Pozzwood Meltdown

Got to the party late yesterday and missed the real action. Patriot Prayer, the right-wing provocateur outfit who prompted yesterday's day of rage, was gone before I got there. As is typical, after the Patriots had a brief demonstration under heavy police protection they dispersed.

Progressive protesters then turn their attention to harassing police, journalists and anyone who looks like they don't belong. Various flakes and outright crazies are drawn to the protests. Every now and then you'll find them squaring off against each other:



Here they are massing at the riverfront and then heading back into downtown to harass the cops and confound commuters. Note the tail-gate twerkers in their U-Haul offering "free vegan milkshakes"--I assume the concrete and lime antifa were adding to their "milkshake" bombs is vegan:

Friday's Fable

Revival

this is a series: previously

Whitist Apologia
by Janae Acharya-Ramirez She-Her Cohen*
New York Times, July 6, 2042

Every high school freshman knows the history of the minstrel show in and its role in maintaining white supremacy. Thus the inherent problemicity in its recent resurrection, in parody of the original, as the "white show", replacing black stereotypes of the slave and Jim Crow eras with white stereotypes from our recent past in white supremacist America.

These shows have become so popular they're the main feature of virtually every "tent show" in the North American Consumer Region. The revival of that broader form, from which the new white minstrelsy was born, presents its own inherent problemicity matrix, coming as it does from the era of white supremacy.

Any representation of that dark period's norms, attitudes and mores runs the risk of normalizing them.
This was demonstrated on these pages brilliantly last week by Harvard Professor Tanyika Balder-Dash Bhe-Bher** in bher essay "The Only Good Whitism...". The shows are history, and any history of oppression without context amounts to the re-introduction of narrative pathogens. Her recommendations for placing Office of Civility and Acceptance regulators with every show is a good start.

Interestingly enough, the revival of the tent show derives in large part from the same necessity that created the original: summertime heat made indoor entertainment unbearable in the hottest months of summer before the development of air conditioning.
Now it's the power grid crisis and electricity rationing driving people out of sweltering micro-apartments and public spaces--and into a cultural and legal limbo.

Licensed under arcane laws regulating "tent shows, circuses and carnivals" as old as the original shows, the productions operate entirely outside of Department of Inclusion regulatory purview. It might come as a shock to the average person, but the tent shows can virtually say or present whatever they want, without fear of penalty.

You might ask--and virtually all of us have attended or seen one of the shows--what problem one could have with shows portraying supremacist era whites in mocking caricature.

I contacted Michael Gruden-Silver He-Him, producer of "seven or eight" shows to ask if the shows are guilty of normalization.

"I see our role as instructional and fun at the same time. I categorically reject the shows normalize whiteness or whitism. I fail to see how ridicule is somehow normalization. We've never sought to present whites or whitism in a positive light."

He's also quick to point out a fundamental difference between the new shows, in which white performers portray whites, and the old shows, in which white performers in blackface portrayed blacks.

"We realized it would be degrading for a non-white to wear whiteface in any context." He also rejected the charge that whiteface in this context is a "violent enhancement of ghostly whiteness" in the words of the Reverend Foremost Chastity Coates Bhe-Bher.
"Our performers wear whiteface only to complete the parody." He says.

Despite their portrayal as dishonest, boorish or ignorant, the stock repertoire of comic foils--such as the "yuppie", the "bro", the "redneck"--become cultural figures of familiarity; and familiarity breeds not contempt but a measure of fondness. We can't help it. The characters make us laugh. We chuckle and shake our head as if at the antics of an eccentric relative, and before we know it we've humanized whitism.

A recent study out of Yale examined the content of the four most popular shows over the last two years and found the same pattern affecting all, one of gradual softening of the shows' portrayal of whites. All began with material duly and unambiguously contemptuous in its portrayal of historical whites; all ended the period with material, while still presenting them as the comic foil, portrayed them in a somewhat more sympathetic light.

It gets worse than that. Shows looking to get an edge on their competitors have taken to introducing innocuous caricatures, such as "the cowboy", or "the sailor". Worse still, the shows offering these characters seem to be finding success. Overtly positive characters can't be far away. Rumor has it one show is working on a character called "the astronaut".

Certainly the content of the shows will eventually be brought under control; even the producers seem resigned to that. But is control of content enough? Is content really the problem? Some forms are inherently exclusionary.

