|
frankenfreak posted:The AfD has viability because it occupies a niche on the political spectrum that needed filling. The Pirates on the other hand never managed to stand for anything beyond "Trust us, we're from the internet". The pirates hosed up. If they had been a more technology and innovation related party, instead of trying for some libertarian/socialist niche that got them nowhere, they probably would have had some staying power. Most young (<30, especially not married)people I know who aren't members of a party infrastructure really don't know where to vote. The CDU/CSU is good if you're a rural Bavarian and/or traditionalist, the SPD is frankly pretty depressing, the greens only get attractive once you have money, and everyone else is a rich person's party, the SED or a protest party. It's probably the same around the world, but if you could have a party that would have broader appeal to young people at the risk of losing retiree support, you could probably reliably get 5-10% every election.
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 19:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2024 22:25 |
|
|
Landsknecht posted:The pirates hosed up. If they had been a more technology and innovation related party, instead of trying for some libertarian/socialist niche that got them nowhere, they probably would have had some staying power. And as someone slightly above 30, I still agree with not knowing who to vote for in the current climate.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 19:41
|
|
|
frankenfreak posted:Instead, their only lasting contribution will be the introduction of the word "shitstorm" into the public discourse. As long as Merkel holds the reins, I think everybody should just vote CDU on the federal and the state level.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
Vote for anyone but CSU.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 19:44
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Why do they let the troglodytes from the CSU speak in the Berliner Runde? Maybe not, but unlike the Piraten, their leadership doesn't consists of goons. Seriously, your political discourse should not look like your average Internet arguments. As it looks at the moment, we will probably enjoy Merkel until she dies or gets tired of this poo poo. The woman is an amazing politician, able to stay in power by doing nothing and harvesting good PR. And with her, we get the CDU and their ever so slight movement of to the right. So that, or the shapeless blob that is the SPD, the Bildungsbürgertum Party, or people who are too busy writing Castro thank you notes to do anything useful. e X fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Sep 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 19:50
|
|
|
I voted for the Greens in the last election because I felt they were the only ones with a somewhat concrete plan of where they would want the country to be in 10-15 years. Whether that plan is actually feasible is something entirely different. the other parties seem unwilling or unable to think beyond the next election cycle. Vote CDU when you absolutely, positively want Merkel to be the gal to take those 3 am phonecalls. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't really feel like the CDU has any vision of or even plan for the nearer future. The Energiewende was a knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima, nothing more.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
e X posted:And with her, we get the CDU and their ever so slight movement of to the right. ArchangeI posted:Vote CDU when you absolutely, positively want Merkel to be the gal to take those 3 am phonecalls. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't really feel like the CDU has any vision of or even plan for the nearer future. The Energiewende was a knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima, nothing more.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
Nektu posted:Merkel is the best populist. She is so good that noone even calls her that. The government is doing ~150 opinion polls per year currently. And the results of those polls oftentimes match changes in government policy.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 20:09
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:The government is doing ~150 opinion polls per year currently. And the results of those polls oftentimes match changes in government policy. Edit: Also I don't think thats what "having a scientific basis for your policies" is supposed to mean. Nektu fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Sep 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure I have read "revealing" articles about how the government is being an evil populist by conducting polls and sometimes listening to them back during the Schröder years.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 20:15
|
|
|
Populism is kinda ill defined. One kind of populism is the one which uses the fears of the people to manipulate them. The other kind is listening to the people and considering what they want. The latter is not necessarily good or bad, but has to be done with caution. The former is what the CSU is doing and those kind of populists can go gently caress themselves.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:Populism is kinda ill defined. One kind of populism is the one which uses the fears of the people to manipulate them. The other kind is listening to the people and considering what they want. The latter is not necessarily good or bad, but has to be done with caution. The former is what the CSU is doing and those kind of populists can go gently caress themselves. I don't think you understand how generally hosed rural Bavaria is (hell, everything that's not Glockenbachviertel is hosed in Bavaria). Most people never give enough credit to how generally lovely any public is when thinking about why all governments tend to suck.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 00:47
