On September 10 there was a round of gubernatorial elections in Russia, as well as elections to local councils in Moscow.
There’s a lot of confusion on account of whether it was a victory for United Russia.
On the one hand, the low turnout – which traditionally favors more motivated liberals – allowed them to outright win most of the prestigious areas of Moscow.
Amazing correlation between liberal victories (green) and bike sharing stations, that ultimate SWPL symbol.
On the other hand, United Russia did score 76% even in Moscow, gaining 1,150 deputies out 1,500. In contrast, liberal opposition, with 180 deputies, didn’t even manage to gather enough mandates to pass the municipal filter for participation in the Mayoral elections in September 2018. Since municipal councils in Moscow are toothless, having no access to the city budget and answering for little more than park benches, this would seem to be irrelevant.
That said, one thing that most people agree on is that this was a defeat for Navalny. He had distanced himself from the Moscow elections, not out of ideological reasons but personal ones; his deputy Leonid Volkov had fallen out with Maxim Kats, a liberal hipster figurehead who went on to unite with Dmitry Gudkov to form the United Democrats, the anti-Putin opposition bloc that went on to sweep SWPLy Moscow in close cooperation with Yavlinsky’s Yabloko. Incidentally, their positions are radically anti-Russian, more so even than Navalny’s; according to insider accounts, disavowal of Crimea – to say nothing of the Donbass – was a hard condition of entry into their coalition. Although this performance might not be that impressive in the large picture, it still probably counts for more than the number of Navalny’s YouTube views.
How important is this development? Probably, not very.
First, turnout was only 15%, and this naturally favored the liberals, who are more motivated than average.
Second, this pattern of voting is in any case a long-established pattern going back to the 1990s, in which the better educated, higher social status (higher IQ, in short) districts vote more strongly for liberal candidates. As I have long pointed out, the problem of very hostile elites is a problem common to both Russia and America.
See the data analysis by Emil Kirkegaard here:
In the less prestigious, lower IQ, more prole areas, United Russia came out well ahead. My own district is pretty representative in this respect.
In terms of the average share of the vote of each political faction (you could vote for up to five people), United Russia got ~1,500, the liberals ~700, the commies ~700, and the nationalists ~300.
Personally I voted for two LDPR candidates, one from Rodina, and some green/ecological chick (she was not in United Russia, a commie, or a liberal traitor, so that was fine by me).
On the one hand, these results are still pretty encouraging; Moscow’s peripheries still reject the Westernist cargo cult, unlike the coddled hipsters of Central Moscow, who hate Russia despite everything that Mayor Sobyanin has done for them in transforming their living spaces into the gentrified SWPL urbanist paradise that they have always yearned for. But is United Russia actually a political force in its own right, or is it just a facade for normies who don’t want to “rock the boat,” and which will fold as quickly as did the Party of Regions in the Ukraine when the pedal is put to the metal? If it’s the latter, with liberals and commies running neck and neck, and nationalists basically out of the picture, the prospects for Russia will be grim in the event of a color revolution.
I’ve seen on your Twitter that you see SJW ideas like “white privilege” spreading among Moscow yuppies…how does this manifest?
But is United Russia actually a political force in its own right, or is it just a facade for normies who don’t want to “rock the boat,” and which will fold as quickly as did the Party of Regions in the Ukraine when the pedal is put to the metal?
I’m guessing / hoping this is the case, which would mean the commies (my favoured party) have a shot at power when Tsar Vladimir shuffles of the mortal coil.
I really dislike the liberals, but I’m coming around to the sense that Putin/UR are more of a deep threat, because they capture the vote that should be going to the communists.
Why? They must know that this is politically suicidal.
I can’t speak for Western Europe, but as you know from living in the States, the Democrats usually pretend to not hate white people when they are running for election. Although Hillary tried to hide her hatred for whites less than any other Presidential candidate ever has. Certainly in the midterms we can count on the Dems pretending that they don’t hate whites.
Does Russia have any liberals like that? Guys like Obama who pretend that they don’t hate the people they are hoping to represent?
German Reader: Tell us what is happening in the German elections and what it means.
@Anatoly Karlin: Your LDPR vote is tactical–correct, Anatoly?
Also, out of curiosity–how do you expect Russian politics to change once IQ-enhancing technologies (embryo selection for IQ, gene editing of embryos, et cetera) become mainstream in Russia? Do you envision Russia moving much closer to the West in such a scenario (to the point of actually joining both the E.U. and NATO)?
@Hector_St_Clare: To be honest, given the Communists’ extremely bad track record at running Russia, I certainly don’t think that it would be a good idea to wish that they were back in power.
Or are you thinking of Communists allowing various Russian regions to secede? After all, implementing a nominal right of secession was one of the good things that the Russian Communists did (among various other very bad things).
@German_reader: I wonder if Russian SJWs will advocate the payment of reparations to Russia’s former imperial realms (Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states); after all, it’s not like the West is the only one that has a history of colonialism and/or imperialism.
It’s getting ever dirtier and more confusing. It’s clear the establishment wants to crush the AfD at all costs, and unfortunately the AfD people might be dumb enough to help them with that.
The AfD has two top candidates, Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel.
Gauland is 76, was with the CDU once, but left because he became disgusted with how Merkel changed the party. He’s kind of a national conservative, with ties to the more radical right-wing faction around Björn Höcke and other party factions in eastern Germany.
Weidel is much younger, in her late 30s, with a background in corporate business, consulting etc. (she was with Goldman Sachs for some time iirc). She’s also a lesbian and lives with a Swiss woman of Sri Lankan origin. She’s supposed to be the moderate face of the party, attractive for economic liberals. She’s spoken out in favour of expelling Björn Höcke from the party for his somewhat “extreme” statements.
Anyway, in the last few weeks there have been controversies around both Gauland and Weidel.
1. At a campaign event Gauland stated that he would like to dispose of Aydan Özoguz (Social Democrats), the minister for integration, in Anatolia (in Anatolien entsorgen; entsorgen has connotations of trash removal). Özoguz is from a Turkish family that immigrated to Germany in the early 1960s, dumb as bricks imo, and pushes deeply subversive policies (e.g. stating there is nothing like German culture; also very pro-Islamic, “antiracist”, with suggestions for migrant quotas in the civil service etc.; hilariously enough her brothers – whom she has disavowed, it must be admitted – are hardcore Islamists who run a pro-Iranian website), so criticism of her is justified. Gauland’s choice of words was idiotic though, and could lend itself to sinister interpretations like wanting to strip Özoguz of her German citizenship. Predictably enough there were outcries of racism by the entire establishment about the “Nazi” Gauland, and even some criticism from right-wing media as well. Unfortunately Gauland even doubled down and has repeated his statement several times.
2. Even worse however is what happened last weekend regarding Alice Weidel (who’s supposed to be the “moderate” after all). Fake “conservative” newspaper WELT (think something like National review in the US context) published the text of a private email that Weidel supposedly wrote to an unnamed acquaintance in early 2013. In it she supposedly wrote against immigration of “culturally alien” peoples like Sinti and Roma (= gypsies) and Arabs, and claimed German politicians (“those swine”) were all puppets of the victors of WW2 and wanted to bring Germany down by bringing about civil war through mass immigration. She supposedly also claimed that Germany wasn’t really a sovereign state (a talking point of fringe right-wingers) and referred to an article on an obscure website called “Terra-Kurier”. I’ve looked at the website, and it’s genuine Nazi stuff, of a really bizarre kind (e.g. it claims there are still Waffen-SS units in Antarctica who have advanced flying saucers – Reichsflugscheiben – and fight with them against “high finance”, shooting down rockets of the US space program and the like).
Anyway, there’s no proof the mail is authentic, an AfD spokesman has said it’s fake; Weidel hasn’t really made a totally clear statement so far. The content of that mail is certainly at odds with Weidel’s public image and what is known about her private life. If it is authentic though it does raise questions imo about her judgment.
Anyway, the media and the establishment are of course exploiting this as much as they can. In this regard it should also be noted that the deputy editor of WELT is married to Christian Lindner, the party leader of the liberal FDP (the kind of party for economic liberals, business types etc. which Weidel is supposed to attract to the AfD).
Meanwhile Merkel and her Christian Democrats are fully in “antiracist” mode, and have been getting cozy with the multiculturalist fanatics from the Green Party in television debates…the Greens would be obviously their favorite coalition partners (probably together with the liberal FDP). Among other things this would mean liberal “family reunification” for hundreds of thousands in Syrians in Germany.
