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The definitive guide to the German election, with Ralph Schoellhammer
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The Economist recently described Germany as "the hole at the heart of Europe". That’s a reasonable description, particularly given it accounts for a quarter of the EU’s output, but it has been in recession for the past two years. Another way to look at it is that Germany is a representation of Europe, and all of its challenges.
Mass migration has ripped at the social fabric, with devastating consequences. Bureaucracy has strangled growth. Widespread discontent has given rise to right wing populist politics. And it can no longer rely on American security to make up for its own defence deficiencies.
The Germans will go to the polls next week. To discuss what it will mean for the country, and for Europe, Will is joined by the Head of The Centre for Applied History at MCC Budapest, and host of the Hammer Time podcast and YouTube show, Dr Ralph Schoellhammer.
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Transcript
Germany's Recession and EU Challenges
00:00:21
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. The Economist recently described Germany as the hole at the heart of Europe.
00:00:33
Speaker
That's a reasonable description, particularly given it accounts for a quarter of the EU's output, but it has been in recession for the past two years. Another way to look at it is that Germany is a representation of Europe and all of its challenges.
00:00:48
Speaker
Mass migration has ripped at the social fabric with devastating consequences, as we saw in the attack in Munich last week. Bureaucracy has strangled growth.
00:00:58
Speaker
Widespread discontent has given rise to right-wing populist politics, and it can no longer rely on American security to make up for its own defence deficiencies.
00:01:10
Speaker
The Germans will go to the polls next week.
Political Shifts and Snap Elections in Germany
00:01:13
Speaker
To discuss what it will mean for the country and for Europe, I am joined by the head of the Centre for Applied History at MCC Budapest and the host of the Hammer Time podcast and YouTube show, Dr. Ralph Schulhammer.
00:01:26
Speaker
Ralph, welcome to Fire at Will. Thanks so much for having me, Will. Very much looking forward to the robust conversation. As am I. Let's start because perhaps some listeners may not be as up to speed with German politics and in indeed European politics as others.
00:01:43
Speaker
Set the scene for me. Why was an election called in Germany? Who are the main combatants? What are the issues that are being fought over? And perhaps what's most likely to happen?
00:01:56
Speaker
Well, I guess the most important part to answer your question is that elections would have taken place this year anyways. But the current government, which is very often known as the so-called traffic light coalition, because it's the social Democrats and their color is red. It's the Greens. Obviously, their color is green.
00:02:12
Speaker
And then you have the Liberal Party, the Free Democrats, and their color is yellow. So it very nice gets together as a traffic light coalition. their approval ratings have been significantly underwater. And that was especially true for the Liberal Democrats, who, according even to current polls, will no longer be presented in the new Bundestag, the new parliament after the election.
00:02:33
Speaker
So they tried to sharpen their profile a little bit before the coming elections, and they more or less pulled the plug on the um the government, which then ultimately led to the calling of snap elections.
00:02:44
Speaker
Now, as you already kind of mentioned in your intro, things started to change very quickly since then with a couple of unforeseen, I would call them black swan events. Some of those were, as you mentioned, were the Christmas market attacks in Magdeburg.
00:02:58
Speaker
We had now this horrific incident, this attack, I think it it's fair to say. In Munich, we had the knife attack where a toddler and a gentleman died who tried to protect the child. in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg.
00:03:11
Speaker
And then you had, and I think that did have an impact, you had American politicians and non-politicians like Elon Musk increasingly commenting on German politics in a way that justifiably so can be read as support for the AFD, the so-called alternative for Germany, which at the moment is the main opposition party in Germany and is projected to come in second after the quote-unquote conservative. And we can talk in greater detail why I would put the term conservative into scare quotes here.
00:03:38
Speaker
behind the CDU, CSU. And that's going to be the interesting thing in in a week. but like we We have a good sense of what the polls tell us. And usually polls in Germany are very close to the final outcome.
00:03:51
Speaker
But there is a couple of known unknowns, the late Donald Rumsfeld would say, because you need get 5% of the vote share
00:04:00
Speaker
to get into parliament. There's a threshold you have to you have to meet. And there are three parties, the left, it's literally the left party that is called to the left, the Linke, the Liberal Democrats, and the alliance Sarah Wagenknecht, which is kind of an AFD version, but from the left. So economically, very socialist, on migration, very right wing.
00:04:20
Speaker
And they are in every poll somewhere between 4% 6%. So so Even within the margin of error, they might make it into parliament or they might not make it into parliament.
00:04:32
Speaker
But that, of course, will have a significant impact on the potential arithmetic for future coalition governments. So if they make it in, then Meats, the head of the conservative CDU, will probably need more than one coalition partner that to form a government.
00:04:46
Speaker
However, if they do not make it in, then even if he, for example, and the social democrats would only have, let's say, 45% of the votes taken together, that would be enough. to have a majority in parliament because all the other percents that he would need of the vote share to get over 50%, that is subsumed then by these parties who did not pass the 5% threshold.
00:05:07
Speaker
Now, please, your viewers and listeners, stay with us. This was that the only kind of technical boring stuff. It gets more exciting in
Conservative Governance and Policy Challenges
00:05:13
Speaker
ah in a second. and What I'm basically trying to say is We do know a couple of things for certain.
00:05:17
Speaker
Friedrich Merz is going to be the next chancellor. The the polls cannot be that wrong. He's, according to the most recent poll, his party is somewhere between 29 and 31%. We do know that as things currently stand, they will not enter into a coalition government with the alternative for Germany.
00:05:33
Speaker
So whatever the ultimate outcome is, the conservatives will have to govern together with a left of center or very far left of center party. So if the Germans, and this is what every poll shows, want a right of center policy, they are not going to get it. I think these are kind of these these are the things that we can say with, I would argue, 99% certainty.
00:05:52
Speaker
What you've just hit on is the idiosyncrasies of German politics. yeah So for someone who is listening in Australia or the United Kingdom or the United States, who is used to effectively a two-party system, this is very different. It relies on coalitions. There's a lot of different players involved.
00:06:12
Speaker
And what you've just said effectively as a conservative, and I know you said an inverted commas conservative government or party would have to rule with i a left-wing party. Some people would wonder how on earth could that possibly work?
00:06:26
Speaker
So I guess that is my question. How on earth could that possibly work? Well, that's a fantastic question. I'll give you my answer. It won't. And this this is why these elections are probably not going to be as interesting as the elections in four years' time.
00:06:40
Speaker
Because the expectations of the voters are very, very high. There is, you mentioned it, it's ah and this is similar, I would argue, to Australia and the United Kingdom. There is a general sense of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country.
00:06:54
Speaker
And this is not just migration. There's very often this argument, oh, it's all about migration. No, no, no. Migration is a symptom of a broader, let's call it, sentiment of malaise. To to give you another example, that the German railway, the Deutsche Bahn, has recently issued a press release where they said, well,
00:07:12
Speaker
they anticipate that by the year 2040, not 2040, so being 15 years, trains will be on time again.
00:07:23
Speaker
That is a very un-German thing, to to put it mildly. And and it's ah it's a disgrace to a modern industrialized country. Then there is a sense that you mentioned bureaucracy at the beginning.
