2018-09-04

AfD Polls Ahead of SPD

For the first time, AfD has polled as the second-largest party in Germany. AfD had 17 percent in an INSA / YouGov poll from September 3. The SPD polled 16 percent.

The rise in polling follows violence in Chemnitz covered here: German Establishment Losing East Germany

Going back to the Anders Breivik attack in Norway, nationalist violence is not reducing nationalist political support. In fact, it seems to increase it. For the first time in decades, the obvious parallel being the 1930s, there is a large and growing nationalist movement. For decades, left-wing violence was excused because the left was ascendant. Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayers becoming a mentor to President Obama. Now a similar shift is happening with nationalists. The establishment in the West shows no signs of understanding the situation, the history of Weimar Germany, nor any sign of cutting off nationalists support by adopting nationalist policies, save for Denmark's center-left.

Bet on nationalists winning power and hope that the current crop of nationalists win soon, before even more radical nationalists emerge.

Update: Some German leftists do understand the situation.

WSJ: Germany’s Left Launches Attempt to Stem Rightward Flow of Voters
The group—called Aufstehen, or Stand Up—is backed by prominent members of the Social Democrats, now a junior partner in the government, as well as the opposition Greens and the radical Left Party. It has said it aims to target voters on the right with mixture of socialist prescriptions and cautious criticism of immigration.

...She referenced riots in the eastern city of Chemnitz last week, where mobs hunted down migrants after two asylum seekers were arrested as suspects in a fatal stabbing. The incidents marked the first time since shortly after the country’s reunification in the 1990s that large groups of neo-Nazis paraded openly without being challenged by protesters, a display that shocked the rest of Germany.

“People who feel abandoned join [nationalist] movements because they feel misunderstood and get no hearing. I want to win these people back,” Ms. Wagenknecht said. “We push people further to the right if we dismiss them as Nazis.”

The movement’s platform includes an unconditional basic income and rapid reconciliation with Russia. Ludger Volmer, a Green politician and co-founder of the movement, said it was both against xenophobia and against the left’s traditional policy of open borders.

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