Anyway, I have no idea how this is going to play out. I’ve already voted for the AfD; I don’t know how much they’ll be damaged by the recent controversies (or might it even help them?), or what else the establishment media might try in the next two weeks. But the situation looks very bleak on the whole. If I weren’t stuck in this f***ing country I guess I’d find it funny though, it’s all farcical in way I couldn’t have imagined before.
Sorry for the long off-topic post!
Imperialism against white people doesn’t count, and Balts (Latvians especially) are regarded as Nazis in the West as well, so undeserving of sympathy.
I wonder though what those Russian SJWs think about mass immigration of Central Asians…is it seen as atonement/punishment for past sins like it is sometimes argued with immigration in the West?
XYZ,
The poorest half of Russians were better off under the late communist (e.g. Brezhnev) period than under Putin, so I don’t think their track record was that bad (although I’d say Russian communists were worse than German or Hungarian communists). See Piketty’s latest figures on the, uh, disappoing performance of postcommunist Russia when you look at the lower half of the income distribution.
I also do support secession of various Russian regions but that’s a separate issue and not such a big deal for me.
What’s your opinion about Sahra Wagenknecht (I know, from the opposite side of the political spectrum from AFD, and leader of a party full of hardline multiculturalists?) She had a pie thrown at her face earlier this year, by the antifa crowd, for saying that “Germany should limit the number of refugees”, never mind that she’s half Iranian herself.
Whatever your opinion about immigration in Germany I think it’s important that this not become purely a right wing issue, so I think Wagenknecht’s relative moderation on the issue is a good thing. (My opinion about immigration, although I’m sure you won’t like to hear this, is that if mass migration is going to happen, then the flow should be redirected to rich countries with generally pro-migration sentiments as expressed in opinion surveys, and within Europe Sweden and Germany are the best suited countries because they fit both criteria. I would also offer the US in this regard, as soon as we have the next Democratic administration. It makes no sense to try to settle refugees in Poland or the Czech Republic instead of in Germany).
“The next Democratic Administration” will probably cause a civil war. Can you imagine current America opening the borders the way Germany has? The country will erupt.
You’re underestimating how much visceral opposition there is to mass immigration in Germany. There was a survey some time ago in several European countries whether Islamic immigration should be stopped completely. 53% in Germany were in favour of stopping ALL further Islamic immigration:
https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-europeans-think-about-muslim-immigration
There are also surveys within Germany about what issues people are concerned about. There was a massive increase in concerns about immigration and terrorism in 2016, and it remains at high levels in 2017:
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/meinungen/deutsche-angst-2/
(e.g. 71% afraid of terrorism, 61% afraid of tensions resulting from immigration, 57% afraid of state and society not being able to cope with the number of asylum seekers).
Another survey from 2016:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/allensbach-umfrage-zum-thema-nationalkultur-14446621-p2.html
Translation: 53% believe increasing immigration will destroy German identity, only 30% explicitly don’t believe that.
Regarding Islam:
http://cicero.de/innenpolitik/ciceroumfrage-fuer-zwei-drittel-gehoert-der-islam-nicht-zu-deutschland
Two thirds of Germans say “Islam doesn’t belong to Germany” (note: this is in direct reference to repeated statements by Merkel and former president Wulff that Islam does belong to Germany).
Germany is at most divided on the issue; imo it’s more like that a fanatical “progressive” minority pushes a multiculturalist open borders agenda, and a lot of people go along with it out of opportunism and conformism. And the level of media propaganda and of stigmatization of differing views in the last few years has become unbelievable. No one can tell me that there’s a majority in Germany for the immigration of millions of Near Eastern Muslims and Africans. The supposed consensus in this regard is fake and artificial.
Regarding Sarah Wagenknecht: I’ve got nothing against her as a person, and compared to the rest of German politicians (who are mostly despicable cretins) she’s not unattractive, certainly very smart. I’ve got nothing good to say about her party though which is full of genuine leftist fanatics (and note: Wagenknecht has come under heavy fire for her mild criticism of Merkel’s migration policy even in her own party). Since they’ve also embraced open borders and radical “antifascist” positions I can’t see any reason at all for supporting them…GDR 2.0. plus mass immigration isn’t something I’m interested in.
Thanks for that update.
It will be interesting to see what happens. I was convinced that Trump was finished when the Billy Bush tape came out, but in the end people shrugged it off.
“it claims there are still Waffen-SS units in Antarctica who have advanced flying saucers”
Lol. Maybe they thought Iron Sky was a documentary.
It’s bizarre, but there really are neo-Nazi types who are into such esoteric stuff (the site I mentioned also had something about Nazis in 1945 escaping via time travel into the past with their flying saucers…or into outer space). One’s first instinct is of course to laugh about these people, but then I’m reminded of Himmler who had all sorts of nutty beliefs (Atlantis etc.) as well, and wasn’t harmless at all.
It’s genuinely disturbing to me if Weidel reads such sites and takes them seriously, at the very least it indicates extremely poor judgment. And obviously it lends credence to all the accusations that the AfD are wolves in sheeps’ clothing.
Whatever happens, I’m not optimistic at all about the elections and what comes after them. Merkel also has indicated once again that she wants to force Hungary and other Eastern European countries into accepting “refugees”. If she’s emboldened by a convincing victory in the elections, it will get even worse.
I’ve spent some time with one of Zyuganov’s first-degree relatives (we have a mutual friend). Commies are no threat to the Establishment, be it Yeltsin-era or Putin-era.
“Whatever happens, I’m not optimistic at all about the elections and what comes after them. Merkel also has indicated once again that she wants to force Hungary and other Eastern European countries into accepting “refugees”. ”
Latest poll suggests that 51% of Poles would support leaving the European Union if the condition of staying is accepting Muslim immigrants. And this is in Poland, probably the most pro-EU country in eastern Europe. (They are very strongly pro-EU and pro-west, but they’re even more strongly anti-migration). And 65% would rather pay fines to Brussels than accept migrants. It’s coming to the point where Merkel’s leverage over the east is limited: what happens if she says “accept the migrants or we kick you out” and they say “go ahead”?
Regarding the Left, I’m aware that Wagenknecht took a stance opposed to most of her party activists, and there has been a huge amount of criticism from her party. Still, the fact that she’s running the party currently, and that their geographic base in the East is more anti-migrant than the western states, indicates to me there’s a possibility the left might change its position givern enough pressure.
“It will be interesting to see what happens. I was convinced that Trump was finished when the Billy Bush tape came out, but in the end people shrugged it off.”
The difference is that AFD is polling really, really low, much lower than they were earlier this year. Even if people shrug it off, they’re still going to do terribly. And unlike the ethnic nationalists in Austria or Denmark, I can’t see which other parties would be willing to coalition with them, so even if they did get 15%, which they won’t, that still puts them solidly in “so what” territory.
Poland has calculated (and detailed) that the German invasion and occupation of their country during World War II cost Poland about $865 billion dollars. The Germans have paid around $4 billion in reparations (and EU aid has been a drop in the bucket compared to what would be owed). If the grandchildren of the Nazis who invaded and brutalized Poland insolently demand fines for Poland not taking refugees, Poland will press for reparations through the European courts. It promises to be a long and embarrassing process for the German human rights moralizers.
You are exaggerating.
Check http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
What about post-Zyuganov Commies?
There will never be a color or other revolution, because support for the traitors is nonexistent outside the largest cities. No country where that is true has ever had one.
15% turnout sounds unhealthy.
I don’t follow Twitter, but I know plenty of Moscow yuppies. This could be my own selection bias, but while most of the people I know are open-minded, compassionate, and liberal in the old-fashioned sense, I’ve never met anyone even vaguely like a SJW. In fact, most of the yuppies I know are tired of beating themselves up about being Russian, resent it when other people expect it of them, and are quite happy to go on holiday in Crimea.
Yeah, you’ve got a point there. Russian ‘Westernist cargo cult’ people are, if anything, an equivalent of vulgar libertarians (in US terms), not bleeding-heart liberals. Frankly, I don’t understand why Anatoly dislikes them.
Don’t know about 20-something commies, I suspect there aren’t large numbers of them.
Maybe the article I saw was citing an outlier poll, but it said AfD likely vote was down from 15% to 8%. Even if that’s not true though, getting 15% in an environment where no other party is willing to work with you, is worthless. (And note that the ‘no possibility of coalition parties’ isn’t true of all ethnic nationalist parties: the ethnic nationalists in Austria, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, not to mention further east of Germany, have been able to work with parties in government and influence the agenda. That’s not true in Germany or the Netherlands or France, as far as I can tell. Who do you envision being willing to work with AfD?)
Only in Infratest’s poll did the AfD get 15% at the beginning of the year and in the most recent Infratest poll they got 11%.
