Many Germans are sick and tired. Some are still angry at the way the COVID epidemic was dealt with (there are those who still insist that there really was no epidemic).
Far more are angry at the worsening medical system. It is still far, far better than in the USA, of course, but that doesn’t shorten the long waiting times in hospital corridors or for appointments with specialists, with smaller hospitals and clinics increasingly privatizing or shutting their doors for lack of income, meaning more long, painful rides in rural areas.
Kindergarten and child care, widespread thanks largely to the amazing (but hardly mentioned) East German model, is harder and harder to obtain, with staff now striking against low wages and harmful child-teacher ratios. The schools are in bad shape, with far too few teachers while pupils from Germany get worse and worse results in international reading, writing, and math tests – not to mention the arts, history, and science.
Far too many pension-age people are struggling, with free food pantries unable to meet the needs of all those dependent on them. And infrastructure is best symbolized by the recent collapse of the Carola Bridge over the Elbe in Dresden, with autobahn extensions greeted most by the speedsters, while the elderly in small towns and villages find fewer and fewer bus or rail connections to the cities, although rural post offices, bank and government services, and small shops disappear.
Most critical is the housing emergency and the failure of the government or private industry to build affordable housing in a country that traditionally prefers rented apartments to private homes.
No, there is no mass poverty, and on average Germany is still well-off in the world. But several millions are well below that average, with threats for the others, symbolized by the possible shut-down of sections of the giant Volkswagen empire, Germany’s pride and a major anchor of its economic leadership role, now beginning to teeter.
Most worried of all are the people in eastern Germany, the one-time German Democratic Republic founded so hopefully almost exactly 75 years ago, October 7, 1949, and buried – triumphantly for a large number – 41 years later, on October 3, 1990. Both dates will soon be ceremoniously recalled – happily for some, sadly for others.
Many East Germans improved their lot under capitalism, above all in terms of commodity assortment and tourist travel to all the world. But even now, after those 41 years, after their industrial, agricultural, and huge home-building systems were almost totally destroyed within a few years, where they feel that they are still treated as incompetent, second-class Germans, with only limited sectors of the economy reconstructed, it is East Germans who are most dissatisfied, disturbed and to a degree defiant.
Chip factory postponed
Symbolic for many is the recent decision by the American Intel to postpone building the huge chip factory planned for Magdeburg, offering well over 3,000 urgently needed jobs. “Maybe in two years” came the consoling statement.
But Elon Musk’s Tesla plant, his biggest in Europe, did get built and may have influenced Sunday’s election in the biggest East German state, Brandenburg, where the Social Democratic Party (SPD), on top here since 1990, was just able to squeak past the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
This election, the last of three in East Germany in September, re-enforced the results of the other two. The dissatisfaction or anger was sharp and clear, with almost zero sympathy for the three quarrelsome partners now governing Germany.
The Free Democrats, openly pro-capitalist and nationally down to 4% or less, have virtually disappeared in East Germany, getting one percent or less. The Greens, who hoped to reach top rank in Germany three years ago, were never liked in the East and were now down to 4-5 percent in all three states and probably immune to even the best political Viagra assistance.
The trio leader on the federal level, Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, had failed miserably in both Saxony and Thuringia – in the 6-7% range. Their victory by a few hairs in Brandenburg, with 30.9 % against the 29.2 % for the ostracized, far-rightist Alternative for Germany (AfD), was due to the great popularity not of the party but of its slow-talking, seemingly very reasonable prime minister, Dietmar Woidke, 62.
A few days before the election he announced that if his SPD did not gain the few points needed to come out first he would step down as government head. This clever ultimatum, called undemocratic by some, won him just enough voters from other parties to win the day, while cutting their own numbers, sometimes painfully.
