So much has been happening in recent weeks! Not so much in the USA, where everyone is waiting for that shoe to drop, the old one with the worn, troubled sole—or missing soul! (The other shoe never claimed to have a soul)
But in Europe! On July 7th came a huge surprise which few pundits had even dared predict. No, it wasn’t the LePen/Bardella crowd they had fearfully awaited, and certainly not the Macron sad sacks! It was La Gauche—the Left—which showed what can be won if you put up a fight—this time with joined hands and clever tactics! And against racism and nationalism!
In the European Parliament elections on June 9th a few leftist parties had pointed the way, with small but welcome gains in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece. But the general trend was to the right. Even in Britain, no longer in the EU, while the incredibly corrupt Tories were finally swept out, the victorious Labour Party replacing them was hardly less adept in the art of selling out to the highest bidders. But here and there the London fog was dispersed by new, courageous voices—most gloriously by good old Jeremy Corbyn as an Independent, now hopefully with the spunk to fight back; those hopeful voices will still be facing a tough time against the fog, with the phonies still shouting their pro-Netanyahu misuse of “anti-Semitism” charges—much like those in the USA and Germany.
The French leftists have also been facing that tactic, of course, with charges of anti-Semitism, at times genuine but mostly exaggerated, invented and stressed so as to split the left and weaken the fight against militarism, internationalism—and for socialism. In France La Gauche is much stronger but, lacking a majority, will also face a foggy Brumaire. On many key issues I expect the Macron crowd will prefer cuddling up to LePen & Co.—a well-established tradition. And the left is a very mixed bunch, of course. Nothing is certain! But nothing can diminish my happiness at seeing the billionaire bunch not just taking in giant profits but also a rare, hard blow to the solar plexus! Vive la Gauche!
In Germany, the fighting ring looks different; it rather recalls Ringling Brothers, the famous circus a German family founded 140 years ago, now newly revived. The three-ring, three party coalition in Berlin finally fought out a rickety budget, just in time for the summer vacation, but the fragile tent will hardly survive the windy gusts of autumn. Every cabinet minister insists on more money in what is already a sadly sagging economy. Yes, it’s still the wealthiest in Europe, featuring lucky trapeze artists flying high up there, like Armin Papperger of Rheinmetall (Panther tanks), with an annual wage envelope of €3.6m, or Oliver Blume of VW with a fat €9.7 m. But those down below, setting up props, clearing messy sawdust or other hard jobs now face the lowest growth rates on the continent, with many groceries out of reach, soaring rents, evictions increasing, poor kids disadvantaged, doctors and teachers far too few and more pensioners dependent on free food pantries.
Some problems are remnants of the Covid misery, but a main reason for the bleak picture is the big fuel cost increase, with the Russian pipeline shut down (and, not so mysteriously, blown up), forcing reliance on liquefied fracking gas shipped expensively from the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Arab Gulf states, or Russian oil repurchased from India. Another major cause: the huge sums spent for a military build-up, for fearsome measures looking increasingly like preparations for war, with the chosen adversary constantly accused of aggressive aims—while more and more German weapons and troops are stationed closer and closer to Russian heartland targets and seaways.
Wherever one looks In the coalition cabinet the ministers of the three parties are constantly at odds, one against the other, somehow recalling that worldwide game “Hammer-Scissors-Paper.” The smallest of the three, the Free Democrats (FDP), relentlessly pro-business, insists that there be no tax increases for the wealthy (disguised under the heading “productive middle class”). Such generosity to the high flyers, already astonishingly undertaxed, requires tough stinginess, with at best the most modest improvements, for single parents, children, the elderly and the jobless. But the FDP, balancing along the 5% line needed to remain in the Bundestag, is constantly blackmailing its two partners. If it should quit then the government would collapse, a special election would be required, and since all three parties stand so low in the polls, having ended miserably in the EU elections, they would immediately face political disaster.