There is a real difference between being a party with parliamentarian representation or not.
The latter are ignored.
The territory Poland won post-WW2 is worth several times 865 billion. And Poland has declared to not have any reparations claims on Germany more than once (not only during the communist era, but also afterwards).
The whole notion is ridiculous – just like the slavery reparations claims and similar bullshit.
Apart from that, I won’t offer detailed prognoses. Generally I think that conservative politicians in both the US and Europe will find increasing support for curbing immigration, but that any “white nationalism”-radicalism – deportation of all illegals in the US, complete repudiation of accepting even a few tens of thousands of refugees in the Visegrad countries – will fail.
Why Globalism Fails and Nationalism is Relatable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpXVoSZyHXM
What are the common themes of globalism?
Homomania
Hollywood
Rap and ACOWW
Cheap Chinese goods
Whore Culture.
You’re living in fantasy land if you think those demands for reparations will do Poland any good. All it will achieve is alienate right-wing Germans (the sort of people who respect Poland’s anti-migration stance and would like Poland as an ally on this issue). It will permanently destroy German-Polish relations. The Polish right is autistic if it thinks its WW2 focus in regards to relations with Germany and Russia is a viable strategy for the future.
The position of the Visegrad countries is also internally inconsistent. Why were Germany and Austria alone at the recent EU meeting in postulating an end of accession talks with Turkey? That would come with an elimination of subsidies to Turkey as an accession candidate which, in turn, could pay for either increased spending on a limited number of refugees or, if that is preferred, EU fines for not taking in any refugees.
In addition I would note that anti-EU sentiment outside immigration issues is sliding. The Italian populists have just retreated from opposition to the Euro. The British government is desperate to transform Brexit into almost-NonBrexit. In other words: anti-immigrationism and anti-globalism are two intertwined, but disentanglable political impulses. That is the dynamic that will play out over the next few years.
Well, the hope never was that the AfD would take power, more that they would do well enough to cause an uprising against Merkel in the CDU. Or at least present a serious opposition in parliament.
Regarding the LINKE, don’t get your hopes up too high, imo they’re too deep in this whole “refugees welcome” and “antifascism” business to reverse course easily. And their prospects of becoming part of any government on the federal level are remote as well.
Chinese goods improves the standard of living of most Americans
Excellent video – Prof. Peterson has some great wisdom on this topic.
Peace.
What is a viable strategy for their future?
Siding with EUrope and mainstream Germany is mid/long-term doom.
The data clearly shows that the Soviet Union showered resources on Central Asia (whereas it drained them from the Comecon countries).
in which the better educated, higher social status (higher IQ, in short) districts vote more strongly for liberal candidates.
I don’t like where this is going. It means that I am a lot dumber than I thought.
Can’t we get some sort of exception to the rule?
the commies (my favoured party)
Communism is a dead end.
Not only that, big numbers of people ended up (end up) dead in the end.
Realizing that Poland is situated between Germany and Russia rather than next door to the U.S.
What the Polish right does is kind of like Netanyahu bonding with the Sunni jihadis and the Saudi Wahhabis against Shia Iran with the differences being that Netanyahu has already stubbornly followed his strategy for several years towards massive failure and that the roles of the relatively proximate and the more distant countries are reversed (Saudi/U.S., Iran/Russia, Germany). But, of course, Israel’s great influence in Washington made the gamble seem less risky than it actually was.
“What is a viable strategy for their future?”
Pilsudski’s old dream of the Intermarium, I would guess. Probably this time with friendly relations with China and America to serve as counterweights to Russia and Germany.
One of the fascinating things about the events of the last few years are how they’ve realigned Eastern Europe and led to these countries submerging their (major) ideological differences and coming into a sort of alignment with each other. The right wingers in Poland are becoming less pro-West (because of immigration) at the same time the neocommunists in Belarus are becoming less pro-Russia (because of Crimea/Donbass).
I don’t think they’re thinking strategically, they want to give a “F*** you” to Germany, is the idea. And maybe to undermine Germany’s moral leverage.
“Would less dumb Russia be more Western?”
Surely there is nothing insulting in this question.
Of course, but that’s political autism. It won’t work in Germany, all it will achieve is that not just leftie do-gooder Germans will be against Poland (because of Poland’s refusal to take “refugees”), but right-wing Germans as well. The Poles may think it’s all very unfair given the massive atrocities Germans committed in WW2, but the reality is that Poland’s ability to guilt-trip Germans is severely limited. It hasn’t been forgotten that Poland took a very sizeable part of German territory after WW2 and expelled the German population from there, with was a pretty ugly process if looked at closely.
From what I’ve seen those demands for reparations seem to be controversial in Poland as well (iirc there was a poll with 51% against, only 21% in favour of making such demands). The Polish right is really dumb if they go ahead with this.
So, not everything is lost it seems in Germany. I, certainly, hope so. For those who suffered in Frankfurt-am-Main airport when it is 30+ Celsius outside and your plane is several hours away, one may also understand my visceral hatred towards Greens who do not like AC. Even freaking bottled water is barely cool. Well, that plus I generally hate “liberal” parties.
When Poland got it, it was largely trashed and destroyed. What wasn’t destroyed, was looted by the Soviets. Poland cleaned up and built up those territories herself.
Sure. But if the German grandchildren of Nazi Pole-killers demand that Poland pay money to the EU because Poland isn’t obeying the Nazis’ grandchildrens’ human rights dictates involving Muslim refugees, reparations as a counter-demand makes sense.
It highlights Germany’s hypocrisy when it demands Poles take in refugees for human rights purposes. And if Germany makes monetary demands on Poland (based on human rights), it demonstrates just how much Germany owes but has not paid morally, if not legally, for the massive damage it caused.
The spectacle of Nazi grandchildren lecturing Poles on morality, getting away with $865 billion of damage on Poland, and then demanding money from Poles is rather rich.
These seem to be deeply in bed with Russia. So they are already, not exactly friends.
They sort of are, though. GOP (the stupid party) on stereoids.
No, the real threat isn’t that Poland will have to pay money, but that Poland won’t get EU subsidies anymore like at present. Of course that’s blackmail as well, but rather different from how you present it.
Anyway, I’m not interested in having a long discussion about this, but the simply reality just is that no German government ever will pay such reparations to Poland, and anybody who isn’t delusional must know this. That raises the question what exactly Poland could achieve with such a move. I’ve already told you that it won’t work at all on the German public, the reaction will be negative. And I very much doubt it will work to Poland’s benefit in international relations either. It will be seen by many Westerners as a cynical ploy by retrograde nationalist xenophobes to evade their humanitarian responsibilities towards refugees and engage in pointless whataboutery about events that happened a lifetime ago. You may think it’s horribly unfair (and maybe it is), but Polish suffering in WW2 isn’t central to Western perceptions of WW2, its potential for emotional blackmail today is rather limited.
Just general observations, mostly.
But to give a few more specific examples:
The deplatforming of Russian nationalist Egor Prosvirnin from a tech conference where he was going to give a talk on subscription model media in Russia (i.e. not politics).
The infiltration of SJW/feminist rhetoric into Navalny’s yuppie electorate, e.g. via the Alyona Popova phenomenon, a libertarian feminist who has 60,000 Twitter followers and heads some foundation called “Human Capital” while paradoxically arguing for open borders and infinity Central Asian migrants. Her response to my question asking for a clarification of her political views: “What do you propose, wall the Muslims off? You have to learn to live without walls… I am against eugenics and similar theories”
“You’re a Nazi” like responses on liberal Russian Facebook to a fairly anodyne talk about HBD I gave in Saint-Petersburg.
People in RT (!) proclaiming that Russians should not use the “n word” (Negro/”negr”, i.e. the gramatically correct Russian would for Blacks.
This rabble will be ruling Russia in another two decades.
Russian liberals/demshiza are more fond of demanding advocating reparations payments to the Baltics and sometimes Ukraine. (I like trolling them with statistics about Latvians’ outsized contributions to the establishment of Bolshevik power; they are not amused, and invariably block me).
Central Asia isn’t really in vogue, probably because the traditional Russian liberals tend to dislike “Asiatics” anyway; they are probably some of the biggest Eurosupremacists on the planet. However that will probably change with the younger generation of SJWs.
Interesting that feminists so often are arguing in favour of male immigrants from quite misogynistic backgrounds.
Anyway, thanks for the reply…doesn’t sound good though 🙁
Oh, I totally agree with you about the Green party, their influence on German society has been really pernicious. Amazing that a 10% party can have such influence, but unfortunately they have many sympathizers in the media.
