Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Mother Jones thinks spillover from the US election is helping the rise of the German AFD, and undermining support for Green Energy. But perhaps the working class has simply grown tired of elitist left wing politicians and institutions ignoring working class priorities.
How the “Trump Effect” Could Undermine Germany’s Clean Energy Revolution
In Germany’s elections, the far right has a familiar anti-immigrant, pro-coal agenda.
AARON WIENERDEC. 29, 2016 6:00 AM
The world’s most advanced energy revolution has hit an obstacle: the Trump effect.
Germany has long been a clean energy pioneer. Despite the fact that the sun hardly shines there, the country was the world leader in installed solar capacity until it was finally overtaken last year by China, a vastly larger and sunnier country. By 2050, Germany aims to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95 percent. It currently derives about one-fifth of its power from wind and solar (and one-third from total renewables), compared to just 5 percent in the United States. Even though this dramatic energy transition—known as the Energiewende—has contributed to higher household electricity costs, 90 percent of Germans say they support it.
For years, Germany’s mainstream political parties have supported clean energy, too. But that broad consensus could soon face a significant test, another possible casualty of the resurgence of right-wing, nativist politics across the Western world. Unlike many of its neighbors, Germany hasn’t had a far-right party represented in its parliament since the Second World War. But that’s almost certain to change next year, when national elections could make the Alternative for Germany party (known by its German acronym, AfD) the second- or third-strongest faction in the government, if polling trends continue. The party, which began as a euro-skeptic movement, has built its success on stringent opposition to immigration and admission of refugees—and on inflammatory rhetoric that echoes the campaign of Donald Trump.
The AfD also opposes Germany’s clean energy policies. It’s calling for an end to the law behind the Energiewende and even questions the existence of human-induced climate change, stating on its website, “Scientific research on the long-term development of the climate because of man-made CO2 emissions is fraught with uncertainty.” Now, in an effort to slow the AfD’s rapid rise, the country’s mainstream parties could be poised for a step back in the fight against global warming.
…
Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/germany-clean-energy-coal-trump-effect
I’ve got a working class background, plenty of my friends are working class. Over the years I’ve watched as various left wing Labor and Democrat parties became the plaything of the urban elites, champaign socialists. I’ve watched the growing dismay and anger, as left wing elitist politicians supported fashionable green efforts to drive up the price of energy, and flood western countries with cheap immigrant labor, regardless of the pain these efforts inflicted on their increasingly disillusioned working class supporters.
Trump didn’t ignite the anger of the working class, he simply offered a solution to their problems, a new direction. The AFD didn’t ignite the anger of the German working class, they just pointed out the problems, and promised to fix them. The “Trump Effect” is simply the end of working class patience with privileged left wing politicians who have no idea of the pain their ignorant internationalist green posturing has caused to the people they claim to champion.
For Germany, the writing was on the wall long before Trump, as this hilarious video from 2014 demonstrates.
https://youtu.be/-e2U2cYcPro
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Once again the morons claim only renewable energy is low carbon energy. They claim that German has 20% renewable (which probably doesn’t include energy from their nuclear plants that are still operating or nuclear energy imported from France) and they claim only 5% in the U.S. Hard to know what they are counting over here, since our hydro as I recall is around 10%. Apparently hydro is not considered renewable and apparently neither is geothermal. They have apparently completely redefined renewable energy’s definition. At any rate, the U.S. has 20% nuclear and around 10% hydro and a smattering of geothermal. That is more than 5%.
Aaron Wienerdec should stop by Pierre Gosselin’s site. A quick search for the word “Energiewende” at NoTricksZone returns 18 posts just in the last two years, many of them recaps of articles appearing in German msm publications. Didn’t see any of them blaming President-elect Trump for any of their self-inflicted problems.
Guessing it is inevitable: Donald Trump will be blamed for anything and everything, real or imagined, for the next 20 years.
Do you think they’ll probably blame him for “making America great again” as well. 🙂
SteveT
I think “Green Energy” is undermining German support for Green Energy. Check out renewable performance here
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm
Looking by month is particularly enlightening
That’s a fantastic link and I shall find it very useful, Thank you!
I notice that the Solar Forecast for every day is 0.
But some days Solar actually delivers some power.
