After this post and this post, both describing the obvious difference between East and West Germany (Germanies?), the Germans have gone out of their way to do it again in their recent elections.
Incidentally, I love the irony that I have the choice of how I want that image to display:
OK. Let’s play it safe and go centre. I mean, I don’t want it on the left, but Jesus – obviously not as far right as East Germany!
Interestingly, Elon’s darlings, the AfD, won a couple of places in West Germany this time around as well, namely Gelsenkirchen and Kaiserslautern. It turns out that those are both poorly-run cities with high unemployment and high levels (for Western Europe at least) of poverty.
And when there is a vacuum of power (or even a perceived vacuum of power) in a place with disgruntled, lower-educated voters, well, the populist parties with no real policies except “blame the immigrants*” will happily step in and take power with 25%, and the rest of the vote split between the “real” parties.
Tight.
But the more concerning issue is that – even aside from these two outliers – the AfD was able to garner around 20% of the vote in many constituencies right across Germany, and was only kept out by stronger performances of one or other of the CDU/CSU or the SPD.
Worrying times. Unless you’re a Nazi.
.
* or whites, blacks, Mexicans etc etc etc.