quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I think Vance is right about many of the things he said in that speech. Especially about German immigration policy.

But is it any of our business?

It depends on whether we remain a member of NATO. If we are a member of NATO and we are responsible for the defense of Europe, I think it's our business. If we withdraw from NATO, it's no longer any of our business.

I don't think we can afford NATO anymore and the Europeans don't have much incentive to defend themselves as long as they think we will do it for them.

JD rocks.

I just went back a bit and found bansheeone's ...interesting posts re Trump and socialism, etc.
I can't really comment on what he wrote about former leaders of AfD, I'm not close enough to that.
But what I am more familiar with, incidents and events which he specifically cited, do not reflect the reality of Trump and his administration.
It's disappointing, but maybe not surprising. This may not be fair to him, but there is in my experience (a year as a graduate student at the Free University of Berlin, studying political science and international relations, all in the German language), there is a definite tendency among German academics toward what we would consider overintellectualization. The development and promulgation of theories that are only loosely connected with reality.
It's too bad, I was hoping he could give us a wormhole into the German political situation, but I now feel he is not a trustworthy source.

Finally, whatever flaws AfD has, the CDU, SPD, and Greens are hopeless in dealing with Germany's existential problems, which are ALL due to internal German political policies. Net Zero policies have destroyed the reliability, resilience and affordability of energy in Germany. Without that a massively industrial base cannot survive. The same Green policy pushed EV's; German car manufacturers are now (as in the US) having to retrench their plans and have wasted billions pushing EV's. The refusal of mainline German policies BOTH to recognize the crisis caused by massive Muslim immigration AND to allow discussion of the crisis will, I hope, result in their electoral defeat and the rise to power of AfD.

One day, they will create a Joan of Arc-type statue for Angela Merkel, riding a shetland pony, for allowing/encouraging Europe to import so many non-Europeans into their countries. The Europeans are now their own minority. England, France and Germany are lost. The invaders/guests are the victors.

A) We need to remember we are those who fled Europe. Europe is fundamentally, Tribal Africa, with better weapons.

Their cultural identities are rooted in war. Historically, their upper classes have disdained commerce - really, until…. Maybe the 1950s? Maybe still. Now, maybe they believe in profit by graft, rather than conquest, but they are culturally criminal. (Some nations more than others - and much of this may have been burned out of Poland/Croatia/other parts of Eastern Europe.)

B) They are headed for a hell of a war. They know they cannot afford democracy, because in 20-50 years, the democratic majority will be savages.

The real solution is mass deportation, now, while they still have a chance of survival, but I doubt they will do it.

C) What happens when upper classes, with a love of war, and a different culture, have to deal with an elected class of savage, with an ideology rooted in conquest…

Not sure. Hopefully, the savages will destroy the industrial base, before they get too far along.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
It is very interesting that JD Vance brought up the recent Romanian election and the nullification of the result by European courts.

And that's exactly where I stopped following him, because it's plain wrong. Now, the nullification looked strange and possibly misguided even from a European point of view; but it was done by the Romanian supreme court, allegedly based upon intelligence by Romanian agencies. No European authority had anything to do with it. Yet the usual suspects picked two sentences from an interview where Breton talked about enforcement of the EU's Digital Services Act, and claimed he had said the EU would nullify elections in Germany if they didn't like the outcome; though there is no legal basis or mechanism for it. Which was swallowed hook, line, sinker, rod and dick by the usual suspects' usual audience, because they don't bother to check sources. And from someone who is a heartbeat away from the US presidency, I really expect better.

I've in fact thought a great deal recently about how different cultural background and education shape our view of other countries. God knows that American practices can look strange to Germans, ranging from the humorously anecdotal to the fairly serious. Autobahn speed limits, not gun control remains the third rail of German politics; even the 85 mph limit in Texas is in violation of the rugged German sense of "freie Fahrt für freie Bürger". Beer is considered staple food in Germany, with legal drinking age for that and other non-liquors at 16; 21 looks damn near like a violation of human rights in comparison.

