Republic of Fear
by Malte Lehming (summarised by Borjabrela)
Your heart rate sinks, muscles stiffen, you lose control of bodily functions: You're frozen with fear. This primal reflex to danger is a familiar phenomenon in nature but it's less common for it to strike nearly all of a political class in a democracy. Welcome to Germany.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was an event that was celebrated at the time as a triumph of freedom and hope over despair. Barely 20 years after the united Germany is frozen with fear. It's as if the East Germans have exacted a delayed revenge on their brothers and sisters in the West: "Your political model may have won, but we'll infect your society by reviving militant antimilitarism, a yearning for security at all cost, and a craze for distributive justice - until the whole country is paralysed."
Four electoral shocks show this. First, in the 2002 Bundestag elections, Social Democrats and Greens saved themselves from defeat with thunderous anti-Iraq war propaganda, playing upong strong anti-American resentments. They laid the groundwork for a new, left-wing German national consciousness that had not previously existed because of the country's Nazi past. "For the first time, I'm proud to be a German," went the refrain -proud to have resisted a war that no one had asked them to join in the first place. Gerhard Schroder ultimately won the elections. But no German government would ever change this: better to sacrifice NATO and give up on the fight against terrorism than advocate such unpopular notions as solidarity with one's allies.
Second, in the 2005 Bundestag elections Mrs. Merkel made the mistake of overestimating her countrymen's sense of reality. She announced economic reforms, which were urgently necessary, but was consequently accused of neo-liberalism. On the German scale of negatives, neo-liberalism come right after fascism. So instead of a reform-minded coalition with the Free Democratic Party, Mrs. Merkel was forced into a "grand" standstill coalition with the Social Democrats. The preliminary result of these two electoral shocks: No more war. No more reforms.
Third, in the 2008 elections in the Hesse state the incumbent Christian Democrat governor was defeated when he revived the old coservative slogan: freedom not socialism. So the third lesson: No more freedom. Anyone who asks Germans to choose between freedom and socialism risks their choosing the latter.
Fourth shock, the rise of the Left Party. The Left Party's slogans are extremely popular: Out of Afghanistan! More justice! Better protection from layoffs! Across-the-board minimum wages! No university fees! No privatisation of state-owned companies! On all these points, surveys show the ultraleft in sync with a majority of Germans.
To counter this, helpless Social Democrats are abandoning any sort of "Third Way" and the Christian Democrats are push into the center acting demonstratively unconservative, cuddly, impartial. Germany's political class is stunned by this effect. Those who become rigid with fear hope they won't be discovered by their predators. But this instinct designed to ensure survival can quickly spell their doom. Once discovered, motionless as they are, they become very easy prey.
Love and freedom.
1 comment:
love and freedom always, indeed
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