Where is Germany Heading Politically?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The east German states of Saxony and Thuringia elected new state parliaments in September and the Rubicon was crossed in German domestic politics. They showcased the rise of two anti-establishment parties. It was the first time a party of the right finished first in a state election in post-1945 Germany.

In Thuringia, the Alternative fur Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) came first, with 32.8 per cent of the vote, winning 32 of the 88 assembly seats. The newly formed populist Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW) won 15.8 per cent, good for 15 seats.

In Saxony, the AfD came second, with 30.6 per cent and 40 of the legislature’s 120 seats, just slightly behind the first-place Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democrats, or CDU), at 31.9 per cent and 41 seats. The BSW gained 11.8 per cent, good for 15 seats.

In 1990 Saxony and Thuringia re-entered German history as federal states of a reunited German republic. Just over thirty years later, though small – they have a combined population of just six million -- they have become ground zero for the rise of anti-establishment parties.

The AfD harkens back to a nationalist right that was totally delegitimised by the Second World War and excluded in its aftermath. Founded in 2013, it is defined by its Eurosceptic, nationalist and anti-immigration policies, combined with neo-liberal tendencies on economic matters.

But it was recently joined by the BSW, a left-wing but anti-immigrant and anti-Atlanticist party recruiting even more German voters to the idea of an “alternative” kind of Germany.

Well over 40 per cent of Saxon and Thuringian voters opted for one of the two options. East Germans are voting for parties that to most west Germans remain anathema. In both states, two of the parties of the federal coalition government did not even reach a combined 10 per cent share of the vote. The only centrist survivor is the conservative CDU, which narrowly held onto first place in Saxony and second in Thuringia.

The AfD leader in Thuringia, Bjorn Hocke, celebrated his party’s “historic victory.” But the AfD branches in both Saxony and Thuringia have come under official surveillance as extremist groups. Hocke himself has twice been found guilty by a German court of purposely employing Nazi rhetoric.

The BSW, founded in January, is a populist party that blends left-leaning economic policies with anti-migration and pro-Russian foreign policy initiatives. In both Saxony and Thuringia, the party, created by Sahra Wagenknecht, the former parliamentary leader of Die Linke (Left Party), also ended up well ahead of the parties that make up Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s federal coalition government. Die Linke, which headed the state government in Thuringia until the election, is the successor to the Communists that once led the East German dictatorship.

BSW and AfD policies overlap in several areas. Both are in favor of limiting migration, increasing deportations of rejected asylum-seekers and creating more controls at Germany’s borders. Hocke denounced the mainstream “cartel parties” who are working to “replace the German people” with a multicultural society.

Where they differ is on issues like social welfare: The AfD wants to limit benefits, and the BSW wants to maintain or expand some. But both strive for a strong, authoritarian state that will contain, patronise and homogenise society.

Wagenknecht has been thrust into the limelight as a core player advocating a distinctive brand of “left conservatism.” She shares with many Western populists a compelling rejection of the dying neoliberal order and all that it represents today: censorship, open borders, transgenderism, and public health authoritarianism. But crucially, she has managed to maintain this platform while continuing to win voters from the left.

One of the most-read German historians today, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, considers the BSW and the AfD “siblings in spirit.” He calls the former “Putinists” and the latter “fascists.”

For Ursula Munch, director of the Tutzing Academy for Political Education, an independent institute, the BSW simply represents yet another threat to the traditional parties. “The other parties are being put through the wringer by both the BSW and the AfD, she told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Munch thinks immigration remains the key issue for German voters, and she believes that the BSW has successfully managed to present itself to voters as a non-extremist alternative to the AfD. “It avoids racist rhetoric and has relatively decent main candidates, who have local political experience and federal political experience.”

The BSW also attracts voters who are skeptical about Germany’s support for Ukraine -- another position that it shares with the AfD. Wagenknecht has suggested Vladimir Putin was no more of a warmonger than the United States.

Ahead of the election, some thought Wagenknecht’s new party would eat into the AfD’s vote share. Instead, it managed to secure double-digit results in both states by taking votes from mainstream parties. The BSW has turned out to be a party normalising anti-democratic narratives.

