Full transcript
ЗАДЕРЖАНИЯ
0:00Today’s main story is the far-right AfD party’s election victory in Germany.
0:04Stay tuned—there’s plenty to unpack.
0:07But before we get into German politics, a few words about our own:
0:10six Yabloko candidates were detained
0:13in Yekaterinburg in a single day.
0:16Those detained include both single-member district candidates
0:19for the State Duma and candidates for the Yekaterinburg City Duma.
0:22They are all being charged with the same administrative
0:25offense—displaying extremist symbols—which carries
0:27a 12-month ban on running in elections.
0:31It is an astonishingly absurd story, of course.
0:35Two weeks before the election, someone suddenly remembered
0:37that Yabloko candidates were still in the race
0:40in one of Russia’s most liberal cities.
0:42They had a decent chance there even in normal times,
0:46and right now it is hard to see what could have stopped them.
0:49And so, two days before the deadline for removing candidates from the ballot,
0:52cases are suddenly fabricated against them out of nowhere.
0:56Even with all the state’s resources, it is not entirely clear
0:59how the courts will manage to process them in time.
1:01First they have to get through the trial court, then the appeal,
1:03and then actually yank the candidates off the ballot.
1:06Once again, we are reminded that elections in Russia
1:09are handled by one very particular agency.
1:11Its operatives understand nothing about electoral procedure,
1:14not even at the level of the relevant laws,
1:17and have apparently only just realized whom election commissions
1:19across the country had registered as candidates.
1:21So once again, instead of any kind of plan or deliberate action,
1:26what we are seeing is panic of the most ludicrous kind.
1:29Before we get to the main video, first,
1:31a word about my website, iditena.org
1:34Alongside my profiles of the candidates,
1:36I have put together instructions on how to vote if you live away from your registered address.
1:40You simply click the button, and it takes you straight
1:42to the right page on the federal government’s service portal.
1:45Just make sure you do it by the 14th, or you won’t be able to vote.
1:50One more announcement for today. Mediazona recently
1:53lost all ability to accept donations from Russia.
1:58The outlet lost 1,500 subscribers overnight,
2:02a major blow to an independent media organization.
2:06So if you have a foreign bank card and would like to support an outlet
2:10that covers the plight of political prisoners and keeps count of those killed in the war,
2:14please set up a recurring donation. I have left the link in the description.
2:19!A Saxon Sensation!
САКСОНИЯ-АНХАЛЬТ
2:23So, the bad news is that fascists have won an election in Germany.
2:29Now that I have your attention, let me clarify:
2:32not across Germany, but in a state election in a single f ederal state;
2:36and not quite fascists, just the far right with an extra edge.
2:39Still, Germany really is in an uproar.
2:42Alternative for Germany, or the AfD, known for its hostility to migrants
2:45and fondness for Vladimir Putin, came a convincing first
2:50in the election to the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament.
2:52For the past decade, every other German political force has refused to work with the AfD
2:57and done everything possible to keep it from power.
3:01Now it is taking power on its own.
3:04With a record turnout of 77.8%, the AfD won almost 43.8% of the vote
3:12and will take 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament.
3:16The Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s current governing party
3:20and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s political home,
3:22meanwhile lost half its support.
3:24The AfD can now form the state government.
3:27It would be the first far-right government in a German state
3:30since the end of the Nazi regime.
3:33It is easy to see why the results of this German state election
3:36are being discussed so intensely.
3:38The AfD, particularly its eastern German wing, really is a party
3:42of right-wing extremists with whom even Marine Le Pen wants nothing to do.
3:47The French right, like the Italian right,
3:50keeps its distance from the AfD at the European level.
3:54Alongside its hostility to migration and minorities
3:57and its talk of traditional values, the AfD platform explicitly calls
4:00for leaving the EU and the Schengen Area,
4:02embraces anti-globalism and—of particular importance to us—advocates
4:06reconciliation and cooperation with Putin.