00:07:34
Speaker
Up until the 20th century, German bureaucracy was a strength. right It was that the much-famed Prussian bureaucracy where just everything worked. right that the The German bureaucrat, the German civil servant was a role model for the entire world, from from Washington, I would say, in part, probably also to London or Australia.
00:07:51
Speaker
Now it has inverted into being not a benefit, but a drag on the German economy and German economic activity. The taxes are too high. Public infrastructure is crumbling.
00:08:02
Speaker
the the The appearance of cities right is is declining. You have a sense you can no longer go out at night into a park because there is drug dealing going on. The security situation is worsening. I know this this sounds like, but that's, I think, so important in politics.
00:08:16
Speaker
It's not just that voters are dissatisfied with like one particular issue. There's a general sense that Germany is in decline. And the promise of Merz is that he can reverse it through right-wing policies. And to be quite honest, I think he might be correct about this.
00:08:32
Speaker
But he needs a partner who would support those policies. There is a partner. That would be the alternative for Germany. But he has categorically rejected any possibility to work with them. He even said he will not accept their votes for suggested like legislation.
00:08:47
Speaker
So what that tells you is he can only then opt for the remaining parties in parliament and they're all left of center. So many of his proposals, lower taxes, less bureaucracy, less migration, more vetting of migrants and ends to family yeah reunification programs and so on and so on, all issues that are heavily and heatedly discussed in the United Kingdom as well.
00:09:09
Speaker
He cannot execute any of these laws, which means that after two, three, four years, if nothing changes, The people in Germany most likely will say, you know what, Mr. Merz, you promised us that you as the head of the conservative party will make a conservative policy.
00:09:24
Speaker
If he does not deliver on that promise, people will, at least that's my my expectation, then turn even more to the AFD. So in four years time, it is not unlikely. We don't know. Four years is a long time. Many things can happen.
Merkel's Legacy and Germany's Crisis
00:09:37
Speaker
But it is not entirely unlikely that in four years, you don't have the AFD coming in second. You have a chance of them coming in first. And I want to explore the rise of the AFD in more detail in a moment.
00:09:50
Speaker
But before we do, I think it's worth just understanding that feeling of malaise in the country that you mentioned and getting a better sense of the root causes of that malaise.
00:10:00
Speaker
And I think it's interestingly, there again is a parallel with the United Kingdom where there is a similar feeling of malaise and a managed decline Where do you put the blame for that that malaise? is this Does this go back to Merkel?
00:10:14
Speaker
Is it even longer term trend line than that? If you were to try and explain why is Germany in the position it is at the moment, how would you answer that? Well, I guess you could argue that the symptoms of this malaise started to appear already in the 90s. So it's it's always difficult with these historical developments to make a precise breaking point where said, here it happened. But they were definitely, i would argue, supercharged during the tenure of Angela Merkel.
00:10:41
Speaker
You mentioned in your intro The Economist and and I'm also ah an avid reader of The Economist, although I have to admit in recent months and years, less for their information, but more for their entertaining value.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yes, same with me. yeah In 2016, they had this, I think it was even on the cover, that Angela Merkel, the last defender of the free world, you know now is Donald Trump, she's the leader of the free world.
00:11:04
Speaker
And in 2022, they had a cover that said Angela Hu, and that she's more or less responsible for all the troubles that that Europe finds itself in. So that that's quite a shift. But it is true. If we look at the policies enacted under Ms. Merkel's government, it is not entirely unfair to say that policy-wise, she probably was the first Green Chancellor of Germany.
00:11:26
Speaker
mean, many of the absurdities that were already planned under the previous red-green government were never executed. Like for example, the the exit from from nuclear power.
00:11:37
Speaker
That was done under Ms. Merkel. The federal ban on fracking, right which is one of the key sources of American power at the moment, the shale revolution, that was enacted in 2017 under Angela Merkel.
00:11:49
Speaker
The explosion of the federal bureaucracy that began under Angela Merkel So we can many of the policies that stand at the beginning of the current German crisis can be pointed to Ms. Merkel. Now, they were then continued by the current government.
00:12:03
Speaker
But the argument that one could make credibly, and I know this is a term that is problematic, but I use it nonetheless to say there is a kind of, when it comes to certain policies, a uniparty movement saying that the so-called right or the so-called left are pretty much in lockstep, whether it was nuclear energy, whether it was the banning of fracking, whether it was the expansion of the bureaucracy, is not an entirely wrong assessment.
00:12:29
Speaker
And the same with European Union politics, right? The idea that the European Union in its current form needs reform, like it cannot go on the way it does. And we can talk about this also in later in greater detail.
00:12:40
Speaker
But the complete unwillingness to change anything is something that is, with the exception, I would argue, of the AFD, broad agreement um among all the other parties. It's ironic, but also very helpful that the alternative for Germany, and you know I'm not going to guestulate your viewers and your your listeners, I'm sympathetic to them, but that they consider themselves justifiably so as an alternative So interesting hearing you, hearing that summation, because so many of the themes are playing out, not just in Germany, but across the Western world, whether it be self-defeating energy policies, whether it be the mass migration story, whether it be the growth of an administrative state, which is just hamstringing growth.
00:13:27
Speaker
These are really common trends. And another common trend is that the response to those problems is a populist right-wing alternative party.
00:13:39
Speaker
You've seen variations of that with Trump changing the the Republican Party in the US. You've seen that obviously in the UK now with Farage and reform.
00:13:50
Speaker
The AFD has been... I was going to say the word smeared or it has been labelled, depending on your view, as a far right party in Germany. Do you accept that categorisation? And if not, what does the AFD stand for?
00:14:06
Speaker
What are their policies? How should people be thinking about them? Well, this is going be a slightly longer answer, but I think it's illuminating, or at least that's what I'm hoping. In a recent interview with Bloomberg and also in her conversation with Elon Musk, the head of the AFD, Ms. Weidel, said that she considers her party to be a conservative libertarian party.
00:14:25
Speaker
So she herself would reject, and she explicitly said that she rejects the label far right. In our conversation, I still think that the label far right is accurate, but I would immediately add, is that necessarily a bad thing?
00:14:38
Speaker
Because when we look at the current political conversation, and I think that's also true for the United Kingdom, many of the positions that would have been common sense positions in the late 80s or mid 90s are now labeled far right.
00:14:50
Speaker
I would even go so far and say, if you look at the debates we currently have also in the UK, kind really to connect the German continental European and British situation. If you think about something like the European Convention on Human Rights, and and the AFD is very critical of this as well, as are some politicians in the UK, but also in Poland, by the way, already.
00:15:08
Speaker
One could say, well, that's a far right position. Well, it depends. If you look at the the framers of that of that convention when it was passed in 1953, I do not think that they had in mind unlimited mass migration to Europe.
