I don’t understand the translation. It translates to against Germans, against criminal Germans getting deported, and against Germans returning from holiday making.

I think the intention is against immigrants, but it still doesn’t make much sense to me. Can anyone comment? Especially about the tightening of residence permits. As someone who moved here who wants to become a citizen, it’s important to me that I have a path to residency as soon as possible so I’m not reliant on my company’s good will and fortune to stay in Germany and pursue becoming a German.

EDIT: OH NO! I ate the onion but in another language hahaha. That’s great! Thanks everyone for the clarification, the literal translation was correct and I assumed the worst (partially because they want to implement the worst). Thank you and again, my bad. Ich lerne Deutsch langsam.

I’d hope so. To me, the push for buying European isn’t to simply support European products but to support the rule of law and to pull power away from oligarchs. I think the smaller the company the better for individuals to support whether it’s Australian or European or Canadian.

The other caveat being they’re not currently in a country actively or likely in the future damaging other countries capacity for self sovereignty. So ideally (as all things are in a late stage capitalist society) no USA, no China, no Israel, etc. Not always possible, but that’s what I hope the movement aims for.

They don’t have an entry on goodonyou.eco. I’d like to know more about their ecological practices but I’ll note them down as a place to buy some clothes from, thanks!

I just want to change the lens those people view lowering company taxes with. Why lower company taxes? What’s the goal? I’d argue the common answer is to grow “the economy” which sounds like it means “make more jobs and pay people more.” But the question then becomes if the goal is to pay people more why are we taxing companies less? Why not tax people less? That’s a more direct line to “growing the economy” except instead of giving more money to companies which is a theoretical proxy for giving money to people, we just give people more money directly.

I wish well meaning conservatives would think about it like that. I don’t think Merz is a well meaning conservative, in fact I don’t know if most conservatives in power are well meaning. But that’s what I’d hope the working class conservatives, who are wittingly or unwittingly betraying their own self interests, would think. Why give money to companies in the hopes they give more money to the people. Why not give money to the people and let them spend it on companies.

The guy worked for Black Rock who I’ve only heard of in “evil corporation” contexts. He made millions of dollars doing this work and then he gets back into politics and his one of his first priorities is lowering the taxes of corporations during a period where the government needs to be raising more funds and investing in its people! How is that not an obvious quid pro quo? Isn’t he not an obviously compromised actor who’s more ambitious than he is good willed?

Not even talking about conservatives as vehicles for societal decline, how is Merz not viewed by everyone as someone who has only his and his wealthy friends interests at heart by his past actions and history? Of course he’s not the change we need, he’s conservative - they, on average, cause pain to the working class. But even more so Merz is compromised, is he not? Just like the FDP after their last coalition stunt.

If someone, including a whole party, put party or power before the people of Germany (and I would argue the people of Europe and mankind as a whole) shouldn’t they be barred from ruling? They’re exactly the people you don’t want running.

Dating is not the same thing situation as being friends. Living together isn’t the same thing as dating even. I wish you the best of luck, but as a random on the Internet who knows nothing about you or your situation - marriage doesn’t have to mean anything. You can have everything marriage can give you without the legal work of marriage and personally I think striving for that is the best green flag a couple can have.

He’s been sabotaging Ukraine since day one and parroting Russian propaganda lines since day one and Russia has worked hard to get trump and the republicans in office. The writing has been on every single wall for the past 10 years.

I don’t know if controlling immigration is the problem or solution, right? It’s a scapegoat.

I think the problem is perception. What should happen is when any media org talks about violent immigrants or violent crime they should be forced to display a graph of violent crime for the past 5 decades or something. Germany is in one of the top 3 or 5 safest years it has had in the last like 50 years.

I’ve had German citizens warn me about the ghettos of Mannheim. These are stores without bars over their windows, plenty of people walking around at most hours of night, music and walk-in restaurants. This is no ghetto like in America. But natives see it as scary because humans are creatures of relativity.

If anything Germany needs to provide a simple, clear path forward to permanent residence (at least) and ideally full citizenship. This tells people who are open to joining Germany that they have a path to starting a life here. Germany also need to provide a security net for those people if they run into problems on their journey to permanent residence (at least) so they know that this massive risk of moving abroad has a minimum amount of safety (cause a work force that feels trapped at their job is not a well compensated work force and everyone wants good paying jobs for themselves and their neighbors). I think Germany does a great job at both of these things already, the scary part is AFD wanting to differentiate between blood-line citizens and naturalized citizens. The scary part is CDU conservatives wanting to reduce the social safety net. The CDU winning hurts the influx of highly skilled or specialized immigrants because now they know the move just got more risky if conservatives get their way.

As far as protecting their border or slowing the rate of immigrants in total or from certain areas… Idk honestly. I don’t know if that’s a real problem, I don’t think it is, and I don’t know how Germany could fix that. I have no doubt very smart people have several great solutions that are human-centric policies that improve the lives of everyone on both side of the fictional line - but I’m positive it’s not the policy conservatives will be pursuing. Because again, I don’t think it’s a real problem.

Real problems are housing for everyone, higher wages for everyone, infrastructural improvement, improving education, better medicine and access to healthcare, etc etc. Germany and most developed countries are wealthy enough to handle their current level of immigration without issue - if the money is spent well instead of funneled into the parasitic 1%'ers pockets. Cultures and integration happen naturally over time, that isn’t a fear for me either.

MAGA won because the economic decline outpaces the societal progress for too many decades, and the perceived solution was not based in reality. Germany has far more run way in the economic and societal race, but the influence on perception is both at a high in terms of strength and a low in terms of being attached to reality.

Idk what you’re saying is incorrect here. Conservatives are by and large Anti-Labor which means they are anti-80-90% of the population. Merkel began decommissioning nuclear plants and put more money towards oil, now we have an energy “crisis” that could have been entirely avoided. But conservatives are pro-oil when everyone in the world would benefit from being pro-green energy including nuclear power.

Conservatives are by and large pro privatizing public functions. The German train network has the issues it has today partially because it’s not publicly owned and operated. Conservatives are anti-infrastructural spending and they tend to be budget conscious only when it benefits the Uber wealthy.

Merz wants to complain about the fiscal budget but then wants to cut taxes for corporations. The CDU wants to fund that, last I checked, by cutting spending on welfare and social security nets. Conservatives want to take money from the sick, poor, and elderly and give it to big businesses and the only argument they have for why that could be a good thing is it could make the “economy better” and some of that money will trickle down.

We are in the mess we are today because of conservative policies. Voting for the CDU is voting for the declination of society based on all the data I’ve seen. I’d love to see what an SPD government looks like when it’s not being sabotaged by the FDP but I worry, like in America, they’re still too centralist to be massively effective at reversing decline.

Immigrants aren’t the problem. Germany needs more immigrants to stay functional in the coming decades, just like most developed countries.

Then don’t do what we did, vote for progressives not Conservatives. Conservatives are a plague on society.

Coming from an American who moved to Germany, Merz will pave the road to Germany’s Trump.

This was a nice read, thanks for sharing!

Also, to add to the fire here - what the fuck is political neutrality in modern day America. Political neutrality when one of the parties is doing Hitler impersonations on the daily isn’t political neutrality it’s passive support for the party.

It’s that whole saying, if a Nazi sits down at a table with three guys and they don’t object there are four Nazis sitting at a table.

I don’t give a shit that they’re based in Switzerland Every country has an extreme regressive party right now flirting or endorsing fascism. In Germany we have the AFD. Everyone has to take a stand everywhere.and they have to do so publicly, everyone but especially those people in a position of concentrated power like those leading a company or within the government.