@Mike1976,
@Redav &
@Ivan le Fou (and, by extension,
@surfpunk)
Several things can be true at once.
Did immigration, political correctness and the economic downturn play a big role in these elections? Why, of course they did. But you're completely ignoring the discrepancy in voting behaviour between West and East Germany.
There's a reason as to why AfD and BSW are quite strong in East Germany but fail to really take off anywhere else, with AfD yet to surpass the West German turnout achieved by historic right-wing parties (e.g. the 1990's
Republicans) and BSW scoring so low in the polls there they don't even try to run for office in some West German states.
NSDAP was also more popular in the eastern part of Germany before the WW2.
Map created by Korny78 via Wikimedia
brilliantmaps.com
The former German Democratic Republic was the only Eastern Bloc nation which Moscow believed they could fully count on during a war with the West (I did post those declassified documents in the NATO news thread once). And today, it is the only former Eastern Bloc country where Russian rule is remembered more positively than negatively. There is a massive split in mentality and alignment still dividing Germany in two. West Germans poll overwhelmingly in favour of being a member of NATO and aiding Ukraine. East Germans poll overwhelmingly against both.
The German unificiation was based on the fallacy that the revolution of 1989 had meant the entire East German people wished to reunite with West Germany. They did not. Those who preferred the Western hemisphere have long since left the East, causing a massive brain drain since the 1990's (which was only exacerbated by the post-unification slump).
Those who stayed behind were often avowed adherents of the old regime and have fled into a mentality now known in Germany as Ostalgie (roughly: "east-nostalgy"). Being pro-Russian is a core element of East German regional identity, and the feeling that their identity has been trampled on by Berlin was indeed the decisive factor on September 1.
Yes, they were a kind of "unique" in the Eastern Bloc. 2% of their population were STASI agents. It's something remarkable.
My personal observation is, they still have this vigilante mindset. Back in the 90s and 2000s, if they saw a Polish registration plate, they tried to get interested in that car, asked you what you were doing there, etc.
And Sahra Wagenknecht, this newly-crowned Boudicca in the fight against identity politics, is an unrepentant Stalinist who previously defended the Iron Curtain as "necessary to shield East Germany from Western imperialism", wrongly claims the GDR never instituted a shoot-to-kill policy at the border, and flatly denies the Red Army committed as many as 2 million rapes during their conquest of Germany.
I heard a Polish analyst saying that some Ossis just don't want to experience what they did in 1944-1945 and that's why they want the Russo-Ukrainian war to stop. They think RuZZia may go further after defeating Ukraine and visit them again.
@Musashi's description was spot-on: East Germans
are predominantly pro-Russian, and their alignment
was a key factor for the results of September 1.
Maybe there's a healthy middle ground between paranoia and your head-in-the-sand-attitude.
@Musashi is right.
Who can know the Ossis better than a person who was born 2 km from their border and lived less than 20 km from them for almost 31 years including 14 years before they united with the Wessis?
As a matter of fact – and contrary to the left's disparaging narrative – the average AfD voter is anything but a member of the so-called "deplorables". Typically, he's a male, between 30 and 50, and lower middle class with some education.
Like in the case of NSDAP, it's correlated with a higher unemployment rate and infrastructural undevelopment.
Upon the unification, the Ossis experienced something like the Americans did in the Rust Belt.
Let's imagine, you truly believe you are the best person in the Eastern Bloc. Your television tells you that and you believe in that. Your products are of a better quality than in the case of your Eastern Bloc neighbours and they really were in most cases. You compare your coffee maker to the average Polish coffee maker or a motorbike to a Polish motorbike. It's so much better. Your heavy industry is very developed and you produce a lot of goods. Remember, you are the best German, exactly the way the North Koreans are the best Koreans. The Soviet Army did not conquer you but liberated you from the evil Nazis. The real Nazis originated from the western part of Germany. Cannot it be true? Did not the first Bundeswehr General with no history of being an NSDAP member appear in the 70s? Did the Wessis even make their Nazis accountable? No, they employed a fvckton of them, as there was hardly anybody available with the relevant experience who could do many high-profile jobs.
Your grandfather served in the Wehrmacht, but he says that he was just a cook or a driver. By no means he could be a Nazi!
Your athletes have outstanding successes and outcompete West German ones by a very big margin maybe apart from football even if your population makes up just a bit more than 25% of the one in West Germany. Your athletes earn a fvckton of medals and you are proud of them.
Your intelligence is far more effective than the West German intelligence and you are able to install far more agents in West Germany than the other way around.
Your government engages you in different activities and organises a lot of mass events, making you proud and relevant.
Out of the blue, 1990 comes and everything goes to the sh1tter.
Your "great" products, you were so much proud of, turn out to be of a bad quality compared to the ones produced by the Wessis.
Your factories produce a lot of unnecessary and uncompetitive goods. Many of them get closed. You heavily rely on lignite, so your economy is not green enough. The Wessis don't like it and flood you with their products. Particularly, they don't like your big factories, as they are not green enough and generate a lot of emissions.
Unemployment goes up to 25%+ and your factory gets shut down. You have no perspectives, becoming disenchanted and depressed. Nobody is interested in keeping you busy and you realise somebody had misguided you about you being the best and your products being great. You can now explore the world without taking your commie neighbours as a reference point and you experience a clash with reality.
These evil Wessis even show you your favourite female athletes having beards now. It's too much.
When you used to go to Poland, you could experience bad Polish roads that made you laugh. Your reference point was a country that did not have any motorways and you had a lot of them. Now, you can visit the Wessis without your homies trying to shoot you. Your motorways made of concrete slabs with big gaps between them look like a joke compared to the ones in the Wessiland. Your Trabbi, which you waited 13 years for, equipped with a 2-stroke engine, looks like a joke compared to a VW Golf (was it even possible to kill its engine?) used by the poorest Wessis. Mercedeses and BMWs appear to be cars from a different planet.
How can you be happy about all this sh1t?
You decide to vote for someone who will make you relevant again and blames other people for your problems.
My personal observations from the 80s and 90s were:
- East Germans were obsessed with saving money and they did it at the expense of their health. Many of them smoked the cheapest cigarettes possible and their priority was saving money. They had their day when the East German mark was exchanged into the DEM at the rate of 1:1.
- they didn't mind walking nude on the beach or at least changing their clothes in public without covering their private parts. I think it's not normal amongst West Germans and they felt uncomfortable seeing that. I think it's still like that.
- the unification of Germany caused a massive increase in neo-Nazi movements amongst the Ossis due to the high unemployment and not being socially engaged the way they used to be in the past. Back in the '90s or 2000s, it was much more likely to be randomly attacked in the Ossiland just because of being Polish. It has never happened to me, though. The Wessis tended to look random Polish people down, but extremely rarely attacked them verbally or physically. Some neo-Nazi organisations were banned and their voters turned to AfD. It does not mean all, or even most of the Ossis, are neo-Nazis.
- Russian names were quite popular amongst the Ossis. For example, I don't know any Polish person called Ivan and I know just one Igor. I know some Ossis, though, and they are not the "Germans" who were imported from the former Soviet Union.
- the Ossis named some of their cities after communists, like Karl-Marx-Stadt or Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt, while the Polish commies dropped this idea after Stalin died. Many names went back to normal right after that.
- the number of monuments commemorating the Red Army is astonishing in the Ossiland. In contrast, there are hardly any left in Poland.
Still, I have never had any personal problems with the Ossis. I did not notice any difference between the proportion of bad and good people in Poland and the Ossiland.
