Germany crawling

The coalition swamp

For the last ten years or so in German politics there has been a handful of parties which have combined in some way to create the ruling coalitions at state and federal level.

It is a completely incontestable fact that the programmes of the individual parties were also almost completely irreconcilable with each other. Voters have been treated to the spectacle of their elected representatives forming governments which had no common ground apart from the exercise of power, the receipt of ministerial salaries and the perks of ministerial life such as the use of chauffer-driven limousines. The result has been governments that are interested only in 'muddling through' (durchwürsteln) on whatever incoherent policies they could come up with.

After each election and with each new political colour scheme – whether 'Jamaica' or 'traffic light' or just mixed pickles – voters were left asking themselves: 'how on earth can that function'. Of course it couldn't. Each of these alchemical homunculi collapsed well before its time.

Adrift in history

The result is that for more than ten long years Germany has vacillated towards… well, nothing in particular. Problems have been dismissed or simply ignored or triangulated out of existence. That's why the country is in such a bad state at the moment – politically, economically and culturally.

The firewall

Out of this chaos the AfD has arisen from nowhere to obtaining respectable, near majority support in recent state elections. Fair-minded people reading the AfD's manifestos down the years will at least find solid proposals for action on issues which concern the German electorate – and ever more of the German electorate.

Of course, it is inconceivable that a party with definite goals addressing current problems and having broad popular support could ever enter a coalition with the wishy-washy apparatchiks of the establishment parties.

Not being able to face the prospect of a coalition with a party that actually wants to do something, the establishment parties closed ranks and declared the AfD beyond the political pale, giving us a lesson in the black arts of political name-calling. No one could possibly work with the AfD because… well that would be Weimar all over again, wouldn't it, topped off with a Machtergreifung, the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, after which no immigrant or dissentient would be safe in their beds.

Hence the Brandmauer, the 'firewall', which forbids any kind of cooperation or even contact with the AfD. No establishment politicians seem to see or care that excluding a political party from the constitutional processes of government represents a blatant disenfranchisement of a substantial part of the electorate and thus a grave violation of democratic government. Up until now no one in the mainstream media in Germany has found this 'firewall' objectionable.

Enter Elon

No one, that is, until Elon Musk blew more than the doors off German politics with an article in the purportedly slightly right-of-centre publication Welt am Sonntag. The publication of Musk's article of robust support for the AfD and his criticism of the anti-democtratic machinations of the established parties caused the Editor to have to write a piece explaining himself for publishing such sacrilege and, as a cherry on the cake, the resignation of his Opinion Editor in disgust.

Suddenly, in German politics, Elon has pointed out to the German people that the Emperor truly has no clothes. His article was published, there was a loud pop, and all the fog and obfuscations of the last ten years vanished. Someone with a big name and a worldwide profile had said the unsayable.

Mainstream media and the political establishment reacted predictably by trying to discredit Musk's contribution in the same way they had tried to discredit the upstarts of the AfD. In this case it was 'election interference' of the worst sort, something which, like the AFD, should be forbidden; no foreigner should be allowed to express an opinion on German politics, in other words. Well, if you think that makes sense – you should review what the German media said about Donald Trump.

The loss of national pride

How can we be so sure that a substantial number of the electorate now see the naked emperor in all his flabby decrepitude? That's easy.

Citizens of a nation like to have at least something about their country in which they can take pride, none more so than the Germans, perhaps. Emerging crushed after the Second World War they took pride in the hard work and dedication which rebuilt a modern democratic state out of the rubble of defeat. In his short story Es wird etwas geschehen (Something will happen, 1956) Heinrich Böll mocked the sometimes brainless postwar spirit of get up and do something, whatever it might be, but his fellow citizens were proud of their Wirtschaftswunder, which had brought them solid prosperity and a stable currency. The German industrial base, particularly in automobile production, brought them a world-wide reputation. Reunification, when it finally came, was also (at first) a reputational triumph. When the Euro succeeded the DM, this was done in a way that favoured German industry over its European competitors. In the course of the last forty years Germans from all walks of life have expressed to me a deep pride in their country, which not too long ago had been a heap of smoking rubble.

Nothing remains of that pride. Not one thing. It is amazing, too, how quickly it has all disappeared. In every field, Germany has gone wrong and the common people have noticed it. Its industrial base is collapsing, not just shrinking; its army is a laughing stock; migration has eroded the German sense of identity; where once there was German orderliness, now there is violent, sometimes unspeakable crime; Germany's once so-efficient railways are now an unreliable disaster; major projects, if they are completed at all, are massively late and massively overbudget. On top of all this, its politicians are buffoons – the great days of statesmen such as Adenauer, Erhardt, Brandt, Schmidt, even Kohl had his moments, are gone.

Let's hope the Germans finally wake up, spit on their hands and get their country back on the rails again.