Maybe the only message understood by Gang Green;”Trump Thump”.
German expat here; left in 2000, living in Canada since 2001 (after a brief, strange interlude in Texas).
There are many reasons for the rise of the “horrible, rightwing, populist, untouchable” AfD. The unsustainable energy policy is only one of them. Other major reasons include the completely lunatic handling of the refugee crisis, the endless throwing away of good money after bad to prop up the farce that is Greece, the increasing transfer of wealth and power to uncontrollable entities such as the EU and the ECB, and of course the perfectly justified discontent and anxiety of the working class, whose livelihood is threatened by globalization and automation in much the same way as it is in other Western countries.
If you ditch the “Nazis zOMG” hysteria and look coolly at the political agenda of the AfD, you will find it pretty close to that of the Christian Democrats in former days, when they were more or less Germany’s version of the Tories. That was before Merkel yanked them from their moorings and transformed them into The Green Feminist Labour Party Of Magnificent All-Encompassing Benevolence – the party that stands for everything and everybody, and therefore for nothing and nobody at all. So, in a sense, the AfD simply is beginning to fill the space of a recognizably conservative party that was evacuated by the Christian Democrats under Merkel.
Despite the fact that the sun hardly shines there, the country was the world leader in installed solar capacity
How utterly mad must one be to not see the insanity summed up by that statement?
I hear the Sahara desert is planning to be the world leader in installed hydro-electric power.
It’s not insane if you’re a solar panel manufacturer. Less sun means more panels means more $$$$.
The insanity of that struck me instantly too but these Green folk are never rational.
The shadow looming over the Green Blob is way bigger, and more sinister than Trump. It is truth itself which has reared its ugly head.
Then it Isn’t sinister.
To Greenies it is.
Reflecting on 2016:
“The Common people are ignorant. But they are not THAT stupid…
“Germany has long been a clean energy pioneer …”.
==========================
What is “clean energy”?
Orwell summed it up in his essay Politics and the English Language “… if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought ..” and Frank Furedi has an essay in Spiked, 2016: A War of Words Against the People, on the way the left tries to manipulate thought by controlling language.
Like “carbon pollution” (CO2), “clean energy” is just another of the left’s meaningless value-laden propaganda neologisms.
Christopher
Who washed it to make it clean?
In my “Introduction to Political Systems Theory” course back in the 70’s we were required to read several books, among them Kuhn’s “Structure …” and Hanna Pitkin’s “Wittgenstein and Justice”, which discusses at length the effects of language on thought. One of the reasons I’ve always been fond of learning new languages was the discovery of Wittgenstein. I once spoke German fluently (50 years later I can still embarrass myself in that language), Spanish, Japanese and Czech partially. It’s very hard to escape English though. Too easy to use it. Everyone seems to speak it.
The word for ” I ” in Korean sounds much like the N word in English.
Wow, Bartleby, still in training?
Sent this to PHOENIX.de, founded by longtime DDR.Anschluss politician Helmut Kohl:
Dieser Jungakademiker Thilo Pommerening vom WWF, wie will er in seinem weissen SUV/pickup Hybrid 6 Tonnen Bambuspsitzen an die Zoos in Deutschland liefern für die Pandas.
Weder trägt das edelweisse Gefährt das Gewicht, noch hat’s die Ladefläche.
Was sucht der in Kolumbien das aufgrund angeblicher Dürre grün ist wie hastdunichtgesehen.
Der Kaffeestrauch ist eine Gabe aus Äthiopien, in Kolumbien ist er fremd.
Wenn die Kaffeeröster erfahren dass die Kolumbianer nicht den Stolz haben nur die guten Kaffeebohnen auszulesen werden wir hoffentlich bald keinen kolumbianischen Kaffee mehr kaufen müssen.
Herzig der Arbeitsdress der kolumbianischen Agraringenieuse:
Schwarzes T-Shirt mit tiefem Ausschnitt. Und dazu die weisse Pyjamahose mit lindblauem Fleckwerk.
Na Servus!
Äthiopien kennt ‘wirkliche’ Dürren, der Legende nach hat eine Ziege den Hirten auf den Kaffeestrauch aufmerksam gemacht. Was ja wohl alles sagt.