|
|
|
Landsknecht posted:I don't think you understand how generally hosed rural Bavaria is (hell, everything that's not Glockenbachviertel is hosed in Bavaria). Thanks to my prejudices, I do understand fully how hosed rural Bavaria is. This is more because I grew up in a town where once a year a symbolic tent in Bavaria-colors is set up so people can drink and celebrate how we stole the actual tent from the Bavarian mercenary army besieging the town then logical thought, mind you.  Every day I'm thankful for not being born in the hellhole that is Bavaria. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 01:09
|
|
|
Libluini posted:Every day I'm thankful for not being born in the hellhole that is Bavaria. I'm kind of sad to not be from Oberbayern/Niederbayern actually. All my friends from these places generally had the following life trajectory: 1. Grow up in nice, well-compensated catholic family 2. Enjoy the mountains very often 3. Go to good schools; write the Bayernabitur and get into good university of your choice 4. Get good job doing something related to engineering, manufacturing or management, either near your hometown or in Munich 5. Get married, have kids 6. Never not drink good beer The only problem is that you're fairly lovely and backwards, and you're also ridiculously catholic and probably racist (get the Austrians off the Autobahn). But since you, and everyone you know, has always been this way, you don't mind (you've been brainwashed through the catholic church, the CSU and your lovely student clubs). If there is one group that amazed me during my time in the University system it was the Burschenschaften; specifically the weird monarchist/nationalist/racist ones. I had a good friend who was a member of one (but he was an American, so a fairly progressive one), and the thing that really got to me was that there are certain ones which are so backward/revanchivist that many of the mainstream Burschenschaften actually forbid associating with them (verbotene Farben posters were at the entrance to most I visited). Somehow it's amazing that there are student organizations who call for things like the Ariernachweis, a Hohenzollern in charge (actually every single Bavarian one somehow thought the Bavarian monarchy was a good thing), and other backwards things; conveniently forgetting the past ~100 years. Indeed, the only time I ever felt compelled to pull out the old "Back to back world war champs, btw my grandfather was in the RAF bomber corps" (I'm Canadian) was when I had to have a conversation with a few of these people at a Stammtisch.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 18:38
|
|
|
Burschenschaften are not only disgusting politically, but also a source of one of the worst kinds of nepotism.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 18:42
|
|
|
I jokingly called a Studentenverbindung a Burschenschaft once. I then had to suffer through about twenty minutes of explainations for why those are totally different things.  (Fun Burschenschaft fact: If you participate in Mensur fencing, you're a bad Catholic.)
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 18:46
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:Burschenschaften are not only disgusting politically, but also a source of one of the worst kinds of nepotism. It's only the worst kind of nepotism if you're not benefiting from it!  The amount of "oh my friend so-and-so from the Burschenschaft's father was so-and-so in the local party structure/think-tank/institute/consulting firm and he hooked me up with this no interview, 5000 euro netto or politically important position immediately out of University, where we studied PWS, BWS or Jura (and you can bet my father did the same for one or two of my friends)" was disgusting. I assume that a fair chunk of the CDU/CSU, SPD, and their associated foundations are all stacked with people who knew the right people.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
There was a guy in my university group that was really chill and an all-around nice dude and roughly a year after meeting him, I see his Schärpe (?) under his jacket (which he had been obscuring a wee bit) and before realizing which Burschenschaft it was, I blurt out in curiosity and ask him. So it turns out he was in the Allemania, but I still figured he has to be in it for the drinking, tutoring and connections, right? RIGHT? He, of course, notices my surprise and, sensing some confusion and some latent hostility towards the Burschenschaft, preemptively goes on the offense and starts a discussion. Sensing that he's more the type of person to defend values and virtues through transitive property as opposed to belief or conviction, I kinda tiptoe around discussing ethnicity, beliefs and such of the Burschenschaft, but sure enough, he opens the door and I basically field the whole "if you're not german enough, you can subscribe to the Burschenschaft values all you like, you're not getting in, also keine Neger, bitte", at which point he just moved the goalposts and derailed like there was no tomorrow. He up and quit our group out of the blue a few months later. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 19:59