The white minstrelsy, like the black minstrelsy, is at its core caricature.In engaging in caricature we validate the practice of caricature. Even the appropriately negative portrayals of whites have this unfortunate effect: without contextual guidance, people will assume there's some validity to other caricatures, such as those of blacks in the old minstrelsy. The dynamic is at work in the new minstrelsy as in the old: the audience believes it is laughing at something familiar.

It isn't merely a question of content. Content is the least of it. The forms of the pre-liberation past, being products of it, are the problem, as evidenced by the white show's progress. Hewing to all norms of justice inclusion, they nonetheless have the effect of bowdlerizing the past, of minimizing non-white suffering and even inducing nostalgia. Reversing the content of minstrelsy makes it no less minstrelsy. Existing entirely as a reference to that original transgression, it revives it.

Our experience with the new minstrelsy has revived Professor Balder-Dash's call for "an end to satire as we know it". I haven't given up the hope satire, and comedy generally, can be saved, despite their inherent power dynamic. But we don't need to curtail it until we figure out what's going on. The white show has demonstrated that.

The good news is the shows are no longer escaping notice. Pastor Coates assures me bhe's planning a national action soon to protest their continuing operation outside of regulatory scrutiny.

to be continued

*Regarding the proper placement of the colloquially named "pronounerific", denoting gender identity, introduced in the early twenties and standard by the time of our story, appearing here as "She-Her": it follows the surname, unless the surname is preceded by a hyphenated pair of surnames, in which case the--properly named--proidentitatem follows the hyphenation and precedes the surname [Ed. from the future]

**"Bhe-Bher": specifically a black "She-Her" [Ed. from the future]

Livestreaming the Democratic Debate

Providing a little color commentary for the debate.

Oregay

From fellow Portlander Tony

This story is one hundred percent true.

Some bullshit ass bar on the Oregon Coast. Seaside, if it really matters. June 13th at 12:06am if ya wanna get technical about it.

He looked like an average rural white kid. Fit. Handsome. Well mannered at first.

He was wearing the standard garb you’d expect from a kid that lives in Corpus Christie, Texas. Trucker hat. Flannel shirt.

After a few drinks, he says he’s a firefighter. We talk. He says he has a great life. He’s not yet 30. He seems like the polar opposite of the urban beta male pack that the cities are so full of these days.

I tell him, “Hey, bro, this next shot’s for you. You’re the future of America.”

I really fucking hope I was wrong about that.

After the shot, he makes an Italian joke, assuming that I am Italian. Everyone named Tony MUST be Italian, you know? I jokingly tell him I’d rather be a Somalian than an Italian. At this, he tells me that “people are just people, and the world is changing. We should “WELCOME AFRICAN MIGRANTS WITH OPEN ARMS.” Whoa. Where is this coming from?

I thought he was a blue collar, working class, TEXAS kinda guy.

After that little statement, I tell him 3/5s of a nigger joke, just to see if he’s serious or not

Like an ugly woman who knows you had lunch with her for the very last time, he gets kinda serious.

He gets to punching me. In the ribs. The chest. What he thinks are the weak spots. Sort of how an old buddy would punch you. Expect he wasn’t an old buddy

He tells me he’s half Irish, half Mexican. Lucky me. How he loves to fight. How crazy he gets when he drinks. How he’s pretty much a bad ass. Laying it on thick.

He keeps punching me at the bar, where we’re both seated. I’m waxing stoic, and he keeps trying to punch me harder. Kind of joking, but kind of not. Testing me.

I say, “Hey. You ever been inside a boxing gym?”

He says “No.”

This dude is almost 15 years younger than my old out of shape ass.

I tell him, “Let’s arm wrestle.”

Right about then, I swear on my honor, he started calling me a bully.

Started saying it loud.

Asking for help.

Looking like a mommas boy who’s trying to hide behind his mother’s apron strings.

He showed me his true colors.

This person (I won’t call him a man) started calling out for help. Proclaiming me a bully. Loudly. Playing the victim. Sounding like a bitch ass south east Portland faggot.

Except he was a firefighter from Corpus Christie, Texas, named Alejandro. (goes by AJ.)

The barkeep came over.

He told her I was a threat.

I was told to leave. 

