The German chancellor has called for a welfare reform, putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.

  • smayonak@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 hours ago

    Its crazy to me that the only left leaning party in Germany was split by internal divisions between neoliberalism and progressive politics. How was that even possible when more than half of Germany’s voters are left leaning?

    • zqps@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      3 hours ago

      Are you referring to SPD? They haven’t bothered with actual left-leaning politics for a while. Die Linke is our party on the left, and they are experiencing a renaissance right, but unfortunately not nearly as much as the far right.

      To answer your question: Most German voters are centrists with a mix of vaguely conservative and social democratic views. And they’ve been exposed to economic anxiety narratives and xenophobic fear-mongering for the past two decades, while lacking the political education to smell the populist bullshit for what it is in a social media environment defined by anti-intellectualism and fake news.