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The chancellor is insulting us on daily basis. He calls us people lazy. He says we are unable to view reality as it is They want to let us work up to 13 hours per day. They want to raise the retirement age 3 years up to 70. They want to cut our health care. People who are unemployed should not get the same health care standard as the rest of the population. They want me to pay for my yearly dentist check, for my skin cancer check. More and more people get poorer and poorer, every day. They fuck up the youth, they want to introduce age verification and social media bans. What do they get in exchange? They should enlist in the army. The government is doing a huge push for fossil fuels, while at the same time cutting benefits for solar power. They are taking huge debts of 500 billion euros and promised to work on our rail infrastructure, they wasted almost everything. The government is full of corrupt people, an economic minister who is best friend with the fossil fuel and car lobby, a culture minister whose most important task is to fight against libraries (!) that are suspected of left extremism. I could go on and on, but I notice my fist is starting to hurt. This chancellor had the plan to halve the AfD polls.
Military build-up in Germany is necessary, yes. But what for if in a couple of years the fascists are in power?
It’s no coincidence that the lobby groups pushing for age verification laws are the biggest data gathering companies in the world.
Aren’t Google and apple fighting against age verification cause they can’t exploit children as much once the excise of “we didn’t know” doesn’t work anymore?
Trump has already shown it can be done. By sheer coincidence, Trump & Ghouls actively encourage them and cheer them on.
I(n Denmark we too can work 13 hours per day, the rule being that we must have 11 hours rest within 24 hours.
We also have had steadily increasing retirement age over the past years, currently peaking at 71 years.
We also pay most our dentist bills ourselves.Regarding the potential 13 hour workday, most people don’t care much, such extra time is almost always voluntary, and most often you can earn a day off at a later point by taking an extra half day of work.
IDK why people are so much against the possibility of working extra hours, it is generally voluntary, and if it is not, it’s time to look for another job. Such a workplace will most likely suck, even without mandatory extra hours.
Regarding healthcare it’s a very bad idea to make it worse for unemployed. It’s a bad society that makes such discriminatory rules on a crucial issue like healthcare.
PS: Our government say we need to increase the retirement age because people get older. But we also get more automation and we also get richer all the time. So I doubt their claim that it is necessary is true.
I imagine it’s the same “reason” in Germany.The problem with the 13 hour day is that it almost only affects people working shitty jobs. It’s not about your office job, but about working the meat industry, fast food whatever. It’s about giving employers more flexibility about how they can exploit you better. Oh the other guy is sick? Then you are doing a 13 hour shift today, have fun! It is only voluntary if you can afford it. And telling more than 5 million people in the low income sector to look for a new job if they don’t like their current one is one of the most privileged things you can say, almost US level.
I have worked manual jobs, where we were offered overtime, the incentives were always good enough for enough to volunteer.
I’ve worked both nights and weekends. Especially when young, many want that extra income, a little older and most prefer time off, for instance for extended holidays.It’s about giving employers more flexibility
Absolutely.
about how they can exploit you better.
That would be failure of the unions. AFAIK Germany has protected unions pretty much like we have here.
I have worked manual jobs
I am not talking about manual labor but low wage exploitation. Food delivery, meat processing, crop harvesting, parcel shipping - a job sector where a lot of non German EU citizen work and you often have short time contracts. I am not talking about being 25 years old working at VW making good money in the factory.
That would be failure of the unions. AFAIK Germany has protected unions
The time where unions were shining is long over in Germany, they have been legally weakened by politics. In many sectors the organization level is ridiculous. A lot of jobs aren’t unionized or there are no adequate tarrifs contracts. IMO it is a rather neo liberal attitude saying it’s the unions fault.
Maybe Germans should vote more left wing, if they want to be able to negotiating with employers on an equal footing.
Unfortunately we have some of the same problems here. It’s as if people who own a house and a little bit of stock, think that now they are suddenly not wage workers anymore.
It is still their wages that enable what they have, but people forget that, and think they are somehow individual successes, when all they do is standing on the shoulders of the work the unions and labor friendly governments have done in the past.Without them, Germany would be like USA. No holidays, insurance based health care, no free education. And the 1% owning twice as much of the wealth as they already do.
Maybe Germans should vote more left wing, if they want to be able to negotiating with employers on an equal footing.
You say that as if this entire thread wasn’t about that exact issue. And the former left leaning SPD is also the reason we even had the 8 hour work day.
