(Daily Signal)—Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Recently, the German government announced that it is going to label or maybe relabel the Alternative für Deutschland—the Alternative for Germany—the conservative party that has an antithetical agenda both to the German government of both liberal and conservative factions, but also to the EU in general.
Anyway, it is announced that it will classify it as a dangerous far-right organization. And that will cement this aura that no government, under their parliamentary democracy system, will ask them to join to form a majority government. So, the process of ostracism and demonization of this party continues.
And what is the party advocating? The party is advocating an alternative for the way that Germany is going. And very briefly, we’ve talked about this, but if you look at what has become of Germany, it has had two years of essentially no growth or negative growth. Only recently, last year, did it finally, after 30 years, invest a measly 2% of its gross domestic product as it had promised in 2014. It had not met that goal. It just barely did it.
It’s had a systematic decommission of its nuclear power plants. And how anybody could rely on solar power in Germany—but yet the German government invested heavily in it. And the result is that German power, electricity—heating, cooling, and industrial use—is about four times what the average power cost is in the United States. And you can see what that’s gonna do to German investment.
They had been also sort of noncommittal about Chinese mercantilism. Because Germany—remember 10 years ago, eight years ago—started to get massive exportation to China for things like cars, especially electric vehicles, and solar panels and industrial equipment.
And they didn’t quite think that China was going to do to them what China had done to us a decade earlier. And that is invite in a country to supply them with quality goods and plants in China and be very profitable as the Chinese mastered that craft, mastered that industry, both this material side of production and the bureaucratic and corporate management.
And when China did that, they began to create German-like EVs, German-like solar panels at a much less cost and then started to export it and ruin much of Germany’s export market.
What am I getting at? Germany, in terms of power, in terms of a border that has been open, in terms of about 16% to 18% of the population that was not born in Germany and is not fully assimilated—these are refugees. Or I don’t think they’re refugees—they’re illegal immigrants from the volatile Middle East. Most of them are Muslim. Most of them do not have an intention of assimilating, intermarrying, and integrating fully in German society.
And you add all this up—and I’m not being critical. It’s very tragic because for years Germany was the powerhouse, the cohesive economic power that kept the EU together. And during the Cold War it fielded one of the best NATO armies, West Germany. Well over 400,000 troops. It’s almost literally disarmed. It cannot fulfill even its meager commitments to help Ukraine. And out of this tension, if it was a normal democratic society, you would have a variety of vocal opponents, proponents, give and take, yin and yang, and there would be a lively mix-up.
And they would come to a consensus that these were the masters of nuclear power. Twenty years ago, German physicists were the top in the world—nuclear physicists. They would start investing again in nuclear power. They would start up natural gas generation. Wind and solar would be integral, but a small part, because they would need reliable, cheap energy to compete on the world market. They would join the United States and look at China and say, “This is intolerable, this system of mercantilism.” They would close their borders. They would go to an assimilationist model and require immigrants that came legally to fully become Germans. They would do all of that.
But instead, when one party is advocating much of what I just talked about, they demonize it because it’s out of the norm. And the norm, unfortunately, in Germany today is national suicide.
Unfortunately, this is not going to end well for Germany. And it’s not gonna end well for us. We need a powerful, friendly Germany. And we wish it well. But the reaction to needed reform—economic, political, social, cultural, military, diplomatic—is not to essentially ban a political party’s freedom of expression. That shows weakness and fear rather than confidence in the future.