But Woidke kept a clear distance from his mother party on the national level, insisting that the increasingly unpopular Olaf Scholz keep out of Brandenburg politics (although he lives there). Scholz did not protest; even the physical contrast between the two handsomely full-bald politicians is almost too funny, with Woidke towering at 6’5” over little Scholz at 5’5”! But no doubt, those Tesla jobs also helped.
The Christian Democrats (CDU), the main opposition party on the federal level, and already almost salivating in hopes of winning the federal election next September, also did miserably in Brandenburg, getting only 12.1 percent, one of their worst results anywhere in Germany since 1945. And in Saxony, where they just squeaked past the AfD (with 31.9 to 30.6%), it was almost exactly like Brandenburg, with the victory again due largely to the popularity, not of the party, but of the youngish, red-bearded prime minister, Michael Kretschmer, 49.
As for Thuringia, the central “green lung” of Germany, with historic cities like Eisenach (Bach’s hometown), Jena (famed for Zeiss optics), Gotha, ancient Erfurt, and Weimar, home to Goethe, Schiller (and to the Buchenwald concentration camp), its past was of little help. The popularity of Bodo Ramelow, prime minister for ten years and the only LINKE to gain that office, no longer sufficed, and his party sacked down from a one-time high of 31% five years ago to a sad 13% this time (but which is now still the best for the LINKE in any German state).
But his one-time precedence in Thuringia has now been overshadowed by a reverse precedent: this is the first state where the AfD wins first prize with 32.8%. Its leader there, Björn Höcke, is the most prominent and most vicious pro-fascist in Germany and the AfD is not only dangerous in Thuringia and East Germany, it is in second place nationally.
CDU lost badly
All in all, both the country’s ruling triumvirate and its main opponent, the CDU, lost badly and were barely saved from complete disaster, one each, by a single popular local leader, in Saxony and now Brandenburg, in both cases leaders who are not on the best of terms with their parent parties.
The real victor parties were the AfD and one other party, which enjoyed as vertical a start as any helicopter, jumping from nil to 11-13 percent in a mere nine-month gestation period: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
The pundits had predicted, and many hoped, that it would win voters away from the AfD. Yet this was seldom the case. Instead, most of its votes were taken away from its mother party, the LINKE, which has now been left in shambles in its former East German strongholds – battered in Thuringia, just barely holding on in Saxony, without a single deputy in the Landtag of Brandenburg, where it was once part of the ruling coalition!
These two parties, from totally different corners, have three points in common. Most importantly, they both demand negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The AfD has its own reasons – partly, some say, because unlike so many German leaders it is in no way pro-American, but rather pro-German – in the old nationalist spirit; more armaments, more soldiers, also with conscription, “traditional families” having more children, more un-taxed money for the wealthiest and more support for the Netanyahu war against Palestinians – but no support for the USA advances into Eurasia, hence no support for Zelensky. And hence its duplicate position to Sahra’s party.
Secondly, as part of their “hate-the-Muslims” blasting, they oppose immigrants or any “un-German foreigners” – basically telling them to “go back where you came from” and “let Germany stay German.”
Sadly, Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW has taken a far too similar path. No, none of the most vicious words and phrases, but instead based fully on “common sense.”
She especially opposes the “economic migrants” who, she stresses, are needed in their homelands and whose competition is used to “hurt German workers,” whose children, just learning the language, make teaching German kids more difficult, and who allegedly take a big share of all-too-meager housing and health care possibilities.
And the cops should be assisted in nabbing foreign “wrong-doers” who should be sent back to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, or wherever. If her policy was aimed at wooing voters away from the AfD, as many believed, it failed almost completely.
But it greatly disturbs many socialist internationalists, who do not ignore the problems of increasing immigration, but demand programs to meet them, while continuing to stress their belief in international solidarity – also for people coming to Germany. This policy, perhaps too insistently, is maintained currently only by the LINKE. It probably cost it votes.