Warum bringt der WWF-Mann keine Ziegen nach Kolumbien?
usual spelling error,
‘Bambusspitzen’
thanks.
real good cooking is not white flesh from the Galapagos islands ‘white flesh of stinking . Galapagos reptiles’
but Vienneas
http://www.ichkoche.at/wiener-zwiebelrostbraten-rezept-3090
Johann – Thank you for the laugh at one of my “favorite” activist groups. “Warum bringt der WWF-Mann keine Ziegen nach Kolumbien?” Warum nicht?
Ich fürchte meine Deutsh sehr alt ist. In Wahrheit es ist ganz quatsch. Aber Danke sehr!
“but Vienneas”
Doch, mit Leguan? Ja? Ist jetzt gut? 🙂
Enshuldugung Bitte. Ich habe vergessen, das Zitat zu schließen.
Moderator: I forgot to close the quote.
[Odd, Google Translate claims that should be “Entschuldigung Bitte.” 8<) .mod]
Mod: I never suggested I could spell German 🙂
Now I think about it, it should have been “Entschuldigung Sie Bitte.” to be appropriate in Hoch Deutsch. I was raised in Switzerland. It’s my only excuse.
‘Germany hasn’t had a far-right party represented in its parliament since the Second World War.’
Ahhh, yes, the National Socialists were ‘far-right.’ Imagine that, far-right socialists.
Tutto nello Stato.
Ah, I see you have problems with political theory. National Socialism. Think about that word “National” It was socialist indeed, but only for a selected group of Aryan people, not for everyone. I wonder if you spotted the derivative of National Socialism, which is Nazi?
That fascism is ‘far-right’ is an invention of the Left.
Perhaps more people are beginning to realize CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
I honestly don’t think so Dan, I think more people are just getting tired of being preached at by self-righteous SJWs. Really. I don’t think the majority suddenly discovered science. It’s not a great way to win the battle but at least it works. The Greens poisoned their own well with arrogance and conceit. The downside of that is they might recover by changing their approach to public relations and we’d have to do this all over again. I think that’s a real risk. Had they really discovered science that couldn’t happen.
When will they learn.
The real cause of “CAGW” was their own hot air…and their real motive to use it (or anything thing that “sticks against the wall”) to keep their power rising.
In this past election in the US, Trump gave the voters a choice that wasn’t just a return to the same old sh*t but with a different label.
I’ve no doubt what Hillary would have meant.
Time will tell whether Trump is just a “different label” or not.
PS I don’t mean to put all of the outcome of the next 4 years on Trump. Congress needs to cooperate. And many in Congress are too comfortable wallowing in “the same old sh*t”.
“Mother Jones thinks spillover from the US election is helping the rise of the German AFD”
No, what’s helping the rise of the German AFD is the overwhelming number of Muslim immigrants, Merkel has invited into Germany and Europe. Germans are getting fed up with the sexual assaults and other crimes the Muslims are perpetrating on them.
Merkel has invited the enemy into Germany, and although she doesn’t recognize the danger for what it is, the German people do.
It’s hard to believe that otherwise intelligent people can be so completely clueless on some things. They allow their emotions or something to overrule their common sense and blind them to reality.
Obama and Merkel have created a Huge problem for Europe. Obama caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to be created when he turned his back on Iraq and allowed the Islamic Terror Army to rise and wreak havoc in Iraq and Syria, and then Merkel invited all these humdreds of thousands of Muslim refugees into Europe.
Two clueless Leftists like Obama and Merkel in power can cause a lot of damage. Now we have to clean up all this mess.
Don’t know about Merkel, but Obama is not clueless. Obama is a devious weasel, who has craftily used tools of Democrat party to do as much damage to country he hates as he can.
” Obama is a devious weasel, who has craftily used tools of Democrat party to do as much damage to country he hates as he can.”
Dems, he may be doing what he is doing deliberately to cause harm, but I would still consider that to be clueless. Perhaps I should have said delusional. One can be evil and clueless/delusional at the same time, in fact, I think that is a requirement for being evil.
The non-christian migrant issue in the EU goes way back before Obama and Merkel, it was begining to be a problem in the 80’s and not limited to Germany, certainly that is my experience. The main issue I saw was migrants being isolated and not willing to integrate. Unemployment was another issue too.