The current government, which has a self proclaimed left and a self proclaimed central party, are doing their best to dismantle all progress made for the common populace in the last 80 years.
IDK why people are so much against the possibility of working extra hours, it is generally voluntary
In the VAST majority of cases if you want to keep the job and advance you shut up, smile and take the hours. Just because is it is optional on paper doesn’t mean shit.
As one who has experienced this frequently, you are dead wrong and don’t know what you are talking about.
It seems hypothetically logical, but that is not how it works in reality.
As someone who has also experienced this frequently, YOU are the one dead wrong. Every time ‘optional’ overtime has been ‘approved’ by the upper management, the one guy who turns it down gets mysteriously let go for some inane reason and when I expressed desire to not work the extra hours, I would suddenly get worse assignments, management would be ruder and one time I got called in for a meeting for my ‘attitude’ problem and told everyone else was putting in more time, I should too because it makes everyone else angry at how lazy I am.
This has been in every company I have worked at that has done this
Wow, major cultural difference then. Are you in Germany?
That’s what I would expect only in USA. Not from a single EU country, at least not the old Western European part of EU.
The problem is that about 2.5 million Germans don‘t even get minimum wage. At least not in practice and unpaid overtime is the main reason for it. If they make 13 hours the new standard, 15 to 18 hours will become reality for many.
Besides, endless studies have shown no meaningful benefit to productivity if you work above 8 hours a day. Instead you have increased sick leave and long term health issues. This will make productivity worse, not better. In fact many fields could benefit from working less than 8 hours a day but that‘s not even debated in the government.
One more thing people should know about Germany is that it‘s (for better or worse) a part time economy. If you increase work hours to 12 or even more hours a day it will mean mass unemployment because why pay benefits for 3 workers when you can pay them for just 2 „harder working“ employees? And what do you do then with millions of unemployed but educated and experienced young and middle aged people? Jobs aren‘t falling from the sky, especially not with so many unemployed people that can‘t contribute to the economy anymore. People will mass migrate somewhere else, making all problems even worse.
The problem in Germany is not productivity. It‘s the opposite! There aren‘t enough contracts. Increasing regular work hours will make things so much worse. It‘s an insane thing to even consider.
That‘s not even the the tip of the iceberg but I think I‘ve said enough for one comment. I hope it can illustrate the sheer incompetence of the German government.
and unpaid overtime is the main reason for it.
That’s a different problem, and I’m surprised the Germans are allowing that.
It’s also completely contrary to what I’ve seen reported by many foreigners working in Germany, where clearly the norm is to have zero overtime.
I work 13 hours a day, but only three times per week. I have four days a week for me.
I love having four days without work, and 13 hours (it depends on the job of course) is not a hassle.i would not want to go back to a five or six day shift.
But everything else, yeah, he’s got a point. That’s enabling “protest party” Nazis to get the votes they need, and it’s a nightmare. I don’t want to go the way of the US.
Because I feel like the profits from working extra hours don’t go to us, they go to the CEOs instead in the form of “bonuses” “second homes” “lucrative jobs at fossil & war industries” etc. It’s corruption if the proletariat do not benefit from it.
No gods, no masters; all hierarchical, authoritarian and capitalist structures, must be destroyed. Only when the last Nazi and Capitalist sympathisers have breathed their death rattle, only then can society be free.
Because I feel like
I feel like you should be able to see on your paycheck if you get paid or not.
The problem of the 1% getting the most is no different because you get a day off working ½ a day.As I stated, I’ve never heard of anybody here complaining about the possibility to take extra hours.
If you don’t want to, chances are you don’t have to.
1930’s history?
Can they make history by all exploding? Not being exploded, just exploding independently.
It isn’t “making history” if you do the exact same thing Nazis already tried.
Also Merz is such a smarmy ingrown toenail, Germany should be embarassed for electing an upper class hate clown who looks like Mr. Mackey from South Park.
The AfD will destroy Germany if Germany is seduced by their seductively simple and stupid narratives of hate. The rest of the world should be extremely wary of Germany as they rearm, it is a nation that uniquely and exceptionally can not be trusted when it comes to resisting fascism.
We have a party much like them here in Denmark, and they too reached a maximum popularity with around 25% of votes at one election.