Why not? The German public will obviously do whatever the government tells them to. If the German Govt decides to pay reparations to Poland, the German people will probably say “great idea!” just like they did with the infinitely worse idea of allowing an infinite number of crypto Nazi, German hating, rapist middle easterners in.
How are they going to take power? Boris N said that such people will not be able to come to power for 50 years at minimum. Are you saying Boris N is wrong?
Alyona Popova: 5/10. Would not bang.
Too ethnic.
I was thinking about this very thing today, but it kinda makes sense when you think about it. I used to be really into feminism and one thing I eventually realized is that feminists are always libtards first. Their feminism only exists in service of their libtardism, not the other way around. This is why western feminists are often actually pro Taliban even though non feminist women all hate the Taliban.
If Islamic immigration ever got to the point where Western countries became more like contemporary Turkey, i.e. it is unsafe for women to leave the house without a male guardian, feminists would continue to support more Islamic immigration and would work overtime to cover up the fact that women were basically under house arrest.
not a fan of Poles, but making people abide by their own bs is the sweetest thing.
my sole problem is that (in the unlikely event Poles get to see even a penny of that money) the money will come from the pockets of the guy with blue/grey/green/white overalls.
there needs to be a way to liberalism-proof Russia that it never has what America had in 1965.
However, a difference compared to 1965 is that in 2017, the data is in. Maybe it won’t be quite as bad.
But overall, it’s all very depressing.
Personally I voted for two LDPR candidates,
What is this New Hampshire where anyone who shows up can vote? Are there no citizenship or residency requirements?
AK: You have to present a passport, and be confirmed as registerd to vote within that district.
errr… the reason Poland has anything approaching an economy is because it borders Germany you fuckedup cretin. If Poland was where Moldova was situated, keeping the same culture and fuckedup mentality that the Polish elite still have……then Poland would be a deeply struggling country instead of the average country , producing nothing of interest that isn’t meat or fruit…..that it is now
How much money should Poland compensate Russia for saving them from annihilation ? This while no western govewrnment wanted to save them…..particularly as the fascist scumbag Polish government very much enabled the Nazi’s to do the destruction to Poland that it did. Russians fought harder for Poland than the Poles did. Russia then rebuilt destroyed Polish cities, and increased Polish life expectancy,literacy,living standards massively from 1945 up until the mid-70’s.
Liberals are OVER-represented in the Russian media, Russian think-tanks, Russian government positions,Russian presidential administration,Russian state companies
…despite all that almost nobody wants to vote for them.
Russia is liberast proof.
I know you’re a lying attention-whore fuckwit troll…..but are you too stupid to understand how the concept of land works?They got enhanced territory thanks to the Red Army’s skill and bravery ( neither of these qualities the Polish authorities or their military showed) and Stalin’s generosity.They enhanced their territory even though Stalin righted the wrong of violent Polish opportunistic imperialism in Lithuania and Belarus, by transferring that land away from them.
Land you dipshit……arable land, land for mining, Russia rebuilding all of Poland, some land with wooden building that got replaced by much superior buildings. Land that had people living on it only because Russians saved Poles and their fascist-warmongering government from total annihilation. Land that the Soviets built gas pipelines on and stopped the Poles was freezing to death each year without bankruptijng the country.
Too many lies in a short spurt of words you disgusting fuckup. No Soviet looting you NATO propaganda spreading dipshit, there was though further murder of Jews by Poles even in 1946.
Poland did not “rebuild” those territories by herself you fucktard. Who was in control you idiot!
Like all Ukronazi retards….you have an incoherent, immoral lying, contradictory “argument”
Cretin
But is United Russia actually a political force in its own right, or is it just a facade for normies who don’t want to “rock the boat,” and which will fold as quickly as did the Party of Regions in the Ukraine when the pedal is put to the metal?
11 million voted in the Primaries for United Russia last year for representation in Duma. That is significant
United Russia’s big policy of success is that it copies many of the ideas of LDPR & the Communists…and then passes them off as their own….though they do also work very constructively with JR,KP,LDPR which enables this kind of thing to happen repeatedly on legislation.
The other big reason for United Russia’s success is simple…..the USA. Without their support for the lunatics in Banderastan to illegally overthrow Yanukovich and bring war to the Donbass, then we would be looking probably at a Duma of 40-45% ER, 25-35% LDPR,25-35% KP and 5-10% CR. There was a stagnating economy ( albeit hugely encouraging improvements in social,crime statistics) that would have been felt by United Russia…..if the Americans hadnt been such cretins
Also all parties in Ukraine, as Karlin says , are fake, paper-thin groups , …they are either Oligarch party’s, lunatic party’s…or both at the same time. Thus there is no comparison of ER to the Party of Regions.
There are discussions about fining Poland also:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-easteurope-infringeme/eu-threatens-hungary-poland-with-fines-if-refuse-refugees-idUSKCN1BH1JH?il=0
EU threatens Hungary, Poland with fines if refuse refugees
Of course. The purpose of bring up up reparations and the cost inflicted upon Poland wasn’t to get the money back (it won’t happen) but to get the Germans to back off their threats to punish Poland for not taking in a lot of Muslim refugees. If Germany wants to play games with money and morality, Poland can reciprocate.
Look, my idiot troll-stalker is back.
There’s a Wikipedia entry on the phenomenon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Nazism
The leading lights of the “movement ” were a Greek convert to Hinduism, a Chilean diplomat and the inevitable Frenchman.
Not my type, but definitely nicer than 5/10:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7079/7302793906_a290068f6c_b.jpg
There’s no excuse for not voting AfD. Personalities and misstatements and “scandals” or “embarrassments” like this don’t matter compared to the ongoing suicide and colonization / subjugation of the german people and nation.
Vote for whoever AfD is running, and replace them with some more desireable and also AfD defender of the German nation next time.
Sounds promising. So long as we also arrange to compensate Germany for the loss of Koenigsberg (“Kaliningrad”) and Danzig (“Gdansk”) and Elsass (“Alsace-Lorraine”) and much more.
Seems like Poland will be wise to pursue friendlier, profitable relations with both Russia and China — but coupled with a stronger, larger military and a few nuclear missilies for deterrence.
Poland or anyone else would be wise to participate and trade as much as possible on the massive New Silk Road rail and road system – and probably drone and hyperloop transport routes – that are coming under China’s initiative.
The USA would be wise to do so as well, but “my” government won’t consider that any time soon.
…..And for Poland to compensate the Czechs for what they in the 30’s, and to everyone else for being war-mongering (and losing) dickheads, when not under Russian control
Poles could also compensate every country, particularly Britain where their immigrants are involved in serious violent crime, out of proportion to the number of Poles living there
Poland has millions of people who have fleed it on order to live in Germany, whereas almost nobody from Germany goes to live in Poland. Accepting a small amount of migrants is the least they should do considering what bootlickers and parasites off the EU that Poles are.
Stop projected again you grandson of a Nazi rapist,lowlife , multiple account shitbag. How is the copying and pasting off the Motyl BS Wikipedia section going today? Retard
Yes, but I’d suppose Poland will simply refuse paying, and then Merkel and like-minded Western European politicians will consider cutting EU subsidies to Poland (why pay for Poland if it doesn’t adhere to EU “values”?).
Anyway, I’m obviously not in favour of forcing migrants on Poland. I also can see how Germany’s sense of responsibility for WW2 crimes against Poland has at times been somewhat underdeveloped. But it still seems like a dumb move imo for the Polish right to make those demands for reparations. It will please the most hardcore of their domestic supporters, but won’t achieve anything else.
I’ve already voted for AfD anyway (am away on the 24th, so went to the polling station two weeks ago). I tend to agree with you, Merkel and her regime are so dreadful on every level that her removal must be a priority.
The $865 billion is what the Germans caused in damage to Poland. It’s not punishment.
Territorial adjustments can be considered punitive.
Most of these territories weren’t worth much when Poland got them. They were bombed and what wasn’t destroyed was looted by the Soviets (intact factories were disassembled and sent east); Poland had a lot of rebuilding to do, which it did on its own. So if you want to include this land as part of the equation, a lot of its worth would have been that of land full of rubble that needed to cleared.
Interesting, thanks.
A quick glance at your history shows about 50% of your posts are responses to mine. Vice versa isn’t true. So clearly you are the one projecting.
And, clearly, you are a troll-stalker. The worst thing about your high level of stupidity is that it’s embarrassing to have such a low quality troll stalking me and following my posts.
So now that we have established that you are someone who projects, what do you project about yourself? In this post – ” grandson of a Nazi rapist,lowlife , multiple account shitbag. Retard”
That sounds about right.
At which point Poland can say, your country caused $865 billion in damage but we were never compensated for it.