00:15:22
Speaker
So I think even the people who developed legal frameworks like the European Convention on Human Rights in the 1950s would nowadays probably be called far right. If you take positions of, you know, whether it's somebody like Helmut Kohl in Germany or Helmut Schmidt, right, but who was ah a social Democrat chancellor in the 70s and 80s. If you look at his positions, Richard, sorry, Gerhard Schröder, I think in many, many ways, even all his his green vice chancellor, Joschka Fischer.
00:15:51
Speaker
I think they had certain positions that you probably would describe as far right nowadays. There is, I don't want to go into the meme wars, but there's this one, I'm sure that all of you as a listener know, right? This one meme where you have like this one guy standing in the middle and and he's in the center.
00:16:04
Speaker
And then the left is moving further to the left. So all of a sudden he finds himself on the far right. this was the one that was popularized by Elon Musk a few years ago. Yes. so But it's, it's not entirely wrong.
00:16:15
Speaker
i mean, the, the, the, if you look at the many areas of political discourse that are labeled far right these days, mean, I just recently read in the Guardian that, and that, that was the headline I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly.
00:16:28
Speaker
It was a, be careful if you work out because it might make you, it might make you far right. So, you know, it's a, and I don't want to switch the topic, but this is the problem nowadays. We don't use far right as much as a descriptive label very often in public discourse, but because we want to elicit an emotional reaction.
00:16:46
Speaker
Not you, of course. Well, our conversation, I take our conversation out of this. But if somebody writes the far right AFD, what they're winking and nodding at you is they say, you know, far right is Nazi adjacent.
00:16:57
Speaker
And that is really what they want to say. but It's not that they say, okay, they have positions. that are far right because they're further to the right than, let's say, the CDU. That would be correct. But they say they are far right because they're a quasi-Nazi party. And if you sympathize with them, you sympathize with Hitler.
00:17:12
Speaker
That is what what they want to say. This is why I, if we want to use it in a descriptive way, I'm all on board with the far right label. But if we say we want to use it in the same way how a significant part of the mainstream media is using it, then I would reject it because they say far right, but they mean Nazi. And the AFD is many things. It's not a Nazi party.
00:17:30
Speaker
So what does the AFD believe? What are they running on? Well, I would argue that they run on basically a conservative program from the mid from the late 80s, early 90s. Now, some of the terms they use, we can cribble about them. For example, the term re-migration.
00:17:44
Speaker
But then again, just to give a quick example, we had this incident in, I don't know why i always call it incident, we this attack in in Munich ah just a few days ago. And if you look at the individual that was apprehended, based on current information, this person's asylum claim was rejected in 2017.
00:18:01
Speaker
he had He was obliged by the German authorities to leave in 2020, yet he was in the country and could conduct a terrorist attack in 2025. So the question why this person is still there is ah is a legit one.
00:18:15
Speaker
And one of the reasons is because the current foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, is, among other things, refusing to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan to take back their citizens because she says it contradicts her, quote unquote, feminist foreign policy.
00:18:30
Speaker
So you could argue that's the AFD in many ways, and we can talk about, yeah just picked this as an example. I'll give you another one. but The AFD was the only party who was staunchly pro-nuclear energy.
00:18:41
Speaker
And it was the only party that said since its inception in 2008, 2009, who said nuclear energy must be part of the German energy mix. They were the only party that said, well, maybe we should take a second look at the euro and the shared currency of the common currency.
00:18:56
Speaker
One can agree with it or disagree, but I think these were reasonable positions. But they were, if you want, the far right reaction to a very far left policy that was being enacted.
00:19:06
Speaker
Nobody ever looks, it appears to me, at the party programs of the Greens or let's say the SPD in Germany. And there are things in there that are at least as far to the left as the AFD is supposed to do to the right. And slowly but surely now in times of crisis, I think people realize this. I'll give you one example.
00:19:25
Speaker
Oh, another one. The claim by the Greens that you can turn off coal, gas, and nuclear and replace all of it with wind and solar was for everyone who had a rudimentary grasp of physics.
00:19:37
Speaker
Always an absurd claim. But people didn't really take it seriously, right? Because the idea was, yes, yes, this is what they say to the people because it sounds good. It is for the you know red meat for the Green Bay, so to speak. cook And now they're starting to realize, oh, no, they meant it.
00:19:52
Speaker
I mean, the the very fact, and I don't want to go too much into details to bore your viewers and listeners, but I think it's so important. You had an energy crisis as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, like and ah a legit energy crisis. And we still, by the way, including the UK, we still have an energy crisis.
00:20:07
Speaker
All your viewers and listeners notice if they look at their gas bills, we still have that crisis. And in such a crisis, the German government decided to turn off 25, this is huge 25 gigawatts.
00:20:21
Speaker
of nuclear power. like And these nuclear power plants, they were built, they were ready to go, it was the so-called construction line 80. They were some of the best nuclear power plants in the world. Like the one Brockdorf, I mean, it'ss it's it's a town not many people visit, but based on on on international reviews, that's probably or was the best nuclear power plant in the world.
00:20:43
Speaker
And they just turned it off for ideological reasons. and What was the ideological reason given that it is a low carbon emission form of energy? ah Now it gets interesting because the green movement was never so much concerned about finding ways to limit negative impact on the environment while at the same time maintaining living standards and prosperity.
00:21:04
Speaker
For them, living standards and prosperity were always part of the problem. The ideology is, I know this sounds harsh, but we we know it if you look at the history of of the movement, was always that human beings are the problem.
00:21:15
Speaker
This is why they have been talking. Even nowadays, they continue to talk about the problem of overpopulation when in fact, with the exception of certain areas on the globe, the world is running out of human
AFD's Rise and Political Climate Shifts
00:21:25
Speaker
beings. like If you look at the newest projections by the UN, n human population will peak in 2050 and then it will go down. and More recent projections say actually human population will peak in 2040. So we do not have an overpopulation problem.
00:21:38
Speaker
But the issue for them was always that the West has to atone, industrialized societies have to atone for their sinful past. So they wanted impoverishment. And this is also the reason why they are so well represented in the so-called degrowth movement.
00:21:52
Speaker
They are not Hiding the ball, and I make this last point. It's so interesting that so often, historically, we hear this line, we should have taken the Nazis at face value, right? They they told us what they want to do. We should have listened. And that is true.
00:22:06
Speaker
But that's so true today for these other parties, right? They never minced words. They say very clearly what they want. But as in the past, once again, most people said, that's too radical. They never going to do it.
00:22:17
Speaker
And ultimately, they ended up doing it or trying to do it. You know, this is a bugbear of mine and has been for some time. And again, it's not limited to Germany that far right parties in inverted commas are inevitably framed as being evil or racist or choose your your smear.
00:22:34
Speaker
And a lot of far left parties, in fact, all far left parties, generally framed as being maybe a generally well-meaning person. if maybe a bit misguided, but harmless.
00:22:45
Speaker
And it it is a very bizarre double standard that is is drawn. I want to to look at the response of the Conservatives to the rise of the AFD.
00:22:57
Speaker
You've said that they have ruled out a coalition arrangement. Is that based off base political reasons, as in they see them as an existential threat to the Conservative Party?
