Bring back the landgrafen! Hesse-Rotenburg will rise again!
That is a fear I share. The question though is if they win the majority in this Land election (trying to be educable! 
) is there reason to be more or less afraid?
First hearing about this I thought more, but on hearing more about how highly probably quickly their being in office would but regional conditions even more in the shitter I am thinking maybe less, that a chance to demonstrate how bad they are in a way that doesn’t destroy the whole country, and with it the EU, may be just what is needed to demonstrate they won’t … Macht Alles Grosse Abermals! 
Oh well, if we go back to the Vielstaaterei (many states) of before unification in 1871, all bets are off…
That is the million €uro question. We can start to speculate on Sunday, depending on the real results. Absolute majority for AfD? They govern, their mistakes are theirs. Short of an absolute majority? The CDU (Christian Democrats - mmmmh…moderate right wing) will not enter into a coalition with them (the Brandmauer, see article for a critique of this idea), but also not with Die Linke (The Left, former communist East German party, today unfortunately anti-semitic and economically illiterate IMO. That is another Brandmauer the CDU has promised to erect). Then there is no viable government, only a minority government that will not even be able to approve a budget. New elections? I don’t know whether that is possible according to the local laws, and if it is, under which circumstances and how soon. Feels like chaos, which is a priori good for AfD and Die Linke. But you never know.
There’s a problem with the idea of an extreme RW movement taking over, then delivering shitty outcomes then expecting the people who voted for them to learn their mistake.
The problem is the Fascist government is shameless about lying about what they’ve done. And the sheep who vote that way believe that propaganda before they’ll believe the evidence of their own pocketbooks and personal lives.
I think this is the main problem. Approached from a logical position, the people would realize they were lied to, the right-wing party cannot deliver, and learn a lesson.
But they did not vote for the party in the first place based on facts and logic, and the US vote in 2024 demonstrates the fallacy in assuming they will magically start using facts and logic the second time around.
I’m not thinking about the people who voted for them; I am thinking about the people in the rest of the country who are “disillusioned”, frustrated with current directions and ripe to glom on to promise of change, looking for some alternative … who in increasingly are willing to consider this party as the alternative for Germany. To those people having no record is more attractive than one that only has a failure with finger pointing and blame spreading. I think.
Those who voted for them already? We’ ve seen with Trump, some turn their back, but cognitive dissonance being what it is some never will.
We have friends in Ostritz in their 80s, and they are from a generation where the big disagreement was SPD vs Linke. They hate all this, but they basically feel boxed in at this point.
The Wikipedia page on the Saxony-Anhalt election process is confusing so pardon me if I’ve got this wrong, but do the SPD and FDP have constituencies they won or do they only have seats based on proportional representation? If they don’t have a seat they won outright, then I assume that they (especially the FDP) would not get anything if they fall below 5%? That might make it even harder to find a coalition.
There are two votes in federal elections, the first vote and the second vote - the first is where you vote for an individual, the second where you vote for a party. Those almost always align, but sometimes not.
ETA: there is an exception to the rules where if you get 3 people elected from your party, even if you don’t get 5%, you will get the proportional block of your vote, regardless how small.
It was recently eliminated legislatively, but the German courts reinstated it.
(the FDP isn’t going to get a single person elected there, though)
Do Germany’s no-nonsense not-kidding anti-Nazi laws have any scope here? Just how far right is a party in Germany allowed to be?
Those laws concern mostly actual, for real, Nazi stuff - insignia, salutes, Holocaust denial and the like. Even the AfD is not openly, on their face, a pro-Nazi party - but they do try to downplay the evil of the Nazis and the significance of their rule in German history. There are frequently scandals of AfD politicians having done Nazi shit in their youth, or associating with Nazis, and Nazis seem to feel very comfortable at AfD rallies. No AfD politician would say out loud: “Hitler was a great man, and we believe the NSDAP had the right idea all along.” - even if that were legal, that would still be political poison in Germany for the vast majority of voters.
