So, Starmer continues his massive austerity program, just kissed Trump’s ass with a terrible trade deal, and:
Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz has been confirmed as Germany’s new chancellor. His grand coalition is off to a rocky start — and its call on Germans to swallow austerity is sure to make things worse…
… Merz’s cabinet completely sidelined the more socially conscious “Christian-social” wing of his party. New SPD head Lars Klingbeil initially promised a complete turnaround, a “generational change” for the party after the failures under previous chancellor Olaf Scholz. No one from the left wing of the SPD is represented in government…
What they’re going to try is some military Kenesianism. It won’t work.
So, the AfD, Germany’s right wing Trumpist style party will either wind up in charge soon, or it will be banned or lawfared into the ground.
Centrists spent generations crushing the left. Starmer purged Labour almost entirely of the left after he became leader. But a lot of ordinary people want centrists out. Since the left is usually not viable, they go right, and by right I mean damn near Nazi.
Anyway Merz is a ‘tard, the last gasp of the centrists: “give the rich even more money. More! More! More! Hurt ordinary people to pay for it!” Then come the fucking Nazis. Or, if they refuse to let them win, democracy effectively dies, and violent resistance will begin.
Absolute morons, so blinded by neoliberal ideology and greed that they refuse to ever really help ordinary people, with predictable results. I only hope that when the right does get in power, instead of lining up the trans, gays and socialists first they say hello to people like Merz and Starmer and they get to reap as they have sowed.
Oh, and those people supporting parties like the AfD and Reform who aren’t rich fascists? You’re idiots. Fools. Poltroons. Morons. They will betray you and hurt you, just as Trump has done to the majority of his supporters. Go left, or be destroyed. Your choice and most of you are making the wrong one.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – Mencken
Feral Finster
“Oh, and those people supporting parties like the AfD and Reform who aren’t rich fascists? You’re idiots. Fools. Poltroons. Morons. They will betray you and hurt you, just as Trump has done to the majority of his supporters. Go left, or be destroyed. Your choice and most of you are making the wrong one.”
True enough, but keep in mind that there is no left alternative with any realistic chance of getting power.
Not only that, but if there were, the rulers would make damn sure that left alternative were strangled in its crib. See, e.g., Welsh, Ian, Seven Rules For Running a Real Left Wing Government.
Feral Finster
I shoulda added, the only thing left to do when entrenched interests make fundamental reform impossible is to Burn It All Down, flat to the ground.
This is why a lot of Trump voters voted for Trump, BTW.
Ian Welsh
Doesn’t matter. If you won’t vote left unless they’re viable that specific election, they’ll never be viable. Think more than one term into the future. As for the elites always trying to kill the left, of course they do. They don’t always succeed and you might as well die on your feet if they do, rather than writhing on your bellies before your masters, squealing “please master, be kind. Oh master. Please don’t hurt me too much. Hurt that person instead.”
rkka
It sounds like how the Center Party Chancellor Bruning’s “austerity” response to the arrival of the Great Depression in Germany in ‘31 paved Adolf’s rise, following which the German Nazis, the far-Right, center-Right, and Center all voted to give Adolf the power to legislate by decree for four years, so he could go crush the Left while they watched & applauded. Only “Teh Left” opposed that.
Of course, centrists everywhere have been trying for decades to shift the blame for Adolf’s rise on “Teh Left” to obfuscate their own heavy responsibility for Adolf’s rise & the world-historical catastrophe he led Europe into.
Feral Finster
” If you won’t vote left unless they’re viable that specific election, they’ll never be viable.”
They won’t be viable, ever, because these are not people who want power, at least not with the icky stuff that comes with power.
Note that I did not advocate Trumpism, but merely explained why some people favor it.