But these idiots typically can’t even walk straight, and soon there were so many scandals that their popularity fell through the floor.But even with 25% of the vote, AfD can never take control of the country, because Germany is a democracy, so 25% of votes means 25% of the seats.
So to form a government they need support from other parties, and if they ever manage that, I bet when their policies become clear, and voting for them is no longer a protest vote, that they will decline to not be able to make government again. That’s generally how it is with protest parties.
I mean, Hitler never got a majority with the NSDAP. I think he actually got like 30% of the vote or something, and became the biggest party, but far away from a majority.
The issue was that the centre-right parties were scared of the left-winged / communist parties, so they decided to cooperate with Hitler.
Basically, it’s usually centre-right politicians that give rise to radical right politicians, and the radical right politicians don’t need a majority, to get into power.
When a “centre-right” party chooses cooperation with totalitarianists, they are not centre-right, but enablers of the far-right. Keep in mind that the CDU/CSU is opportunistic: it has cooperated with AfD in at least one province. To me, that’s evidence of some of their party members being empty shells, devoid of humanity.
Those who reject that path should reform CDU/CSU from inside to support busting large cooperations and giving back the narrative to the people, rather than to fragile authoritarianists. The true Christian democrats, will master that path, and if they are kicked out, well, then they must create a new CDU/CSU of their own!
All who choose fascism over communism, choose hatred and repression over liberation.
Hitler was very different circumstances, that are not comparable.
Hitler had 33% of the vote in the last free and fair election, before he seized the country. And yet he managed to seize the country. Never be naive!
It was thanks to the corrupt and senile Hindenburg who was in the pockets of the military, thanks to the irresponsible racist Papen who put capital before people, and thanks to collaboration from ““national”” ““conservatives””.
The KPD refused to cooperate with the SPD, because they viewed the SPD negatively due to the SPD’s leaders having crushed a communist liberation movement in the aftermath of WWI. Personally, I generally support both the SPD and 1919-1928 KPD, but that is the one big criticism I have of the SPD; a council democracy would have been better, than the path the Weimar Republic walked.
In the face of fascism, all must cooperate against it. Class consciousness must be maximised, and that is reached by talking with those farmers, with those with less education, by making them feel like they’re heard; we should not blame them, but rather focus our solidarity upon breaking the neoliberal and neofascist movement.
That was completely different, German democracy was in complete shambles and the country disillusioned.
Comparing this situation to what happened back then is like comparing apples to oranges.If it is, then how is AfD, an explicitly fascist and anti-democratic party, so big?
In the face of fascism, the answer to tackling it, isn’t “It’s totally different”, but “Let’s get people to regain trust in democracy”. And that starts by tackling homelessness, housing costs, wage theft, corporatocracy, deplatforming all antidemocratic groups, and so on.
Biden took a lot of measures that helped the American public, but the narrative was skewed against him due to large corporations and reactionaries opposing his policies.
Not to handwave away.
Because of immigrants. People believe immigrants are bad for their country, and they feel they get benefits at the cost of native Germans.
It’s all about Xenophobia, just like Brexit.So how is it different?
Then: Large socioeconomic inequity, institutional distrust, anti-intellectualism, Jews as scapegoat
Now: Large socioeconomic inequity, institutional distrust, anti-intellectualism, immigrants and queers as scapegoat
Same shit, different century.
Absolutely not, Nazism was seen as protection against communism, there is no such need today.
Also today AfD is extremely disliked by the rest of the population.
Nazism won before WW2 because Germany was disillusioned, they felt unfairly treated by the world, and their democracy was failing.
You can’t point to any of those mechanisms today. Today it’s almost 100% xenophobia, and for some east Germans, they feel unfairly treated by west Germany, despite it was West Germany that footed the bill, and West Germany and EU have invested billions in east Germany.
The East Germans were just not aware how far behind they were.
Fascism rarely becomes more popular than that before the violence starts… after it does if it looks any more popular than that it is because centrists tend to be cowards.
Please note that the attitude towards AfD among the population in general is VERY negative.
With the Nazi’s some supported them because they were anti communism. That is not the case today.
It’s sad that AfD has gained as much as they have, maybe Germany shouldn’t have been united after all. It seems the former East Germans are extremely unhappy about it!?It is no different in the US with our violent rightwing extremists and it makes no difference, fascism never truly wins through majority popularity.
A minority can take over if the majority does nothing to prevent it.