00:23:09
Speaker
Or is it ideological that they've bought into the far-right neo-Nazi rhetoric that a lot of the media has whipped up? Or is it a bit of both? I think it's it's a bit of both, but there's a phenomenon. And I believe that's true in the UK. That's true in the United States. It's true in France. It's true in Austria. It's true in in Germany.
00:23:28
Speaker
There is an idea by the long established political parties. And I don't mean this in a derogatory fashion. I just mean by these parties that have been around for longer than these new alternative movements, right? Whether it's the AFD or whether it's reform in the UK or whether it's the movement of of Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the United States.
00:23:45
Speaker
There is this idea that whenever voters switch to one of the alternatives, that they just do it temporarily. it's ah it's It's a protest move. it's They want to show the Tories, they want to show the CDU, they want to show the Republicans, we are dissatisfied with you, but deep down in their hearts, they want a return.
00:24:03
Speaker
And I don't think that's the case. And this is what what the conservatives in Germany believe. So they say, if we say we will never cooperate with the AFD, then voters will say, well, in that case, I cannot vote the AFD because deep down my my allegiance is with that with the CDU. And I think that's a miscalculation. I can actually back that up with a bit of data as well.
00:24:24
Speaker
Over the last couple of years, voters were asked, why do you vote for the AFD? And it is true that for a very long time, the main motivation was it was a protest vote. So they didn't vote for the AFD because they believed in the program.
00:24:36
Speaker
They voted for the AFD because they wanted to show, let's call it the elites, that they're dissatisfied. This has now shifted. Now, a larger part of voters for the AFD votes out of conviction and no longer out of of you know protesting.
00:24:50
Speaker
And this is, by the way, I think the same we saw in the United States. Donald Trump in 2016 won because people what wanted to show the middle finger to the establishment. I believe that he won in 2024 because they actually wanted to see the policies that he promised and acted.
00:25:05
Speaker
And this is what what I also sense in the United Kingdom, that I'm sure that the vote for reform was partially to tell the Tories, we are not satisfied with what you're doing. But there is a growing movement in the UK that says, you know what, maybe reform is the alternative and the replacement on the long run of of the Tories.
00:25:22
Speaker
And the strategy to say, we will forever exclude those who appeal to our voters without taking their program or without trying to subsume them, if you want.
00:25:33
Speaker
I think that's that's a huge problem. And this is what the CDU doesn't understand. I'm sure that your your viewers are familiar with the term of a, how do you say it in English? ayic A pyrrhic victory. Pyrrhic victory, yeah.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. so So a victory that comes at such high cost that it's basically a defeat. And I think this is what's going to happen in Germany after this election. The CDU is going to come in massively as number one in the election.
00:25:57
Speaker
But with this election victory, you will have massive expectations on part of the electorate. And as we said at the beginning of our conversation, if they do not cooperate with the AFD, they cannot execute that program.
00:26:08
Speaker
So people will say, we gave you 30% the vote. And you didn't keep a single promise you made. So what what will these people do? They either stop going to elections altogether. And this, by the way, would also be a true threat to democracy, in my opinion, because the threat to democracy is not people voting for the wrong party.
00:26:25
Speaker
The threat to democracy is if people stop voting first. And then if they say, I hate the system as such. And we are not at that point, luckily. But a significant part will say, you know what? You disappointed us.
00:26:35
Speaker
Now it's time to switch fully to the AFD. And my sense is that Mr. Merz, who I'm sure is a nice person, is not politically adept enough and smart enough to realize this. They believe they can blackmail the people into voting for them.
00:26:52
Speaker
But as we just saw, I mean, just to give you a concrete example, last week, there was a suggestion in the German parliament to make stronger restrictions on migration. The AFD voted for it.
00:27:03
Speaker
The CDU in parts voted for it, but ultimately it was rejected. And now you had this incident in Munich. Of course, people ask now, everyone now, you know, as politicians do, your thoughts and prayers and and our thoughts are with the victims.
00:27:17
Speaker
But a growing number of people says, just a week ago, you had the chance to vote for laws that would prevent something like that happening in the future. And you voted against it.
00:27:28
Speaker
And now you tell the relatives of those you know who have suffered or potentially died. Luckily, so far as we know, nobody has died. But even if you're heavily injured, your life is never going to be the same. Like a little toddler was harmed.
00:27:40
Speaker
This child will never have the the life that originally it was supposed to have. And you tell them, you know, our thoughts and prayers are with you, but we cannot pass any law that would prevent this because that would mean that we have to vote along with the AFD and that we cannot do.
00:27:54
Speaker
And then at some point, people will say, okay, what is your priority? Is your priority Voting with the AFD or is your priority protecting the German people? And if more and more people think that it's the former and not the latter, more and more people will ultimately switch to the AFD.
00:28:08
Speaker
Let's dive deeper on migration.
Mass Migration Policies and Societal Impact
00:28:11
Speaker
For a listener who perhaps, again, isn't as close to German politics or or Germany as a country, just help me understand how the phenomena of mass migration since Merkel and then how it has changed both the country as well as German politics.
00:28:29
Speaker
Now, I would argue that the situation in Germany is incredibly similar to the situation as it is in in the UK. There is a ah somewhat different composition about the countries of origin when it comes to migrants and the can say the occurrence all of the social and cultural distortion it led to.
00:28:48
Speaker
But in the most general sense, it's a very similar phenomenon. And the reason for this is, as we saw in Germany starting in 2015, but I think the same is true also in in the United Kingdom, is that the powers that that that were, or and currently still the powers that are,
00:29:05
Speaker
are generally inclined to err on the side of mass migration. Now, again, this is not a conspiracy theory. This is not a you know this is not making something up. This was the policy starting again in the, I would argue, late 80s, early ninety s and kind of going on until now.
00:29:22
Speaker
And the reason why we can say this actually so clearly is if you go back and really try just to pinpoint towards the beginning of the so-called populist right,
00:29:33
Speaker
What you will find out is the first, he let's say, historically relevant ah populist right movement in Europe was the Freedom Party in Austria and under Jörg Haider. But then the Navy is not important, just for those of your viewers who want to Google it. It's an interesting figure. He died in a car accident.
00:29:48
Speaker
ah in 2008, 2009. And he did ah referendum, a plebiscite in the early 1990s in Austria that was called Austria First. And it dealt almost exclusively with the problem of mass migration, when for most people, they didn't really have mass migration on their radar in the early 90s.
00:30:07
Speaker
Now, he did. and think you had similar figures also in the United Kingdom. You had similar figures in France. So the conversation about mass migration goes back to the eighty s It was only with the ninety s and then with 2000 that then supercharged in 2015 that it became an issue for everyone.
00:30:25
Speaker
So I think that's that's a very, very important thing here. And one of the reasons why this happened, and there we have to delve a little bit into an almost more philosophical conversation, is, and it's twofold. One, of course, was the idea that it's good for economic reasons.
