Summary
Elon Musk livestreamed a conversation with Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on his platform X, endorsing her and urging support for the AfD ahead of Germany’s February 23 election.
The livestream, which drew over 200,000 viewers, raised concerns across Europe about Musk’s influence in foreign politics.
AfD, under observation for extremism, has gained popularity amid discontent with Chancellor Scholz’s government.
Musk’s promotion of Weidel and controversial remarks on other European issues are being monitored for violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act.
Why are we just letting Nazis take over again? Seems like we had a solution to them before.
Money and power… And propaganda.
The elites don’t want immigrants, they want wage slaves. Who will come when they are told to, live like they are told to, work in any condition they are given and leave when they are told to.
So the goal is to deport these pesky immigrants with rights and import those slaves, then those slaves will work for extremely cheap cuz the threat of deportation and how their home countries are beyond fucked anyways.
Who benefits from slavery? Is it the working class (poor and middle) or the elites who will have cheap labor?
Not to mention this will reduce the salaries for everyday Germans, and then elites gets to claim 2 things to fellow germans:
look at all the immigrants who are stealing your job and driving your wages down.
look at how much our economy is growing (it will be the elites who will be getting all the wealth not the working/poor class)
Btw you can replace the whole scenario in USA as well with the whole H1B visa stuff.
And because people are too wimpy to kill the rich, they’ll go after the next best thing, the slave.
When large parts of the population say they’d like less islamic immigration and, instead of listening, politicians patronise them, what you end up with are Nazis…
Don’t politician have to serve their country? In Germany’s case that means promoting immigration, to have any chance at keeping up the pension and welfare system as it is, because Germans don’t get anywhere near enough kids. Being against immigration right now means being for less pension, higher medical costs, worse infrastructure etc. Merkel realized that (more than) ten years ago. The average afd dumbo is still too fucking thick to think further than from wall to wallpaper. There would be other options, of course. Consuming less, getting rid of the thought of eternal growth, but not even worth a thought as long as sexy Christian is still alive and foamy.
While I personally don’t agree with them, what you are doing here is exactly the kind of patronising I was talking about. The choice between poorer services and immigration should be a democratic choice. People should be allowed to be ok that the country will be poorer but less culturally diverse. If that’s important to them. That’s that point of having democracy at all- it’s not obvious which matters are the more important ones. You may have you own opinions, they may in fact be thoroughly based on data and utilitarian greater good, but as soon as you say ‘this whole mass of people must be thick because of what they value and I’m going to ignore them’ you’re engaging in the exact kind of behaviour that you think you’re fighting.
IF(!) people were voting AfD while acknowledging that it will result in less money, general quality of life etc. for them: fair enough. If they made an informed decision to live a shittier life by voting against immigration because that’s their priority: all right (he he). But we both know that this is not the case. They fall for the dumb and blatant lies of the populists, telling them they will have more money, better social security, better infrastructure, a better life in general.
No. This is the fundamental of democracy, it’s weakness we have to bear with (but only because all the other options are worse). Despite all the bullshit (and there is a lot of bullshit) democracy has to rest on the fact that a population of adults can make a decision. That en masse their bullshit detectors work good enough. Else we become anti democratic ourselves and start favouring a vanguard of the insightful, educated, tasteful, moral, high thinkers “such as ourselves!” that get to patronise everyone else and disregard their opinions.
A lot of people thoroughly dislike conservative Islam. Both as a concept and from firsthand experience. There are other things wrong with the country too. But acting like people have no right to want there to be greater discernment at the border, and in fact call them churlish and mentally deficient for expressing anything of the kind, is what leaves them (and the are many of them) disconnected from the political process, frustrated, and open to the rhetoric of more extreme ideologues.
I myself dislike conservative Islam, same as all religions and ideologies that want to govern other peoples private lives. So fair enough. I’m not acting like people have no right to worry about immigration as it is, those are words that you putting in my mouth. But there has to be a difference between worrying about who comes to this country and calls to expell every brown person from Germany.