The growing political disaffection that has led to this situation has been simmering for some time. Voters in the east of the country feel especially misunderstood and looked down upon by politicians and the media.

Both populist parties are hostile to a status quo which must be reversed if the legacy parties want to avoid further decline. A united Germany no longer seems so united.

 

Eastern Europe Needs Skilled Labour

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Over the past few decades, many of the political leaders in eastern Europe have focused their efforts on curbing the flow of migrants and asylum seekers, contending that an influx of third-country nationals would undermine social stability, threaten cultural cohesion and even pose a security risk.

For example, in 2015, at the height of the European Union’s migration crisis, the four Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) opposed the EU’s refugee-quota system, which aimed to share the burden by allocating a certain number of asylum seekers to each EU country based on population, GDP and other factors. Hungary and Slovakia were among the most vocal critics of the plan, arguing that mandatory quotas were an attack on national sovereignty.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban champions a homogenous Hungary. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico’s left-populist Smer-Social Democracy party won the 2023 election by exploiting resentment against even Ukrainian refugees. This has helped such leaders to consolidate electoral support by playing on voters’ fears of economic anxiety and desire for stability in an unsettled world.

But the region is facing an acute shortage of skilled workers. So these countries are increasingly liberalising their immigration rules and procedures to enable the entry and employment of skilled foreigners. In January, Hungary passed a new immigration law that introduces new short-term guest and skilled-worker visas. It was accompanied by new ways to improve the efficiency of visa processing in countries such as Oman, Qatar and Uzbekistan.

Hungary has little choice. Labour shortages in the coming years would hamper the government’s ambition to become an electric vehicle manufacturing country. In 2022, China’s CATL announced that it would build a $7.9 billion EV battery plant in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen, its biggest overseas investment in Europe to date, to supply German carmakers BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen.

 In late 2023, China’s BYD, one of the world’s largest electrical vehicle manufacturers, announced it would open its first European EV production factory in Hungary. BYD will construct the plant near the southern Hungarian city of Szeged and is expected to provide thousands of jobs to the region.

The Chinese manufacturer has already located in Hungary. In 2017 it opened its first European factory in Komarom, where, among other things, electric buses are produced, and in the fall of 2023, it started selling its passenger cars in Budapest. 

 The German defence contractor Rheinmetall recently opened a new factory in the Hungarian city of Zalaegerszeg, while armoured tactical vehicles are to be produced in the city of Gyor. All of these ventures will require sufficient human capital.

The Czech Republic in September 2022 simplified the recruitment process for “critically needed” workers and improved oversight of working conditions for foreigners. This allows the Czech government to offer more favourable residence conditions to some third-country nationals, making the Czech Republic more competitive as a destination for talent.

This past summer, Prague implemented a regulation that grants free access to the Czech labour market for citizens of nine selected countries: Australia, Japan, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, and Israel. They do not need to obtain any employment permit to work in the Czech Republic, but only a residence permit.

The number of foreign workers in Slovakia increased seven-fold between 2013 and 2022, with some manufacturers, such as the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, relying heavily on labour from abroad. And more of these workers are coming from farther away, from India or Kazakhstan rather than Serbia or Ukraine.

But there is still a need for tens of thousands more workers, especially in the mechanical engineering, automotive, transport, healthcare and IT sectors. So, like the Czech Republic, Slovakia also streamlined its procedures to attract foreign workers last summer.

The labour shortage in eastern Europe is likely to worsen: demand for skills in the industries of the future is only increasing, at the same time as fertility rates are declining and young people are leaving the region to pursue better opportunities elsewhere.

To plug these competency gaps, countries must continue to reform their immigration policies. Failure to do so could result in widespread economic pain, as they may miss out on new investments that could generate GDP growth and raise tax revenue.

The question is not whether immigration is good or bad, but how it can yield benefits for both destination countries and third-country workers.

 

Jews in Today’s South Africa Feel Embattled

By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post

Since the Gaza war began last year, South African Jews feel like they are cats on a hot tin roof.