That’s way more how it looks in USA than in Germany IMO.
Still I hope USA has a tipping point, where normal people has had enough.
And I wouldn’t bet 100% on the mid terms fixing the problem. USA is in a much worse position, because it’s a flawed democracy, with only 2 parties that realistically can have the power of governing. That makes people much less likely to see an alternative they like better than the sociopathy and destruction of society that has become the brand of Republicans. It’s a mindset of “If I have to suffer, you have to fucking suffer too.”In Germany there has actually been convictions against AfD people, so there are already limits to what they are allowed to do without going to prison. Contrary to Trump who is allowed to make crime after crime without consequences.
For instance AfD party members have been sentenced jail time for being Russian agents, and for a period of time, AfD members of the Bundestag were not allowed to see confidential papers, because their integrity was questioned.With the Russian federation seemingly collapsing, a lot of outside influence will probably disappear, and Trump/Musk are no longer popular even among AfD members.
Yes I understand it’s a problem that AfD is as big as it is, and it can cause problems governing Germany that so many support AfD, but I don’t see Nazism taking control of Germany, by taking control of a German government.
The opposition to them is too strong for that.The opposition to them is too strong for that.
It looks pretty meager to me.
I think you are forgetting that Germany actually has committed a Holocaust against Jews and that this Holocaust began as a politically fringe movement.
One of the leading parties of in Germany literally has Theology in the name, you have to be kidding me if you don’t think Germany is right on the edge of succombing to fascism.
but I don’t see Nazism taking control of Germany, by taking control of a German government.
The opposition to them is too strong for that.Why? Were there not many who were at first opposed the first time the Nazis did it in Germany? Fascism takes over by taking the reigns of government and convincing empty centrists to stick to their obsession with decorum instead of sounding the fire alarm like they need to, it does not require a broad endorsement of it by a majority of the population. To believe it does is very very dangerous.
But do you also have another ~25% party that pretends to be center conservative yet is already happily copying every far-right propaganda and culture war narrative and exactly a handful of changes in leading positions away from ruling side-by-side with the them? One with a voter base so brain-dead that they will always vote for them anyway…
No, it’s very unlikely that the right would get a complete majority, it’s almost always split between left and right, with a few center parties, that prevent either side from getting a one sided majority.
See, and that’s the fundamental problem. The AfD will never get an majority. But the allegedly center conservatives are parroting every AfD line, all while at the same time having leaders very vocal about no cooperation with the far-right yet constantly normalising the idea of said cooperation via backbenchers suggesting it without any backlash.
Guess what… the nazis also never got a majority but came to power via delusional conservative that seriously thought governing with fascists would reign them in.
Our problem is not primarily a far-right too stupid to actually govern or a minority that is too stupid to not vote for them anyway. It’s the run-of-the-mill conservative that has no ideas, no solutions to any modern problem and is happily jumping onto the populism bullshit train to get to power anyway.
But the allegedly center conservatives are parroting every AfD line
That’s exactly what happened here, many parties took the Xenophobe line from our most extreme party.
The Social Democrats even took a lead on that. Since that The Danish Peoples party has never come near their prior strength, and they almost didn’t get a single candidate elected a few years back.The result is that our immigration politics are extremely harsh, bordering on what’s legal according to treaties we are part of.
But at least we did it without getting a “Geert Wilders” in government, like they did in the Netherlands.
I don’t personally like that our immigration policies are probably the harshest in EU. But unfortunately it seems to be politically necessary ATM. Problems with immigration are so blown up in the media, that the population demands it.
Not fascism, but that we protect our society against influx that some people seem to think is damaging to our society. And in a sense that should be the right of any sovereign nation.
But it certainly doesn’t help the situation, that we now have a retirement age of 71. Which might have been avoided if we had more immigrants. But people see it as our wellfare is threatened, and they see immigration as part of that threat.
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Greens + Die Linke with all seats would be chef’s kiss.
And, I hate to say it, but if having BSW in parliament keeps out the brown fascists, then that too.
BSW
They are actually the exact same bunch of xenophobic populists, just more fans of the Russian authoritarian style where the AfD is trying to emulate MAGA.
Yeah, but if they keep out AfD and divide them, that’s all the better.
Did any politicians before say that they realised that they were wrong, they were harmful bigots and blatantly bad people? That would really be a historic act!
Great, become history then. Right now please, I’ll write the (small) book.