In the world of today, don’t you worry about democracy, when you look at how easy it has become to influence people based on the vast amount of data collected on every single person, by companies headed by people like Elon Musk? Are you not afraid of the accuracy of algorithms, that can form and modify the opinion of people without them noticing? Are the bullshit detectors really that good? Do you think most people have an accurate idea of what huge amounts of information they generate just by browsing the web and using a smartphone? I think the goal should be to help more people to make informed decisions, as free of external influences as possible. If you think that’s patronizing and that we should let things just run their course, I’m pretty sure you’d have to also accept the possibility of the end of democracy in a not too distant future.
apologies that wasn’t my intention
who actually is “calling for the explusion of every brown person in germany?” isn’t casually referring to this whole block of complex views in such an offhand way part of the problem? can people not express a desire for some who have entered the country with repugnant views to now leave without this being taken as a pogrom against all of a certain ethnicity? i don’t think this is what you are saying. i’m just pointing out how easy it is to generalise and mask views that might be different to our own liberal laissaz faire ones but are not in themselves that extreme.
i do. but it survived when the country was dominated by people listening to the pulpit every sunday. and it survived when everyone decided to dispense with “christian” morality at all in the 60’s and 70’s. it survived when literacy was below 50% in the early 20th century. and it survived when your only news from a handful of paper broadsheets and radio stations controlled by press barons. the problems we have now are definitely problems but they are not entirely new, just a different kind.
there have always been ideologues and fascists. what has played into their hands is refusing to allow very common and very popular concerns to a part of moderate political discussion. when a good proportion of immigrant muslims will express a desire for homosexuality to be illegal* and also express a willingness to stay silent when others support terrorism* then wanting their to be some discerement at the border is surely something that should be discussed. instead we fret over the kneejerk reactions of do-gooders who cry racism. which leaves the problem unsolved and the only people talking about it the exaggeraters and fantasists of the far right.
* https://www.channel4.com/press/news/c4-survey-and-documentary-reveals-what-british-muslims-really-think (UK based)
I’m sorry, but are you serious? That is quite literally what the AfD does! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67948861.amp
“Much discussion allegedly focused on so-called “remigration” - the removal of people with non-German ethnic backgrounds, even if they are citizens of Germany.”
Do you not see how this is a far cry from a civil discussion about who enters the country and pretty fucking close to a pogrom? They want people born here, people with German citizenship out of the country because of their ethnicity. And it’s not like this is secret information. People know about it when they vote for AfD. Three regional AfD chapters in the states of Thuringia, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt have already been reclassified as proven right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
I would also argue that democracy in Germany did indeed not survive the first half of the 20th century, in part due to populism and media propaganda.
I can see your problems with Islam. But feel free to ask the majority of AfD-Voters what they think of homosexuals and start to wonder they wouldn’t match with the views of Grey Wolfs just fine…
I would further and say just immigration is not enough. We need to provide equal rights and opportunities to immigrants as well. Because as long as immigrants can be exploited for lower labor, Germans will also be exploited indirectly.
Whether its about crimes, poverty leads to crime not immigration. Which immigrants tend to be.
Or if it is about equal pay, cuz if immigrants don’t get equal pay that will just lead to lower pay for everybody industry wide.
AfD knows this because they serve the rich not the people. They want the threat of deportation to immigrants so they work for cheaper and rich get richer.
And at the same time, when Germans get angry, AfD tells them to direct it towards immigrants not the rich.
Its crazy how many of the world’s problems can be solved by having empathy and humanity.
While I don’t disagree that there’s a serious class battle going on people are also allowed to want there to be less immigration, especially of islamic culture, no? That’s democracy. Steamrolling over this, as if it’s a totally invalid thought to have, is what leads to the disconnect between urban elite politicians and the mass of people who are frustrated that the border seems to be porous to objectionable social values. You could have a moderate solution, but by ignoring people you end up with them feeling they’re only understood by more extreme ideologues.
Obviously the way Merkel and CDU did immigration and the way it is still done is far from ideal. Germany needs to change the way it looks at immigrants in general. But I doubt Fritzl sees it that way so yeah, tough times to hope for a better future…
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Wrong continent