As Germany heads to the polls next Sunday, one thing is certain: a new chancellor will take office, but little else will change. Regardless of how a final coalition will be formed, Germany’s economic, social, and political trajectory will remain largely the same: austerity for the many, money printing for the few, and a steady march toward deindustrialisation. Our co-founder Yanis Varoufakis has given his view on the situation in Germany ahead of the federal election.
Next Sunday, Germany goes to the polls. The least significant result is that we shall have a new Chancellor: Mr. Friedrich Mertz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, who will most likely receive double the votes of the unpopular incumbent social democratic Chancellor Mr. Olaf Scholz, who is destined either to return to government as a much diminished figure or to retire. Nevertheless Mertz will be forced to form a coalition with Scholz’s social democrats perhaps with the Greens as well – since it is the only way of keeping out of government the AfD, the ascending neofascist party, the darlings of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
The precise composition of the coalition government will depend on which of three parties tittering on the cutoff of 5% (the minimum necessary to win any seats in parliament) manage to enter Parliament: the Free Democrats (who wax lyrical about free markets but back to the hilt the oligopolists), Die Linke (my former comrades who have disgraced themselves over Palestine, not to mention their incapacity to string a decent program together) or the party of Sahra Wagenknecht (who started life as a left-winger but is now positioning herself as an anti-immigration zealot). Mr Mertz would prefer that none of these three parties make the 5% mark. For the more of them succeed in entering Parliament the more dependent he will be on the social democrats and the greens for an absolute majority in Parliament.
What are the real changes that we should expect to see from this reconfiguration of the governing coalition? Not many, regardless of the precise election outcome. Recall that the Christian and the social democrats ruled together under the Christian democrat Angela Merkel, for a decade . During that decade, the current policies were set in stone. It was the decade that cemented the austerity for the many and the money printing for the few – the combination that crushed investment and led to today’s inexorable deindustrialisation drive (as well as the flight of German capital to the US).
Will they do better this time around? No chance. They will be more cruel toward migrants and probably relax their idiotic debt rules that have starved the state of funding – but only in order to pay for more weaponry, as part of the pointless drive to beef up a military that is not needed (and which is driven by scaremongering based on the ludicrous notion that a bankrupted, exhausted Russian army is about to roll into the green and pleasant lands of Germania).
What should we expect regarding China from this change in government? If Kamala Harris had won in the US, Germany would have fallen in line with America’s priorities, including the demand that Berlin ‘decouples’ from China, agrees with the EU’s ridiculous tariffs on Chinese EVs, solar panels and so on. But, with Trump blowing up the transatlantic alliance, there is a slight chance that a Mertz government will not be happy to cut of German industry’s lifeline to China just because Washington says so. Then again, our European leaders have proven their cowardice again and again.
While still on Germany, let me give you the bleak news: Germany has already become a totalitarian police state – they did not have to wait for the ultra-right AfD to win power! On Tuesday 18th February our movement, DiEM25, had organised (together with the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East & Amnesty International) an event to discuss Palestine, featuring a keynote speech by the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, the incredible Francesca Albanese. The police informed the organisers that policemen will be in the audience monitoring every word. Then, before the event started, the police barricaded DiEM25’s venue. Our organisers found another venue and called upon. attendees to make their way to it. The police tried to intimidate us in the new venue too. But we persevered so that Jews, Palestinians, Germans and others could offer Berlin an example of what Germany could have been.
Sadly, Germany is slipping inexorably into a totalitarian abyss. Without even the ‘help’ of the ultra-rightist AfD. Sadly, the next election will do nothing to change that.
DiEM25 and our German political arm, MERA25, are fighting to break through the suffocating status quo. But they’re not making it easy, or even fair, with the crackdown on dissent in Germany intensifying. On February 18, police pressure forced us to move our event with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to another venue at the last minute – an outrageous act of intimidation that reveals the growing authoritarianism of the German state.
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