Why more young men in Germany are turning to the far right

[4Q Basket Case]

Without a written Constitution, Parliament can do pretty much whatever it wants.
Sovereignty in the British system lies with the "king-in-Paliament." The King has not vetoed a bill since the early 1700s, so the sovereign is pretty much whatever Parliament says it is.

There are a number of ways to go about this:
Legally prosecute the leader of the party (sending a not so subtle message to the second in command, "Okay, Mr. 2IC, if you do not tow the party line, you're next." (e.g. France)
Ban the party. (Germany, maybe?)
If your party is polling poorly before an election, just announce you will not hold elections (Romania, UK)

I saw British polling that indicated Reform would win 500 seats if elections were held today. Now, elections will not be held today, but I think Labour, Tories, and LibDems are worried.

Of course, the conventional parties could resolve this easily: tell the European Court of Human Rights to stick it in their ears. The ECHR is the main culprit. "Human rights" sounds innocuous enough. Who could be opposed to human rights? Until you find out that "human rights" means uncontrolled immigration and housing at the expense of the taxpayers in the countries to which they immigrate. In country after country, folks from Africa and the Middle East flock in droves, burn their passports at the border, and claim "asylum." Asylum in reality means, "my home country sucks and I could never get a job there that will pay one-tenth what a job here does, plus, the electricity works here, the roads are paved, the cops are mostly honest, etc. so I'll stay here."
Any party that gets a handle on the uncontrolled immigration problem will be popular, but the conventional parties refuse to tackle the problem. Reform, AfD, Rassemblement national, have all announced they will try and that is the source of their popularity. The conventional parties have a choice: get immigration under control or just ban the immigration-skeptic party. They have chosen the latter.

I'm not sure what law could be used to criminally prosecute Reform Party leadership. I guess without a Constitution, Parliament could pass a law making the Reform Party ineligible to be on the ballot and making it a crime to lead it. But that seems like political suicide.

If the Reform Party would win 500 seats if elections were held today, that's huge popular sentiment. You might have the legal authority to "cancel" the party. But you can't cancel what the voters believe they need from government.

BTW -- I checked, and there are 650 seats in the House of Commons. If Reform currently leads in 500 of the districts (or whatever the UK calls the areas that MPs represent), that's over three-quarters -- a massive total.

And while it probably wouldn't hold up through a real election, they could lose down to 326 seats (a decline of over a third from their current polling) and still hold an outright majority in the HoC.

The British people are speaking loudly and clearly on this point, and I'm thinking the concern from the Tories, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and Labour is mis-placed. They shouldn't be concerned so much about the Reform Party itself as they should be about the popular sentiment that's driving Reform's recent successes.

If Parliament removes the Reform Party from the ballot and makes it a crime to be in Reform Party leadership, but the population still holds the ideas that drove it, another group will spring up in pretty short order. Would they dissolve and criminalize that one too? And the next and the next and the next?

Whether the politicians want to or not, the people of the UK are demanding that they fix the immigration issue.

I didn't even know the European Court of Human Rights existed. But I agree 1000% with your assessment. Who could be against human rights? Until you find out that that means accepting all comers and providing them living quarters and financial support for an indefinite period of time.

Yeah, especially since the UK is already out of the EU, I'd tell the ECHR to pound sand.

 

[crimsonaudio]

If the Reform Party would win 500 seats if elections were held today, that's huge popular sentiment. You might have the legal authority to "cancel" the party. But you can't cancel what the voters believe they need from government.

So much for democracy, eh?

 

[Tidewater]

I'm not sure what law could be used to criminally prosecute Reform Party leadership. I guess without a Constitution, Parliament could pass a law making the Reform Party ineligible to be on the ballot and making it a crime to lead it. But that seems like political suicide.

If the Reform Party would win 500 seats if elections were held today, that's huge popular sentiment. You might have the legal authority to "cancel" the party. But you can't cancel what the voters believe they need from government.

BTW -- I checked, and there are 650 seats in the House of Commons. If Reform currently leads in 500 of the districts (or whatever the UK calls the areas that MPs represent), that's over three-quarters -- a massive total.

And while it probably wouldn't hold up through a real election, they could lose down to 326 seats (a decline of over a third from their current polling) and still hold an outright majority in the HoC.

The British people are speaking loudly and clearly on this point, and I'm thinking the concern from the Tories, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and Labour is mis-placed. They shouldn't be concerned so much about the Reform Party itself as they should be about the popular sentiment that's driving Reform's recent successes.