GlassHammer
Ian,
It’s really weird that so many think “the greedy” will protect you from “the evil”, “the greedy” people I know would seriously consider egregiously harming themselves for a moderate increase in wealth which tells me everything I need to know about their willingness to sacrifice me for much larger increases in wealth.
mago
I stopped reading Charles Pierce years ago when he fell hard for the Russia Gate hornswoggle, but to borrow one of his favorite terms, I’m gob smacked when I consider what’s happening in GB and Germany. (Patrick Lawrence recently concluded an excellent four part series on Germany. No links, but worth the read if you haven’t already).
Don’t know what was in Starmer’s, Scholz’ or Merz’ baby formula but it left life long damage. (Or as I often assert, their nannies probably dropped them on their heads).
Joking as usual, but these people and their toxic ideologies are creating widespread chaos that will echo for at least a generation, assuming continuity of the human species, which I do. Could be a Road Warrior or Mad Max or even a Bladerunner world. Maybe a Cormac McCarthy “The Road” kinda world. I don’t know.
Probably won’t live to see it, although in these accelerating times it feels like it’s just down the street and around the corner.
Ruled by monsters wearing suits in a world gone mad, whether we voted for it or not. (I would contend that we did on a cosmic level, but not going there).
Have a good day.
Oakchair
Well in the 20th century Europe decided to cannibalize itself and propel themselves to third rate status behind the USSR and America. The current crop in the ruling class response to that disaster appears to be “hold my my beer. “
bruce wilder
The vacuum where a populist Left should be no doubt has many causes — it is overdetermined. In U.S. politics, genuine idealists are eliminated and marginalized pretty darn fast while any populist opinion or sentiment is subverted with identity politics distractions or simply deprived of oxygen.
What happened in the U.K. around Corbyn was dramatic. There was a huge groundswell of participation and it was suppressed with ruthless efficiency of a sort and with very little effective resistance that I could see from here. Ditto for what was done to the late Alex Salmond.
Germany has BSW, built around refugees from The Left, itself the remnant of the former East German ruling party. They have not seemed to benefit from the shrinking of the SPD, once Germany’s largest party and now fading to black.
Tc
“Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable”
The Dems have been the party of “better things are not possible” since Carter. Every time they get power they find ways to let the russpublicans tie their hands behind their back, eschewing “tyranny of the majority”. etc, etc, etc
Yet self-described lefties are STILL cowering and demanding unity behind the “safe” lesser evil neoliberals (genocide now being a lesser evil). The neoliberals need to be purged or a new party is needed since the Dems are almost all less than worthless . It won’t happen because US voters on the left are just as worthless as their reps.
Honestly I sometimes think women should never have been given the vote when I see what cowards they generally are. Of course there are some men on the left like that too (if you can call them men), but during all of 2024 it was 90% women in full panic mode accusing me of every name in the book for refusing to contemplate voting for the genocidal dotard or that whiny diversity hire former VP (I got dozens of her ads every day asking for money, not even asking for my vote, much less telling me one reason to vote for her). It never occurs to them that primaries could be good or that accepting genocide makes them bad people who will reap what they sow.
Nora Handler
I like your writing but not the term tard which is only slightly better than retard. I am the sister of three developmentally disabled men. They were mocked and called retards. They are much nicer than Merz.
Daniil Adamov
I think the two sides of this conflict, while fiercely opposed just now, are naturally inclined towards eventual convergence (the old “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” framework seems apt here). That is to say, either the establishment will suppress the far right for now but gradually copy its ideas to undercut its support (as they did with the left in decades past), or the far right will be allowed to win and then sell out to the establishment for power and a chance to implement a small part of their preferred agenda (as the left did in decades past). The likeliest course, then, is more of the same, but worse (from various performative cruelties) and with nationalist branding in the place of progressive branding.
I’m not sure that those countries still have a left worth talking about on the national level. I suppose Germany does, but its major left-wing parties seem pretty much inseparable from the anti-democratic establishment – and actually, Ian, can you even blame them within your framework if it’s the only way for them to keep out the far right a little longer? They don’t want to be the morons, after all.
