Germany, Europe: a ruling class that divides society and then claims to save it

Immediately after the results of the elections in the states of Thuringia and Saxony, which saw the unequivocal victory of the sovereignist right wing of Alternative für Deutschland and the populist left wing of Sarah Wagenknecht, with the corresponding collapse of the governmental parties of the “Traffic Light” coalition (Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens), came the announcement by two of Germany's largest car companies, Volkswagen and Audi, of plant closures and thousands of layoffs.

The two events seem to recall each other, linked in a circle now difficult to break. Germany's industrial economy - what until just a few years ago was considered the “locomotive of Europe” - has been literally brought to its knees by the combination of two factors that are not the result of an unforeseeable fatality, but of conscious political choices made by German governmental political forces and before that by the Cdu, through the previous majority led by Angela Merkel and the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen's European Commission: the “Green Deal” policy dictated by adherence to apocalyptic climateist ideology and outright opposition to Russia in the Moscow-Kiev conflict.

Dogmatic EU fundamentalism for the energy transition, of which the Berlin political class has been the most determined supporter, has resulted in the demolition of the German and European automotive sector, and more generally of all mechanical, metallurgical and metal production, in favor of the Chinese industry, a near-monopolist in raw materials, components and often even finished products in the field of electric mobility and renewable energy plants. And it has caused, on the one hand, a surge in inflation due precisely to the rush for raw materials and disincentives to the detriment of energy judged as not “sustainable,” and on the other hand, an increase-this one really unsustainable-in the cost of living for families due precisely to the strict environmental obligations imposed, resulting in increasingly pessimistic expectations for the future.

Into an economic situation already largely jeopardized by such irresponsible ideological choices, Russia's invasion of Ukraine plunged in 2022. Germany, which had been developing intensive economic and political relations with Moscow for decades, after an initial, brief phase in which it timidly attempted to play a mediating role was abruptly called to order by the United States, like all European NATO allies, and had to adjust to a line of total opposition with the Russians, seeing its own exports severely damaged by sanctions, and above all being forced to give up Russian gas. This contributed significantly to fueling and increasing the elements of economic crisis that had already been triggered by the ill-considered green programs and the closure of nuclear power plants imposed by the Greens. Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz has tried to make a virtue out of necessity by partly converting domestic industrial production back into armaments for the Ukrainians, but this is clearly a fallback, fueled in any case by public appropriations, that will not be able to compensate for the lost business. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that Germany has become, from a leading country, the “sick man” of the EU, plunging more than others, in a climate of low if not absent growth for most of the continent, into recession.

Addingto this picture of pessimism and high social tension is a third deflagrating element: the increasingly unmanageable conflicts related to immigration, especially from Muslim countries, indiscriminately favored in the past by Angela Merkel and then embraced as dogma by the current governing forces in the name of an uncritical multiculturalism, but whose contradictions related to the “clash of civilizations” are now continually coming to light - most recently with bloodsheds produced by pure hatred such as the recent massacre in Solingen, which belatedly prompted even Scholz to promise a crackdown on irregular flows.

Against this background, how can one be surprised that a growing number of voters - particularly in the most economically suffering regions and among working-class and youth groups - are still increasingly choosing to vote for parties such as Afd or Bsw, the only ones on the national “political market” to challenge the green agenda, immigrationism at all costs and the “endless war” with Russia into which European members of the EU and NATO have been sucked?

By now it has become a sad and repetitive habit in Europe and throughout the West: in the face of the successes of “populist” and “sovereignist” right-wingers - or of radically anti-politicallycorrect leftists such as Wagenknecht's - the political, intellectual and media elites lined up almost unanimously in the progressive/woke camp tear their scandalized robes, issue wails of indignation, demonize dissident forces from their agenda by pointing them out as racist, fascist, Nazi, call for “sacred union” and “cordon sanitaire” against them in the name of defending democracy - as is happening, precisely, for the umpteenth time now in Germany.

Certainly, at least in the German case, there is no shortage of extremist accentsin the voices of protest directed at those forces. But the logic of the “cordon sanitaire”-in Germany as in France, as in the EU after the recent European elections-achieves nothing other than to create unnatural coalitions, paralyzed by entrenched vetoes, stiffened in abstract and radical stances, and thus to entrench the crisis and accentuate the lacerations in public opinion, further polarizing the confrontation and also radicalizing dissent.

From this point of view, the most paradoxical position is that of the Cdu/Csu, which reaps the benefits of being in opposition while maintaining its own support or losing less, and channeling some of the unease that also rewards populist/sovereignist movements, but then still ebbs, as in most of the People's Parties in the old Continent, into the rhetoric of the “cordon sanitaire,” when it could and should try to break it, to launch bridges of dialogue to exacerbated voters and understand their reasons, to question the most harassing points of that ideological agenda, rather than radicalizing it even more.

The reflex that aims to exclude “pariahs” from all political agility dangerously prepares for the structural crisis of Western democracies, and may foster the very thing they say they want to prevent: their subversion and the fall of societies into a creeping civil war.