this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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It is so striking where AfD is popular thought.
A long time ago I visited one of my parents' friends in East Germany with them, and I said something about how it was good that Germany reunified after the wall fell.
My parent's friend said, people here don't think it was a good thing. People here felt like they lost the war.
I never realized that was a thing.
When you grow up in west Germany, you kinda never realize that the GDR was basically annexed by west Germany.
The majority of people in the GDR actually didn't want to turn capitalist, but they rather wanted another, more liberal form of socialism. Also, the Treuhand basically destroyed the east German industry which was then bought up by the West.
So, actually the "finally reunited" narrative is the one that's overly romantic, not (only) nostalgia for the GDR.
How is AfD helping?
That's a very distant phenomenon and more a result of the economic misery the east Germans have been experiencing for the last 35 years than a yearning for socialism.
Also, the east was targeted for neonazi agitation by westerners after the wall fell.
Credibility to forward east german interests
That all makes sense.
Another "story" I've heard is that the East German factories were basically years behind in safety and efficiency and environment harm, and so a lot of them were shuttered after unification. Was this the Treuhand?
The job of the Treuhand was it to check if a business were able to survive the transition to capitalism; most weren't so they were closed. The problem is that many people in the GDR believe that they were scammed by the west, when in reality they were scammed by their own government for decades.
They were scammed. The exchange rate of the Ostmark to the DMark was great for consumption, but made etern businesses unsustainable. They were then bought up by sleazy investors for a pittance.
You can say about political liberties in the GDR what you want, but domestic production was actually really good over there.
On top of that, East Germany didn't get the investment they were promised after unification. I don't think it is a coincidence that the people who didn't live under Neoliberalism 40 years ago are rejecting it today.
Interesting, indeed. Maybe it's a form of nostalgia? We still have plenty of people missing the comunists in my country, usually folk that had it better during the regime. But I never heard "we felt like we lost the war".
Any chance that NATO skepticism is a big issue in East Germany, and the actual appeal of AfD?