|
|
|
For all their song and dances about patriotism, having actually completed mandatory military service never seemed to have been a requirement for most Burschenschaften.Landsknecht posted:The amount of "oh my friend so-and-so from the Burschenschaft's father was so-and-so in the local party structure/think-tank/institute/consulting firm and he hooked me up with this no interview, 5000 euro netto or politically important position immediately out of University, where we studied PWS, BWS or Jura (and you can bet my father did the same for one or two of my friends)" was disgusting. I assume that a fair chunk of the CDU/CSU, SPD, and their associated foundations are all stacked with people who knew the right people. I seriously doubt that there are that many positions that pay that much that you can get them soley on nepotism. (5.000 netto basically means 100.000+/year)
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
Randler posted:For all their song and dances about patriotism, having actually completed mandatory military service never seemed to have been a requirement for most Burschenschaften. The thing is, the Bundeswehr has a pretty bad reputation with those hardcore rightwing nutjobs for being too liberal (American liberal). But also yes, pretty much every organization has nepotism adn of all the problems Burschenschaften have, that is really the least of it. e X fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Sep 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 20:18
|
|
|
All this hate for Bavarians seems very prejudiced, narrow-minded and backwards in my opinion. Kinda ironic.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 20:29
|
|
|
Saupreissn elendige
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 20:44
|
|
|
Randler posted:For all their song and dances about patriotism, having actually completed mandatory military service never seemed to have been a requirement for most Burschenschaften. It's not based on nepotism alone, but after a few years at your job you're getting a promotion, and with a lot of the lobby organizations (think working for a group based on selling energy companies, alcohol companies or some industrial conglomerate to lawmakers), these people seemed like they were doing fairly well, at least earning as much as university professors. Most of the people who had been at these organizations for 5ish years think about 30 yrs old) were always driving a nice car, wearing a 5000 euro+ swiss watch and dressed very nicely. It helps that living in Berlin is cheap, but my boss at the time (a Bundestagsabheordnete), who makes the equivalent of almost 200.000 per year brutto (when taking into account tax free stuff) didn't consume as conspicuously. While none of these jobs are pure nepotism where incompetent people are hooked up solely because connections, most of the system I witnessed among upper-middle class people was that you went to a good university for whatever you wanted, and then somebody you knew got you a good job in that field without much difficulty. The general consensus seemed to be that if your parents had money and were well connected you would have the same things, which really isn't much different from anywhere, but many of these organizations masquerade as meritocracies.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 20:54
|
|
|
ephex posted:All this hate for Bavarians seems very prejudiced, narrow-minded and backwards in my opinion. Look at the politics that lovely state produces. I want Angela to fire Dobrindt into the sun. And these homophobic fuckers are also one of the main reasons that I still cannot marry my boyfriend. It's 2014! Then there's the racism, refusing to take down crosses in classrooms despite Karlsruhe judging them unconstitutional, etc. The fact that we were a few thousand votes away from Stoiber replacing Schröder as chancellor should give anybody nightmares. And so fourth. Despite all this, Bavarians are perfectly fine to vote for these people again and again. Also, all (two) Bavarians I know personally are insufferable dicks.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 20:56
|
|
|
ephex posted:All this hate for Bavarians seems very prejudiced, narrow-minded and backwards in my opinion. It's hate for Bavaria, not for Bavarians. And that's utterly, completely, absolutely justified.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 21:12
|
|
|
Bavaria should secede for the benefit of the rest of Germany.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 21:15
|
|
|
Bavaria as in its government and main political party? Yeah, sure. Same as every other Bundesland with a majority conservative legislature. Guess what, old people vote conservative. Young people don't vote at all because there is no point. It's all different colors of the same poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 21:26
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:Bavaria should secede for the benefit of the rest of Germany. I love how every time someone in Bavaria says they should secede the rest of Germany just pointedly looks at the door and goes "well, Reisende soll man nicht aufhalten". And yet they never do!
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 21:32
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:Bavaria should secede for the benefit of the rest of Germany. But were would Berlin get financed from?!?!
