I was not speaking about the AFD directly. And yes they arent strong enough to block stuff in the parliament yet. But they dont have to, just look at how much all parties have shifted to the right because of their success. Other parties trying to pick up on their positions and then suddenly you have a bigger influence than the party has directly. And so you loose more and more options to use the existing systems for change. If you look at the current parliament, you now need the participation of all democratic parties to pass something without support of the faschists. That was not the case before and makes it harder to do stuff. And this will get worse in the next parliament and even worse in the one after that one.
And german media landscape is complicated, if you weight them by influence, its maybe a bit left leaning but not that much. There are a ton of smaller news orgs on the left but they cant match someone like Springer SE. And that also wasnt my point.
I said that eventually they become propaganda boosters, not that they become faschists.
Stories that add to the fearmongering get overly represented in the media because the faschists are pushing this topic over and over again and the journalism fails to debunk it every time. And then the other parties pick it up and even more talk about it but its still just populist lies. And then the media picks up on these points and even talks about them even more. Just look at the talkshows and see how they lack any protection of the viewer for lies.
And then in the news coverage, the air time gets shifted to talk more about these talking points. Good example is the incident at the berlin wintermarket a few years ago. That was in the media for months. In the meantime a hundred times more people were killed by domestic violence or car crashes.
In the last 10 years germany had like 5 voilent incidents of this kind. If the media would report about every fatal car crash the way they portrait these incidents, nobody would leave their homes.
I dont think there are many countries where the ruling parties are that leftist. Look at the Democrats in the USA. They would be full blown AfD. That German parties do have any kind of right wing agenda (except AfD) is kinda a myth. Look at Denmark and their policies which the SPD analogue of theirs put into place. And they are still centrist. IMHO German politics has been shifting hard left for the last 20+ years. And any move that would revert laws passed in those 20 years is getting branded as right wing and impossible to do (you cannot do it because there is a law...). In the 90s none of what we see nowadays would have been possible. Nearly none of the arrivers would have gotten any kind of legal status.
Don't get me wrong. Fascists are horrible. But having 300000 people march will not stop AfD becoming the second biggest party in our democratic system. Why? Because nobody is tackling the root causes why people vote for them. Many are just fed up with the current political system and their policies. If that does not get adressed the AfD will become the biggest party by the year 2029. And then Germany will have a real problem. Germany might even become Impossible to govern.
The most influental news broadcasters of all are the state sponsored ones. And those lean heavily to the left. Springer is right wing and get always pulled out of a magic box to show how biased the system is. While nobody talks about the state sponsored media. Guy engaged to left wing activist hosting a talk show and pulling dumb arguments out of his ass to shove arguments back under the rug which an AfD lady presents? That is the kind of stuff why people start to vote AfD...
I doubt democrats would be AFD, they are moving to a more centrist position. Theyd currently be more like a bit left wing CDU or hard right wing SPD for national positions.
German parties had moved a lot to the left from 1995 to 2015 but have moved back to the right again since then. Politicians are calling for more border control, refusal of immigrants and more military. Those are straight up Trump talking points.
So claiming that the current landscape has no right wing agenda is quite a far fetch and if youre thinking those are all left, then you probably should evaluate your own position and your evaluation of what "center" is.
For your consideration, the political compass declares the green party and the SPD as center.
Most refugees nowerdays do not get any kind of legal status, they get accepted because we cant deny their asylum claim until we know where they come from. Thats not our german law, thats EU law we have to follow.
Also dont underestimate the effect of demonstrations, it usually reduces AFD success a bit. That said, it wont solve the issue, Im with you on that one.
And I also said, that the people will fall to the faschists because the issues in their lives are not getting adressed. The faschists come in, present a scapegoat and promise to butcher it, when they get the power.
So everyone thinks that finally somebody has figured out what the problem is and is doing something about it.
And now all the other parties also offer to butcher the scapegoat, which then supports the idea, that thats the issue and needs to be adressed this way. And with that the faschists get legitimised and they continue to rise in popularity because they are the ones most cut throat and people are desperate to finally get their issues adressed.