Maybe. Or maybe the talk about eliminating subsidies or fining Poland will quietly go away, in which case the reparations threats will have achieved something.
Don’t be obtuse, Poland expelled millions of Germans from those territories (which were close to one-fifth of pre-war German territory) and acquired their property, obviously that would have to be set against Polish claims. In any case, WW2 ended 70 years ago, the Polish right is simply demented if they think anything positive could come of dredging up those issues again.
Much of that property was already destroyed during the war, so Poland would in such case be liable for the price of land with rubble on it. On the other hand, Germany destroyed 80% of Warsaw and never paid for rebuilding it. And the same goes for much of Poland. This would dwarf whatever the value was of farmland and ruined towns and cities in eastern parts of Germany.
The amount the Poles calculated was simply the cost of damage, that was never paid for. It didn’t take into account any punishment (which Germany deserved). The loss of territory can be considered punishment. In some ways it is a fitting punishment, because the territory lost is precisely the territory that voted most strongly for the Nazis; the uprooted people were the Nazis’ strongest electorate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_1933#/media/File:NSDAP_Wahl_1933.svg
(my comment does not imply that these people deserved to be raped, murdered or otherwise subject to atrocity – but losing one’s land is probably a fitting punishment for voting for Nazi-invaders of others’ lands)
This business seems to have started when Germany/EU insolently threatened to make Poland pay fines for not accepting Muslim refugees. Given all the damage Germany inflicted on Poles, it was a stupid thing of Germany to do.
I’ve really got zero interest in discussing all these WW2 issues in detail once again…I know about German crimes against Poland and have never denied them.
Regarding German demands that Poland should accept “refugees”, yes, of course it’s quite arrogant and perverse if Germans want to lecture Poles like that and interfere with Polish sovereignty…I’m definitely not in favour of it. But the Polish right is badly mistaken imo if they believe demands for reparations are an effective counter-move, just won’t work. I’m not sure they really understand how Western progressives and EU supporters think…these people have very little sympathy for Poland anyway. Arguing “But the Germans destroyed our capital in WW2!” won’t impress them at all, doesn’t work as an argument against the ideological demands of the anti-nationalism and “antiracism” favoured by EU elites.
Agree.
You may be right, but who knows how it will play out. As I mentioned before, I think the goal is simply to get Germany to drop the migrant talk, not to actually get hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations from Germany. It may fail, but I’m not as sure as you are that it will. We can agree to disagree here.
Yes, such attitudes are rather alien in Poland.
Poland’s demand for reparations is obviously
a political countermove in response to EU/Merkel’s
threats to impose fines on Poland and other countries.
Germany is apparently unaware of Newton’s Law of Action
and Reaction: For every Action there is an equal and
opposite Reaction. Germany will pay a price for Merkel’s
arrogant 2015 action inviting migrants to Europe without
a prior consultation with the rest of the EU. Right now
only Poland and Greece are demanding reparations but
what the Germans apparently don’t realize is that they are still
disliked and distrusted by most Europeans, and certainly
by their neighbors.
No country has inflicted as much suffering on Europe as
the German states in their 1200-year history. France and
the Czech R. could demand reparations for the German
brutality in the last 150 years. No country has killed as
many Americans as Germany. That’s why German nationals
were placed in internment camps in the U.S. during WW I
and WW II.
Germany is unfortunately a country that needs to be taught
a lesson every 50-100 years, for it is incapable of living
in peace with its neighbors. Trump cannot stand Merkel
(who can?), and right now there are over 300 NATO/U.S. military
installations/bases on German territory. Trump could say
to Merkel, “Nice country you’ve got there. It’d be a shame
if something should happen to it.”
I think the reunification of Germany was a serious blunder.
To keep Germany pacified, the first step should be to split
it into the former territory of East Germany (which could,
along with Poland, refuse to accept any migrants) and West
Germany. If that doesn’t work, or is not enough, let’s do
what should’ve been done at the end of WW II – completely
dismantle the German arms industry. Germany does a lot
of moral posturing these days, conveniently forgetting that
it remains a major merchant of death, i.e., arms exporter.
German leftists might even applaud this action.
These are two modest proposals to start a conversation.
By the way, I couldn’t help noticing on Politico.eu how
much vitriol is directed at Germany by French commenters
Hi Anatoly.
I suppose very few people in the US saw the SJWs coming, so I don’t want to say that it is impossible in Russia. But I am still very skeptical that such ideas could really take off here. Just recently I was in a meeting with a gaggle of women and a few men. When the conversation turned to gender roles, one of the men (a gentle-mannered and well-liked fellow) asserted that in his point of view a man’s role is to make decisions and a woman’s role is to support his decisions. The women– all university educated, who speak various foreign languages, frequently travel abroad, and spend most of their free time on social media– didn’t even raise their eyebrows.
This was too much for me, and I barely contained a fit of nervous giggles.
I am also very skeptical that the rabble of which you speak will be ruling the country in a few decades. As you have discussed here many times, “the liberal opposition” is very divided and has very little popular support. And perhaps it is precisely because their social worldview is so at odds with that of the average Russian. A moderate, united opposition dedicated to basic classical liberal principals (legal protection of private liberty and property, fair competition in business, a balance of powers between different branches of the government) might be able to carve out a niche in Russian politics and provide a counterbalance to the soft authoritarianism of the current government. But the myopic and narcicisstic obessions of the so-called liberal opposition seem unlikely to gain traction here.
I recognize that my sample is biased (I mostly spend time with yuppies who have young children, and these are likely to be different from the yuppies who don’t). But surely your sample of twitter celebrities is also biased, and perhaps in a very perverse way. (I suspect the same is true for your considerations of American politics, but that is another story.) If we wanted to be realistic about this question, we’d need to comb through opinion polls from the last twenty years, and compare opinion polls of the younger and older generations, of the urban and suburban populations, of the yuppies and the vatniks, to get an idea for where society is really going on average.
Agreed about Eurosupremacism. But this seems to me a kind of self-hatred. Russians have never been fully accepted as “normal” Europeans, and the current situation seems even worse than usual. A Russian who wants nothing so desperately as to be considered European seems to me like the teenage boy who ignores all of the cute, intelligent girls that might actually be interested in him and instead doggedly pursues the dumb blond, no matter how often and how rudely she rejects him.
These people have no self-hatred. This “intelligentsia” dominated by ethnic minorities (some have Russian origin, but long ago assimilated, and consider their homeland America, Israel, etc.)
When the oppositioner (not of Russian origin) Shenderovich said that the genetic inferiority of Russian – the result of negative selection, and oppozitsiner Stomakhin (not of Russian origin) calls for all Russians, regardless of sex and age should be burnt in the furnaces (of the death camps), it is the usual “ethnic” hatred.
It is pretty interesting to see how even two intelligent, pretty open German and Polish/Ukrainian nationalists (ok, I know AP doesn’t identify as a nationalist, but his arguments are pretty nationalistic in this particular case) who basically agree on immigration and WW2, just basically just talk past each other when it comes to the reparations question.
Personally, I think German_reader is more correct in this sense, Poland would be stupid to alienate Germany; for all its problems, Germany is still a behemoth relative to Poland, and provides it with not inconsiderable amounts of aid (the amount that Poland/Visegrad gets in EU funds, where Germany is the bigger donor, is comparable to what Russia gets from hydrocarbons taxes). “Friendly relations with China and America to serve as counterweights to Russia and Germany” might be nice in theory, but in practice, they are both half a world away (not to mention that Polish opinion of China isn’t even that high either due to their commie obsession).
What did you expect an audience of Slavs to call you when you are in effect telling them that HBD confirms that the Nazis were right: Slavs are indeed inferior to Germanics?
AK: Russian liberals don’t need HBD to believe that anyway.
I think this should be viewed in the context of what appears to be an eastern/central-European populist campaign against the perceived EU dictate (and the EU is often equated with Germany). Something similar is happening in Hungary, for example.
It doesn’t matter what the excuse is – reparations, migrants, the debt (Greece) – the point is: stick it to The Man, and it’ll make you popular, regardless of the merits of issues being played…
It’s just that the EU/Germany is perceived as being too powerful and too pushy… Plus, apparently the subsidies are supposed to stop from 2020, and the amounts of subsidies before 2020 are already fixed and allocated, so they got nothing to lose.
Britain has (speaking as a proud British person)
More like a white man who keeps going after a white woman instead a bunch of easy-but-unattractive Chinese and Turks
This allegory is not about our time
https://imgur.com/a/ApESm
The European championship -2017 athletics . Girls triple jump.
