The manipulation of fear throughout the electoral campaign by the imperialist reaction to increase electoral participation and win votes and the massive rejection of the government of the traffic light coalition express the deep political, economic and moral crisis of imperialism in its phase of greatest parasitism and decomposition.
Fear campaign by the coalition government and the other "democratic parties" against "right-wing extremism" or "fascism" and "the need for a package of measures against illegal immigration to stop the advance of "right-wing extremism" - not only to win votes but, above all, to prepare public opinion for political changes within the current bourgeois-democratic regime, i.e. further reactionary state of the bourgeois dictatorship through further centralisation of power in the executive and increasing restriction and suppression of rights and freedoms.
Let's look at the proposals of
the opposition and the government:
Migration and Asylum Act (ARD
News of the day)
"We are overwhelmed": 8
September 2024
They agree on the issue of
migration: CSU leader Söder and FDP leader Lindner called for a significant
reduction in asylum applications in the Berlin report. Migration “has been
overlooked by us,” said Söder. Lindner criticises the loss of control. CSU
leader Markus Söder calls for a significant reduction in the number of asylum
applications in Germany. Söder says in the Berlin report: “Overall, the number
must be reduced in the long term to well below 100,000, because we are actually
overwhelmed. We are overwhelmed by the consequences and integration. - “Not
only with regard to daycare, schools and apartments, but we are also culturally
overwhelmed,” said Söder. In many German cities, German residents no longer
felt at home. “And the truth is simple: it has affected us.”
Söder wants to change the asylum
law.
In addition, the CSU leader
proposes a long-term change to the asylum law. “We have to turn a subjective
right into an institutional fundamental right. "This means that Germany
can decide for itself who enters the country and how many are in the
country," said Söder. "This would really give us the opportunity to
decide why. For example, whether immigration is necessary for work reasons or
which humanitarian services we can receive through quotas." FDP leader
Christian Linder also takes a similar direction in the Berlin report. "I
am convinced that there must be some kind of pushback. And by the way, this is
only one of the instruments that we have to use," said Lindner. "We
should also talk, for example, about increasing the number of safe countries of
origin. We should further reduce the incentives for irregular migration to our
German welfare state - and ideally in consensus with the Union and coalition
parties."
On the elections of the eastern German federal states - Saxony and Thuringia .
We are not going to focus on this
occasion on the absolute and relative figures of electoral participation in the
elections of the federated countries of East Germany - Thuringia and Sachzen -
to explain the spontaneous rejection of the elections by a significant part of
the population as a sign of the growing discontent of the masses with respect
to the system of bourgeois dictatorship and its system of government. Despite
the fact that the tendency of spontaneous rejection by the population is
persistent, as shown by the official figures themselves. As a counter-current
to the entire reactionary election campaign to force citizens to vote, manipulating
fear and contempt for the foreigner by the political system as a whole - state,
government, parties, candidates and "formers" of public opinion
(manipulators) - in order to "legitimize" the new authorities through
the vote.
The comrades of Serve the
People (DVD) wrote a very important summary, which we reproduce:
"Yesterday's regional
elections caused a great stir in the bourgeois media, and not without reason. A
comparatively high voter turnout, an electoral offer from the extreme left to
the extreme right of the bourgeois party spectrum, from the
"communists" to the fascists, from the MLPD to the Free Saxons,
should have been there for everyone. However, the fact is that non-voters have
become the strongest party in both federal states. Including those who voted
invalidly, in Thuringia it is around 27 percent (the AfD is second with around
24 percent) and in Saxony it is 26.5 percent (the CDU is second with around
25.3 percent). None of the offers of the bourgeois electoral circus managed to mobilize
more people than those who decided not to accept them. Not even the fact that
these elections were declared the most decisive could change that.
At the same time, there is a
noticeable rejection and rejection of the current federal government, the
current representatives of the ruling class in this country. This goes so far
that sometimes the FDP no longer appears in representations of the election
results. In Saxony only about 20,000 more people voted for the FDP than for the
Nazis of Free Saxony. The SPD and the Greens are on the same level as the Free
Voters. In Thuringia, about as many people voted for the FDP as voted for the
Animal Protection Party. The Greens are out of the state parliament and the SPD
is barely able to overcome the five percent hurdle.
Finally, it is obvious that
these elections brought neither the final victory of fascism nor the downfall
of the West. It is equally obvious that they have left the bourgeois parties,
parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy with even more problems than they
already had and have deepened their crisis. Not only the two federal states,
but the entire Federal Republic of Germany has already been declared
ungovernable here and there, which is of course nonsense, but clearly expresses
the extent of the difficulties.”