The Greens, heading to the top of the party pile less than three years ago, look very sad today, and are probably most disliked. While failing attempts to preserve their mainstay, ecological chastity, they have often crept under warm covers with Christian rightists, accepting compromises on the environment but striving for vanguard position in bellicose demands to hit out against Russia, now in Ukraine—also economically. “Ruin Russia!” was the call of Green Foreign Minister Annelina Baerbock. It often seems that the Greens have the closest bonds and kowtow most deeply to U.S. capital interests (and German ones as well), and are torn between their martial foreign policy and a worsening reputation with home-owners fearing higher costs to isolate and warm their homes and with farmers angered by regulations against herbicides and stricter protection for animals—forced on them, as many see it, by a bunch of rich bio-vegans!
Even the Social Democrats (SPD), the trio leaders, are polling at about 15%, only half that of their traditional (but also diminished) Christian (CDU-CSU) rivals. Frightened by losses among working people, the SPD must display social consciousness, at least verbally. But although its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has called for a €15 hourly minimum wage, he also insisted on an extra hundred billion euros for militarization, then even more, all at the cost of working people. And while still dragging his feet about sending Zelenskyy the Taurus missiles, capable of wrecking both Moscow’s subway system and all its military bunkers, he is okaying every other kind of military hardware for Kyiv, as well as continuing support for a genocidal Netanyahu & Co. in Gaza. While a few Social Democrats—very few—have dared to call for negotiations and peace in both wars, the loudest bellicose crusader in Germany is Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who calls himself a Social Democrat. He is now in Alaska, helping to establish another German outpost in a far distant area, but not too far to angrily denounce a small cut in the immense German military budget. It’s all needed, of course for “defense.” Not long ago he was busy setting up a permanent German outpost in Lithuania. And it is Pistorius who has called for a rebirth of military conscription, which had been basically shut down in 2011. When this trial balloon was punctured for sailing too far and too fast he sent up a smaller balloon; no drafting but a questionnaire for draft age Germans, compulsory for males, voluntary for females, setting them up for drafting “when necessary.” That balloon is still afloat. To make things clear, he demanded “Kriegstüchtigkeit” (war fitness), elating those hoping for conflict but frightening most of the others. Here are his words:
Once again we must get used to the idea that there could be a danger of war in Europe. And that means: We must become fit for war, we must be able to defend ourselves and position the Bundeswehr and society for it.
These words of Pistorius revolve around Ukraine, where they really mean a demand to “fight to the finish” by NATO, led by the USA (or, if need be with Trump, by Germany) and thus inching ever closer to the nuclear precipice. Denmark, Holland, Norway and Belgium plan to send F-16 fighter jets; Denmark and Holland said there would be no restrictions on Kyiv striking targets in Russia. F-16s can carry nuclear weapons, and Russia has said the planes will be considered a nuclear threat. NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg states that 500,000 troops are at “high readiness,” and in the next five years NATO will “acquire thousands of air defense and artillery systems, 850 modern aircraft, mostly fifth-generation F-35s,and many other high-end capabilities.”
NATO is now celebrating 75 years of opposing the USSR and Russia; Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas will probably succeed Stoltenberg as secretary general; she is equally bellicose, if not more so, and the Scholz government enthusiastically joins the celebrations while welcoming U.S. long-range missile launchers in Germany. The hooded figure with the scythe can well rub his bony fingers.
Who opposes these deadly dangers? First of all, a fair section of the German population, most notably in its eastern states, where older generations were immersed at every occasion in an official GDR stress on “Peace” and where many visited the USSR as students, workers, allied soldiers or tourists and found that Russians, despite their funny alphabet, were human beings with neither spiked tails nor horns.
Surprisingly perhaps, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) opposes military support for Ukraine. This is hardly the result of any pacifist feelings among its leaders, who praise NATO, praise a German armaments buildup, support a military draft and praise Israel’s war against Gaza even more vigorously than the government parties which teeter between very faint “concern” for civilians and continuing full support for Netanyahu. But for Ukraine the AfD calls for peace—and tends to support Putin. One can speculate about the reasons, but this position may well have helped gain amazing popularity in the Eastern states; it is now in first place in Thuringia (29%), in Brandenburg (25%) and Saxony (30%) and all three face important state elections in September.
More important for AfD strength is no doubt a widespread dissatisfaction with the economy. Although Germany is still near the top in exports and average living standards, many face great uncertainty with the general decline, making the future look bleaker for offspring generations. This is strongest among East Germans, who often feel cheated and condemned to second class status despite all the promises of 1990. The AfD, nationally in second place, lays the blame above all on “all those refugees and immigrants, mostly illegally here to get handouts, pushing down wage scales and far too often criminals and rapists”—an almost literal translation of voices in the USA. It is widespread racist prejudice, and worries about failure and war, which have given the AfD its big lead.