On the left (second place) – France
Right (third place) – UK
In the center (the champion) – Belarus
But is it true? It always comes up in Hungary, but difficult to measure, if possible at all. For example we received oil and natural gas at massively discounted prices. I think at one point the re-export of Soviet natural gas and oil was the most important Hungarian export commodity in the 1980s… The USSR also accepted low quality Hungarian exports which could be sold nowhere else.
I think in general it was a “they pretend to pay and we pretend to deliver them goods” type of relationship, where ultimately both the USSR and the rest of the Comecon lost out. It would have been better for both if they engaged in a meaningful mutually beneficial trade relationship instead.
Oh, please. Ikarus was a great bus, and Globus was a very decent foodstuff. And Soviet metro trains are still running on the Blue Line in Budapest. They’re probably 60 (or so) years old and still running fine.
If anything, quality was too high for the modern capitalist economy, where everything has to fall apart and be replaced as often as possible.
You Europeans sort out your internal reparations issues and then come together to think about European reparations to the US for WWI and WWII.
[This rabble will be ruling Russia in another two decades.]
I don’t understand why anyone would believe this. It is very much the exception in history for the beliefs and practices of the rich to spread in short order to the rest of society. Still more so when the rest already feel a strong and conscious aversion to them.
They are not so much more rich (though that’s important, since the rich have far more influence, access to power and media, etc.) but more intelligent. More intelligent people win more arguments than stupid people, on average, steadily converting people to their ideology. This is a big problem if their ideology is shit.
Again, what is really missing in all these discussions is the fact that the title of those “liberal” parties is a euphemism for West. West has committed a cultural suicide in Russia. Nobody really gives a shit about what Moscow hipsters think. Last time I was in Russia (2016) I spoke with number of people, including Muscovites, including young people–I never encountered in my life such a dramatic rejection of those proverbial “liberal” (that is Western) values. Either real liberals decouple themselves from “Western” (a massive task as it is–those who know Russia’s history will know why) or they have no future in Russia. But that is the topic for a whole other discussion.
Who is more intelligent?
Well, it’s not that they are intelligent, it’s just that in modern life, considering the means of communication and availability of travel, overtly racist ideologies are unconvincing and unpleasant to most people. Cosmopolitanism used to be synonymous with elitism, but nowadays it appears to be common, at least among the urban populations.
But is United Russia actually a political force in its own right, or is it just a facade for normies who don’t want to “rock the boat,” and which will fold as quickly as did the Party of Regions in the Ukraine when the pedal is put to the metal?
The Russophile element in the Ukraine is still present in electoral institutions there. They just lost about 3/4 of their electorate. Putin’s been a cack-handed bully and lost most of his audience. Not surprising, really.
For 25 years, you’ve had the Machine, the Soviet nostalgiacs, the Zhirinovsky clown show, this season’s populist / social democratic formation (which appears as we speak to have been co-opted), and a collection of pluperfect and ineffectual liberals. These have been supplemented on occasion with the residuum of the quondam Machine and a revanchist formation. Since your liberal parties summed with the Machine adopting a liberal disposition have never broken 30% of the vote and are currently polling in the low-single-digits, I’m not sure why you’re anxious about their future performance.
They are winning because they are better at choosing up sides. They have the universal community banner and they are running with it; “giving voice” to every little snowflake in the world. They are winning by default. There is no organized opposition. The opposition can’t unite; see comment #85. And we all know what happens when individuals go up against organized groups.
overtly racist ideologies are unconvincing and unpleasant to most people.
Yes, but disproportionately by POP, but works with a disproportionate acceptance by POC which will be enough to finish off the POP prodigals and muzhiks.
Let me give an example of what the Germans
have done. About 800 AD the region between the
Oder and the Elbe-Saale rivers, roughly coincident
with the former East Germany (DDR) was inhabited by the
Polabian Slavs. Many place names still show their Slavic
origin. E.g., Krakow is not that far from Hamburg, and the
word Berlin itself is of Slavic origin, having the common
Slavonic ending -in (e.g., Putin). As we know the Saxons
(along with the Angles) invaded post-Roman Britain. What is
not generally known is that once Charlemagne was dead, the
Saxons (early Germans) felt free to invade the Slavic territory
east of the Elbe river, and gradually exterminated the Polabian
Slavs so that now they have been reduced to a small region
known as Lusatia which straddles the Polish-German border.
Lusatia is inhabited by the Sorbs who in the northern part speak
a language very close to Polish. One of their main towns is Bautzen
(Budziszyn).
The Saxons’ attacks is in fact what triggered the process that
led to the formation of the nucleus of the Polish state in Central-
Western Poland (Wielkopolska). Several Slavic tribes came
together in self-defense against the Saxon incursions. Hence
the Saxons played an important role in the formation of two
countries – modern England and Poland (The Vikings were
also involved in both countries but to a lesser extent).
There’s also the issue what Poland would have to do for being America’s special friend in Eastern Europe…a desire to be so led to Poland’s participation in the Iraq war and Poland providing facilities for the CIA’s torture programme…policies that were rather foolish imo and weren’t good for Poland’s image abroad.
Besides, given the way the US might develop in coming decades, the US public is unlikely to have much sympathy for ultra-Catholic Polish nationalists (and unlike the Saudis Poland has nothing to bribe the Americans with).
To some extent I can understand Polish apprehensions about Germany and Russia, but the Polish right seems almost intent to deliberately antagonize both Germany and Russia. I doubt that’s a smart policy in the long run.
.
They didn’t exterminate them in the sense of physically destroying them, that’s just nonsense, they Germanized them culturally. It’s clear that East Germans are to a large extent descended from Germanized Slavs, genetic studies have confirmed this. Now certainly the process wasn’t always pleasant, but something like this has been common throughout history (e.g. Finns being assimilated into Russians, Britons being subsumed into the English), to claim this as evidence for some eternal German depravity is idiotic.
We probably have to 🙂
Yes, we’ll see how this plays out. Unless there is a drastic course correction, the EU may well break apart in the next few years anyway.
America should pay for destroying our cities.
That is exactly the same policy that destroyed the second Polish republic.
The EU won’t break apart. Elites and populations are too invest in the Union for that to happen.
What is much more likely is that the EU becomes dysfunctional, but the individual member states end up too tied to each other to disengage.
That was more a fundamental aspect of planned economies, rather than of the trade between them.
All kinds of globally uncompetitive industries survived in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Bulgaria, for example, had a large technology sector – eg making reverse engineered DEC minicomputer clones.
When the free market arrived those industries just vanished.
“Yes, we’ll see how this plays out. Unless there is a drastic course correction, the EU may well break apart in the next few years anyway.”
I’d probably say it would happen in a matter of decades rather than years, but yes, I think this is inevitable. One of the most promising signs is that, contrary to a lot of other countries, Polish youth are more skeptical of the EU than their elders.
“It’s clear that East Germans are to a large extent descended from Germanized Slavs, genetic studies have confirmed this.”
I wonder how much that explains the large cultural differences between East and West Germans. (I’m sure the communist experience explains most of it, but maybe some portion goes deeper than communism).
Actually no, cosmopolitanism is actually remarkably unpopular in Europe, even in some societies outside the communist orbit like Austria. Look at public opinion polls on questions like “should we ban further Muslim immigration”. The depth of penetration of liberal ideas into popular consciousness is highly overrated.
Overtly racist ideologies probably are (and should be) unconvincing to most people, but the desire for relatively homogenous ethnic homelands shouldn’t be and isn’t. The desire for Poland to remain Polish doesn’t have to have any implications for whether you think Poles are ‘superior’ to Syrian Arabs, Ibos, Mexicans, or anyone else.
Would you care to rephrase that? Unless, of course, you’re just taking the piss.
I doubt it plays much of a role, I’m somewhat wary of explaining everything with genetics. And in any case, there’s not just an East-West divide in Germany, but also a marked North-South divide.
Well, that’s why I said “overtly racist”. These days, you probably need to talk about homogeneous culture, rather than ethnicity. And you can (and probably should, as far as I’m concerned) object to unassimilated migrants, but not just migrants…
No, you don’t need to do either of the above. You can’t combat liberalism using liberal premises, or shouldn’t. I have a lot more respect for people who straightforwardly and honestly state that they’re concerned about ethnicity and demographic change, whether migrants are ‘assimilated’ or not.
Again, I don’t think the median European is anywhere near as liberal/multiculturally minded as you think.
overtly racist ideologies are unconvincing and unpleasant to most people.
Would you care to rephrase that?
Restricting myself to the US:
White liberals are, on average, more intelligent, have better life outcomes and are more tolerant of diversity than white proles.
(According to AK, Russian liberals are also above average in intelligence.)