Get ready:
Warner Brothers in talks to make “Nigel Farage – The Movie”
Nigel Farage: Benedict Cumberbatch
Donald Trump: Clint Eastwood
Hilary Clinton: Meryl Streep
I object to Cumbertwat playing Nigel. We need someone better than that paid up member of the wankerati.
Obviously Warner want someone with a British accent everyone hates.
Tony Blair perhaps then? Or Gary Lineker?
This is pure horror. Meryl Streep as Hillary Clinton. Hillary did not look as good at 18 as Meryl Streep would look at 70. Furthermore, their parents are from Germany and about 15 kilometers from my place of residence. This fictitious role occupation is therefore another no go. By the way, Trumps grandfather was born near my place of residence. For American conditions a catwalk of 60 kilometers ..
Americans don’t walk kilometers.
We drive miles…
and run kilometers.
Don’t miss the video.
When the Deplorables in the heartland stop growing coastal city food, the cities will take note. You cannot tell those who feed you to go to hell.
“You cannot tell those who feed you to go to hell.”
Well, that is what they have been doing for past Eight years…
I was deplorable, before deplorable was cool.
I have consoled several socialist friends about their feelings of despair post-election. I empathize with them, telling them “I know just how you feel. I felt the same way after both of the Obama elections.”
Yes, after getting a very long liberal rant from an acquaintance against Trump after his election, I simply responded, “LOL. That’s exactly how I’ve felt for the past eight years.”
He is a very strong supporter of Israel, which made his support for Obama and Clinton puzzling to me. I’m waiting to see how he feels about Obama now after the UN vote.
“Mother Jones thinks spillover from the US election is … undermining support for Green Energy.”
And downside is?
And then, there’s this:
“Sadly, this is not from The Onion. For satire to work it has to be believable and no one with commonsense would believe that the federal government would intervene to fine people living in Alaska for using wood-burning stoves in the winter.”
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/12/31/epa-moves-fine-alaskans-burning-wood-keep-warm/
“Trump Effect” Undermining Support for German Green Energy
Nice to hear mining activity is increasing already…. and he’s not even in office yet!
Someone should have looked at the polls on support for green energy in Germany…
There’s no way Germany is going back on renewables now.
and did you know it exported even more electricity last year? More than France?
AFD are a nasty party of genuine fascists… anyone who knows any Germans will know that these are a genuine extreme and are going nowhere.
“Griff January 1, 2017 at 2:13 am
and did you know it exported even more electricity last year? More than France?”
Possibly because record numbers of local German consumers were disconnected, the excess had to be consumed elsewhere otherwise wasted.
“..it.exported even more electrical energy last year?”…
Yes, of course! Because the mad “Energiewende” produces electrical energy by random not on demand ! If there is Wind with 16m/s throughout Germany plus sunshine for some hours, windmills and solar panels produce more than 38000MW . But the energy generation of conventional power plants, which is necessary to stabilize the high-voltage grids, is added, so that you have to get rid of the overproduction at all cost and even pay for its acceptance! But with suddenly no wind blowing, we have to import expensive electrical energy from our neighbour countries!
The “Energiewende” ( electrical power supply change) is completely nuts, introduced by incompetent green morons, allegedly to save the planet from CAGW!
The AFD is the CDU of 20 years ago and has been the home of Merkel’s homeless conservatives for three years. Merkel’s CDU is now a wishi washi party with more heart for refugees than for one’s own people. In addition, Merkel has sold itself with the Energiewende to the Greens. #Merkel was in her youth a strict socialist youth in East Berlin. Their “youth group” in the FDJ observed as a “playful” exercise the observation of the literature professor Havemann under GDR householder. Merkel was in her group responsible for leadership and propaganda. Of this, no one wants to know anything about today’s CDU and the mainstream press. Of course, today’s Federal Republic is no longer comparable with the one before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Much is worse and more truths are suppressed. It was also for this reason high time that the largest partner of the Federal Republic, the US finally pursue a different policy than under the hypocritical Obama.
I went thorough Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin and East Germany in July 1989 and witnessed the last days of the Communist Honecker regime.
Here is something I wrote a long time ago on the subject.
Regards, Allan
_______________________
This article is true. I’ve also been to Cuba, and it is a cesspool of poverty and degradation (Trudeau boys, please take note).
