They can’t understand the kind of diversity of thought and respect for national sovereignty that exists in BRICS, the fact that each country first and foremost looks to their own national interests. Because in the Western bloc ideological uniformity is ruthlessly enforced, and dissent from the neoliberal Atlanticist line is absolutely not tolerated (as we are seeing by how they have been treating countries like Slovakia and Hungary), and national interests are totally subordinated to the greater imperialist project (hence why Germany allowed its own critical infrastructure to be obliterated without as much as a protest).

For those unfamiliar with the German FM: her grandfather was an ideologically committed Nazi and member of the SS.

The way to fix it is to get back in Russia’s good graces, tell the US to fuck off, ditch neoliberalism and do what China is doing: massive state directed investment in industry, infrastructure and renewables (with a side of nuclear energy). None of which they are willing to do. And if they think the decline is just going to be a steady “slow agony”, they are also mistaken. Declines happen slow at first but they accelerate more and more as the system breaks down. Things will go very rapidly then.

Maybe he’s telling the truth or maybe he isn’t. It doesn’t matter. Either way he actively participated at a very high level in the destruction of socialism. I don’t think that what he is doing now is in any way trying to atone for that crime because he doesn’t see the destruction of the socialist economies of Eastern Europe as a bad thing. He still holds Poland up as a success while only criticizing the fact that the US was unwilling to treat Russia the same way and instead pushed much harsher shock therapy measures aimed at destroying Russia entirely rather than turning it into a stable vassal state like they did Poland. That being said he is a somewhat prominent anti-imperialist voice now which puts him in the same kind of category as pro-Russia reactionaries - yes they are enemies of socialism, but they are useful to us at the moment insofar as they help weaken US imperialist hegemony.

We’ll see what happens with Hungary and Slovakia with this latest thing that’s happened where Ukraine is trying to cut off Russian oil from reaching them. The EU of course has sided with Ukraine over two of its own members, but Hungary and Slovakia have threatened to cut off electricity transfers to Ukraine which would be a big deal since a lot of it comes through there, plus Hungary is saying it would block EU funds to Ukraine until this is resolved. But so far it’s only talk, so we’ll see if they are really serious about protecting their sovereign interests or if they end up bending the knee in the end. I don’t trust Orban, he is like Erdogan, prone to holding out until he gets a deal profitable to him and then he’ll do a 180 on his position, and while i am sympathetic to Slovakia’s government they are a small country and there’s only so much they can resist if the EU decides to apply serious pressure on them.

Being European and hearing how people around me talk i am very pessimistic about the possibility of any European country (minus Serbia) managing to break free and go its own way, but i hope i’m wrong. For me the real wild card and weakest link in NATO is Turkey.

Germany must take responsibility as the leading power in Europe. We are all in Europe waiting for Germany to end the military conflict in Ukraine.

Yeah, good luck with that. If that’s your best hope you’ll be waiting for a very long time. Germany is a total basket case, don’t expect anything reasonable or rational to come from this country any time soon.

Probably for German re-armament if the Greens have any say.

So “unexpected”. Who could have seen this coming?

I prefer not to get into that sort of name-calling, it’s not productive.

My money is on no, on all three counts. They won’t stop antagonizing China over Taiwan, they won’t let go of project Ukraine, and they certainly won’t abandon their most precious neocolony. These people have no reverse gear. All they know how to do is double down.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong though.

Probably. I haven’t clicked on that link but that sort of thing is to be expected from this source.

When i recommend a piece i generally vet it for that sort of stuff, and if there is any problematic content i try and add a warning. But i don’t vouch for other things the same author may have written.

We should always be aware of the bias of the media we consume, and when reading analysis by conservative leaning authors like this one, caution is advised. That’s part and parcel of critical media consumption, knowing what we can take that is of value from a piece of media and what to discard.

There are elements of that but i think that’s too shallow of an analysis. First and foremost they are a splinter of the Left (Die Linke) party (which has now all but collapsed, and it would be fascinating and highly educational to get into a whole analysis of why that happened, but not now), with similar but not identical positions.

