A Different Perspective

Red Baron reads the New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and the local newspaper, the Badische Zeitung, all online. Lately, I’ve added the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and I’m becoming increasingly impressed by the unique perspective Der andere Blick offers on German politics.

The editors tell it like it is and don’t beat around the bush. They give me new insights into my homeland - which is so in need of reforms - and shed new light on old issues from surprising angles.

Last week’s topic in Der andere Blick: The Decline of the Mainstream Parties - An Opportunity for Democracy. The decline is obvious in Germany today, but across Europe as a whole, it is no new phenomenon. It’s just that, once again, Germany is a latecomer.

Suddenly, the Christian Democrats (CDU) are in a steep nosedive, while the Social Democrats have been crumbling away for quite some time. Populist and nationalist parties are filling the vacuum created by the evaporation of the established mainstream parties.

Why didn’t we see this trend sooner and take countermeasures earlier, before Jean-Marie LePen's France and Silvio Berlusconi's Italy drifted to the right? By now, Marine Le Pen’s Front National, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, and AliceWeidel’s Alternative für Deutschland have become political forces to be reckoned with.

In the NZZ article, Eric Gujer calls Chancellor Angela Merkel the gravedigger of Germany's old party system. She committed the fatal sin of allowing the ideological differences between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats to disappear and of declaring their policies alternativlos, to be without alternative.

Now Angela’s successor, Friedrich Merz, must govern with a Christian-socialist unity coalition that is incapable of implementing major reforms, making only cosmetic adjustments to Germany's excesses of social welfare and bureaucracy.

Who can blame voters for looking for alternatives (!) and seeking salvation in new parties? The AfD and The Left make frivolous promises to voters, whether it’s “Make Germany Great Again” or “Tax the Rich.”

©NZZ

So, like many other countries, Germany is becoming increasingly politicized and polarized. The former is evident in rising voter turnout. Whatever reforms our centrist, Christian Social Democratic government attempts amid dwindling resources are, in the eyes of many citizens, insufficient and so merely play into the hands of populists. 

No matter how you turn it, the AfD is currently the only true people’s party in Germany.

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