The Duran Podcast - Scholz escapes Brandenberg disaster, Greens crushed

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Scholz escapes Brandenberg disaster, Greens crushed

All right, I am here with Alexander Merkiris. We are in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. And today, Alexander, we're going to talk about the elections in Germany in Brandenburg. So my first question to you is, what are your thoughts about the elections? Well, I think the first thing to say is that the IFTA did very well. And Sao Vargasnex party, again, have done extremely well. It's a new party and it's surged and it's managed to come third.

And if you actually look at the overall result, basically the Sbedee, Olau'lla Schultz party, they eked out a win, but they did so once more by basically consolidating the entire establishment vote, because the IFTA almost got the same amount as they did. So really, it is another defeat for the German establishment. Now, can I just say a few things about Brandenburg, because this is the most

interesting area of Germany. It's basically the territory around Berlin. It is the core of the old kingdom of Prussia. The king of Prussia, people that we know who eventually united Germany, originally they were the Magraves, the Marquesses of Brandenburg. That was their original core territory. Now, so it's very historic. It's a place of castles and estates and small towns. It's very much, as I said, the area of, it's very Prussian. It is also historically been politically very, very much on the left. It's an oddity about German politics, but going way back of the before the First World War, this was an area which consistently voted left and it was historically a social democratic stronghold. So it was part of the former East Germany when

Vili Brandt did Ostpolitik in the 1960s and established relations between Western East Germany. He came to East Germany, he was enormously well received in Brandenburg, as I said very much, an SBD area. It's the place where you would expect the SPD and parties of the left to do really well. And yet we see that the IFDA has broken through. It's almost won as much, as many votes as the SPD did. But entirely predictably, Saovaeghe Knecht's party has come from nowhere and is now third and they are in a poll position. 13%. 13%. 13%. Whole position. now to decide who actually rules in Brandenburg. So before we get into the actual election,

I've got a history question to ask you. I'm interested in it, and I think maybe our viewers will be interested. Prussia. Can you explain Prussia a bit? Right. Just briefly. Right. Prussia is this area that was,

this kingdom that was established in northeast Germany, basically from the late 17th to the early 18th century. Economically, rather poor. Sandy soil, tough farmers, strongly Protestant, and the area that was belonged or was controlled by the House of Hohenzolan, which is one of the leading Protestant families in Germany. Now, starting in the 17th century, late 17th century,

it began to grow in power, but the real breakout point came in the early 18th century, when Prussia had a ruler, Wilhelm I first, extraordinary man, very close friend of Peter the Great. They got on incredibly well, had very similar personalities, very strong, strong personalities and they both carried out extensive reforms in their own countries which paralleled each other. And Wilhelm is always referred to as the soldier king. He reorganised Prussia, made it very, very tightly run, ensured that it was completely free of corruption. He assumed a very modest lifestyle for himself and he created

in Prussia, the best army in Europe. His son was Frederick the Great, who then went ahead and made Prussia, this inherently poor country into a major European power by using the army that his father created and combining it with his own genius. And then after that, in the 19th century, Prussia always very closely allied to Russia.

I said the Soldier King and Peter the Great, very close friends. The two families, the Romanov's in Russia and the Hohenzolans, often intermarried. So they were very close. They fought together against Napoleon. They maintained very close relations. The Minister-President of Prussia in the 1850s and 1860s was Bismarck. Brismark's intensely russerophile. He spoke Russia.

He was for a while ambassador in St. Petersburg, and he was able to use to leverage the alliance with Russia to unite Germany. Good. I've always been interested in Prussia. I don't know why I've always found it interesting in the connection of Prussia to Russia. And I think it carries over today and maybe it reflects a bit on the election results. Absolutely. That we're seeing from East Germany. So we're talking about an area that he's it's tremendous military tradition. It's actually at the same time rather left wing. It's historically russophile.

Okay, so let's get into the election results. Is it is it a win for the SPD and for Olaf Schultz? is it a win for Aivde and talk a bit about Sadat-Waginag. I believe it's PSW. That's right. The party. That's right. And also talk a bit about the Greens and the other partner in the coalition,

which ended up with zero. Yeah. Zero representation. Adelina 360, she got, her party got clobbered. Anyway, let's talk about the actual results in what they mean. Well, I'm going to start with. the IFD, I think they've done incredibly well. Bear in mind that we're talking about a region, which is historically a left-wing region.

About 30% they got. Absolutely, absolutely. And SPG was about 32, 31, 32, yeah. So, I mean, this is a breakthrough in this territory. I mean, this is something which is remarkable. Also, they did particularly well amongst young people, apparently, which is, again, very, very remarkable. Number one. I got to know they were number one for under 24-year-olds.

Exactly, which is, again, remarkable in this area. So you see that the young people voting for anti-establishment parties, voting for the IFD, a party that is characterized as far right, Brandenburg has never been good ground for the right, and yet the IFD has done really well. SPD Strongholds. The SBD Stronghold, left-wing Stronghold. before in the 1920s an area where the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany, was quite strong as well.

So that gives you some idea of the success the IFDA has done. Schultz personally has done well, because if he had lost in Brandenburg, there was real possibilities that he might cease to be Chancellor. And that would have been, that would have opened up all sorts of. of interesting and rather worrying possibilities, because if he had to stand down as Chancellor, the build-up was the Boris Pistorius, who is his defence minister, who was an extreme hawk and very anti-Russian, and a major fervid supporter of Ukraine that he would have taken over. So Schultz has survived, I think, from the perspective of the Russians, if I can put it like this,

It's better that they have Schultz than Christorius, just to make that quick point. So they will probably be, well, not unhappy with this result, but then they're not very interested, I think, in the internal mechanics of German politics. So Schultz did well. SPD can breathe a sigh of relief that they have not imploded in their own stronghold.