I was wrong about the future of America.

Justice is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

One man's radicalization is another man's rehabilitation.

The New York Times' recent piece on rehabilitated white nationalist Caleb Cain breathlessly describes his foray into right wing YouTube as if he was a spellbound zombie conveyed along by mysterious algorithms

These interviews and data points form a picture of a disillusioned young man, an internet-savvy group of right-wing reactionaries and a powerful algorithm that learns to connect the two. It suggests that YouTube may have played a role in steering Mr. Cain, and other young men like him, toward the far-right fringes 

But there is cause for hope, according to the Times

It also suggests that, in time, YouTube is capable of steering them in very different directions.

The article goes on to describe Cain's deprogramming by an internet-savvy group of left-wing ideologues manipulating powerful algorithms. Justice doesn't allow for self-awareness.

Mr. Cain also found videos by Natalie Wynn, a former academic philosopher who goes by the name ContraPoints. Ms. Wynn wore elaborate costumes and did drag-style performances in which she explained why Western culture wasn’t under attack from immigrants, or why race was a social construct... 

Ms. Wynn and Mr. Bonnell are part of a new group of YouTubers who are trying to build a counterweight to YouTube’s far-right flank. This group calls itself BreadTube, a reference to the left-wing anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s 1892 book, “The Conquest of Bread.” It also includes people like Oliver Thorn, a British philosopher who hosts the channel PhilosophyTube, where he posts videos about topics like transphobia, racism and Marxist economics.  

The core of BreadTube’s strategy is a kind of algorithmic hijacking. By talking about many of the same topics that far-right creators do — and, in some cases, by responding directly to their videos — left-wing YouTubers are able to get their videos recommended to the same audience.

Good luck with that, as they say.

The ACLU and its media allies are trying to take YouTube over entirely from its creators, from its audience, from YouTube. They've lost the platform, and, probably related, the platform has become the last haven of genuine political discourse. It's as if, in banning nationalist dissent everywhere else, they herded it onto YouTube; chasing it off of YouTube leaves it with no effective platform, shunted into little narrative reservations where no civilized person might be troubled by its savagery.

Not only does the left's argument not inspire, its customary advantages don't work on a free YouTube. It is (or was) democratic, it empowers the common man, costing virtually nothing to get started; it's global and grassroots at the same time. An unfettered YouTube is everything the left claims to want, and they want nothing to do with it.

Hate in the Afternoon

Talking about the status of the Purge and its next steps.

Censorship to Continue Until Morale Improves

Censorship is the eighth dirty word. The first seven are okay now, actually. Censorship is the last dirty word. Can't say it.
YouTube channel Black Pigeon Speaks was taken down without explanation this morning

The reason we know; the only curious thing is the timing. The subject of his last video was censorship and I think I'm seeing a trend.

BPS was meticulous in avoiding terms of service violations, but was certainly slated for removal at the first opportunity--but what determines that in YouTube's estimation? What holds them back in the first place from wholesale banning? Having demonstrated they won't explain themselves and no one will force them to, what restrains them?

Going nuclear in a day on the right might prompt a response, finally, from somewhere in the government or society. Congress taking up the anti-trust issue must factor in. But be certain, if things get really bad for the Narrative, they'll probably drop the big one. Everything they've done this far shows their commitment to censorship of any rightist or populist dissent, even over profit.

How much autonomy is YouTube allowed? The erratic nature of its censorship--waiting a day to purge Crowder and then abjectly apologizing, for instance--indicate Google is applying all the pressure (not community outrage), and intervening at points when CEO Susan Wojkiki isn't being diligent enough. Thus the tearful apology.

Pozzwood Tonight

Money and the Reformation

In 1971 German author Dieter Forte had some international success with a play, Martin Luther and Thomas Munzer, or the Introduction of Bookkeeping, portraying the Reformation as a battle between the people and capital, with unfortunate consequences. Munzer is the Reformation preacher who split from Luther, leading radical reformers in attacking the feudal system. He was executed for his role in the disastrous German Peasant's War.