So, the figures on this in the
media:
“According to the current data
of the state scrutineers, 73.5 percent of the voters in Saxony and
Thuringia took part in the elections. Never before have so many
eligible voters taken part in elections in Saxony; the last time Thuringia had
such a high proportion of voters was in 1994 (74.8 percent). The strong turnout
was also accompanied by a significant migration of voters. In both federal
states, a particularly high number of CDU voters switched to the AfD.
In Saxony, CDU voters were mainly in favour of the BSW, while in
Thuringia it was mainly former left-wing voters who now voted for the new party
of former left-wing politician Wagenknecht.” (NZZ)
The fear and rejection of the
traffic light coalition government expresses the political, economic and moral
crisis of imperialism in its most parasitic and decomposing phase.
The government and its three
parties suffered electoral failures, which the German chancellor expressed in
these words:
“Chancellor Olaf Scholz
described the results of the regional elections as “bitter” and called on the
parties in Saxony and Thuringia to forge alliances without the AfD. “All
democratic parties must now form stable governments without right-wing extremists,”
Scholz told the Reuters news agency” (NZZ).
Statement on the class
character of opportunists of all stripes, said by the “Left Party”, but also
valid for BSW:
“Former CDU General Secretary
Mario Czaja has called on his party to revoke the decision of incompatibility
with the Left Party. It is absurd that the CDU cannot work with the
pragmatic left, Czaja told the editorial network Germany.
He always thought that was
wrong. The left in East Germany is largely a conservative social
democracy with East German characteristics. Anyone who equates the
left with the AfD is trivializing its inhuman thinking and ideology. There
is also a decision of incompatibility in the CDU with regard to the AfD. “
(NTZ).
“First meeting of the CDU with
BSW and SPD this week
Elections in Thuringia
After the regional elections in
Thuringia, the first talks between the parties will begin to explore coalition
constellations. The top representatives of the CDU, BSW and SPD announced the
first meetings this week, but did not give exact dates. The CDU's top
candidate, Mario Voigt, speaks of "optional discussions" to clarify
"the foundations" of any collaboration.
The CDU representative told
reporters in Erfurt that these are not yet exploratory talks. These are more
informal preliminary talks that his party will hold with the SPD and the Sahra
Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). BSW's top candidate Katja Wolf also confirms a
meeting this week. Discussions should start "as quickly as possible,"
she says, also emphasizing that these are not exploratory discussions"
(ZDF, September 4, 2024).
Fear manipulation was on a
much higher level than in previous elections.
The manipulation of fear and
rejection of foreigners, at a much higher level than in previous similar
events, of citizens eligible to vote by the media, reactionary parties and
their representatives from both camps has achieved an apparent triumph of
greater participation. The tendency towards rejection remains slightly below a
third, to draw further conclusions we will have to wait to see the
participation by age, since this time the right to vote has been extended to
those under 18 and over 16.
Greater participation,
exploiting fear of foreigners and war, by one reactionary sector, and against
illegal immigration and “right-wing extremism”, by the other sector of
imperialist reaction. While they all agree on the over-exploitation of the
immigrant worker, the imperialist war against Third World countries, cuts to
the right of asylum, etc. An expert commentary in Focus says:
“The AfD is a party of the “New
Right”, which means that it has members and supporters who can be described as
normal conservatives and those who clearly have a right-wing extremist
background. Because the Union parties were no longer distinguishable from the
positions of the Greens and the SPD on migration and internal security issues,
especially during the Merkel era, conservative voters migrated en masse to the
AfD.
Despite the change in the CDU
leadership, the Union parties have not succeeded in winning back these
voters.(...)
However, during the voter
surveys conducted in the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, one thing
became clear: for many voters, the issue of “illegal migration” is a central
concern.
We are currently experiencing a
new radical conservatism in many countries, which revolves around the issue of
illegal immigration in connection with conspiracy fantasies. The latter are
evidently more widespread in the eastern states of Germany than in the western
ones. Why this is so remains an open question.
(...)A new approach to
illegal migration is needed But if we go back to autumn 2015, the public and other major media
fully supported Chancellor Merkel (in her open-door policy towards asylum seekers
from Syria - our note) and criticism was dismissed in an almost professorial
manner. For many East Germans, this evoked associations with the GDR, where the
government made serious mistakes that were then cheerfully defended in the
state-controlled media.