But what about the LINKE (Left), always proud to call itself the “Party of Peace”? It was often alone in opposing military involvement in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Mali, the waters off Lebanon and Somalia, and now even in Pacific regions. It opposed armament programs and the entire return to modernized Prussian-type militarism in all its spheres.
But then came Ukraine. And then came Gaza! And the Left split again, as elsewhere, as so often. Some, without refraining from condemnation of the Russian march into Ukraine, blamed NATO’s relentless steamroller expansion eastward for genuine angst in Moscow and condemned Washington’s very explicit goal of world hegemony, which it called a “rules-based international order”—despite its defiance of so many rules, from depleted uranium and white phosphorus bombing to its horrendous regime changes in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia—and so many others.
But others, in LINKE leadership, chose to appease NATO, to accept increasing weapons shipments to Kyiv (and even to Netanyahu) and to reject dramatic appeals and rallies demanding negotiations and peace, largely using the pathetically weak alibi that AfD and other rightists were not being sufficiently barred from such rallies. It was such positions and decisions, which indicated the desire of some LINKE leaders to gain acceptance through compromises, and maybe win a ministerial armchair or two in a national cabinet, which caused the breakaway of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), headed by the popular, attractive, master debater who gave it her name. Within less than seven months and only rudimentary organization it has risen to 7% (sometimes 9%) in the national polls and to third place in eastern Germany, mostly at the cost of the LINKE, which (except for a few urban strongholds), is fighting for survival, now with only 2-3% nationally and with quickly diminishing poll percentage in the East. (In Thuringia BSW 20, LINKE 14, Saxony BSW 15, LINKE 3, Brandeburg BSW 8, LINKE 2)
With the LINKE already slipping badly, many clearly hoped—and hope—that a fighting new party might revive a genuine opposition in Germany. And Sahra’s party, like Sahra herself, took a strong position against the mass murder and devastation in Gaza and, while joining in condemning the Russian attack, supporting “not weapons shipments but demands for a cease-fire, negotiations and peace in Ukraine” and moves to a lasting détente between the EU and Russia, and China too.
But some on the left now have questions about this surprisingly strong new party. Sahra moves close to the AfD on immigration questions, supporting stricter controls, accepting only “genuine asylum-seekers” not economic immigrants, the quick ejection of miscreants—slogans especially popular in the East but disturbingly close to slogans of the AfD (and increasingly in all other parties, except the LINKE). Nor has Sahra defined any militant economic demands for working people, other than “fair wages,” while urging more or less a return to the prospering West German “normalcy” of the 1950s and 1960s! Her goals and motivation are unclear; so is the question of how much influence some very good people will have, like Sevim Dagdelen, who actively joined the fight to free Assange and made a moving speech on peace lst week in New York.
There are some leftists, basically Marxists, who opposed the split from the LINKE and still hope, at its party congress in October, to save the original, hopeful party from its fatal opportunism, corruption—and its looming oblivion
So much is up in the air; above all, who will head the governments in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony after September. Only three parties are showing strength, the AfD, the Christians, and the Wagenknecht BSW. But none are close to the needed majority and, as it now stands, not one is willing to join with either of the other two. A situation not unlike France since July 7th!
In conclusion unusual news again, perhaps most important of all, involving sparks of genuine hope. Hungary has now taken up its six month turn as head of the European union and the first move of Viktor Orbán, hitherto the autocratic pariah of the outfit, was to visit Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing in the cause of peace in Ukraine, perhaps on a basis resembling plans worked out early in the war in Minsk, then Ankara, but skuttled under pressure from Britain’s Boris Johnson and Washington. One can hate or admire any of the gentlemen now involved; I would endorse Satan himself if he could help end this God-awful war and move towards the urgently-needed peace in the area—and elsewhere. Perhaps, with the help of Orbán and maybe a new leadership in France, this may finally become possible. If you are pious it’s worth praying for. If you are human, it’s worth fighting for! In Berlin, Washington, Paris, also in Budapest, Moscow and everywhere else!