4:09The AfD opposes aid to Ukraine, favors lifting sanctions,
4:12and wants Crimea and Donbas recognized as Russian territory.
4:16AfD politicians regularly travel to Russia and mingle
4:19with our own quasi-fascists, such as Alexander Dugin.
4:21The party’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, meanwhile,
4:24happily poses with a mug reading “Russian Army.”
4:28In other words, even by the standards of Europe’s
4:30political right, the AfD is unmistakably extremist.
4:33Its victory—especially one this crushing—has sent a genuine shock
4:36through Europe and the rest of the Western world.
4:39To discuss this election, we need to take a step back
4:42and look at the results of the most recent federal election.
4:46Look at the map.
4:47This is the first election in which former East Germany stands out
4:51so starkly—and precisely along its old borders, without a single exception.
4:54The whole of former East Germany is blue.
4:56Every part of it voted differently from former West Germany,
4:59and Alternative for Germany won everywhere there.
5:03That was not the case in 2021, when the AfD was already
5:06enjoying considerable support, or in any previous year.
5:10Never before had the electoral map directly reproduced
5:13the borders of divided Germany.
5:16When such stark geographic polarization emerges somewhere—when
5:20an exceptionally high turnout reveals two different political nations,
5:26with different values, expectations, and willingness
5:28to vote for radicals—that is already a serious political crisis.
5:34It means that the federal government formed after the election
5:38does not represent the will of an entire third of the country.
5:41That third voted for one set of politicians, while the others said:
5:45sorry, we have a firewall here. We will not cooperate
5:48with the fascists you elected over there in the east.
5:52They have their seats and can sit in parliament,
5:55but we will not let them into a coalition
5:57or give them any real power.
6:00This creates a fundamental divide
6:03and gives the eastern states reason to radicalize still further.
6:08But Saxony-Anhalt is a case apart even by eastern German standards.
6:13It is a very rural state in central Germany.
6:17Neighboring Saxony has Leipzig and Dresden,
6:20two major cities and economic centers.
6:22Saxony-Anhalt has no major cities at all.
6:26And unlike neighboring Saxony, which borders Czechia and Poland
6:30and is therefore an important logistics and tourism hub,
6:33Saxony-Anhalt lies in the country’s interior.
6:36All the major roads either bypass the state or run along its edges.
6:41All of former East Germany lost status after reunification.
6:43All of former East Germany lost status after reunification.
6:48The German Democratic Republic was, objectively,
6:50the economic center of the entire Eastern Bloc in Europe.
6:54To Soviet citizens, East Germany looked practically capitalist:
6:58it was the richest, most developed, and most prosperous
7:01of all the foreign places they could conceivably visit.
7:04Its industry, science, and economy were
7:07as advanced as anything could be within the Eastern Bloc.
7:11And it was within that bloc that East Germany had a reason to exist.
7:15Of course, German reunification and a united Europe substantially improved
7:18the life of the average person from the former East Germany.
7:22People became wealthier and safer; the whole world opened up to them;
7:27and, importantly, they were no longer surrounded
7:29at every turn by Stasi informants.
7:32At the same time, however, it turned out that after the Eastern Bloc collapsed,
7:37much of former East Germany had become surplus to requirements in a united Europe.
7:42Factories closed, jobs disappeared,
7:46and young people rapidly moved away.
7:49That was the fate of the entire territory.
7:52Some cities later got lucky. Leipzig, for instance,
7:54managed to reinvent itself economically and return to growth.
7:58But there is little for Saxony-Anhalt even to reinvent.
8:02It is a poor, rural state that feels forgotten by everyone.
8:07Saxony-Anhalt has the highest unemployment rate
8:10of any German state—more than 8%.
8:12By every socioeconomic measure, it ranks either last
8:16or close to last in Germany.
8:19Its already small population of just 2 million is shrinking rapidly.
8:24This is a state with every reason to feel that it lost out from the changes.
8:28It has every reason to vote for radicals,
8:31especially since its radicals are a particular breed.
