyone..
Just yesterday a new article broke from one of the largest most respected newspapers.. we now face child immigrant gangs of 11-18 year olds, that commit violence. Paywaled link: https://www.berlingske.dk/indland/markant-flere-boern-er-inv...
> I am more than happy to pay the taxes and my share for the society, but only if it’s used for the good used and to make my living standards better.
So what's the solution to improving your experience, pay less in taxes or more? Don't add conditions. Remember that this is the subject: "So we get to work for the state about half the time (including VAT etc)".
Sidenote, as to your experience: most of that is not due to the German government, but to wars started by Russia and the US/Israel, and indeed other global crises. They have influence over how to act on crises, but they can't (for instance) magically make natural gas/oil appear out of thin air. The easy proof for this is that many, many, many countries with very different governments face those same issues.
Germany is thus paying the price for those failed investments, as is any country which energy market is connected to the German market. It is natural for voters to look to the government for a solution for a problem that the government is responsible for.
If history had gone a different direction and kept natural gas prices low, the bet that the government did would had been successful and people would likely had a very different view of the government. People would had enjoyed one of the cheapest electricity prices of the world, burners would be cheaper than electric heaters, and the chemical industry would possible be the biggest in the world. Emissions would still be high but the bet was always to utilize natural gas until green hydrogen could replace it, even if that part of the bet had dubious scientific support).
The actions of Russia (and now the USA and Israel) really fucked a lot of countries all across the world; particular policies with regard to energy do have an effect, but are definitely not 100% the cause of the related issues.
CDU and the green could had done a 180 turn now when the bet on natural gas failed, and instead gone on a course for energy independence through a mix of nuclear, wind and solar, while investing heavily into making it as cheap as possible for the consumers. They would loose a lot of internal support, but it would demonstrate a clear alternative to the bet on natural gas.