Multi-party systems are superior to two-party systems, in my view, for a number of reasons — ideological diversity and less susceptibility to consolidation by an elitist power structure, to name two — but they each work equally poorly when the country is a functional oligarchy controlled by special interests.
Via Remix News (emphasis added):
“Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were once coined a “conservative” party, but over the years, they have seen a dramatic shift towards the left. Now, they look to further cement this leftward shift following regional elections in autumn of this year, where the party is already signaling it will join a coalition with the newly formed BSW party led by Sahra Wagenknecht.
In many eastern states, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is well in the lead, but BSW has chipped into that lead. In many states, the only possible coalition that could form, based on current polling, involves some combination of the AfD and CDU, or the CDU and BSW.
The CDU is clearly moving in the direction of the BSW and rules out any possible coalition with the AfD.
The newcomer left-wing party, the Alliance of Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which bears the name of its founder, now has 10 percent support nationwide, according to the latest polls.
The party is just one percentage point behind the governing coalition Green Party and five percentage points ahead of the smallest party in the coalition, the Free Democrats (FDP). Its popularity is shown by the fact that the conservative CDU is now seeking the party’s cooperation at the regional level.”
BSW has only been around since January of this year, which happens to coincide with the rise in AfD popularity that has thrown the corporate state into a frenzy of hang-wringing with the usual accusations of Nazism, etc.
Via DW (emphasis added):
“Sahra Wagenknecht on Monday, presented her recently announced political party to journalists in Berlin. The “Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — Reason and Fairness,” she said, will seek to establish itself as a true people’s party and enter its first EU and German state elections this year.
Wagenknecht, who maintained her seat in Germany’s Bundestag parliament when she abandoned the Left Party in October, said BSW would work toward overcoming the “incompetence and arrogance” of Berlin’s current coalition government, claiming many voters “feel left behind.”
Wagenknecht and some 40 former Left Party colleagues will make up the initial core of the party — which will change its name before the next scheduled German national elections in autumn 2025 — and work toward establishing a larger roster of party members to stand for elections across Germany in the near future.”
Per Wikipedia, “the Bild [German newspaper] described Wagenknecht as a right-wing socialist, while Die Tageszeitung [another German paper] said that she promotes ‘socialism with a right-wing code’” — the meaning of which is not entirely clear, unless the point is just to slice into AfD’s appeal in the East.
Related: After Leftist Lobbying, German Bank Kills AfD Donation Account
Continuing:
“The BSW, for its part, has also ruled out an alliance with the AfD.
As some of the polls show in the eastern states, AfD may be on top, but if it has no coalition options, the party has nowhere to go. The CDU, although it is openly telegraphing it will work with the far left, does not appear to be harmed by this stance in the polls, where it is performing nearly as well as the AfD in many of these states.”
To my eye, BSW looks like a potential classic case of controlled opposition.
Truth be told, in the U.S., large and historically extremely influential swathes of the Republican Party are entirely indiscernible from the Democrat Party — same donors, same interests served, different colors. Trump has made huge inroads cleaning out the trash, but, as we saw with the astro-turfed Nikki Haley debacle in the primary, the Old Guard a la Dick Cheney are always waiting in the wings to restore things back to the way they were.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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