8:33Like all modern right-wing populist movements,
8:36Alternative for Germany is a remarkably motley conglomerate.
8:39Just as in Trump’s MAGA movement,
8:42Zionists coexist with antisemites and gays with homophobes.
8:46It contains many different forces bound by nothing
8:48but radicalism and rejection of the status quo.
8:53The AfD is also geographically divided.
8:56Its eastern wing, in particular, is a party
8:58of nostalgia for East Germany.
9:01East German flags hang at its conventions,
9:03and its members sing the East German anthem.
9:06There you have it—the ice cream tasted better back then.
9:09The AfD is anti-immigration, conservative, and isolationist everywhere.
9:15But in the east specifically, it is a party
9:18that says the entire past 35 years were a mistake.
9:21German reunification, the EU, and Schengen brought us nothing
9:24but Germans leaving, migrants arriving, rising crime, and economic collapse.
9:29That is not to say that the AfD advocates breaking Germany apart again and restoring East Germany.
9:34Such ideas remain extremely marginal even in the east.
9:38As with most populists, it is very difficult
9:41to understand what they actually want.
9:44They count on the votes of the discontented—people who
9:46feel like losers, abandoned and forgotten.
9:51No specifics are needed.
9:53Things simply have to be different from the way they are now,
9:56because the way they are now is plainly bad.
9:59We’ll continue our discussion of Germany after a brief commercial.
12:06Продолжим.
12:08Так вот, мы сегодня про Германию.
12:10At first glance, it is hard to explain why people in Saxony-Anhalt
12:14should be worried about migrants and open borders.
12:17There are virtually no migrants there:
12:19there is nothing for them there and nowhere for them to work.
12:22Nor does anyone travel to Saxony- Anhalt through those open borders.
12:26But the issue sells.
12:28Open borders and mass migration are integral parts
12:32of the liberal world order in which these people feel they have lost out.
12:37It is equally difficult to understand how people can worry about safety
12:40and recoil at rising crime while living in a rural state with no major cities,
12:44where violent crime is almost entirely absent even by German standards.
12:49In 2023, its homicide rate was 0.4 per 100,000 people.
12:53Seven people were murdered in a state of 2 million over the course of a year.
12:57That is a Scandinavian-level figure;
12:58very few places in the world have a lower one.
13:01What “lack of safety” can anyone talk about
13:04when the principal measure of violent crime is so negligible?
13:08How can anyone dream of “law and order”
13:11when both are plainly already in place?
13:14But the mechanism is the same. The past always feels safer.
13:19It is always easy to believe that crime is spiraling out of control
13:23in this chaotic present of open borders, a liberal state,
13:27and no watchful Stasi—even when the objective data says the opposite.
13:31There is a palpable sense that the locals have been shut out of the good times,
13:35that everyone has forgotten them, and that the central government inhabits a world of its own,
13:39disconnected from their interests.
13:42The feeling that they have no place in the new economy
13:44or the new globalized world makes it easy for them to buy
13:49into the idea that this entire new world is steeped in evil.
13:54Elections like this, with such a staggering populist victory,
13:59bring us to the point that politics and governance are by no means always about numbers.
14:05GDP per capita, incomes, and consumption
14:08can all be rising nicely on paper. Everything can look excellent on paper.
14:12And for all its problems, Germany does look excellent on paper:
14:15it is objectively one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
14:18The average resident of Saxony-Anhalt is also
14:20doing very well if you compare them not with a Bavarian,
14:25but with people in other countries.
14:27By the standards of 90% of the world’s population,
14:30a poor German is a very rich person.
14:31But if people feel that they have lost out,
14:34if the system has failed to co-opt them,
14:36if they feel unwanted and excluded from the political process,
14:42they will vote to turn back the clock.
14:45To “Make America Great Again.”
14:47To bring back the days when factories were running,
14:50young people stayed, and outsiders did not pour in.
14:54It does not even matter whether they lived through that mythic past,
14:58whether they have ever seen a migrant in person,
15:00or whether they have ever ventured beyond their village.