US abortion law looks like a mess oscillating between near-total bans even in cases of rape and incest, and permission until delivery; in Germany, abortion is technically illegal, but not punished within the first twelve weeks if following counseling by an officially recognized source, pacifing a long-lasting conflict in the 1990s (though US-inspired radicals on either side are trying to unravel that). Prostitution is legal by acknowledgement that it's gonna happen anyway, and legislating sexuality between consenting adults should be reserved to problems like incest (though some want to introduce the pseudo-feminist "Nordic Model" punishing the purchase of, but not offering sexual services).

Capital punishment is banned by the German constitution, and also the European Convention on Human Rights. The American electoral college system would never pass democratic muster here, because it assigns different values to individual votes, disregards some entirely, and blocks resident citizens in non-state territories from even voting for their national government. Obviously people also get slightly irked when the US ambassador states in a Breitbart interview what would amount to his German counterpart telling the media "I absolutely want to empower liberal leaders like Justin Trudeau in America" (hi, Richard Grenell).

Regarding socialism, the American Right has of course a fine tradition of parading immigrants and foreigners with personal experience of it who are warning they see it emerging in the US. Though on a more scientific level, outside amusing anecdotal similarities I don't actually think that and would even agree with Marxists who will likely term the emergent political change in the US as "Bonapartism". My default position also remains that the "socialism" in National Socialism is an empty term that was a catch-all for overcoming monarchism after WW I, and lost all meaning when Hitler got rid of the Strasser wing in the NSDAP which dreamt of a Querfront with the communists. Though my approach above is an honest attempt to reconcile with the American right-wing take on the Nazis, which I initially ridiculed when I first heard it. Sure got everyones attention though, right?

As for freedom of speech, sure there's a different interpretation and history behind it here. And as everywhere, sometimes authorities go to excess, though like many things such attitudes develop in pendulum movements. It's interesting to compare today's fear of the Right with fear of the Left in the 50s-70s under the threat of expansionist communism and terrorism, and see the similarities. Pro-Palestinian supporters have also complained of infringement since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, and arguably they have a point; the city and state of Berlin heavily restricted their demonstrations due to anti-Semitic chants, and Hamburg issued an outright blanket ban for half a year. The phrase of "from the river to the sea" has actually been banned as a verbal badge of a terrorist organization, similar to many Nazi phrases.

Last year a congress of Palestinian supporters in Berlin was shut down by police over anti-Israeli statements, and one invited speaker from the UK pre-emptively banned from entering Germany due to his known history of such. Only this week, there was a heavy police presence at another event with UN Special Envoy for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese for the same reasons, ready to pounce if she said some of her usual stuff (which would have been a sight); other appearances of her were cancelled by organizers. Of course if you want to say that Germany hasn't learned the lesson that if you're restricting people from slandering and calling for the death of Jews and other undesirables, you're a Nazi - be my guest.

In the end, it just doesn't concern people who don't go out of their way to make personal or ethnic insults and death threats in public. Just a couple hours ago, I published a commentary on our bimonthly's website calling pretty much everyone involved in the Munich Security Conference a midget, mental or otherwise: Vance, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the foreign ministers of the G7 including Marco Rubio and Annalena Baerbock, and all the European leaders who, quote, "had time since the original start of this war in 2014, but since 2022 at the latest, to grow out of the dwarf role vis-a-vis the US into at least somewhat battleworthy cave trolls", unquote.

Pretty sure that's covered by freedom of speech/press, though my editor-in-chief made me change all the dwarf pictures from the Nibelungen and Middle Earth I had selected, along with a video from Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" to underline my point of "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't" about Donald Trump's negotiation (non-) tactics, to actual images of the subjects. Which admittedly is more becoming a serious defense magazine, though not necessarily for the better of the article's adressees.

We spent hundreds of millions of dollars (1940s dollars, billions today) and lost hundreds of thousands of men to liberate and protect them from tyranny, only for them to go right back to it. If we pulled out of NATO (which would result in its dissolution since we put up the lion's share) and washed our hands of them tomorrow, I'd be just fine with it. More tax rebate for me.