00:30:38
Speaker
ah I think that is a conversation one can have. We would have to go into greater detail here as well because, again, if you look at the case in Germany but also partially in the UK, if you break migrants down by country of origin, um you can see a very clear pattern that some countries or from some countries, the people that come are a net contributor to the system, and from other areas, ah they are the exact opposite. And this this is sometimes very bothersome because in the migration debate, and I try to avoid the two of us doing this, we talk about migration in such general terms that we don't really flesh out the differences. And as Wittgenstein once said, that imprecise language leads to imprecise thinking. And I think this is something that we should try to avoid.
00:31:20
Speaker
so yeah so So that's one thing. i put I put a pin in it and it come back to it. But the other one was, of course, again, mostly driven by the political left. Very similar, by the way, to the debate we about energy. So there these two points connect.
00:31:32
Speaker
Was this idea that mass migration is a way, once again, for the West to atone for the sins of its past. We were once the imperial powers.
00:31:43
Speaker
you know We bestrided the world as the global Western ah behemoth heger hedge hegemon, whatever you want to call it. And now it is somebody else's turn. I think this is a very present argument in the United Kingdom. If it can if you follow, for example, certain immigration activist groups, this is the very argument that they make. And by the way, in Germany, the Greens made the very same argument. The argument was, we have exploited the world for so long. By the way, something I disagree with, but that's a separate topic.
00:32:11
Speaker
And now kind in order to make up for the sins of the past, we have to open our borders. We have to welcome those whom we exploited in the past so that they can find a better a better future ah better future here. So this was not just as it is sometimes presented nowadays in the media, mass migration was not like an earthquake, like an unforeseen event. It is the consequence of deliberate policy decisions.
00:32:34
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying, because the people say, so are you saying it was a conspiracy? No, no, it's not a conspiracy because all of this was out in the open. But migration policies as they were enacted over the last 10, 15, or as I would say over the last 40 years, I mean, all of this is in writing.
00:32:48
Speaker
like for For example, we had a decision in Germany as well as in the United Kingdom, the decision, for example, to allow people to go back for vacation to the very countries from which they supposedly fled to the UK or to Germany.
00:33:03
Speaker
I think every reasonable person would say that's absurd. this is This is like in the nineteen thirty s a Jewish person who made it to the UK saying in 1941, I'm going back to Germany for vacation.
00:33:14
Speaker
Even saying it, I think, shows us the absurdity of it. But this is exactly what we see at the moment. Or you had the case in Germany where people that only had temporary refugee status, so very short, short time, they had the rights to bring their entire families.
00:33:29
Speaker
So there was family reunification for like very, very short term stays. And of course, these people are never going to leave again. If you bring your entire family to another country, you don't do this for three months. ah yeah so So you incentivize these people to come and stay.
00:33:42
Speaker
The argument, oh, no, no, no, these people are going to leave again. Of course they did. But this was the consequence of of a deliberate policy that was designed to have that effect. As I always say, Will, and you said it too, maybe this was well intended. i'm i know i'm I'm not want to put intentions into into people's hearts.
00:34:00
Speaker
ah But what we see now, of course, is that it's not working because you created a situation where, especially in urban areas, they can no longer cope with the consequences of mass migration.
00:34:12
Speaker
The public system, infrastructure, schools, education, and all all all these things. Sorry, that was a much longer answer than I anticipated. No, not at all. That's a really good summary. And I'm interested in the component of around historic guilt.
00:34:26
Speaker
Now, historic guilt, you're right, is now, unfortunately, an instinct across the West. in across the west The unique part of German history is, of course, World War II and the the the Nazis in World War II.
00:34:44
Speaker
Does the historic guilt around World War II continue to play a role in present-day political thinking on migration, or do you think that the country has moved beyond that?
00:34:55
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. And by the way, I would say it does not just play a role in the the thinking in Germany. I think it plays a role all over the West. and Look at the the political conversation in in the United States. Look at the political conversation in in the United Kingdom.
00:35:08
Speaker
What is the most likely statement that gets you labeled a Nazi? It is if you're critical of migration. so So this idea that anti-immigration equals neo-Nazism is, I think, and an idea or concept that is...
00:35:25
Speaker
omnipresent throughout throughout the West. And but is it fair to say Germans are uniquely sensitive to that criticism? Well, let me say something provocative. I think the answer is yes, but let me say something even more provocative.
00:35:36
Speaker
My argument has always been that that that Germany lost the war on the battlefield, but they they lost the war for the mines, to put it this way. mean, it is absolutely fascinating to observe that the kind of guilt complex the Germans have, and one could make the argument that they have it for justified reasons because the Holocaust was unique. It was a unique evil. So if you are the country that did something like that, that this has this throws a long shadow, is I think everything else would be would be abhorrent. So this makes a lot of sense.
00:36:05
Speaker
But somehow that that guilt for a unique crime done by the Germans, and I have to admit that include the Austrians in this as well, because we were much more willing collaborators than we like to admit it.
00:36:17
Speaker
Makes sense. But somehow this this kind of guilt was transferred to all the other countries as well, where you have these weird conversations now, right? That British imperialism what was more or less akin to what the Nazis did. Or they the same in the United States, right? Where there are all these weird historical comparisons that always harken back to, well, isn't that just as bad as the as the Nazis were?
00:36:39
Speaker
um if If I would be super facetious, I would say it's almost a ah race to the bottom, an Olympics of masochism. well Who can claim the place of being the worst individual, the worst country in human history?
00:36:53
Speaker
You see this also play out to relate that a little bit more to your viewers and listeners. This absurd debate at the moment of whether or not Winston Churchill was worse than Adolf Hitler. mean, this is a complete, ah but and but this is, it's is it it is this this idea to say, yes, Hitler was worse, but Churchill was even worse. I mean, who does that? I mean, this is, this is this is as you say, ah this is a psychological and very interesting one for observers like you and I, but this is a psychological phenomenon.
00:37:19
Speaker
but I don't know of any other civilization that runs around and constantly says, if there is any bad person in history, they say, no, wait, wait, wait. We have somebody who's even worse.
00:37:29
Speaker
but Or think about in the United States, the so-called 1619 Project. So you have a project that was picked up by all the elite institutions, the media, the government, that says that the true founding was not in 70, 75, 70, 76, depending on but when you want to want to pinpoint the the exact ah revolution, the beginning end of the revolution. You say, no, it was 1619.
00:37:50
Speaker
It was the first arrival of slaves in the United States, 150 years before the country even existed. That is the true beginning. Because you if if you're a country in the West, and in Western civilization, you must have the beginning of your civilization with something very, very, very, very very bad.
00:38:07
Speaker
or Or the same conversation you had in the UK couple of weeks ago, or was it last I think it was last year, about ah what a the the how medieval Britain or how ancient Britain was like all black people or something like that. and you know yeah Don't get me wrong, but this is ah ah I think there was also this article on the BBC that during the the great plague in London,
00:38:30
Speaker
ah black women were especially hard hit. This was an actual article. and I'm not saying this is not interesting stuff, but it's a certain obsession where you where you try to say, look at Britain, we were racist already in 1500.
00:38:42
Speaker
you know fifteen hundred No, no, we were we were racist already in 1400. Because what you're trying to say when you say that Britain was actually founded by you know people of African descent, you are saying that And by ignoring that and claiming that that Britain is you know Anglo-Saxon and and and ah and you know Normandy and but whatever it is, that by ignoring that, you're actually a racist.