15:02What matters is that they want to escape a present
15:05they do not fit into—and that is a constituency made for any populist.
15:09А тут получились правые.
15:11!No Winners!
КАК ПОБЕДИТЬ ПОПУЛИСТА?
15:16Alongside Germany’s traditional parties and the AfD,
15:19the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance also entered the Saxony-Anhalt Landtag.
15:25Wagenknecht is a German politician from The Left who grew tired
15:28of fighting with her opponents inside the party and created one of her own.
15:33The maneuver did not work in the federal election:
15:35her party failed to clear the 5% threshold for entering the Bundestag.
15:38But it did not disappear, and it has now won five seats in the Landtag.
15:44Those five seats hold the balance of power in parliament:
15:47whichever side the Wagenknecht Alliance
15:49agrees to work with will have a majority.
15:53Unlike the other parties, the Alliance takes a more accommodating position toward the AfD.
15:57It has already said that it would oppose Ulrich Siegmund,
16:02the AfD’s current state leader, if he were nominated
16:05for minister-president: he is too objectionable a figure.
16:08Otherwise, though, it is willing to discuss all sorts of things
16:10with the AfD—perhaps another candidate, concessions, and so on.
16:15In other words, the firewall does not exist for the Alliance.
16:19For the other German parties, it is precisely an agreement never to enter a coalition with the AfD.
16:26The Wagenknecht Alliance is also a populist force,
16:30simply from the opposite flank. Economically, that is.
16:34But then, no one in Germany cares about economics in 2026.
16:38On political and cultural issues, the Alliance’s representatives are decidedly right-wing,
16:43while Wagenknecht herself is also fond of Russia.
16:48The Alliance could also simply refuse to join either side and abstain.
16:53After two rounds of voting, a candidate for minister-president no longer needs 50%,
16:58only more votes than anyone else.
17:01But the AfD and the anti-AfD alliance would then have exactly the same number of votes.
17:06Once again, no one could be elected.
17:09It is a perfect deadlock, and everything depends
17:11on the Wagenknecht Alliance.
17:14So it is unclear how this situation will actually be resolved.
17:18The new Landtag will convene for its first session before long,
17:24and all eyes will be on the Alliance’s decision.
17:28If parliament cannot elect a government, it can simply call a new election
17:32in the hope of producing a better outcome next time.
17:35That is a standard feature of a parliamentary system.
17:38The trouble is that the AfD might gain three more seats
17:40in a new election and finally take power.
17:44Unfortunately, developed democracies are not the nimblest of structures.
17:48Like any large institutions,
17:50they find it difficult to react quickly to new challenges.
17:53It is harder still when politics has been
17:57conservative to a fault for more than 30 years.
18:00Look at the results since 1990: the Christian Democrats
18:05and Social Democrats occasionally swap places.
18:09Both parties are hardwired into the German political system.
18:11The first is center-right and the second center-left.
18:15Both play strictly by the rules.
18:17The same people have voted for each of them for generations.
18:21Watching a traditional German election campaign is about
18:25as exciting as watching grass grow.
18:27Forceful, colorful populists who address voters in slogans
18:32do not fit into this system.
18:35And when the system realized that the AfD was growing rapidly,
18:37it could not rebuild itself or recognize that the country
18:40had many forgotten voters who needed to be addressed differently.
18:44Entire parts of the country had been pushed to the margins of the new world.
18:47Their existence could not simply be waved away—you cannot wave away voters.
18:52They had to be brought back on board.
18:56The only response the German system could devise
18:59was to mechanically copy the AfD’s platform in watered-down form.
19:03If voters support an anti-immigration party,
19:06then we will become an anti-immigration party ourselves.
19:09If they want a conservative turn, we will deliver one ourselves.
19:15“But we can’t be fascists! We’re establishment German politicians.
19:19So we’ll play at being fascists—a watered-down version of the real thing.”