Blacks and browns in the US are, on average, less intelligent, have worse life outcomes and are less tolerant of other races and cultures. Throw in historical circumstances that encourage racial or sub-cultural identity over “the norm” and you have large numbers of people for whom [racialist] ideologies and political currents are convincing and pleasant.
White liberals will not only let the white proles perish, they will actively try to destroy them because they are the scapegoat for failed liberal policies to “uplift” blacks and browns.
White proles will be finished off because they do not have and will not have cohesion with white elites because white elites reject (as you point out) racialist politics on behalf of the “white group.”
The JQ works the same way. If you don’t handicap the Jews in some way in an open, competitive and meritocratic socio-economic system, then Jews are going to take the proles lunch money every day all day; using their brains of course, not with force like black thugs.
What is the nature of the north south divide?
And does the Rheinland count as south, or is it in its own category? To what extent are these differences correlated with traditional religious divisions?
We just can’t stand “Prussians” (that is people from Northern Germany) in the south, they’re cold, arrogant, without humour, think they know everything better. And politically the south of the old federal republic for a long time was more conservative than the north. Unfortunately that has eroded over the last few years given how the Christian Democrats have changed…but Bavaria is still hated by the “progressives” up north.
Merkel (born in Hamburg btw) is far more of a “Prussian” than an “Ossie” in some ways, I have difficulty imagining something like her could have emerged from Thuringia or Saxony.
Nah. As long as you’re behaving like one of them, I don’t think most people are concerned whether your parents immigrated, and where they were born. What they are concerned about is exactly unassimilated, culturally alien groups in their midst. My opinion, anyway.
People changing their core beliefs as the consequence of observing a debate is extremely rare IMO. Still more so when material interests are involved. We won’t even get into whether IQ is really the most important factor in persuasion.
I dunno, the way I see it, liberal elites are not trying to ‘finish off’ any groups; all they want is to incite proles to fight each other, instead of fighting the bosses. Also, I don’t consider them (or ‘the Jews’, whatever that is) any more ‘intelligent’ than proles.
Well, different patterns of behavior, yes, and of course if you define ‘intelligence’ as patterns observed among the elite, then sure, they are intelligent. But that’s basically tautological: elites do elitey things.
Racism is pretty convincing to those Europeans and East Asians who have experience with the lower functioning races from Africa and the Middle East so we are likely to see a lot more of it in the future with increased travel and migration.
I wasn’t racist at all back in the year 2000 when I lived in a very Finnish Helsinki where you only really encountered Swedes, Balts and Russians as minorities. Then our elites decided to flood us with Middle Easterners and Africans, a neighborhood I was living in started turning diverse and my liberal beliefs died pretty fast. “Assimilation” is meaningless – I can tolerate unassimilated Russians as neighbors but I don’t want to live in a heavily black neighborhood regardless of how much they’ve studied our language.
Of course this is becoming a “cosmopolitan” city in the sense that white people are rapidly moving out and the future city is going to be just a few white wealthy enclaves surrounded by black and brown ghettos with the majority of the white population escaping to the surrounding areas. That’s the urban “cosmopolitanism” of the West: it’s a form of segregation but the segregation is achieved through economics and other informal means while everyone celebrates the lack of explicitly racial policies.
High IQ people are more likely to have high incomes so they’re able to buy segregation and they can more safely signal support for “tolerant” policies with the expectation that the migrants won’t move to their neighborhood. The assumption becomes that if someone is frustrated with immigration it means that they’re unable to buy their way into an all white neighborhood and no one wants to signal low status.
The same is going to eventually happen in Russian cities as well unless Russia adopts a fundamentally different economic or value system. It could not happen under the Soviet system because housing was an assigned, planned system so this form of segregation through real estate prices could not develop the same way.
informal means while everyone celebrates the lack of explicitly racial policies.
Using PC language and holding the “right” opinions with regard to race is an extremely important identifier that allows the white elites to differentiate themselves from the proles.
Please present your papers, comrade…
if you define ‘intelligence’
Well, no need for us to go round and round. We can agree to disagree.
I define intelligence as that which is measured by IQ tests.
Ashkenazim>E. Asians>Northern Europeans>SS Africans
If you were in the white prole group in the US you wouldn’t have any trouble seeing that the white elites are trying to finish you off.
The white elites don’t worry about proles and trying to keep them divided. There is an occasional paroxysm of violence, but other than that the proles are not a problem. The only way proles are a serious problem is when there are deep and major divisions among the elites and some “vanguard” faction of the elites catches their eye by giving voice to their complaints and uses them to set themselves up as the new elite.
Rhineland/Palatnate is historically Catholic, right?
Depends what you understand by “Rhineland”. The Palatinate’s princes in the early modern era actually were Calvinists iirc, as were many of their subjects, also many Lutherans. My grandfather’s family was from Ludwigshafen am Rhein (which was part of Bavaria until 1946) and they were Lutherans.
The history of the Rhine territories in modern North-Rhine-Westphalia was different, they became part of Prussia in the early 19th century. Some people claim this led to a negative view of the state among the region’s population (sort of like in Southern Italy), since they came to regard the state as an instrument of foreign domination (and there was a religious dimension as well, due to Catholic-Protestant tensions). I don’t know how plausible that is, but North-Rhine-Westphalia today certainly seems to be more corrupt and dysfunctional than other parts of Germany.
From Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Palatines
My grandfather’s family was from Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Sorry about the political deterioration in the Urheimat , cuz, bad stuff happening here in the Carolinas as well.
: Anatoly Karlin apparently disagrees with you that imperialism against White people doesn’t count.-
Pilketty’s methodology has been questioned by Leonid Bershidsky:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-14/piketty-zeroes-in-on-putin-s-pain-point
-
Thanks for this information!
- Basically, I was curious about this considering that Kazakhs probably suffered as much, if not more, from Russian/Soviet imperialism as the Baltics and Ukraine did. (For instance, something like 30% of Kazakhstan’s population died due to forced collectivization in the 1930s. Plus, there is also the very possible displacement of Kazakhs from their lands during the 19th and 20th centuries.)
-
Poland should certainly be welcome to raise the reparations issue; indeed, if Poland feels that it hasn’t been sufficiently compensated for Nazi German aggression, this issue needs to be discussed.
However, if this issue is raised, wouldn’t it also make sense for Poland to demand reparations from Russia (as the legal successor state to the Soviet Union) for its annexation of Polish territory in 1939 as well as for the Katyn massacre?
Also, I completely agree with you that refugees and migrants which Germany accepted should be Germany’s and only Germany’s responsibility. After all, if Germany accepted these refugees and migrants without consulting with other E.U. countries, then there should be absolutely no reason for other E.U. countries to take some of these migrants and refugees off of Germany’s shoulders!
As for your point about Germany’s territorial losses being a form of rightful punishment due to the high Nazi vote in these territories, I would like to point out that even if 60% of the population in these territories voted for the Nazis, this would still leave 40% of the population who got punished in spite of them not voting for the Nazis. Indeed, if you want a better argument in favor of these expulsions, you might as well point out the fact that most of the people who were killed in the Holocaust were either Polish or Soviet citizens and that thus Poland and the Soviet Union are entitled to territorial compensation from Germany for the loss of most of their Jewish cognitive elite.
(Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that Poland’s claim to the Oder-Neisse Line is that weak. I mean, sure, it’s weak, but it’s stronger than the Zionists’ claim to Palestine was in the early 20th century. After all, areas such as Pomerania and Silesia were Polish as late as 900 years ago while most Jews left Palestine 2,000 years ago.)
@German_reader: I’m not opposed to Poland raising the issue of World War II reparations from Germany. (Raising this issue means starting a discussion about it.) However, wouldn’t it also make sense for Poland to raise the issue of reparations from Russia (as the legal successor state to the Soviet Union) for taking eastern Poland in 1939 as well as for retarding Polish economic development for half a century through the imposition of Communism on Poland?
Also, I agree that since Merkel doesn’t appear to have consulted other E.U. states in regards to her refugee decision in 2015, other E.U. states shouldn’t be forced to bail Germany out in regards to this. Rather, this problem should remain an exclusively German problem.
@Daniel Chieh: I certainly didn’t say that higher-IQ people were always capable of better judgment than lower-IQ people, now did I? After all, sometimes lower-IQ people appear to have better positions than higher-IQ people–such as with open borders.
Does Italy, an EU member, have any claim against Germany for reparations for the repeated sacking of Rome?
Also – Bavarians didn’t vote for the Nazis (except for a pocket of Protestants around Nuremberg). Northerners did. Bavarians didn’t deserve the Commie occupation after the Nazi defeat, and didn’t get it.