00:39:04
Speaker
So even if you just say, oh, Britain probably in 1688 was was ah the glorious revolution a mostly white country. No, no, no. Wrong. You are. And this is an obsession. that was fed or that that that that resembles the German obsession with with their historical guilt for the Holocaust. it is it is As I said, we would have to have ah an extra conversation just for this. It's absolutely fascinating.
00:39:27
Speaker
And you see the same in... because they the the the two things really go together. that is also what motivated the energy policy in the past, right? Because it is this idea that industrialization, that modernity itself, right, is rotten at its core and therefore everything that flows from it is per se bad.
00:39:47
Speaker
and Again, this was a very long answer, but it's, it's Decline, if you want, or decline is not based so much on the laws of physics, unless you have an earthquake, ah you know something can happen. an asteroid If an asteroid hits your country, no it's hard to blame politics. It's hard to blame culture.
00:40:04
Speaker
But if you look at the country like Germany or the United Kingdom or the United States, there is no physical law or there is no law akin to the laws of physics that would predetermine that these countries have to decline.
00:40:17
Speaker
It's in the politics. It's in the culture. Yeah. The heartbreaking thing for me when I look at the problems in modern Britain, for example, is that so many of those problems are self-inflicted.
00:40:28
Speaker
that That is the great tragedy. And it sounds like there is there is several similarities in Germany. So let's assume that Mertz gets in, he goes into coalition with one of the or two of the left-wing parties.
00:40:41
Speaker
And it sounds like Politically, it will be almost impossible for him to make meaningful changes on on immigration policy, given that that alignment. But let's say the left has a come to Jesus moment and they've decided for that that suddenly that that they need to be tough on immigration.
00:40:59
Speaker
If they could do that politically, how hard in practice would it be to reverse the mass migration of the last however many years? and That is a tricky question. And and I'm going to try it very carefully now because we have to distinguish between what is legally possible, what is is morally acceptable, and what is, let's say, logistically possible. so And and what what I mean by this, there are certain legal restrictions, especially coming from lawmaking in Brussels. there was this I wrote about it in a recent column. i don't know how many of your viewers are aware of this.
00:41:34
Speaker
There was, for example, a decision by the European Court of Justice that all the women in Afghanistan have a blanket right to to refugee status in Europe. So it's it's just a matter of, if they I mean, they cannot come for logistical and technological reasons, but hypothetically, if a woman from Afghanistan arrives on the European shore, you have to take them in.
00:41:52
Speaker
So the first legal challenge after this come to Jesus moment that you described would be that you would have to leave certain international agreements. You would have to revise certain international laws, which I think would be appropriate.
00:42:04
Speaker
Because as we said earlier in the show, something like the European Convention Human Rights was signed in 1953. We are no longer in the world of 1953. Just to give you a very quick example to highlight this. 1953, the United Kingdom had a larger population than Nigeria.
00:42:21
Speaker
In a couple of years, Nigeria will have a larger population than the entirety of the European Union. The world has changed tremendously since the 1950s and many of the legal frameworks that were created for that world.
00:42:33
Speaker
That world simply no longer exists. Then the the second part, or let me put the third part first, then what is technologically possible? I mean, could you, hypothetically, and I'm just saying hypothetically, I'm not advocating for it, I'm just talking about the possibilities.
00:42:49
Speaker
Could you... re-emigrate auto-economize. return large numbers of people to their countries of origin, of course, it's technologically possible.
00:42:59
Speaker
I think it's it's a it's, would it be possible to, for example, revoke citizenship for people who just recently got it and who did not behave, let's say, in a way that makes one think that they deserve that kind of citizenship?
00:43:12
Speaker
Is that possible? Of course, it is possible. The question is, to what extent is it morally acceptable? And to what extent would the German population go along with it? So this is, i think, always the the is issue when we talk about the migration question is we have to distinguish between what we would accept from ah from a moral perspective and what is actually technologically possible. However, and here comes the absolutely for me most important point, if will that the overtone window of what is morally acceptable will always shift into a more radical direction
00:43:45
Speaker
If the problem itself grows. And I see this. I have many. ah This sounds horrible. But it's. No actually not. but I have many good friends. In the. In the. Kind of the young right. In the United Kingdom. And I really like them. And I know. I would never denigrate. Any one of them.
00:43:59
Speaker
You know, it's it's a very smart people. Darren is among them. ah You know, Conor Tomlinson is a among them. Very smart, very nice people. I can only speak of them in the fondest terms. However, if you, Darren, maybe less so, but if you if you kind of follow a little bit the the way they approach this problem, there has been, and i you know I'm just pointing this out as i mean this as a friend.
00:44:20
Speaker
But there has been as a slight radicalization, let's put it this way. right was for them i'm I'm still of the belief, for me, ethnicity is irrelevant. For for me, nationality is a cultural factor. i legal I did believe that you can come from another country and become Austrian and become British.
00:44:37
Speaker
You might have to do more, you learn the language, you know but but you can... so strongly identify with a new country that that it becomes yours. You see a very strong, and I might be wrong about this. I'm not saying i'm right about this, but you see as strong as a strong trend on the the young right, I would say, that they increasingly say, no, you can't.
00:44:56
Speaker
like You can come, you can try to become British, but if you're not born in this country, you cannot be British. Your children, maybe, your grandchildren, but you cannot. And this is what I mean with with with the radicalization.
00:45:07
Speaker
Because then you say, if you come to a country and even you if you get the passport after 10 years, you might have the passport, but you're not really British. You're not really Austrian. And I have to admit, I partially agree with this because a piece of paper does not make you British or Austrian.
00:45:21
Speaker
But my Justice's last point, to really because I don't want anybody who listens to this to put words in my mouth. So if we say, you know, deporting criminals cannot be done because, you know, it would be immoral because if you're a criminal from Afghanistan and you commit a crime in Germany and they deported to Afghanistan, you'll be treated worse than Afghanistan.
00:45:39
Speaker
So you keep these people in Germany and they continue to commit crimes. Then gradually you shift the morally acceptable from we should just deport criminals to, you know what, we have to deport everyone because it's just too many.
00:45:52
Speaker
And this is what the establishment politicians overlook. The population, and I think they do so for good reason, they are going to be radicalized because as it is, if it's like a wound that is festering.
00:46:04
Speaker
And the more it festers, like you know it's like you have a wound on your leg. If you treat it quickly, you can keep your leg. But at some point, the doctor is going to say, we have to cut off the entire leg. And this is, I think, a little bit as an analogy of where we're moving.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I've had similar thoughts when I've listened to the the Lotus Eaters crew. For people who aren't aware, Lotus Eaters is a conservative is probably the wrong word now, but far right may not be the right term either, but it is an alternative right digital platform. And I think it is fair to say that they have moved from talking about this topic about promoting cultural integration and promoting an alignment around values to perhaps a more nativist approach to the immigration question.
00:46:47
Speaker
And I don't think that is is necessarily right either. I want to turn in the time we've got left to... to European geopolitics, particularly Ukraine and Russia, and the recent pronouncements from the US.
