After the 2019 Green wave, many observers expected a blue-brownish backlash for 2024. And in many countries, these observers (who are these people, and why are they always so well-informed?) were not disappointed. In Germany, the governing “progressive” coalition took a rather spectacular beating, while the main opposition, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) performed ok-ish. The…
Friedrich Merz, the CDU/CSU candidate for the chancellorship, is much more popular with men than with women. It makes you wonder why.
Here’s an interview with DW in which I try to make sense of the 2024 state elections in Brandenburg.
Ten days or so ahead of the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, I had a chat with Berlin-based British Deutschlandversteher Deborah Cole. Some quotes made it into this excellent explainer piece in the Guardian. Looks like Germany failed the test. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/29/germany-state-elections-populists-afd-bsw
Need to something uplifting? 50 minutes to spare? Listen to how the hunt for alien life is gearing up.
How it started: far right governments as an exception A decade or two ago, far right governments were a rarity in Europe. Of course, there were the Berlusconi governments of the 1990s and early 2000s that included the radical right Lega (then still the Lega Nord) and the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale, i.e. the rebranded MSI.…
Der komplette Artikel ist hinter einer Paywall, die Kurzfassung kann man momentan hier nachlesen.
Mit der Deutschen Presseagentur habe ich ausführlich über den Rücktritt von Malu Dreyer und die Nachfolgeregelung in der Landespartei gesprochen. Wer es lesen möchte: Zeit Online hat den Text übernommen und bietet ihn ohne Paywall an. https://www.zeit.de/news/2024-06/23/parteienforscher-arzheimer-sieht-spd-gut-aufgestellt
Mit Tagesschau24 habe ich über den Verfassungsschutzbericht für das Jahr 2023 und die politischen Schlussfolgerungen daraus gesprochen. Das Video dazu gibt es hier. https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-1350020.html
This week, the Internet is full of interesting stuff about the 2024 European elections, which were sort of momentous. Here are four links I liked, and one that helped me to cope.