Mark Level
Great minds think alike, Ian. Alexander Mercouris, who has a brother living in Germany and has followed German politics for years, is scathing towards Merz, in the dialogue here, “Germany’s tough guy, Chancellor Merz.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-gp79W2QY
After Merz lost with a vote during the 2nd round, he went and cut deals with everyone, including the AfD, to get into Power. The thing is, on a personal level, he is a nasty, insecure prick, doesn’t get along with or like other people. (See Andrew Cuomo as a similar type; years ago the New Yorker did a long piece on how he can’t stand anyone, a miserable misanthrope.)
As shared, he evidently hates Von der Lyin’ (which should be good), fought with Merkel and was sidelined, etc. But it is nothing to do with policy, is purely personal.
I see the “Give the Rich More! More! More!” as entirely unsurprising. He is a Globalist Ghoul, member of Blackrock. He knows what the donors demand, & his ideology is a straightjacket.
Damn the future, Damn Peace and Prosperity, full speed ahead to endless war and immiseration of the majority. It really is a Death Cult.
It’s interesting that as the USSR degenerated in 1989-91, members of its political class responded and tried to change things up. Nothing like that seen or allowed in 21st Century “West.” Neoliberal Austerity and Endless War are not allowed to be questioned, they must be bowed down to as the ultimate good.
I liked Tc’s comment, felt like he was channeling my thoughts the first couple of paragraphs. I will disagree however, on “Honestly I sometimes think women should never have been given the vote when I see what cowards they generally are. Of course there are some men on the left like that too (if you can call them men),” to a point. Ann Coulter demanded that women be disenfranchised mainly for attention, but also because some women are reflexively anti-war and don’t want their sons to be sent to die.
I agree to a point that since women are socialized to be cooperative, males competitive, many learn the wrong lesson and are cowards. When I was teaching, most of our staff were female, and many would take Admin bullying without any pushback, sadly a lot of male teachers did as well. This is simply “Slave Morality” or in Russell Dobular’s words, “the Peasant Mindset,” it is thoroughly inculcated in American Culture, sadly.
The problem seems to be equally endemic in EUrope. I have not looked into whatever “deal” Starmer cut with Trump yet, just knew it would be like the “Gimp in the Basement” scene in Pulp Fiction, however. Maybe Starmer wasn’t the one balll-gagged and bent over a table, literally, but it will be the British people, who seem to have centuries of that behavior in their “public” schools and daily life, cost of the Empire and Monarchy I would assume.
At the point of starvation or freezing to death, one would hope there is resistance– it will emerge somewhere. Sad that the “Arab Spring” accomplished so little positive. Will there ever be a “Neoliberal Spring”? If not, our societies are doomed and a 2nd Dark Age will last for centuries.
bruce wilder
. . . if it’s the only way for them to keep out the far right a little longer?
Is that a corollary to “there is no alternative”?
Tc
To Mark Level, I do not support disenfranchising anyone, but the attraction of the enabler mommy party to so many women, and men to the abusive daddy party seems so glaring and yet it is verboten to say the part about women or to hold them responsible for the evil they perpetuate.
The fascist right-wingers are merely the acute symptoms, neoliberal zionism is the disease . We are in late stage terminal cancer, and most leftist voters are still prescribing aspirin.and hopium. Actually, I don’t think it matters anymore, it’s all over except the death throes.
Feral Finster
1. “Don’t know what was in Starmer’s, Scholz’ or Merz’ baby formula but it left life long damage. (Or as I often assert, their nannies probably dropped them on their heads).”
They are sociopaths.
2. “That is to say, either the establishment will suppress the far right for now but gradually copy its ideas to undercut its support (as they did with the left in decades past), or the far right will be allowed to win and then sell out to the establishment for power and a chance to implement a small part of their preferred agenda (as the left did in decades past). The likeliest course, then, is more of the same, but worse (from various performative cruelties) and with nationalist branding in the place of progressive branding.”
Daniil knows the real score. Sort of like how, after all the bluster and panic, the actual results achieved by Trumpism amount to a meaner and more dysfunctional version of Dubya’s second term.
For if the Establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at determining whom to co-opt, whom to buy off, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.