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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Minor correction that is not meant to excuse the islamophobic racism, imperial chauvinism and antisemitic equation of Israel and Jewishness that completely dominates German politics now: The reactionary CDU is the leading party in Berlin and governs the city in a coalition with the SPD class traitors. That the SPD is the leading party and the CDU is the opposition applies on the federal level, which is irrelevant to public schools that are always ran by the state government.
At this point in time, what would you say are the material differences between the CDU and the SPD?
The CDU is less hesitant and more gung-ho in its imperialism, although i'm very sure the CIA made sure to curb any ambitions in the SPD to repeat Schröder's no to the Iraq War. The SPD may also favor slightly different sectors of the bourgeoisie in their politics, they're still closely tied to many unions, are traditionally a party of class collaboration and will therefore support the interests of industries that have a high degree of organization among its workers (coal and steel are the prime examples). The CDU also asks for much higher bribes, and is much less actively hated by corporate media when it is in power.
These differences are very minor, though, both parties are neoliberal, reactionary and routinely mistaken to be "middle of the road" by the boomer demographic that forms the core of their electorate. Basically, the SPD is who you vote for when you're deeply in denial about being an ultra fucking racist labor aristocrat and the CDU is who you vote for when you're a temporarily inconvenienced millionaire who has done Hitler salutes "ironically" in the past.
banger line
Thanks, i'm also quite happy with how true it turned out to be.
One would think SPD might have torpedoed its relationships with industrial unions over its shenanigans w russia (gas/markets for cars), but apparently not. (also weren't greens involved with no to iraq and subsequent "my opa was defending freedoms"-ification?)
SPD was traditionally more cooperative towards Russia, they were the ones who signed the deal to biuld Nordstream2. Germany's national bourgeoisie had very clear material incentives to be less hostile towards Russia than the US, and the SPD was a main driver of a cheap gas policy that formed the backbone for that. This is obviously no longer allowed by the US as of now. And yes, the Greens were in coalition with the SPD during the Iraq war and both parties opposed that war - although both also participated in bombing Kosovo and invading Afghanistan. Iraq was a very one-off thing that was probably motivated by the upcoming election back then, nobody in Germany believed in the WMD thing back then, it was widely called out as a hoax in the German press etc.
The Greens used to be deeply rooted in pacifist, nuclear disarm movements during the 1980s when they formed. These were huge in Germany (maybe unsurprising for a Cold War frontline state that had started and lost two world wars). As soon as they came into power on the federal level, the party leadership pivoted to being a warmongering imperialist party that was part of the first German government to send combat troops abroad since 1945. Western Germany was obviously deeply entrenched in the NATO structures ever since its foundation, but mostly as a staging ground, logistics hub, donor etc., citing the country's fascist and militarist past as the reason to not engage in wars with boots on the ground. It was the "red-green" coalition with the Greens under Joshka Fischer and the SPD under Gerhardt Schröder that changed that, at first under massive protest from the party base especially among the Greens. The anti-war crowd is now completely neutralized, today's Greens are by far the most imperialist party in Germany and are the loudest Slava Ukraini stans in the current federal government consisting of the SPD, the Greens and the libertarian FDP. You can imagine the Green stance among the lines of an aggressive V*ushite radlib homonationalism.
I was more interested in the who unions support, my understanding was industrial unions were kinda softish mainly spd/cdu voters. Despite afd rise, i don't think they've lost the unions, and that makes me wonder what will make the unions go "fuck all of this"
Your understanding is mostly correct for a lot of the industrial unions. There are some attempts by the AfD to get reactionaries into Betriebsrat positions (basically labor representatives in a businesses' management, idk the English term), but they are usually pushed back and unions in Germany tend to have a fairly solid anti-fascist positioning. There are union members who are understandably disillusioned with the SPD, but there are little electoralist alternatives with the Left party currently being busy with a patsoc faction finally splitting off after years and years of infighting, pointless struggle sessions etc. It's kinda dire, honestly. Germany just doesn't have a strong left opposition atm.
Federal governments clawing back municipal power and installing allied governors in municipal posts is pretty standard imperialist behavior.
We've seen it in the UK. We've seen it in Texas. We've seen it in Turkey. We've seen it in India. I doubt Germany will be an exception.
I don't see this happening, there's a pretty clear through lineh here where the federal government is more than happy to do policies but offload the entire implementation of those policies into the hands of municipalities who have no resources to actually do it and also never change anything about the municipalities being permanently broke.
It's an insanely well working system for them as they can always just offload whatever failing onto the municipalities and then get credit for doing it, as apparently most people are incapable of more curiosity as to why barring some noteable exceptions basically every local council is a broke ass shitshow and are thusly satisfied with "it's around 11.000 analogous, parallel cases of individual failure"
Yeah, when it comes to other stuff, sure. Education being left to the states to decide over is multipartisan consensus in Germany, tho. It's something especially the CDU is extremely possessive off.
Also, more on topic, this is very in line with the consistent anti-Muslim and especially anti-Palestinian racism shown by Berlin's CDU major and his underlings ever since their last state election. It has ofc ramped up massively during the recent months, but Wegener has always ran on sending hordes of cops after Berlins Arab communities, it was the center point of his electoral campaign to crack down on Muslim communities, his administration has prohibited and shut down a ton of protests voicing support for Palestine, has made it illegal for kids in Berlin's schools to wear a keffiyeh, tried to close down a leftist cultural center merely for inviting Jewish Voice for Peace (an org that opposes Israel's settler colonialism), and also tried to make everybody in Berlin's art and culture scene sign a pro-Zionist declaration as a precondition for any public funding (the last two proposals fortunately failed).
This is very in line with what the city-states current government has been doing ever since it got into office, and it arguably is what won them the election.