Medieval banking magnate Jacob Fugger lectures Luther's protector, the Duke of Saxony:

Do you know we have over one hundred church holidays a year? Over a hundred, my dear prince. Church masses, pilgrimages, I don't know what. The people eat and drink themselves full and don't give a thought to work... And then these fast days! I'm always having to petition for new exceptions for my workers. A worker should work and not fast! This has finally got to be regulated. Daily work should be sanctified. People should thank God that they can work at all. They can receive their reward in heaven. Then they won't need so much on earth, and we shall finally have cheaper labor costs. So much for your Luther.

Pagan religious observations provided the peasantry with relief from toil before there was such a thing as "days off". The Church's maintenance of them created an authority interfering with exploitation of labor where before there had been only custom.

It long ago become a cliche to find capitalism's very roots in Protestantism. But we are now in Protestantism's dotage, its optimism gone, its authority gone--done in by its own materialism, I say.
 Those days once consecrated to rest are now dedicated to consumption--and the work to pay for it. Protestantism probably made inevitable religious holidays' present role--you no longer sacrifice, to propitiate God, but indulge, to assist the economy. An economy based on indulgence--is a funny thing to find at the end of a road that began with a revolt against indulgences.

Money Changes Everything

Every historical movement since the invention of money has had a strong if not dominant economic component. Feminism in the pre-hysteria United States was largely about drawing women out of the home and into the labor force--labor arbitrage.

Whether economic incentive is a necessary or a sufficient cause of the disease feminism is now doesn't matter. It's hard to imagine getting to where we are without it--expanding the labor pool for the world's greatest economy is how we funded the demise of the family. America fuck yeah.

The patriarchy, despite its misogyny and lack of representation, kicked it all off with technological innovation: maintaining the home required less labor with progress generally and specifically in the introduction of modern appliances such as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. The initial instrument of women's liberation was the washing machine.

There is a racist classic: "if we'd known you'd be this much trouble, we'd have picked the cotton ourselves". Likewise, maybe we shouldn't have been so industriously helpful to women in their former misery.

Then comes the pill, of course. Its benefit to the economy has been well documented--and celebrated, here in the new New Republic

Legal access to the pill before women turned 21 both increased how many women were in the labor force as well as how much they actually worked. Access to the pill reduced the likelihood that a woman would have a baby before the age of 22 by 14 percent. That, in turn, increased young women’s labor force participation by 7 percent. The women who first had legal access to the pill because of their states’ laws worked 650 more hours than their peers who only got it later... 

Between 1972 and the early 1990s, the share of women in their prime working age who were in the workforce rose from 72 percent to nearly 84 percent. Had that not happened, the economy would have been about 11 percent smaller in 2012...

This leaves out the perceived economic incentive of legal abortion, which Chelsea Clinton recently blurted out to some controversy. I won't try to make myself an expert on the subject: I'll assume there's mainstream consensus it benefits the economy by limiting labor turnover.

But taking the long view there's an economic argument against the Pill--if you take out the feminism: it's dysgenic. It degrades your human capital. Not just the quality of available labor, but that of the population is degraded, and society has to absorb the cost of the Pill effecting higher levels of dysfunction.
Of course.
But this cold calculation chills people who cheer the economic benefits of a childless society. For whom the nation with more children is on the wrong side of the "fertility differential".

I don't think it's the economists that are that short-sighted. It is, or has become, the feminism now, stupid. Increasingly, like "diversity", the cost feminism will extract from the economy will become obvious and unmentionable.

It likely isn't quantified, or allowed to be quantified at this point, but the economic returns to business from the great migration of women out of the home must be diminishing now. All those jobs where women are competitive with men have long been open to them and their industries have taken advantage of the expanded labor market--now, compelled by feminism, the same businesses are expected to produce equal representation everywhere, regardless of how paltry the pool of available and qualified female labor.

Feminism has made a lot of money for the economy. Now it wants that money back, with interest, forever.

Living on Tanja Time

Talking with our German friend Tanja.

Subscribe to my channel before it's too late.

The Purge's Progress; Hell Hath No Fury Like a Sissy Scorned

You're never going to believe, grandchildren, what it was like under the Tyranny of the Twink.

The homosexual bullies of the present test my sympathy for the bullied homosexuals of the past. As well they should. It's a tired trope to say the past explains the present--and questionable. More often we should look to the present to explain the past.

Our understanding of the past is malleable and obscure, mediated through History. The present is undeniable, in your face. The present is to the past as reality is to its representation.