The only reason I think why they came out first is because they managed to persuade everybody or all the other sort of left or left of centre establishment parties, the Greens, the FPD and all of those, that they were the party that needed to be supported to keep the IFTA out. Now, that's why they won. They brought together in effect the establishment vote in Brandenburg. The Greens, catastrophic results for them. Unsurprising, again, if you know Brandenburg, as I said, a left-wing area,

but a sort of tough working class left-wing area, a place where I think people are not going to be very impressed by the Greens. It's a Russophile area. They won't like the belligerence of the Greens either. But more traditional left, where the Greens are more woke left. Right. Exactly. This isn't, this isn't, you know, not the perfect territory for the Greens, but nonetheless a disaster for them. I mean, they've seen, they've seen themselves completely wiped out.

And a breakthrough, again for the BSW, for Saravaga-Knecht's party, she will, she is probably ultimately going to represent a major threat to the SPD in this area. And of course what the SPD is now finding is that they can't govern Brandenburg without her. And that's going to be complicated because these two parties fundamentally disagree on foreign policy at the present time and on lots of other issues as well. Saravaga-Knecht, anti-Woke left, much more skeptical, in fact, much more resistant to immigration altogether. it's going to be an uncomfortable alliance and one where I think the BSW

will have an interest in being a difficult coalition partner for the SPD. So it's unlikely that we're going to have a very stable SPD administration in Brandenburg going forward. The CDU they got like 8%. Is that normal for them in this area? In this area, everything is not a good area. for the CDU.

But having said that, it's still a very bad result for them. I mean, they're the party that wants, aspires to be the next government of Germany, and they're not doing well even, you know, at a time when the SPD is unpopular, but they're not doing well in an area like Brandenburg itself. By the way, I said Brandenburg, historic territory for the left, Berlin, which is, of course, the capital, which is, you know, the big city in this area, It's pretty left wing also. And certainly in East Berlin,

I imagine that the BSW will do pretty well as well. It's interesting that the BSW, as a new party, is doing so well. I mean, how long have they been in existence? Like, just a few months. No, they're not even not even a year. Is this weird to see them getting this kind of traction? I mean, 13% is a lot. It is astonishing.

Now, Sao Varga Knecht herself is very well known in Germany. I mean, this is a point which people on the IFTA complain about, that it's impossible, almost impossible, for people from the IFTA, for example, in Germany to get onto the talk shows, to get the kind of visibility that politicians on the left do. Saovaegnecht, however, is able to get onto the talk shows. She's very visible in Germany.

She's been in German politics, involved in German politics, for a long time. She was a major figure in D'Elinka, the left-wing party that existed in Eastern Germany, based on the former East German Communist Party, which was very strong in places like this. But against that, I mean, the BSW has no organisation to speak of. I mean, it's rapidly trying to create one, but it has... no, you know, it doesn't have the kind of roots, the organizational roots that say, D'Linka used to have. Understandable, though.

Understandable. So given the fact that they're organizationally weak, the fact that they're able to grow so fast is astonishing. And it tells you that the original calculation that they made, that Sáhavageknecht made, that the left in Germany needs to go back to its roots is working. It's it it's they're winning over working class left-wing votes in places like Brandenburg and other places as well. We saw that in Saxon in Thuringia. I think they're going to break through in Western Germany as well before long. I think it's only a matter of time.

in places like Hamburg, for example, I can imagine the BSW doing really well in parts of the Rhearnland areas too. Yeah. So final question, West Germany, which a lot of people are saying, okay, the recent votes that have been taking place, we're talking about East Germany. So obviously Schultz is, well, for Brandenburg, no, Brandenburg is a stronghold, but obviously the establishment parties are not doing so well, say the CDU, CSU. and these are places where the IFD and BSW-Sah-Arikan Act can flourish. They can put on a good showing. In West Germany, do you think you're going to see different results or trends, or are we looking at this trend carrying over to parts of West Germany as well? But for the moment, it's going to be more difficult for the IFD and the BFW to break through

in parts of West Germany. Berlin might be different, by the way. I mean, West Berlin, again, I can see them doing actually quite well that. But in parts of West Germany, it may take a little longer. Now, again, it needs to be explained why. We've discussed this in a previous programme. It's not because dissatisfaction with the establishment isn't very strong in West Germany too.

It's probably as strong in many places as it is in the former East Germany. Germans, East and West, share many of the same concerns. And this economic gulf that people talk about has gradually eroded away. So that's not the factor that plays into this. The problem that the IFDA especially has is that when the two Germans unified, The establishment that took over East Germany was the old West German establishment. So the East Germans, voters in East Germany, don't have the same tribal connection to these parties, the CDU, to some extent the SBD, that they have in West Germany, where in West Germany they are seen as the home parties. the parties that people's parents and grandparents voted for.

So East German voters are more willing to vote against parties that haven't got deep-rooted allegiances. But in West Germany, dissatisfaction is very strong. It is growing all the time. I think the SPD is in serious trouble, in many places in West Germany now, I think the BSW will probably start to eat into their votes very quickly. I think, you know, we perhaps give it a year,

and you could start to see them doing pretty well, as I said, in places like Hamburg and places like this. With the CDU, because they are the main opposition party at the moment, and because they're strong in some of the more Catholic areas in the south of Germany, they probably will be more difficult to overturn. But even there, I think, give it a while, you'll start to see the IFDA eating into their votes.

And if the CDU forms the next government of Germany and continues with the same policies that the current government is conducting, which it probably will, by the way, then I can certainly see people starting to vote for the IFD in conservative areas of Western Germany as well. It will just take a little longer and it will require a little more time. All right. That is the video from Malaysia, Kuala Lampur, the duram.

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