Europe's Support for Ukraine Amidst Challenges
00:47:02
Speaker
So Trump has basically said, as as he said for for some time now, Europe needs to do more to promote its own security. He said he can no longer guarantee European security in the way that the US has done since effectively the end of World War II.
00:47:18
Speaker
How is that going down in Germany? And what do you think the response will be if there is some sort of, what do you think the response will be following the the election from a Mertz coalition government?
00:47:33
Speaker
ah Good question. if If you allow me just one quick one quick point to the the migration thing to to to conclude it. um Because I agree with you. And the only thing, of course, is if you, and this was an article in The Spectator just recently about 100 daily knife attacks in in France.
00:47:47
Speaker
And of course, we all know what happened in Southport. We we know the story now about the grooming gangs. I mean, I do understand that when I read these things, I become radicalized too. I got be completely honest. so just just so So i it's it's I understand the reaction. But to to your question,
00:48:03
Speaker
Well, once again, all the things we discussed go hand in hand with with with your current question. um I always like to say that ultimately wars are won by tanks and not by platitudes.
00:48:14
Speaker
And what I mean by this is is that the kind of energy and industrial policy that we have conducted all over Europe, including the UK, just think about Ports Talbot, for example, right? and And the British steel industry.
00:48:26
Speaker
You cannot support a country that is at war without a steel industry, ah you know without manufacturing, without heavy industry. So when when Ed Miliband goes out and says, we're going to have the this rooftop solar revolution, and then you have you know the the Ministry of Defense go out and say, our commitment to Ukraine is unwavering.
00:48:47
Speaker
You can have one of those two, but you cannot have both. And the same is true in Germany. You cannot say, it doesn't matter if it's Mr. Merz or if it's Mr. Habeck or if it's Mr. Scholz. You cannot say, we will support Ukraine. Oh, by the way, due to our energy policies, we no longer have an industry.
00:49:04
Speaker
Because just as with domestic terrorism, thoughts and prayers do not solve a problem. They might be appropriate. They might be you know and emotionally stabilizing, but they don't solve the problem.
00:49:15
Speaker
And that is the same case here. What Ukraine needs you know is ammunition, is tanks, is armored personnel carriers. They need hard equipment to fight a war.
00:49:26
Speaker
But given the current status of the European economy, we do not have the the means to provide this. I give you a very quick example. Bloomberg had an interesting article just three days ago.
00:49:37
Speaker
But they pointed out that Russia is producing more ammunition than all eu states taken together. And that at this point, Europe is discussing or is planning only to ah to to only allow European producers to provide ammunition, right? Because this would help the European economy and not buy from the UK or from so all from the United States.
00:50:01
Speaker
But the problem is that those European producers are not ready to do so. So European politics, both energy, industrial and economic policies, are directly undermining support for Ukraine. So as you correctly pointed out, the reaction to what what Mr. Hexeth and Mr. Trump have been saying, you know the the pearl clutching, and Ms. Callas, the European high representative of foreign policy, said our commitment to Ukrainian territorial integrity is unwavering.
00:50:29
Speaker
you know Tweeting is easy, but but winning a war is difficult. and And this, I have to admit, was a little bit the miscalculation, I have to say, of of President Zelensky, is that he took those tweets and and oaths of loyalty by European politicians at face value without entirely ignoring that what they were doing to their own economies simply made it impossible.
00:50:53
Speaker
to support Ukraine. Again, let's return to Germany. They turned off 25 gigawatts of electricity. I mean, this is complete and this shows you that when faced with the choice of green policies and supporting Ukraine, not just talking, but doing, they choose green policies.
00:51:11
Speaker
The same now on the European level, when Ms. van der Leyen says, we will never give up the green deal, that means that one thing has to give. If it's not the green deal, it's going to be support for Ukraine. And this is what we see. So Mr. Merz,
00:51:23
Speaker
to answer your question in more detail. He made a very strong commitment to Ukraine. He made a very strong commitment to Germany re-arming. They don't have the money for it. The German welfare state is at breaking point. Now, people say they can take out more debt.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, but that is just kicking the can down the road. And the other thing is there is no appetite for this in Germany. The current um minister of defense, Mr. Pistorius, has said that Germans must get into kind and a war economy, a war fighting mindset.
00:51:50
Speaker
Maybe they have to, but they don't want to. I mean, this is one of the reasons why the AFD is also successful because i would they're not yeah they don't get their their marching orders from Moscow, but it is true that they are very critical of continuing support for Ukraine. So that has that has to be said. I think that position should be more nuanced.
00:52:08
Speaker
um I think they're presented in ah in ah in in ways that I would not necessarily agree with, but they do reflect a significant part of the population. The same is true, by the way. for Mr. Scholz's SPD.
00:52:20
Speaker
Support for Ukraine is not uncontested within the Social Democratic Party. Yeah, I find this whole conversation quite frustrating because you can be highly sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, which I am, but still recognize that this war has been heading in this direction for at least two years now.
00:52:40
Speaker
I have heard a lot of moralizing and criticism of Trump in recent days. But a lot of, you know, he's the modern day Chamberlain. i've heard a lot of grand statements about continuing to fight for democracy, but I'm yet to hear anyone really offer a credible alternative to what he is saying other than indefinite trench warfare.
00:53:02
Speaker
yeah which is is what we're seeing. Because even if you were to have the economic power to be able to give Ukraine all of the weapons they want, it would escalate to a point where Putin would say, okay, well, now I'm going to bring out tactical nuclear weapons.
00:53:16
Speaker
And the West would not stand to eye toey with him when he did that. And they would inevitably withdraw and you'd be back in the same place that, that, you are now. Like, i've I've just never seen how this, and you can say that you can you can say that Putin is evil, you can say that this has been his fault, this war, and still recognize the sad reality that Ukraine is not going to get their pre-2014 territory back.
00:53:41
Speaker
Is that a fair characterization? No, I think it is fair. We'll just add one thing because I think you're absolutely right. 2022, Europe was at a crossroads. And that crossroads was you either get serious again in world politics, but then you have to adapt your economy, your energy policy, your defense policy.
00:53:57
Speaker
Or you just hope that somehow this war is going to be over in a couple of months and we can go back to this so to the the status quo ante and hope that things will be the way they were before. And you're absolutely right.
00:54:08
Speaker
As analysts, as you and I are, we have a picture of the world, how we would like it to be. But unfortunately, we have to discuss the world as it is. And as you correctly said, would I, from a moral perspective, agree that the borders should return to where they were in 2014?
00:54:25
Speaker
Of course I would. Absolutely. But am I also willing to say, as you just did so eloquently, if we want to achieve this, what would it involve? And are the risks worth it? As you say, people people always mock the argument about potential nuclear war.
00:54:41
Speaker
I don't see how this is mock worthy. Even Nigel Farage, when he says, well, of course, in Ukraine has to be a member of NATO. Can we at least have a conversation about this? Because if Ukraine then would hypothetically invoke Article 5, the US and Russia would have to go to war.