The present is always and everywhere exposing various misconceptions failing the "test of time"--except where political correctness won't let it happen. The consequences of this suppression are disastrous and getting worse.

"Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraints imposed upon her by the laws of man."
--Alexis de Toqueville

Consider our experience with race relations, where--though no one ever says it--the misbehavior of blacks in the present explains the segregation and oppression of the past. Indeed, it creates a natural and justified longing for it. That each individual white endures a sort of psychological torture by propaganda suppressing this--as our suicide rates climb--is a great crime.

Feminism is, unfortunately, barely getting started on this same arc and is sure--because it's women--to be even less rational the farther we get into their grim enterprise dedicated to making of women inferior men.

Like civil rights and desegregation, gay liberation likewise will reveal the evils of the past weren't irrational expressions of Hate (global evil spirit in Diversity theology) but social and evolutionary adaptations to the problem of homosexuality.

Among those problems is the tendency for homosexuals to form elite subcultures and capture organizations or institutions--like the Catholic Church. Our capture now by gay culture looks very much this historic precedent on a grand, chaotic scale.

This rant was prompted of course by the "Voxadpocalypse". The limp wrist of justice found even me, though it only copped a feel.

A YouTube livestream video from last October was flagged, reviewed and taken down

 

No strike was applied, but the letter ends with the strong suggestion I "review" my videos to avoid getting the boot.
So I just took a scorched earth approach, taking all but the last couple of videos private. The longer your trace of videos the more raw material laid out for the voluntary auxiliary thought police to mine and flag. But You Tube has a plan apparently, that goes all the way down to tiny channels like mine (270 or so subscribers).

We're all supposed to believe this is a result of outrage over Carlos Maza's suffering and YouTube's initial refusal to take down Steven Crowder's channel, but it's yet another case of a platform unleashing a host of restrictions on a questionable pretext. Usually somebody being "bullied" online. The left's obsession with "bullying", its use as a means to power (first come the charges of sexual harassment/racism/bullying, then the remedies, which involve transfer of power, position, wealth) demonstrates the status of gays within it, just as its obsession with sexual harassment demonstrates the status of women there.

No, I think if this is due to a single sissy, he's perched higher up than Carlos Maza.

You Tube is said to be just getting under way in this latest round of repression. After they've eliminated as many right-wing accounts as they can without doing more damage to the platform than they want the remaining few will be severely limited, banned from monetization and recommendations.

And, completely coincidental to this totally unplanned escalation of the purge, comes a piece in the New York Times about a white guy "drawn" from innocuous self-help videos into the "rabbit hole" of alt right You Tube via the site's AI-derived recommendations.

AI must be calibrated to pc premises eventually; the powers-that-be eye the technology warily, greedily. Objectivity has always been their enemy; automated objectivity is a nightmare for them. It's a nightmare for us if they get control of it.

But we're just another sissy's complaint away from the next phase of their plan, I imagine, helpfully outlined in the New York Times article above.

A Purge's Progress

"If you are reading this I'm already dead..." 

Nick Monroe on being banned from Twitter for the Orwellian offense of "ban evasion":

You’re reading this because I’m gone now. Twitter permanently banned me for a “ban evasion” lasting three-and-a-half years.

 They say my account – which amassed almost 50,000 followers and has appeared on numerous news websites – is a “ban evader”. This means I had an old account which was banned, so they banned my new account, too.

Twitter: "If you attempt to evade a permanent suspension by creating new accounts, we will suspend your new accounts."

I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record.

Banning people from the platform is inconsistent with allowing fictional personas in the first place. Whatever the case, Twitter doesn't believe in redemption.
Monroe is apologetic about the old account

Being banned on Twitter is a lot like participating in both the court of public opinion and a funeral at the same time. Both my followers and detractors are judging my body of work and all my actions in the wake of the ban. I wasn’t always the person I am today, but who I am was best described in my interview with Michael Malice.
Roughly five years ago, I was ‘PressFartToContinue’ (PFTC).

It's all somber tones and puerile names in the Current Year. Future man won't know what to make of it.

I made a YouTube account by that name when I was 17-years-old. It was meant to be a fan channel of ‘PressHeartToContinue’.

I had no idea what I was doing, or how my actions would come to impact me years later. I, like just about everyone else in the world, have grown since I was 17. And I know who I am today. I’m the independent Twitter journalist who spoke out against online censorship before I too was banned.