What is truly interesting is that there are still apologists for Castro and Cuba here in Canada, even as Fidel himself has recently admitted that Cuba is a failed state.
They are probably the same “useful idiots” who said that Communist East Germany was a good model for Canada to emulate. I seem to recall several former NDP leaders who tried to sell us that line of BS (the names Broadbent and Lewis come to mind).
I travelled to East Germany, going through the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie in 1989, shortly before the Wall fell. East Germany was a cesspool too. While not as materially poor as Castro’s Cuba, it was an even more vicious police state where neighbour spied upon neighbour, and nobody felt safe from the Stasi secret police. Those who tried to escape were shot, and allowed to bleed to death in “no-man’s land” between the many barbed-wire fences that formed “the Wall”.
Epilogue
The last person to be shot and killed while trying to cross the border from East to West Germany was Chris Gueffroy on February 6, 1989. He was 20 years old. Rest in peace, kid.
The Germans dump their excess electricity onto the grid and destabilise the networks in other countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic, who are started to get rather annoyed about it. It would increase costs – from an already high level – in Germany if they were not able to do this. Economic collapse will stop it in the end as you can’t buck the markets if not everyone has an insane energy policy.
You are right! The energy policy of Merkels CDU and the Red/Greens is completely insane, costs german consumers billions and destabilises the networks of our neighbors!
Electricity has to be produced on demand not by random (wind!). Without the possibility of storing electricity economically, those morons are dreaming of a shutdown of ,not only nuclear power plants, but also coal/lignite fuelled ones!
“Griff January 1, 2017 at 2:13 am”
Griff, the Fantasy Land you call your mind is weakening such that it could be reduced back to Primordial Slime even before Trump gets sworn in as Donald J. Hitler. [Seig Heil!]
About 2 years ago Spiegel did a Series on Germany and Spain’s Renewables in which their Top Officials indicated they were suspending any new subsidies for Wind and Solar energy because they were ~”risking bankruptcy” for their Countries and Taxpayers, and these Renewables had proven to be “notoriously unreliable”. Since then the Father of Wind energy in Spain has declared that it has failed, and Nuclear Phobia has forced Germany to have about 30 new Coal-fired Electricity Plants either in operation or planned.
When I found SpiegeI’s Series, I was actually looking for examples of CA’s Ivanpah system for capturing the Sun, which NPR was touting on its Blog as the next Utopian Fantacea. But worldwide, there was apparently only one similar system operating, in Spain, and they weren’t building any more of them. No, a Spanish Corporation had come to America help us out instead!
@Griff: where can those poll figures be found? What *exactly* were people asked about? Which were the polling organisations and how accurate have they been in the past?
https://energytransition.org/2015/01/49-percent-of-germans-doubt-success-of-energiewende/
is misleadingly titled. It quotes extremely high support figures. They are difficult to believe: I don’t think you’d get 95% of voters in my country to agree on the time of day, let alone energy policy. What’s fascinating in that article is that it goes some way towards explaining WHY there might be support: “many of their expectations for returns are unrealistic – 32 percent want payback within three years, with another 30 percent expecting it within five years.” That article notes of another survey that “The survey seems to be tailored to the company’s portfolio.”
They are not even socialists, so how can the be fascists?
Happy New Year, Shankhunt42, …… , er, … , I mean Griff. Glad to see that you and delusion, or compete lack of logic, are hand in hand in 2017. Funny in that the following is an exact quote from Germany with regards to their wonderful (ad)venture into renewables:
“We should regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.”
Oops! Skankhunt42 is the correct spelling. My apologies to all, with the exception of Griff, that is.
Yes, Griff, You’ve never made the Turing test.
Are you human or a fast responding non-rossia, google goes Canadia answering machine.
I’m German, and the rise of the AfD isn’t Trumps fault and only have little to do with green energy.
The Alternative fuer Deutschland started as Libertarian Party founded by an economy professor called Bernd Lucke. Reason was the catastrophic handling of the Greece’s Debt Crisis by German and European politicians. Lucke and others used the same arguments as left critics and pointed out that a clean bankrupt of Greece and a Grexit from the Eurozone would be better for Creece and it’s debitors than a doomed try to handle the debt with new credits ad infinitum.