This conspiracy thinking also
benefits the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, which has attracted so many votes in
Thuringia that a government with the CDU/CSU, SPD and the Left is not possible.
It remains to be seen whether this party can survive in the long term. But its
initial successes alone are a signal to the Union, the SPD, the FDP and the
Greens that a new, coherent approach to the issue of illegal migration is
necessary. Otherwise, the current situation in Thuringia will become the norm,
because the BSW cannot form a coalition and govern either. (How illegal
immigration is transforming the German party system, FOCUS-online-Top-Expert
Joachim Krause, 02.04.24).
There is one reality on which
all this manipulation of elections and their imperialist policy is based,
according to Lenin, and this is:
1. On the economic side, the
difference is that a part of the working class of the oppressor countries
receives the crumbs of the super-profits that the bourgeoisie of the oppressor
nations earn through the continuous and increased exploitation of the workers
of the oppressed nations. This is a fact. The workers of an oppressor nation
are to a certain extent accomplices of its bourgeoisie in the plundering of
the workers (and the mass of
the population) of the oppressed nation.
2. Politically, the difference
consists in the fact that the workers of the oppressor nations occupy a
privileged position in comparison with the workers of the oppressed nation in a
whole series of domains of political life.
3. Ideologically or
spiritually, the difference consists in the fact that the workers of the
oppressor nations are always educated, by school and by life, in a spirit of
contempt or disdain for the workers of the oppressed nations.
So, a large part of those who
reject the elections will vote for one of the “options” in order to avoid
“Armageddon”. But it happens that according to their own constitution and
electoral laws, for example the AfD and others are branded as “right-wing
extremists”, but they are not only allowed to participate in the elections, but
are financed with money from the bourgeois state. Therefore, according to the
constitutional control authorities, they are allowed to participate in the
“democratic system”, they are part of it. And they are monitored by the state
secret services so that they eliminate their impurities from their organic
corpus. And this is not only the case with these parties, but also with
opportunist parties such as the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which was
identified by the secret service of constitutional control as “communist” and
founded its own party under its own name (BSW). It is now suddenly a
“presentable partner” for two coalition governments with the CDU in the two
federal countries already named. The differences between AfD and BSW regarding
immigrants are more a matter of expression than of degree.
Once again we repeat that these
electoral contests, as always, are to decide which of the representatives of
financial capital will govern from parliament or national, federal or local
governments and from these institutions will crush the people. The differences
in programme are minimal because they have the same class character, but they
serve the particular interests of the factions or groups into which the bosses
of financial capital are divided.
But. The problems of the war
against oppressed countries and immigration, which are inseparably linked,
undoubtedly fuel reactionary conflict, but also the civil war between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is equally obvious that these elections in
the two countries or federated states have left the bourgeois parties,
parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy with even more problems than they
already had and have deepened their crisis.
Imperialism is the final phase
of capitalist society and it is the one that matures and makes possible the
triumph of the socialist revolution and it is the one that has allowed the
beginning of the new era, we cannot deny this evidence.
According to what Lenin pointed
out, we see that there the problems are more complex and more difficult.
There is a fundamental question:
where, in what part can the revolution advance more? Chairman Mao says in the
poorest, most backward countries In the backward countries there are better
conditions, that is what is seen, that is what reality is showing.
The problem is that by plundering
the oppressed nations, crumbs are thrown to the working class and the people
that the imperialists subjugate, that was already explained by Engels in the
last century and Lenin analyzed and developed it; This is how the crusts are
generated, as they specify in the crusts, from which the trade union
bureaucracy and the bourgeois workers' parties derive, as Engels said, which is
what Lenin takes, that is the problem.
But it cannot be said that
imperialism does not mature the revolution; precisely when imperialism gets
bogged down in the struggle with the oppressed nations, the struggle is
strengthened in the working class of that imperialist power and in that very
people; but their situation is more complex because the bombardment is
systematic and they try to cover the chains with those crumbs.
Lenin said, for this reason,
that the revolution has to combine two movements or two forces: the national
liberation movement, which is already clear, is led by the proletariat, that
has been demonstrated to satiety by Chairman Mao Tsetung and the revolution in
the imperialist countries; The two must be combined, otherwise there will be no
revolution, as Engels (in the 1890s) answered.
This is the situation of the
proletariat in the imperialist countries. There, they do not understand the
problem of the exploitation of the oppressed nations and the crumbs that are
thrown to them by the imperialist countries; that has already been resolved
since Lenin.
We will deal with imperialist
war and immigration in later installments.