While South African Jews have risen to prominence and helped build the country, there is a deep-seated fear of the current government and for the community’s safety, because for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the Palestine issue is a deeply felt ideological cause.

South African public opinion is vehemently pro-Palestinian. This was already the case before the current war, and since then, tensions have only increased. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, South Africa’s International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor held high-level discussions with senior members of Hamas, a move that was met with criticism.

South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein condemned the government at a pro-Israel rally. After Pandor’s diplomatic outreach to Hamas, Goldstein changed the Prayer for the Republic of South Africa, said regularly at congregations across the country, from asking God to protect “the president and the deputy president all members of the government,” to asking for protection for “all the people of this country,” a measure, he wrote in a letter to South African rabbis, that was taken in “extreme situations, for government violations of morality so grotesque they undermine the integrity of praying.”

To the estimated 60,000 South African Jews, their government appears to have shown little empathy for the Jewish victims of terror. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the umbrella organization that represents the country’s Jewish community, has noted a sharp increase in antisemitism.

Since then, the South African government, with broad popular support, has accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). For many Jewish groups in the country, the decision to side against Israel was seen as evidence of antisemitism.

Now, the city of Johannesburg plans to rename the road on which the American consulate is located after Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. It was proposed by a former mayor, Thapelo Amad. Sandton Drive, its current name, is a central artery in Johannesburg, and Sandton, the neighbourhood in which the road is located, is home to many of South Africa’s Jews. The area is also home to at least four synagogues among other Jewish institutions.

Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who is now 80 years old, gained infamy in 1969 when she was part of a group who hijacked a Trans World Airlines flight on a journey from Rome to Tel Aviv, Israel. She became known as the first woman to hijack a plane.

 “We stand with Hamas, Hamas stands with us, together we are Palestine and Palestine will be free,” Amad posted online. “With our souls, with our blood, we will conquer Al Aqsa.” 

All of this is now reshaping how many South African Jews view themselves, their place in the country and their relationships with their fellow citizens. It is in this crucible that they are now forced to reconcile their own complex history in South Africa with the reality of a country whose national identity is increasingly built in opposition to a foreign country, Israel, that they hold dear.

Indeed, most Jewish institutions in South Africa today are oriented toward Israel. Herzlia, the primary Jewish school in Cape Town, is named after Theodor Herzl, and its motto (“Im Tirtzu”) is based on the famous Zionist line about willing Israel into existence.

The school has been the center of controversy, as the hard-left Economic Freedom Fighters political party last year called for it to be deregistered with the government, a move that would cause it to lose funding, for being too “pro-Israel.” Among other issues, the party cited the high number of Herzlia graduates who move to Israel and join the Israeli military. The exact number of Herzlia alumni who do so is unclear, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a highly contentious topic.

The rhetoric reached a boiling point last December, when a speaker at a large pro-Palestine rally in Cape Town targeted Herzlia directly, saying, “We know where the murderers come from -- they come from Herzlia, here in Cape Town.” After the rally, the foreign ministry said it would investigate if any citizens were serving in the Israeli military and arrest any that had. These events were used by Jewish authorities as evidence of their threatened status in South Africa.

The South African Jewish community traces its lineage almost exclusively to the Lithuanian Jews who fled Europe before and during the Holocaust. They arrived in a country where they were greeted with skepticism. There were undeniable pockets of support for Nazism among some political parties at the time.

When the Afrikaner-led National Party took power in 1948, however, it didn’t elevate these views into the political discourse. Instead, the party focused on creating the apartheid system of minority rule and gaining the full support of all white citizens, including Jews.

Jews were significantly over-represented in the struggle against apartheid, with many in the ANC, but most lived with it. Not until 1985 did Jewish community leaders condemn it outright. As Cyril Harris, chief rabbi from 1987 to 2004, later told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given.”

Many South African Jews today, though, fear that the country may fall into economic ruin. Israel has always been viewed as an exit plan thanks to its Law of Return, which grants them automatic Israeli citizenship.