The result? All other political parties and many in the media called them far right, xenophobic, anti European. It worked. Many Germans looking for a party what doesn’t want to dissolve Germany in an European Superstate joined and voted for the AfD. Even for the far right the AfD was an alternative to the ultra-right NPD.
Lucke and some others have been sent by voters to the European Parliament, but he and other early members of the AfD left the party after a new Party Leader was elected during the first national congress of the AfD. That changed the party from Libertarian to a thing best described as national social democratic.
The AfD agenda is still written around neoliberal ideas, but you can except that it will be changed to a more social democratic agenda with strong emphasis for a strong national state during the next years.
The green agenda of the Greens and Social Democrats was mainly aimed on photovoltaic and wind power. Many from the upper middleclass put photovoltaic systems on the roof of their homes, and get for 20 years a granted and fixed price for each kWh they produce. The price difference between the fixed price and the market price is add to the consumers price.
The lower middleclass and underclass in Germany lives almost in apartment buildings for rent – they don’t have the chance and the money to build a photovoltaic system on “their” roof, but they have to pay for the photovoltaic systems of the upper middle class.
In 2016 the average price for a kWh was 28,7 cent, and 6,35 cent of those (22%) are used to finance green energy. An average German household needs 3500 kWh per year, that means it pays 222 Euro for “green energy”. For 222 €uros you will get in Germany 222 balls of ice-cream in a cone of wafer.
Strange comparison ? Well, politicians of the Green Party told us that green energy will cost us not more than we spend on one ball of ice-cream each month…
Why the f**k do we have to spend so much money? At noon all photovoltaic systems in Germany reach their peak, and the market price for electricity drops. Coal, gas and nuclear Power plants have to reduce their output during noon. Those plants can’t shut down because during night the photovoltaic systems doesn’t produce any power, leading to a situation there the non-green Power plants still have to maintained for the security of the power grid. Most of those Plants are run by Company’s owned by Cities and States, and those public owners lose a lot of money by keeping the plants running.
So the green energy in Germany means profit for the upper middleclass, and the lower middleclass and the underclass have to pay, while Cites and States lose money with their conventional power plants. That’s neoliberalism at work.
Subsidies are neither “liberal” nor “neo-liberal”. The whole agenda is just a green/red imbecility based on a quasi-religious belief in CAGW, in reality a camouflage for “the great transformation”, conceived by the Club of Rome!
I was also in the former GDR, because Willy Brandt had met with the former GDR leaders in return for the state recognition of the GDR, namely that inhabitants of the immediate border area of the FRG could visit their relatives on the GDR side once a year. Since I was often on vacation with my uncle on my mother’s side in the Rhön on the Bavarian side of the line of demarcation during this time, this uncle once applied for a visit to me. Already the journey through the growth at the border was a gruesome experience, at that time from the GDR side already a several meters high fence with self-shooting were installed. Behind this fence there was a free minefield in the GDR area, and again a border fence with watchtowers like the Roman Limes with grim looking Border soldiers. Everything to prevent the own citizens of the GDR from leaving the country. On the side of the FRG, there were a number of places to see memorials for shot refugees. In the former GDR it was like entering a completely different country. Decayed and neglected villages, roads with sloops one at the other and far and wide no inns. Fortunately the sister of my aunt could cook very well, so that we could at least eat well. A terrible experience for a 14-year-old boy, as I was then one.
AfD’s rise has most to do with Merkel’s policies and far little to do with Trump. Both are political pendelum actions, typical of un-damped proportional feed back dynamics.
The german AfD party is indeed denounced as far right by the leftish mainstream, but is in fact rather national-liberal-conservative. Of course, the party also attracts voters of the far right wing, who have either not voted, or voted for NPD which reached 1,3% in 2013.
With president Trump in the Oval Office, the leftish media establishment fears a more realistic view on left/green agendas like CAGW , EU, Euro,migration politics and the “Great Transformation” even in Germany! All critics of Merkels “great coalition” are N@zis or at least right-wing populists! So you have to restrict freedom of speech and to censor the Internet to save democracy!
Welcome to the late “German Democratic Republic”, new edition by Merkel and Friends! I would like to call it “The 4. Reich”!
Unless that was a clever pun on “sham campaign”, it’s “champagne”.