00:54:57
Speaker
We avoided for decades the Soviet Union and the United States to go to war over who knows what. And now it's because of Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea.
00:55:08
Speaker
that that we that that that will risk a world war. I'm not saying it is and not saying it's going to happen, but the kind of nonchalance with which some people say this is never going to happen, and I find a little bit a little bit concerning.
00:55:20
Speaker
it's It's a risk evaluation. And the other point one i has to make, as you also correctly pointed out, is so isn't is it what is more important? This is we going to be a little provocative, but I think it's important to answer questions. For the future, is it important that Ukraine survives as a nation or that a place on the map that is called Ukraine survives? Because this is and at the choice.
00:55:40
Speaker
Ukraine already had devastating birth rates before the war broke out. I think it was like 1.4. Now they are killing off entire generations in this war. So even if if they quote unquote win whatever whatever that entails, I mean, the same is true for Russia partially as well, but Russia is just so much bigger.
00:55:57
Speaker
Even if they win, they have all this land without any Ukrainians in it. So potentially, would it really be such an impossible deal to say there will be territorial concessions, but we guarantee that the nation of Ukraine, that as as you know as the the cultural, linguistic, ethnic Ukraine as a nation, will survive. I mean, isn't this this not something that would be worth worth considering?
00:56:24
Speaker
ah the other they and and Again, this I agree with everything you said. I think it's it's a very... I don't believe... This is just a last point. I don't believe them. Because if I'm like these European politicians who are now saying it is absolutely crucial to to support Ukraine until victory, why haven't you moved European defense policy, European energy policy?
00:56:45
Speaker
European industrial policy. Did you really think you can support a country at war without producing artillery shells? Are they really, and as you get emotional here almost, are you really that stupid?
00:56:57
Speaker
Did you really think that tweeting at Putin is going to change anything? And we we cannot. We have the evidence stares it into the face. Heavy industry in Europe, continental, but also in UK, at the moment is dying.
00:57:11
Speaker
Gas prices, which is crucial for industry, is through the roof. Steel mills, aluminum smelters, all these things are closing down. We are not producing enough ammunition. We're not producing enough tanks.
00:57:23
Speaker
We're not producing enough artillery shells. And then its the question is over. like that There is no debate. You win you ah who win a war with weapons. You lose a war without weapons and we are in the without weapons camp. Therefore, there's not much we can do.
00:57:36
Speaker
And the the United States, of course, their argument is that we shift our perspective more to the Pacific. They have at the moment limited resources as well and they want to use them elsewhere.
00:57:47
Speaker
Do I agree with that? Honestly, it's not my call. It's not your call. This is the decision United States have to make. But their argument that a conflict at the borders of Europe is primarily a European problem Again, is is it like we might don't like it, but is it objectively wrong? I don't think so.
00:58:04
Speaker
want to pick up on that line, industry in Europe is dying for my final question. And it requires you to to step back from just Germany to look at Europe in its totality, because we've identified a lot of problems for Europe, and some would argue existential problems, around culture, around the economy, around defense deficiencies.
Pathways to Europe's Resurgence
00:58:28
Speaker
yeah know You put all these things together you it's It's very easy to see that Europe is in decline. My question is, is the decline of Europe terminal?
00:58:39
Speaker
Or if not, is there any reason for optimism that there can be some sort of a resurgence I think so. I think so. I mean, the reason why I do what I do and I think what you do as well is I always say I fight the good fight in hoping that we win.
00:58:54
Speaker
and And if we lose, at least I can then say in hindsight, I have a huge I told you so and claim that I stood on the so-called right side of history. No, but the decisive moment, the line is overused, I use it nonetheless, I think was a little bit the election of Donald Trump in 2024. Because There is now this spillover into Europe that optimism is possible. Or as the latest US commentator Charles Krauthammer used to say, that decline is a choice and you can make another choice.
00:59:22
Speaker
This is why I find the election in Germany so important. If the Germans, and despite all their problems, they are still the 200 pound gorilla in the European room. If they show that change is possible, I think others will follow suit.
00:59:34
Speaker
mean, smaller countries, Denmark, Sweden, they already are shifting. They already are turning. If you look, for example, at both economic or migration laws in these countries, they have seen the ah writing on the wall on the wall quite clearly. But now we need some of the big countries.
00:59:51
Speaker
to kind of step out of the comfort zone and say, we like to do things differently. But also also the UK, I have to admit, I have my quibbles with Mr. Farage. I know there are many fans out there and he's very charismatic and a good speaker and everything.
01:00:04
Speaker
I'm never entirely sure how serious and sincere he is about his positions, but I put that aside for a second. But even in the UK, you see a strong appetite for new political forces, for political alternatives.
01:00:16
Speaker
And that's a very good sign. Democracy in Europe at the moment, and in the UK as well, is not so much under threat by these new movements. I would argue it is much more under so and threat by the status quo powers who want to prevent those new movements from coming to power. Because there is, and I know we're we're almost out of time, so this is a topic for ah but another conversation, but it cannot be denied that attempts to censor free speech, to limit conversations, to to make activism for alternative movements more difficult, where they'd be debanking or not being invited to talk shows, all these kinds of things. That is going on.
01:00:53
Speaker
And what you saw happening, mean, this is so fascinating. If you think all the big social media companies from the US were going along with this, and now they make 180 degree turn. Now you have Google saying, no, no more fact checkers.
01:01:05
Speaker
You have Facebook saying, no more fact checkers. You had Google officially saying, we will not go along with the the Digital Services Act in the European Union. Like we follow suit with Mr. Trump's approach of more speech is is better, even though it means that sometimes uncomfortable or vulgar speech slips through.
01:01:22
Speaker
In his video he did a couple of weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg said the same thing, that they want to collaborate with the Trump administration to support free speech, to kind of to to reduce censorship. You have Elon Musk and now J.D. Vance just a couple of hours ago come out and say that in Germany, in Europe, that politicians have to start to embrace the positions of these new populist movements.
01:01:42
Speaker
So that something is happening. So well the question is there still time, right? Is there still enough time? But I think there is. A Europe with a backbone, a Britain with a newfound cultural pride and consciousness,
01:01:56
Speaker
will also be a Britain, and will also be a Europe, that will have an easier time of integrating the people who are here. I mean, that there must be a significant reduction in migration of question. But even those who are there, think about this from a very simple psychological viewpoint.
01:02:09
Speaker
You want to integrate into a team, a society, a country, that seems powerful, that seems strong, that has a backbone. But the reason why there are fans for, you know, Real Madrid and Manchester unit United in Japan is because Real Madrid and Manchester United are some of the best teams on the planet. So we like the winning team.
01:02:28
Speaker
we like We like the winning side. And the same story as well. If Britishness is a value, a term that is filled with pride, that is filled with, you know, with a a strong, and healthy sense of identity, there will be many people who say, I like that. I want to integrate into this. So so i am i am i want to be I want to be optimistic. I choose to be optimistic. So I think it's not too late yet.
01:02:48
Speaker
Fingers crossed. Ralph, a fascinating conversation. Thank you for coming on. Fire Will. Thank you, Will.