19:23We’ll tighten immigration policy, slash visa and integration programs,
19:27breach the Schengen Agreement by setting up
19:30police cordons along our land borders, and step up deportations.
19:34Most importantly, our chancellor, Friedrich Merz,
19:36will use every speech to trot out some piece of racist nonsense
19:39designed to coax potential AfD voters back into
19:42the Christian Democratic fold.
19:45Just look, he’ll say, at how the “cityscape”
19:47has changed since we began deporting people.
19:50The result of such a policy is entirely predictable.
19:54When a political force panics at the rise of radicals
19:58and tries to appropriate their agenda, its poll numbers plummet.
20:02And that is precisely what happened:
20:05the Christian Democrats were routed.
20:06As it turns out, people who want to vote for xenophobia, racism,
20:10mass deportations, withdrawal from the EU and Schengen,
20:13isolationism, and nationalism want to vote for exactly that.
20:18If voters support energetic, aggressive fascists,
20:21they have no use whatsoever for dull bureaucrats playing at fascism.
20:26Meanwhile, people who never wanted to vote for fascists
20:29listen to talk about the “appearance of our cities”
20:31after deportations and feel disgusted.
20:36They simply stop voting for you. At best, they stay home;
20:38at worst, they vote for another party.
20:40This is the classic mistake of trying to create a product
20:45for everyone and ending up with a product for no one.
20:48You are not radical enough for the radicals
20:50and too radical for your core voters.
20:54You fail to win over anyone else’s electorate while losing your own.
20:58In this case, the Christian Democrats did what Merc did.
21:01Few people know this, but Merc has an electric G-Wagen in its lineup.
21:06In its first year, it sold something like 1,500
21:09of them worldwide—which is to say, virtually none.
21:13The reason is simple: someone buying a boxy SUV does not want an electric car.
21:18If you are buying a G-Wagen,
21:20you care equally little about fuel economy and the environment.
21:23You want to burn 25 liters per 100 kilometers
21:26and have Amur tiger steak for breakfast.
21:28An electric-car buyer, for their part, has no need for this boxy shed.
21:34In the real world, there is no overlap between
21:37electric-car buyers and G-Wagen buyers.
21:40You cannot create a universal product for them.
21:42Neither group will want it.
21:46Politics works in exactly the same way.
21:48You can make an effort to understand what
21:50is actually going wrong in people’s lives
21:53and where mistakes were made in previous years.
21:58Why do people who are statistically better off
22:01believe that they are worse off?
22:03Why do people who have never seen a migrant
22:05in their lives vote to deport them all?
22:09What is happening with their jobs, careers,
22:11opportunities for self-fulfillment, cost of living, taxes, and regulation?
22:15Why is the population of this region shrinking, and what can be done about it?
22:20Can these people make use of the opportunities offered by the globalized world
22:24and their excellent German passports—to travel and see something new?
22:29You can ask yourself: what did we get wrong about integration over the past 35 years
22:33if voting patterns suggest that we have two different peoples,
22:36eastern and western Germans? This is difficult work.
22:39It requires substantial changes in government policy
22:42and a serious effort to bring everyone who feels shut out of politics back into the system.
22:48But when politicians try to assemble a platform that will appeal equally
22:52to an entrepreneur in Cologne—their classic voter—and
22:55an unemployed young man in Magdeburg who votes for the AfD,
23:00they end up with a platform that no one wants.
23:04So there is no need simply to recoil at a far-right victory.
23:06Take note and remember the lesson for the future.
23:10Large and significant groups of voters must not be allowed
23:14to feel forgotten or cut off from their own government,
23:19or to believe that the state works for everyone but them.
23:22And this is true far beyond Germany.
23:25Radicals are not the problem but a symptom of it.
23:29If latent resentment exists, radicals will inevitably
23:33grow from it like weeds.
23:35They may take the form of Trump or the AfD; it hardly matters.
23:39What matters is that if you do not engage people and give voice
23:47to their views, someone you dislike will.
23:51See you tomorrow!