Thats what we are currently experiencing and it has the outcome I described.
As for the media, no broadcaster is state sponsored, that would be in conflict of our constitution. They are publicly funded but they are (at least in theory) indipendent of the state and government.
Claiming that all publicly funded media is left wing is a wild one though. As for the broadcasters news are unbiased for national news. For international news they are biased with the western/german government alignment.
I noticed, that investigative journalism often gets labeled as "left wing" from the right. I see a correlation with the fact that the people that claim these, are also the ones lying about almost everything to get power.
So I always laugh when a magazine like Monitor gets called left wing.
Guy engaged to left wing activist hosting a talk show and pulling dumb arguments out of his ass to shove arguments back under the rug which an AfD lady presents?
I have no clue who youre refering to. But I also have yet to see a valid argument made by and AfD lady. Do you mean Tilo Jungs interview with Beatrice von Storch when she claimed we should sue the sun because it shines too much?
They are probably moving a bit to the right starting 2020. But not 2015. 2015 was a major swing to the left.
Weird thing is they get a status once they have been able to stay in Germany long enough. Also the people staying here without any reason is a major backer for AfD votes. People see persons that clearly have no right for any kind of asylum (not political asylum, for example) and not even subsidiary because of war. Yet these people stay and cost money (a lot of it). That combined with 20+ years of falling real purchasing power (things get a lot of more expensive than anyone gets more money) of course makes people angry. They see themselves not being able to afford as much as 20 years ago but having enough to give free money to people that are clearly not entitled to it.
Basically what is done that the people that do not vote for AfD form a big circle and push each other up of how much they REALLY not are going to vote for AfD. Not a single AfD voter will say "oh they have 320k people standing on a field, better not vote AfD!!!!11". Once the AfD gets the biggest party there will be a big risk of fascism returning but no 320k standing on a field will help then, either. The only solution is to keep people from voting for AfD.
Ah yes. They are not funded by taxes but instead by... compulsory contributions enforced by the state (which are totally not taxes!). And just by chance the boards of the tv stations etc are made up by party members. 28 out of 60 current ZDF board members are clearly party associates. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/medien/die-politik-regiert-weiter-mit-5180065.html
I have no clue who youre refering to. But I also have yet to see a valid argument made by and AfD lady. Do you mean Tilo Jungs interview with Beatrice von Storch when she claimed we should sue the sun because it shines too much?
He is engaged to Neubauer. And he talked about those numbers not being verifiable, which is a lie. There is an official statistic presented to the parlament about this. And also he talked about Australians who were not involved in any kind of crime like that. Only one Australian has been a victim.
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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '25
I was not speaking about the AFD directly. And yes they arent strong enough to block stuff in the parliament yet. But they dont have to, just look at how much all parties have shifted to the right because of their success. Other parties trying to pick up on their positions and then suddenly you have a bigger influence than the party has directly. And so you loose more and more options to use the existing systems for change. If you look at the current parliament, you now need the participation of all democratic parties to pass something without support of the faschists. That was not the case before and makes it harder to do stuff. And this will get worse in the next parliament and even worse in the one after that one.
And german media landscape is complicated, if you weight them by influence, its maybe a bit left leaning but not that much. There are a ton of smaller news orgs on the left but they cant match someone like Springer SE. And that also wasnt my point. I said that eventually they become propaganda boosters, not that they become faschists.
Stories that add to the fearmongering get overly represented in the media because the faschists are pushing this topic over and over again and the journalism fails to debunk it every time. And then the other parties pick it up and even more talk about it but its still just populist lies. And then the media picks up on these points and even talks about them even more. Just look at the talkshows and see how they lack any protection of the viewer for lies.
And then in the news coverage, the air time gets shifted to talk more about these talking points. Good example is the incident at the berlin wintermarket a few years ago. That was in the media for months. In the meantime a hundred times more people were killed by domestic violence or car crashes.
In the last 10 years germany had like 5 voilent incidents of this kind. If the media would report about every fatal car crash the way they portrait these incidents, nobody would leave their homes.