And that last part is what this is really all about. Twitter is not scandalized by the thought of enemy of humanity PressFartToContinue evading justice. Ironically, it's the good behavior of Monroe's later account, and its effectiveness as a critique that inspires this action. The ruse is laughable.

Monroe was actually quite disciplined and broke no pc rules--the very model of how to get past the censors, if they were even faking an unbiased stance.

A little too on that adorable nose.
Twitter earlier banned an AOC parody account for being "misleading" despite the author including the word "parody" in the title and bio. The author was then perma-suspended for having a personal account as well, which isn't actually forbidden.

"No, really, Mr. Hanson, my intention was just to bring shame upon her and her family..."
Meanwhile Dateline NBC still hasn't come around for Gawker's Josh Bernstein for stalking a 14 year-old girl. One thing I didn't know about the Soph saga is the police were actually called in after his hit-piece:

According to the local Kron4 new station, they published a piece on May 17th, 2019 indicating that police are investigating Soph based on complaints made by those at her school, who have begun shunning the teenager and claiming that what she stated in her “Be Not Afraid” video was “disgusting”. The video was taken down by YouTube shortly after the Buzzfeed article was published...

The Daily Beast punches up at a barely-employed sports blogger:

On May 22, a Donald Trump superfan and occasional sports blogger from the Bronx named Shawn Brooks posted a video clip of Nancy Pelosi on his personal Facebook page. The clip showed Pelosi at her most excitable, stammering during a press conference as she voiced frustration over an abortive infrastructure meeting with the president. Brooks’ commentary on the video was succinct: “Is Pelosi drunk?” 

Thirteen minutes later, a Facebook official told The Daily Beast, Brooks posted a very different Pelosi video to a Facebook page called Politics WatchDog—one of a series of hyperpartisan news operations Brooks runs (with help, he claims). This clip had been altered to slow Pelosi down without lowering the pitch of her voice. The effect was to make it sound as though the Speaker of the House was slurring her words drunkenly while criticizing Donald Trump. 

Fifteen minutes after that, the same doctored video appeared on a second Facebook page Brooks manages, AllNews 24/7. This clip was identical to the Politics WatchDog video on every way, except that it didn’t carry the Politics WatchDog branding that was superimposed over the earlier video. Whoever posted it had access to the director’s cut. On both pages the clip was accompanied by the exact same dispassionate, newsy prose: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Trump walking out infrastructure meeting: ‘It was very, very, very strange.’”

At the same time, doctoring that video was wrong. I'll chalk it up to the fact Brooks is a black guy. His defenders sure seem fixated on that.

Again this is all about trying to prevent a Trump victory in 2020. But it's also a global trend. Angela Merkel's chosen successor has proposed censoring dissidents ahead of elections:

Merkel's successor sparks freedom of speech uproarPicture: Die WeltSofia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's favoured successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer sparked outrage on social media on Tuesday with an apparent call for limits to free speech around elections, AFP reported. 

The CDU chief's comment came after her party and its centre-left coalition partner SPD suffered their worst scores in Sunday's European election -- a result partly blamed on the fact that some 70 YouTube stars had urged Germans not to vote for either party.

Addressing the issue on Monday night, Kramp-Karrenbauer said if 70 newspaper editors had called to boycott parties ahead of an election, that would be classed "clearly as propaganda". 

"The question is... what are rules from the analogue realm and which rules should apply to the digital realm?

"I'll tackle this discussion quite aggressively," said Kramp-Karrenbauer, or AKK as she is dubbed in Germany.

The pace quickens.

Interview with the German

Subscribe to my channel.

German social democracy is in crisis: 

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) went into last week’s European elections with some bold, albeit vague campaign slogans: “Come together and make Europe strong” was one. “Europe is the answer” was another. Given the party’s humiliating performance, taking in a new historic low of just over 15 percent, one has to wonder whether they were asking the right questions.

The Social Democrats lean hard on “more Europe” as the solution to Germany’s problems, and are far more likely to praise French president Emmanuel Macron than defend the leader of their British sister party, Jeremy Corbyn. They banked on selling themselves as a stable, mildly progressive bulwark against creeping right-wing populism but seem to have lost this role to the Greens, who broke 20 percent in a nationwide election for the first time...