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 22:22
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:Bavaria should secede for the benefit of the rest of Germany. That's just what they want. As long as we suffer, they should suffer too.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
Hey Germanchat, we're discussing power politics in Germany, 1910-1940 over in the Experimental Chat thread. It'd be awfully appreciated to hear the German perspective on Flamenpolitik and the influence of the German Chancellor versus Minister-President of Prussia and how they waxed and waned.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 03:13
|
|
|
So wait a minute how bad are these Burschenschaft things? Are we talking Texas A&M good old boy fraternity levels of bad here? Worse? Better? Are social conservatives waning in power and public support like they (mostly) are in America, or are they on the rise? It's always hard to tell with limited information like forum posts. edit: from wikipedia quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burschenschaft#Controversy 
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Sep 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 03:31
|
|
|
Its a wide array, really. You've got the good old frat boys who want to a) drink, b) smoke c) drink and d) smoke as much as they possibly can, you've got Damenschaften because those secret treehouses don't allow girls and therefore they have to make their own secret treehouses with male strippers champagne, and you have the hardcore right-wing Burschenschaften who are very upset that Germany still hasn't returned to the borders of 1937. Generally speaking, any Burschenschaft that is still "schlagend" (=fencing) is probably the latter. But yeah, there was a big throwdown last year over a second-generation Vietnamese immigrant who was denied entry even though he met every requirement. Because, you see, they aren't racist, but people sort of have to look German, you know? That said, they probably play a much lesser role in an average student's life than most American fraternities. The majority of German students isn't a member in a Burschenschaft and has little interest in becoming a member. My only contact to a Burschenschaft during my time at a university was seeing a guy in fancy clothes and that little hat they wear try to balance three sabers in one hand while fumbling around with his iphone in the other. Honestly, our conservatives are kinda tame compared to American conservatives. They've had no problem forming a coalition with a party who's leader was very openly gay and married to his partner, and I can't even remember when the last time was that someone seriously made abortion part of their political platform. Yes, there is the rise of the AfD, but I think that is more a sign that the remaining social conservative don't feel represented by the nominally "conservative" party anymore and are now doing their own thing. There will always be people who want everyone to follow their specific moral code, but I don't feel like there is a concerted movement to roll back civil rights for homosexuals or anything.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 04:45
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:Are social conservatives waning in power and public support like they (mostly) are in America, or are they on the rise? Depends heavily on your area, but I think there's this perception that they're gaining ground just because social conservatives are slowly stopping supporting the CDU/CSU and starting to filter down into AfD (or those on the far-right are switching from NPD to AfD because they're apparently more palatable to the voter). It's like if the Tea Party actually put their money where their mouth is and formed their own party, then got like 10% of the vote each election. If I had to make gross oversimplifications of the comparisons between the major German parties and US parties, I'd say: Greens = US doesn't really have an analogue FDP = I dunno, take those really rich Republicans who tend to be kinda classically liberal across the board\ Die Linke = US definitely doesn't have an analogue SPD = Left wing of the Democratic Party CDU = Moderate Democrats/Left-leaning Republicans AfD = Republicans since 2008 CSU = Texas Republicans.. out of touch, xenophobic, Protect Are Borders, corrupt. Drone fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Sep 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 06:01
|
|
|
Drone posted:Greens = Republican Libertarians Fixed it for ya.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 06:25
|
|
|
"Mehr Mut, Mehr Markt, Mehr Freiheit" doesn't really strike me as a particularly mainstream Democratic campaign slogan.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 06:28
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:So wait a minute how bad are these Burschenschaft things? Are we talking Texas A&M good old boy fraternity levels of bad here? Worse? Better? Are social conservatives waning in power and public support like they (mostly) are in America, or are they on the rise? It's always hard to tell with limited information like forum posts. There's a very wide array of organizations that constitute the Burschenschaften, ranging from a boys club to groups who think Hitler had uniformly good ideas. As you can guess, the latter are disliked by about 95% of Germans, with the remaining 5% all being terrible people. I have a good (American) friend who came to Germany for an exchange and stayed for a masters who's in one, and from the events I've attended with his group, they don't really seem any worse than normal 20-25 yr old German males; they like to smoke, drink, watch football, have sex, and do generally dumb poo poo (like play with their swords). This group also maintains some mountain hut somewhere and probably they all go to church together (all of these organizations are very christian, you see). This group of Burschenschaften are generally people who were enticed by party culture and good deals on rent; maybe their fathers or uncles were members so they want to be as well. Pretty comparable to American fraternities, and since they live in purpose built residence buildings with lots of space for partying and guest accommodation, simply by being there you'll get to party a lot, which is an attraction if you don't know a lot of people in the city you study in. On the other end are the groups that get themselves in the media for bad things. Like publicly saying that everyone who lives/works in Germany should have to prove Germany heritage. Or not allowing any non-Germans in their organization (maybe there are some token dutch, british and scandinavians, because they're tolerant). There people are the ones who have no problem saying that the proper map of Germany is the one from 1941, and they believe that it's some crime that the inferior slavs of Poland have a large chunk of what used to be Germany. In private they generally espouse nazi ideas in private, think highly of military conquest, and somehow forget what happened the last few times Germany tried to expand. While in the US you can generally get away with a lot of discourse just short of "Confederate states forever! All niggers need to be slaves!," any discourse in support of the Nazis is not only near-universally despised, it's also a federal crime. People in these sorts of organizations can generally be identified by the fact that they wear some dumb stripes at all times, and their passion for fencing. A kind of irony is that the far-right Burschenschaften seem to want the same things as the NPD, but they're totally different people. Most of the Burschenschaften are old-money/noble titles kinds of poeple, whereas the NPD are unemployed skinheads and football hooligans. As for conservatives, they're a different bunch. Since Germany's split between protestants and catholics, many in the protestant areas are much more permissible, with the catholics on the warpath against the homos and abortions. The CDU is also very pragmatic when they need to be, and there's really not much neo-con stuff in federal politics since the FDP lost their spots. The former east is also something like 90% atheist, so good luck getting any votes there if your party's message is based purely on God (PBC hahaha). Germany is in many ways a sensible country (at least it pretends like it is), there was even some famous evangelical family who tried to get asylum in Alabama so they could homeschool their kids (in Germany homeschooling is forbidden, your children must learn about evolution and loving). The one thing to understand is that the far right is still unacceptable. There's been numerous scandals where it turns out the intelligence agencies are basically running the far-right parties, and these groups receive no serious support outside of a few jurisdictions. While history is dulling some things, WWII is still within living memory of many people, and the Holocaust, the crimes of the Wehrmacht are all well known. Virtually every major city was destroyed in WWII (that's why everything is new and shiny now!), and the country was split and occupied for almost 50 years. Seeing as there are many records and memories of what it was like when the red army rolled across half the country and then occupied it for some years, I believe that most people associate far right thoughts with annihilation.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 06:32
|
|
|
Anyone thinking any of the major parties in Germany are remotely on the level of the Tea Party needs to read up on the Tea Party.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 06:33
|
|
|
Jerry Manderbilt posted:"Mehr Mut, Mehr Markt, Mehr Freiheit" doesn't really strike me as a particularly mainstream Democratic campaign slogan. That's a really apt slogan and is, I'd say, at the core of mainstream Democratic party politics. How is it not? More courage in killing terrorists/standing up to Republicans/willing to be bypartisan, more free market trade agreements, more freedom for citizens and minorities throughout the world and especially in America. Sounds like a core campaign strategy I could use in a Federal election here. Q: Whats the different between the average AfD and TeaParty supporters? A: More Nazi guilt, less guns. For instance, I assume AfD won't officially include in its party manifesto that immigrants from Turkey should be rounded up in camps for deportation. TeaParty Republicans already funded those camps and criticize everyone else for not sending more children to those camps. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Sep 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 06:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2024 22:25 |
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:For instance, I assume AfD won't officially include in its party manifesto that immigrants from Turkey should be rounded up in camps for deportation. TeaParty Republicans already funded those camps and criticize everyone else for not sending more children to those camps. I assume it's more like "convince them, with money if need be, to go home, or integrate." While "no more new turks" was a campaign slogan of both the SPD and CDU as late as the 80s, I don't think anyone really is at that level anymore. The bigger issue is how can you integrate the people here, and more importantly, convince them to be citizens and to be proud of Germany.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2014 07:45
|
|