Here’s an overview of which parties their voter base comes from:

And here’s a demographic breakdown of their base:

Source: https://www.boeckler.de/data/Boeckler_Impuls_2024_10_4.pdf

For those who don’t speak German, what the second graph basically says is that their voters are:

• much more likely to be anti-establishment (lit.: “low trust in the government”)

• predominantly low income

• predominantly from east Germany

• sightly more likely to be women

• significantly more likely to have lower educational qualifications*

• more likely to have an immigrant background (lit.: “immigration experience”)

*(Germany has a three tier educational system that is a bit confusing, but basically this is another class indicator - those who have gone or could have gone to university are less likely to vote BSW)

The last one is particularly striking as it does not fit with what you say about them “courting white workers” (in fact it is debatable if that kind of framing even applies to Germany… Germans don’t tend to think in terms of “white” and “non-white” but rather of native Germans and foreigners, though there is a strong anti-muslim prejudice as well on top of that). I personally know a few people of Turkish background who voted for BSW (this is anecdotal of course, i wouldn’t extrapolate anything from it).

As you can also see by which parties they “poached” voters from, they are a mixed bag, they draw from both left and right wing parties but the common denominator is that these are people who have become disillusioned with the establishment.

There is no analogue in US politics. The closest would be the UK’s George Galloway and his Workers Party (WPB). Reactionary on some social issues but not always (anti-LGBT but not racist or islamophobic like the “right populists”), while on economic issues they are closest to what the old-school social democrats used to be before they went all neoliberal. The establishment calls them “left populists”.

It’s also a bit strange i think to use the term “class demagoguery” because that’s what the liberal establishment calls it when anyone, including us communists, talks about any class issues.

Overall i would say they are a tailist working class party, and their mixed views on social issues reflect the mixed views of the working class itself which tends to be economically left but also sometimes skeptical of the social issues they perceive as being championed mostly by upper middle class university educated liberals (incidentally that’s exactly the base of the Greens, and so unsurprisingly Greens voters are the least likely to switch to BSW), the liberal establishment, and the mainstream media.

They are certainly not socialists or communists but they are useful insofar as they pull away support not just from mainstream parties but also from the far right (where a lot of disaffected people gravitated towards when that was the only anti-establishment alternative), and most importantly they are one of the only prominent anti-war voices in German politics.

The drop in support for the establishment capitalist parties and the social democrats brought no significant gains by left parties. There were a few exceptions: […]

There is another notable exception which is BSW in Germany. They went from 0% (they didn’t exist before) to 6%. They have some cringy right wing positions on a few issues but nominally they are a “left” party.

I mean, if i lived there and i saw what the EU and Germany did to Greece i wouldn’t trust them either.

I’ve had experience living in both western and eastern Europe. Western (and northern) Europeans are extremely gullible and trusting when it comes to their own countries’ institutions. They almost never question official narratives and media (and when they do it’s because they think their institutions are not being racist and fascist enough toward non-western European people). They have this almost religious faith that everything will work out in the end if you trust the system.

Eastern Europeans are much more cynical toward their own governments and recognize how corrupt they are, but unfortunately they make up for that by idealizing to the point of near worship Western Europe and the US. They have this inferiority complex and disdain for their own people where they constantly talk about how inherently stupid, lazy and criminal they are and how that’s why they don’t have the nice things that the West does.

And then there’s the pervasive anti-communist paranoia where even today many are convinced that communists are still secretly running their countries and that’s why the utopian liberal promises that they were sold on in the late 80s, early 90s never came true.

I don’t know how it is in southern Europe, i don’t have any lived experiences there but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was some mix of those two types of mentalities (minus the post-socialist cognitive dissonance).

Even then it would be a long shot. People outside of Europe just don’t understand what kind of an iron grip the Euro-Atlanticists have on all of our institutions and media, and therefore also on the minds of the people.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it appears that EU institutions are now already pre-emptively applying pressure on national governments to prevent any deviation from the Brussels line from happening as a result of the recent EU elections.

This tweet by the author of the article does a great job of explaining how that happens through ECB monetary policies. I was so impressed by the quality of the analysis (even if some of it is also in the main article) i added it to the body of the post.

You just don’t understand our European culture. Likeability is seen as less important in Europe than pedigree. Von der Lyin’ comes from old Nazi aristocracy, and that counts for a lot in Brussels.

European values tho.