In less than two months a new German Bundestag will be elected. Currently all surveys and many products of German leading media show what is wanted: Angela Merkel is also to be the next German chancellor – in which coalition with CDU/CSU whatsoever. This is only a secondary issue for Ms Merkel. The counter-candidate for the Chancellor’s office, SPD-chairman Martin Schulz, is acting without conviction and fortune, and no one believes it, for instance, when he warns of a new refugee wave after the Bundestag elections. Although he is probably right about it. Nevertheless, bad prognoses for the post-election period are not needed at all now, and Ms Merkel perseveres to distract from all the adversities of national and international politics and to cloud over the country with political mildew (appeasement and intimidation) and to prevent it from thinking.
The German “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, which is devoted to the chancellor, and the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, no less connected with her, are of course strongly helping with this, for example by a new survey among the German “elites” in business and politics. 521 of them, so many have been questioned, currently believe “with a large majority of a good future of the EU”. In addition “the leaders have especially high hopes of the new French President, Emmanuel Macron.”
The German “elites” also point a bit into the future: “69 per cent of the leaders fear that the EU could not [yet] be on its own when it comes to security policy and military.” The “elites” therefore advocate an “increase in German defense spending” because they doubt “that in their present state the German Bundeswehr is adequately prepared for NATO’s alliance tasks.” Additionally the elites – “high on the agenda” – want a “strengthening of cohesion within the EU” and a “more intensive cooperation with France”. The German “elite”, on the other hand, cannot get anything out of the new US President: “As far as dealing with Trump, 90 per cent consider it right that Germany expresses its criticism of the President’s policy clearly and irrespective of German-American relations.”
By the way: Among the “elites” there are 85 board members of German companies with more than 20,000 employees – thus enormously overrepresented in comparison with their share of all German companies. That one is less than one per cent.
And of course, there is to be no lack of self-criticism. Even Ms Merkel knows that she has lost many votes since summer 2015. There is appeasement and a little repentance is the order of the day. “A situation like that of late summer 2015 cannot, is not to and is not allowed to repeat itself”, Ms Merkel declared already in December 2016. Now, a new study on the German media and their reporting about the German migration policy seconds. Its title is: “The ‘refugees’ crisis’ in the media”, purchaser and publisher is the Otto Brenner Foundation, which is close to the trade union, and the results were reported in a large number of leading media. Thus the already mentioned “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” wrote when she reported on the optimism of the German “elites”, just the same day: “The most comprehensive scholarly study on the role of the German media during the high phase of the refugee influx, draws, in retrospect, a sobering conclusion. Journalists did not live up to their role as uncoverer […]. Instead of reporting critically, the so called ‘information journalism had taken over the view, also the slogans of the political elite’, and had appeared as a political actor rather than as a neutral observer. Worries and fears of the population were almost completely suppressed behind the great narrative of the ‘welcome culture’, while dissidents were discursively ostracised.”
Ironically one could say: In case of so much self-knowledge, who can still doubt a serious concern for the correction of committed mistakes? All the voters who voted for or wanted to vote a different party because of the refusal of Merkel’s migration policy, now can confidently make their choice with the CDU again ... and also forgive the leading media, which, of course, have confessed and are repentant. … We will see.
However, many questions remain open. None of the true tasks is solved. Who is still openly talking about millions of everyday problems in order to find a worthy relationship with the almost 2 million people from other cultures who came to Germany in a minimum of time within 2015 and 2016? Without losing your own dignity! And who dares to separate the wheat from the chaff? The German administrative courts are virtually brought to a halt with tens of thousands of asylum claims – also a kind of “integration” into an eroding state. Who says that Merkel has often infringed law and has been an abetter of a “rule of injustice” (Horst Seehofer, CSU)?
Notwithstanding the above, economic and financial regulations remind more of a dance on the volcano than they are on solid order. The economic and social imbalances within the EU are enormous; the EU is not a community of common advantages, but looks more and more like a zero-sum game. The euro remains a misconstruction and is artificially kept alive by the ECB and its president with cash (drug) injections. The allegedly low number of unemployed in Germany is at the expense of wages and salaries. In Germany too, poverty is increasing rather than decreasing. The level of education in the state schools is a catstrophy, they have been reformed to ruination, and the path to privatisation will create a new class society. The “marriage for all” met the demoscopic majority of votes and, above all, a small and influential group of interests, but as so often in the past few years, again, it was not thought through to the end. Within the EU, a sharp wind blows against all those who do not rely on even more EU.
Countries such as Poland or Hungary – with double standards, one could also say: mendaciously – are told that it was all about human rights and the rule of law, but eventually every effort for a little more sovereignty and independence is to be wiped out unscrupulously… falsification of history inclusive. Et patati et patata. And the war course against Russia is still not corrected.
So I dare a prognosis: Until the Bundestagelection, we citizens will be lulled. This fits well into the holiday season. Then there will be a rude awakening. •
Our website uses cookies so that we can continually improve the page and provide you with an optimized visitor experience. If you continue reading this website, you agree to the use of cookies. Further information regarding cookies can be found in the data protection note.
If you want to prevent the setting of cookies (for example, Google Analytics), you can set this up by using this browser add-on.