If Parliament removes the Reform Party from the ballot and makes it a crime to be in Reform Party leadership, but the population still holds the ideas that drove it, another group will spring up in pretty short order. Would they dissolve and criminalize that one too? And the next and the next and the next?

Whether the politicians want to or not, the people of the UK are demanding that they fix the immigration issue.

I didn't even know the European Court of Human Rights existed. But I agree 1000% with your assessment. Who could be against human rights? Until you find out that that means accepting all comers and providing them living quarters and financial support for an indefinite period of time.

Yeah, especially since the UK is already out of the EU, I'd tell the ECHR to pound sand.

The UK left the EU but incredibly, decided to remain part of the ECHR.
The asylum laws were written in the wake of the Holocaust an intended to prevent that level of persecution from happening again. The German government was persecuting Jewish Germans and at least in the US, we did not care what an immigrant's religion was, so a German Jew was a German as far as US immigration law was concerned and we had already admitted our quota of Germans, so the famous ship M.S. St. Louis was turned away and most of those 937 Jews ended up dying in concentration camps.
The problem is (through statute of judicial interpretation) asylum evolved from granting asylum to people persecuted by their government to granting asylum to those persecuted because their government stinks at protecting them, and then became "let me in because my country sucks." To those claiming asylum because their government is incompetent, I say, "That's not our problem. Go home and vote for a better government."
The "asylum because my country sucks" has been abused now to the breaking point and illegal immigrants know that if they claim asylum because their country sucks, they will be logged, assigned an optional court date (Kilmar Abrego Garcia, for example, did not appear for his original court date), and released into the US.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Not Germany, but I'll bet the numbers are similar across the EU for MENAPT migrants.:

When immigration to Europe started quickly increasing in the 1990s, our political elites claimed it was needed to save the pension systems of our aging societies. They never told us that MENAPT immigration is actually a drain on public finances.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1919346170121359831

 

[Tidewater]

Not Germany, but I'll bet the numbers are similar across the EU for MENAPT migrants.:

When immigration to Europe started quickly increasing in the 1990s, our political elites claimed it was needed to save the pension systems of our aging societies. They never told us that MENAPT immigration is actually a drain on public finances.

View attachment 50740

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1919346170121359831

The cost of uncontrolled immigration from nonwestern societies is not (just) a dollars and cents question (although it is partially that).
A lot of the western social safety nets are based on social cohesion, a shared sense of "we are all in this together and owe each other a duty of care": "Don't throw trash on the ground. We all speak German. We all work hard in school to become the most productive adults we can for German society." Germany had a fairly high social safety net, but Germans also acknowledged that, if you could work, you did. Germans owed that to other Germans.

Bring in millions of outsiders who do not know much about the country, could not care less, beyond which country pays the most in social safety net spending and it is a recipe for disaster. When immigrants latch on to the public teat and feel no connection to the people paying for it, then things are not looking good for the host nation.
That said, there are tons of immigrants who come to Europe and do work their tails off to make a better life for themselves and their families. Many do learn the local language and learn about what it means to be a German/Belgian/Frenchman, etc.

As I have said elsewhere, there is an assimilation rate, how quickly can a host nation digest and integrate immigrants, to make them just "cultural Germans of a different genealogy." It is possible (indeed inevitable) to swamp that assimilation process, especially is the host nation shunts newcomers into ghettos by language or country of origin. Right now, the combination of shunting into ethnic ghettos and unbelievably massive rates of immigration is troubling for the future of the West.
Cut immigration down to around 1% of its current rate (and repatriate the 99% you do not accept), and wait 50 years and Europe might be okay. Maintain current trend lines and in 50 years, you will have a region called Italy or Germany, but the people who live there will not be very Italian or German.

 

[Its On A Slab]

The cost of uncontrolled immigration from nonwestern societies is not (just) a dollars and cents question (although it is partially that).
A lot of the western social safety nets are based on social cohesion, a shared sense of "we are all in this together and owe each other a duty of care": "Don't throw trash on the ground. We all speak German. We all work hard in school to become the most productive adults we can for German society." Germany had a fairly high social safety net, but Germans also acknowledged that, if you could work, you did. Germans owed that to other Germans.

Bring in millions of outsiders who do not know much about the country, could not care less, beyond which country pays the most in social safety net spending and it is a recipe for disaster. When immigrants latch on to the public teat and feel no connection to the people paying for it, then things are not looking good for the host nation.
That said, there are tons of immigrants who come to Europe and do work their tails off to make a better life for themselves and their families. Many do learn the local language and learn about what it means to be a German/Belgian/Frenchman, etc.