Their political ideas and goals do seem to align, though, and it’s much harder to legislate against ideas than to simply outlaw the swastika. The AfD is being treated by the Verfassungsschutz (the federal and state institution for the protection of the constitution) as far-right extremist, and there is talk of starting proceedings to outlaw them - a process with very high barriers (rightfully so), and disastrous results if unsuccessful.
I truly hope we do not find out just how far right a party in Germany is allowed to be.
Yes, you are right, neither SPD nor FDP have won constituencies granting them direct mandates in Saxony-Anhalt, and both are unlikely to do so soon. The FDP is probably out of the next parliaments in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Meklenburg-Vorpommern, because of the 5% clause, and the SPD are hovering around 8%, 14% and 29% of the vote intention, in that order. That is lousy for a traditional big tent party, a Volkspartei.
Concentrating in Saxony-Anhalt, were the AfD polls strongest, if the FDP, the Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht and the “various” all reamin under 5% as expected, they will have no representation in the regional parliament. Then you may not need 50% of the vote to obtain an absolute majority, if 12-15% of the votes don’t count 43-45% may be enough. And that is without taking into account the proportional representation correction factors and the extra seats granted to winners in single constituencies (Überhangmandate - if they exist in those regional elections, IDK).
That might make it easier to obtain an absolute majority.
I feel like thats a different concept.
It was my understanding that what I’m discussing happened in the middle east with Islamic extremism. In middle eastern nations with quasi-democratic institutions, islamic extremist parties would win power and not accomplish anything of value. This would reduce the desire among the public to have people like that win power so they are less appealing in future election cycles.
In Venezuela, the vast majority of voters reject Maduro’s party and want them out. However Chavez and Maduro destroyed the democracy so they can’t be removed. The public voted for opposition parties, but because the democracy was destroyed the will of the voters didn’t matter.
I really don’t know how to deal with extremist parties. My point is that if democracy is strong and if the voters are given a chance to elect extremist parties and those parties fail and screw up, then in theory the voters will be less likely to vote for them in the future.
But like i said, its just a theory. Trump won 63 million votes in 2016, 74 million votes in 2020 and 77 million votes in 2024. So there are very serious holes in this theory. Also again, extremist parties make destroying the democracy their top priority so they can never be voted out once they win.
One person. One vote. One time.
This is relevant to the philosophical discussion of the last few posts: Paradox of tolerance - Wikipedia.
Of course one side demands that we not tolerate extremist views on the other side of the political spectrum while giving the extremist views on their side a pass by insisting that their opponents are fear-mongering and being intolerant hypocrites; while the other side is the exact mirror image. In other words, both sides insist that they are the rational centrists and that extremism is unique to the other side.
I don’t know which two sides you are refering to, but currently there is only one side that threatens democracy with a real chance of success. When another side, or fraction, or movement, or whatever comes that is also a threat, we will discuss it and try to oppose it. But right now, today, he AfD may win a majority in a Land in Germany. Talking about another side is a distraction to me.
Talking about the trumps and putins and orbáns and farages and lepens and musks and thiels and miléis and so on that support the AfD and each other is not.
And … 44 %. One seat short of governing alone, apparently.
The AfD will not be ‘demystified’ by its participation in a Land government, as some hope without any empirical basis, but will instead become further normalised and become more motivated. For the AfD Saxony-Anhalt is merely a stepping stone if not a trampolin on the way to the federal government and that victory will give them momentum. The Christian Democrats (CDU) have lost more than half of their voters: 37.1% 2021, 18.5% today (with a higher participation today, which makes it worse) and the SPD falls down to 8%, which looks and feels awful.
I will vote in the regional elections later this month in Berlin. I feel no joy at all at the prospect of having to choose one party I am not really happy with to stop the fascists, but that is how it feels. I bet the results there will be sobering too.