Catastrophic as the election may have been, it was anything but unexpected. The Social Democrats have been lumbering from one defeat to the next for nearly two decades, their toxic brand of what Oliver Nachtwey calls “politics without politics” costing them hundreds of thousands of members and millions of voters. The European elections were merely the latest confirmation of a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral for what was once the proudest, strongest socialist party on earth...

On paper, the party’s campaign talking points were practically indistinguishable from their competitors. So why did the Greens do so well while the SPD crashed and burned?

At the risk of oversimplifying things, the SPD in 2019 has a serious credibility problem. The Social Democrats have spent nine of the last fourteen years carrying water for Angela Merkel’s grand coalition in Berlin, burning through eight different leaders in the process. It seems whoever dares take up the mantle, whether party stalwart Sigmar Gabriel or the most recent disappointment Martin Schulz, puts their entire political career at risk. What’s left of the SPD’s base is sick and tired of the coalition, and anyone who associates themselves with it soon becomes a political liability to be disposed of after the next electoral defeat and superficial attempt at rebooting the party.

The Green Party and "far right" Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) are drawing off the SPD's refugees, but if the boldface (added) below is true, they are anything but populist:

The reasons behind the Greens’ appeal are fairly evident, as the Fridays for Future protests dominated German headlines in the months leading up to the elections and climate change became a key issue for many voters. The Greens seem to offer a modern, progressive answer to climate change and tap into the cultural attitudes of urban and middle-class milieus. Unburdened by historical ties to labor unions or other working-class organizations, they can deftly navigate between groups and more authentically embody liberal Europeanism than their stale Social Democratic counterparts. More importantly, unlike the SPD they’ve been in the opposition throughout Merkel’s reign and can plausibly claim to represent a breath of fresh air. For the first time in their history, they may have a real shot at the chancellorship in 2021.

There are practical reasons for a coalition of Greens and nationalists that will unfortunately never happen, as borders and population control are the greenest policies of all. Of course, that's if you take the Greens at their word. As for the nationalists, everybody takes them at their word, which I think is telling of the justice of their cause.

The SPD's coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Union, is no longer led by the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel and her chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is already under fire for proposing speech restrictions ahead of elections and arousing suspicions of incompetence:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has dismissed a report that she believes her successor as CDU party leader is not up to the job. 

The claim, which she called nonsense, was made by two unidentified officials in a Bloomberg article on Tuesday. 

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer will take over as leader of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) next year. 

She has been criticised in recent days for suggesting a debate on rules for how "opinion is manufactured" online. 

The suggestion was prompted by a viral YouTube video, in which prominent vlogger Rezo accused the government of failing to tackle climate change and income inequality. Dozens of other YouTubers subsequently called on German voters to withhold their votes for the CDU and their coalition partners, the Social Democrats.

Populist nationalism is on the rise as elsewhere in Europe, but with much discontent going over to the far left Green Party I suspect the mainstream parties will align with them expressly to deny the AfD any role in a governing coalition.

Chemnitz and the AfD's rise:

Once a model socialist town named Karl Marx City, Chemnitz in the east German state of Saxony has witnessed dramatic political changes over the years.

In this edition of Insiders: Unreported Europe Ayman Oghanna visits the city which once fought for the fall of a totalitarian communist regime but is now fast becoming the symbol of Germany’s newly assertive far right, once again exposing the country’s east-west divide.

It started in August 2018 when a German man was stabbed to death, allegedly during a brawl with two refugees from Iraq and Syria. What followed, was a week of angry anti-immigrant protests that saw neo-Nazis, far-right groups and thousands of ordinary citizens marching together in Chemnitz against migration.

The protests stand as a watershed moment amongst the outpouring of anti-immigrant hatred that has swelled as Germany’s far-right grows bolder and stronger, following the 2015 migrant crisis.
At the heart of Germany’s newly assertive far right is the AfD, Alternative for Germany, a populist anti-immigrant party.

Whilst the AfD has only been around for six years, it has already achieved stunning success, becoming the third largest party in the Bundestag.

All in keeping with my pet theory that the right place to be, it turns out, was on the commie side of the Iron Curtain. These places have not been led along the primrose path to destruction and have some nerve left it seems.

Raumpatrouille Orion, the "German Star Trek":