As I have said elsewhere, there is an assimilation rate, how quickly can a host nation digest and integrate immigrants, to make them just "cultural Germans of a different genealogy." It is possible (indeed inevitable) to swamp that assimilation process, especially is the host nation shunts newcomers into ghettos by language or country of origin. Right now, the combination of shunting into ethnic ghettos and unbelievably massive rates of immigration is troubling for the future of the West.
Cut immigration down to around 1% of its current rate (and repatriate the 99% you do not accept), and wait 50 years and Europe might be okay. Maintain current trend lines and in 50 years, you will have a region called Italy or Germany, but the people who live there will not be very Italian or German.

I wonder how much of the German anti-immigrant stance stems from the presence of so many guest workers that were allowed to stay and bring in their family.

Post-WW2, West Germany had a huge labor shortage so they brought in hundreds of thousands of guest workers from places like Turkey. The German govt allowed them to bring in their families, and many of them stayed.

Does the anti-immigrant polling contain a healthy amount of "Germany For Germans"?

We like to pride ourselves as being a melting pot of cultures, but our own nativist folks are pretty clear about the people they don't want in this country. And race and religion are a huge part of that.

 

[Tidewater]

I wonder how much of the German anti-immigrant stance stems from the presence of so many guest workers that were allowed to stay and bring in their family.

Post-WW2, West Germany had a huge labor shortage so they brought in hundreds of thousands of guest workers from places like Turkey. The German govt allowed them to bring in their families, and many of them stayed.

Does the anti-immigrant polling contain a healthy amount of "Germany For Germans"?

We like to pride ourselves as being a melting pot of cultures, but our own nativist folks are pretty clear about the people they don't want in this country. And race and religion are a huge part of that.

The Gastarbeiters n the late 1950s to early 1970s were mainly from Italy and Turkey, and they came legally and in limited numbers. Those who came and have stayed have largely become culturally German.
There are a ton of videos of young Arab men harassing young German girls because the German girls are dressed more provocatively than Arab men think they should be. The Arab men think they are whores and treat them as such.
I really think the difference between Germany now and Germany is volume. In 2010 there were 4 million Turks living in Germany. With the Syrian Civil War, and the the war in Afghanistan, Europe was flooded with immigrants and Germany took more than her share of them.
As of 31 DEC 2024, there were 14,061,640 foreign-born people in Germany, including 1.5 million from Turkey, 1.3 million from Ukraine, one million from Africa, a million from Syria, half a million from Afghanistan. a quarter of a million from Iraq. That is an order of magnitude bigger than the Gastarbeiters. Hard to digest and assimilate that many.

 

[Tidewater]

Merz wins Chancellor vote (2nd try after failure on Tuesday).
Why is Friedrich Merz so unpopular with the public?
Not the most inspiring German leader, but congrats, I guess.

 

[CrimsonJazz]

NEW: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer calls for the UK to take back its borders, says the UK is becoming an “island of strangers” and immigrants should learn how to speak English.

Wow.

“Without [strict rules], we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”

“So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse … then you're not championing growth, you're not championing justice, or however else people defend the status quo.”

“You're actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart. So, yes, I believe in this. I believe we need to reduce immigration significantly.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1921939841572638761

Obviously not Germany, but holy crap.....!!!

 

[4Q Basket Case]

I‘be actually been in the UK for the past week. So I was here when PM Starmer (who is Labour — roughly analogous to the Democrats in the US) announced a new national policy on immigration.

It includes a lot of stuff like limitations on low / un-skilled immigrants, incentives for professionals, limitations on asylum-seekers, limitations on public support (direct payments and free bennies), a timeline to learn English, assimilation into the culture, etc. etc.

Ended by saying immigration to the UK is a privilege, not a right.

Sounded like it could have come straight from the mouth of Margaret Thatcher.

The famously liberal BBC covered the news, but has refrained from any normative commentary. Just a few years (months?) ago, they would be screaming, calling it racist xenophobia. They’d do it today if it were coming from a Tory PM.

The British press’s deafening silence tells me that they don’t like it, but know the populace is fed slap up and would be jumping down their insulated throats if they voiced an iota of opposition.

It took a fire siren held up to their ears for Labour to get the message, but even they have now. Note that many Democrats are admitting they bungled the US’s own border security issue.

Interesting times. I think a lesser version of this is coming for the US.

 

[CrimsonJazz]

Six candidates from Germany’s right-wing AfD party die 13 days apart in lead-up to local elections: reports

Four candidates and two reserves — all running for office in the same region of Germany for the AfD party — died within two weeks of each other.

nypost.com

The mass of untimely deaths among AfD candidates has forced officials to reprint ballots several times and invalidate some mail-in ballots, according to the BBC.