Thirdly, both the AfD and the BSW were seen by many as protest parties – opposing an establishment which is proving so inefficient, so ineffective and so enthusiastic – but only for measures, including military ones, aimed against Russia and militarizing Germany. This protest vote represents a very misplaced trust when applied to the AfD.
New polls confirm that East Germans, especially, are becoming fearful about a war danger now blasting away in every media outlet, loudest from Baerbock and the other Greens but also from Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, a Social Democrat and, despite or because of his war talk, very popular with all too many as a decisive, hard-hitting leader. Meanwhile, Olaf often drags his feet uncertainly, as with allowing or barring long-range weapons shipments to Kyiv.
He goes along
In the end, undoubtedly under great pressure, he goes along. Unfortunately, many in East Germany also swallow the “hate foreigner” propaganda, blaming the wrong people and wrong economic causes for their problems, but all too justifiably considering themselves belittled and discriminated against by the West German invaders, corporate and individual, who always know everything better and have seized almost total control. Thus, the dissatisfaction spreading everywhere in Germany is most pronounced here – as could be seen in all three elections.
Many new problems loom since new coalitions must now be formed in a process recalling the game “spin the bottle” – or “Who with whom?” The AfD, thus far taboo, is still ruled out of any coalition – until now!
But it will certainly be necessary to invite Sahra’s party to join, despite all prejudices. There’s often no one else to choose from!
The BSW has stated that it will only join governments which oppose armament shipments to Ukraine and the stationing of American long-range missiles in Germany, with the terrible perils that involves. But can a Christian Democrat likely to win the top spot in Thuringia and Saxony or the Social Democrat in Brandenburg accept such conditions? Can they avoid them as irrelevant at the local, land level?
Hard to believe! But can the BSW join governments and thus become itself part of the establishment, while retreating from its conditions? And if it does, on what basis can it appeal to all German voters next September? Sahra, who appears to make the rules, will have to make some tough decisions.
And what about the LINKE? Is it doomed? Some prominent members from its Communist Platform, its Cuba Si caucus, and other prominent left-leaning members remained in the party but say it must make basic changes, pushing out leaders who condemn only Putin – and NATO hardly if at all, who oppose arms shipments only in vague words, if at all, and in many cases even support Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
The party must cease being a liberal supporter of moderate Keynes-style improvements and a gentler status quo – and USA hegemony strivings, or German ones – and start fighting for working people’s power and socialism as its almost forgotten goal.
Can these groups succeed – now that the current leaders have thus far led the party almost to extinction? Can it replace people like the undemocratically-chosen LINKE delegate to the European Parliament, Carola Rackete, who voted to approve sending more weapons to Kyiv, even Taunus missiles, thus opposing LINKE policy and more bellicose than Olaf Scholz – while party co-chair Martin Schirdewan simply abstained and only the third delegate, Özlem Alev Demirel, had the guts to raise her hand in opposition.
Two tests are in the offing. Leftists have called for a major peace rally in Berlin on October 3rd, with full trains and buses expected from the whole country. The LINKE leaders could no longer oppose such a call (as they did in 2023) but are sneaking in some conditions of their own into a separate message which will probably be ignored. Scheduled to speak are Sahra Wagenknecht, the admired and admirable Gesine Lötzsch, who chose to remain in the LINKE (and fight for a change), and a well-known Social Democrat, Ralph Stegner, who has already been pressured to drop out. It will be a call for peace in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon, in all conflict areas, with a reduction and no increase in the arms build-up. How many will be there? Not an unimportant question with elections ahead!
And then, October 18-20, perhaps under its influence, the LINKE will hold a party congress in Halle. Will the status-quo leaders, who have ruined the party, win once again, with the sure assistance of nearly the entire media? Or can there be a change, a move toward the left, away from pragmatism and opportunism – and just possibly leading to reconciliation and unity on the left, so urgently, so desperately necessary in a continent, a whole world, balancing on threats of fascism, of ecological disaster, and of brinkmanship – indeed truly on “the Eve of Destruction”?
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