Context for the non-Germans: The CDU has led our government for 16 out of the last 20 years. The CDU leading is not a significant shift. But the pressure that's being put on by the AfD is certainly an issue.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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The Merz CDU is much further right though than Merkels CDU. In current terms the SPD is about in the spot politically where Merkels CDU was. The Merz CDU is there, where the AfD used to be about 4-5 years ago.
A broad generalization in terms of American politics:
AfD -> Trump Republicans
Merz CDU -> Mike Pence w.o. Evangelicalism Republicans
Merkel CDU -> Obama Democrats
Eh, the AfD has always, and still does, represent some extreme positions that the CDU is still far away from. Remember that the AfD was founded as an anti-EU party, a position they still hold. The CDU has only really copied the AfD when it comes to migration. Otherwise they are still very different.
Even the Merz CDU is left wing compared to US democrats. Remember all the social programs we have, for example public healthcare.
AfD is a fringe party
"It's fine, we don't have to deal with it, they don't have any REAL power yet"
AfD becomes a significant party
"What are you, politically biased? We can't ban them!"
The state in germany has been promoting genocide in palestine for decades. Why wouldn't they have a fascist govt?
God dammit Germany
Cdu/csu are "conservatives" but also a whole lot of other things and nothing like the GOP. Afd surge is sad but not as bad as many feared.
A far-right surge in Germany of all places, right after watching the US fall to fascism, is extremely concerning. It's pretty clear it's a global epidemic at this point.
The fact that AfD is progressing is what I'm mostly concerned about.
Merkel seemed rational.
It's way too early to put on a tin foil hat — and I know nothing about the German election to base this on — but given Trump's comments about Musk potentially helping him commit voter fraud in the USA, paired with Elon's constant meddling in Germany lately, is it too far to suggest that there may be enough evidence to consider that Elon may have meddled in the German election?
I see a lot of people blaming Americans for voting in a fascist, and sure, a lot definitely did; but enough doubt has been sewn for me that I'm not even certain that they did vote Donald Trump in
You can leave off your tinfoil hat; the surveys (by many different organisations) predicted this result fairly accurately.
Appreciate it. I wish it was a tin-foil conspiracy; the reality is much more grim. We want this, apparently.
20% AfD is bad ofc, but also still puts them nowhere near power, even if the media hypes them up for clicks.
That's not really a conspiracy theory. It's a pretty open, two pronged attack from both Russia and United States.
The former does its regular disinformation spam constantly. As for the US recently we had:
- JD Vance attacking European democracies for "being against free speech" (during a freaking security conference).
- ... and during CPAC.
- Twitter and Meta approving propaganda ads.
- Twitter (and TikTok) serving right-wing biased feeds to their German users.
And much much more.
If we're talking about Musk specifically he:
- Took part in AFD's campaign meeting.
- Kept boosting AFD on Twitter before elections.
- Had multiple comments attacking democratic parties and saying that AFD should be the ones ruling Germany etc.
Neither side is even pretending they're aren't trying to upend democracies and replace them with far-right autocracies.
I mean, Musk et al absolutely were meddling in the German election, there was a post last week examining a study that concluded far-right AFD friendly posts were getting boosted on TikTok and X prior to the election.
I feel like our standards and definitions of "free" elections have been utterly fucked in the social media age. I don't know if Musk actually hacked voting machines, and I doubt any fake votes were cast, but does it really make any difference? If someone is voting for AFD because they're trapped in a disinformation bubble on X, how much different is that from just buying votes? Musk is controlling that voter either way.
I'm not really sure what we're meant to do about it, but I think this is a crisis-level threat to Western civilization. If we can't figure out how to have elections free of interference, democracy is going to keep sliding over to fascism.
Yes, either we have evidence of Musk committing voter fraud or we don’t. Otherwise we’d sound just like the Republicans chanting stop the steal in November 2020.
German constitutional court ruled against any form of voting machine. It's all counted by hand. Multiple times.
I at least have little trouble believing it. People did not vote for Trump the first time so much as against Hillary Clinton, and the debates and such this time likewise made Kamala Harris out to be a poor candidate next to him who, if not personally, then at least via delegation would really "clean up" all the stuff that is wrong in the USA.
I mean to say: we all (here + most of the media seems complicit in this as well) fell asleep far too readily. We IGNORED the desires and plight of the rural people, even being aware of the electoral college, yet we did next to zero about communicating to them whatever it was that was even being done on their behalf. Example: encouraging people with testosterone (isn't that considered a performance enhancing hormone?) to compete against people without, citing that being the most "fair" treatment possible (I don't care here what actual gender they are - I'm talking strictly performance hormones here). Another example: across the Fediverse we kept saying how bOtH sIdEs SaMe, meaning NOT that, and surely the other side would see that? Except meanwhile they didn't seem to care about the issue all that much, in comparison to e.g. grocery prices and "moral corruption" in the government.
Like a failed friendship, we ignored what the other side wanted. And now, we should not be so shocked that it is over. We could have listened but... oh well. We preferred our echo chambers and enragement-baiting clickbait media (the "correct" sources of news) to engaging in that basic human activity.
Awesome -_-