@AP: Applying percentages to entire populations isn’t a very good idea, though; after all, some Bavarians did vote for the Nazis while some northern and eastern Germans didn’t–indeed, it’s the frequencies that differed.
Thus, please tell me why exactly Germans who didn’t vote for the Nazis in areas where many of their neighbors did deserved to be put under Communist rule for half a century?
Saved the Polish nation from annihilation you cretin…all the while not a single western state bothered to set foot in Poland during WW2 . Taking eastern Poland was wholly just…the Polish state had dissappeared because the Nazi’s had already invaded.
600000 Soviets died liberating Poland you idiot…and there were plenty of people in Poland who enjoyed living under Communism…which rebuilt their country from ruin, gave them better education, security and increased their living massively from 1945 until the mid-70’s
You really have to use your brain. Israel has been more than compensated for by Germany….that is in huge reparations for crimes commited on Polish soil that the Polish government doesn’t deserve to be paid even 0.1% of. Reparations should be already accounted from a huge part of money to Israel for its survival and in it’s creation As many jews as Poles ( in the perputual warmongering state of Poland) died from 1939-45.
Poland should pay reparations for stealing land from the Czechs and being wholly complicit with the Nazis.
Poland is the one committing the crimes by in effect honouring the Nazis by tearing down monuments to the Red Army who liberated them……because the Poles always have scumbags in their elites. What better way to show you are complicit dickheads with the Nazis by tearing down monuments to those who removed Nazis from Poland and rebuilt your country and gave you German land.
Millions of Poles live,work and parasite off Germany, asking them to take a small amount of refugees…and Poles refusing to do so….is a disgrace
The real issue here is that scumbag fake-Catholic,pseudo-religious Poles don’t want to be exposed as anti-christian dickheads….unwilling to take even a few refugees and expose their racist mentality to all of the EU. Compare this to conservative,Christian Russia which allows in millions of immigrants and you can see the old anti-christian and jealous mentality of the Poles come to the fore…again.
That was freakin’ awesome!
Peace.
At this point at least 3 national entities have
raised the issue of reparations from Germany:
as German South Africa, almost 3 times the size
of present-day Germany. Germany is accused of
genocide in 1907-8 and setting up concentration camps.
In fact, some historians think that Germany was so
efficient in setting up concentration camps in the
1930s-’40s Europe because it acquired a lot of
technical experience in exterminating large numbers
of people in Africa).
Of course, Germany has been paying reparations to the
world’s Jews for many decades now which has kept the
Jews mollified on the German issue. Watch the Jews
go after Germany again as soon as the money spigot is
turned off.
In view of the above, I don’t think the issue of the
reparations will vanish anytime soon. It’s not
just Poland. Right now it’s four countries/groups,
but their number is likely to increase in the near
future.
Soviets took territory whose presence in Poland was rather dubious to begin with. It was taken by Poland by force from the natives, and the League of Nations granted temporary rule with the understanding that there would be a referendum (which never occurred).
Good point. But that’s how it is. Some % of Americans didn’t vote for Bush but all Americans still pay the consequences for the stupid Iraq war.
1000 years ago Poland had roughly the same borders
as it does today so, yes, the Polish claim to the Oder-Neisse
border is at least as good as the Jewish claim to Palestine.
In fact, I’d say much better, since 1000 years ago the area
between Limes Saxoniae (border of Saxony along
the Elbe-Saal rivers) and the Oder-Neisse rivers was still
largely inhabited by Poland’s fellow Slavs, known as the
Polabian Slavs who spoke a language very close to Polish.
True, it was a mixture of extermination, ethnic cleansing,
intermarriage, and Ostsiedlung. Nevertheless, the fact
remains that only small numbers of Polabian Slavs remain
today around Bautzen in Germany and on the Polish side.
Even more important, the Germans gained a tremendous
amount of territory at the expense of the Slavs in general,
and Poland, specifically, until in 1945 1000 years of the
Drang nach Osten was undone in a matter of weeks.
1000 years ago the population ratio between Germany
and Poland was exactly the same as it is today, 2 to 1, so
Poland could not win its battle for self-preservation.
The Germans kept coming and coming, and gaining more
territory. However, in a conflict between a larger country
and a smaller country the larger country will always be
viewed as more culpable if only because larger countries have
more options. IMHO it was the German reunification of 1871
that produced nothing but disastrous consequences for Europe,
particularly because both Germany and Russia were artificially
enlarged at Poland’s expense and acquired delusions of grandeur.
Nothing is as corrupting as power.
This brings me to the question of why the Czech wedge into
Germanic territory, so far into the West, has somehow survived
the Germanic onslaught and the Polabian Slavs basically did not.
The entire area north of Czechia, i.e., roughly DDR, was
inhabited by Slavs at the time of Charlemagne who did everything
in his power to keep the Saxons from crossing Limes Saxoniae into
Slavic territory. Of course, one explanation is that Bohemia was
protected by mountains. Fortunately, the history of Central
Europe is now intensely studied by Polish, Czech, and German
historians, so we’ll understand these matters better in the coming
years.
Personally, I’m opposed to the Polish government’s decision to
seek reparations, as is much of the population as well the Catholic
episcopate in Poland. But the really dumb thing was for the EU/Germany
to threaten Poland and Hungary with fines to begin with. This started
the ball rolling.
Unless, of course, the cause-effect is the opposite: wealthier people tend to score higher in IQ test. They also – no surprise here at all – tend to live in more expensive neighborhoods.
I believe that you are, in a way, confirming my point – talking about ‘heavily black neighborhoods’ – that’s exactly what an enclave of unassimilated migrants is. I’d be much surprised if you felt the same way about a colleague with African background who speaks with no accent, works at your office, lives in your neighborhood, and goes to your pub to discusses the latest hockey game with you.
You might want to try to convey a rational purpose for the elites to pursue this (alleged) course of actions.
How dare Poles not want their women and children to be raped by Muslims! That’s what Jesus would do!
Do you understand the concept of scapegoat? Do you understand the concept of elite differentiation?
Do you understand the concept of global unfettered free flow of capital and labor? Do you understand the value of having a global lumpen proletariat?
The Czechs were smart enough to convert to Christianity and create a principality at least approaching the standards of Latin Christendom. The Elbe Slavs remained pagan, were politically and culturally backwards (we don’t even have written sources from their point of view), and consequently got steamrolled.
And sorry, but interpreting these events of 1000 years ago through the lens of some perpetual German-Slav conflict seems seriously anachronistic to me.
As for reparations, not going to happen. Personally, I’d be ok with Germany paying reparations to the Herero, and maybe even the Greeks have a case for some compensation (there’s the issue of the forced loan the German occupiers extorted from Greece, that might be a basis for some claims). But we need all our money now to pay Danegeld to “refugees”, so they don’t chop our heads off when they’re in an “Allahu akbar” mood, so sorry, no money for reparations!
Yes, and that’s my hypothesis too: all groups blame all other groups, the ‘blacks’ blame the ‘whites’ and vice versa. That’s the game, according to me.
No, not exactly.
Yes. But this basically amounts to forcing workers in the developed nations to compete against the poorest and most desperate in the world. And it actually works better by relocating factories to Bangladesh, rather than by bringing millions of Bangladeshis to Connecticut. You would actually have to pay them more in Connecticut.
all groups blame all other groups
No, the elites direct the animosity of one group toward another group, depending upon circumstances, depending upon which group is considered the greater threat.
No, not exactly.
Elites need a way to differentiate themselves from hoi poi. It was wearing purple for a time. When nomadic warriors seized power and installed themselves as the elite it was riding and owning a horse.
It’s language, dress, sophisticated art (not mass culture), etc. Virtuous PC language, beliefs and political positions are currently one of the main distinguishing marks.
And it actually works better by relocating factories to Bangladesh
This is an important facet, but it works best of all if you can relocate capital and import peoples to drive down the wages and salaries of maids, fast-food workers, gardeners, computer programmers, engineers, and every occupation including CEO.
This doesn’t seem essential or universal. Elites in Norway, for example (and I suspect everywhere in Scandinavia and Finland), work hard to avoid differentiating themselves. They look and behave like ordinary people, wear old sweaters, drive old cars. It’s just a matter of style, culture, I think, not any law of nature.
I dunno. You export major industries, large factories – you’ll have serious oversupply of labor. Most computer programmers are already working in India (and some and Kiev, Bucharest, etc.). Unless you believe that ‘white’ American workers will somehow prefer to starve, I don’t see a great need to import people. People that are already here will suffice, just give it time.
You do realize the war ended over 70 years ago and that Allied confiscation or German industry, property, technology and territory more than covered any damages Germany inflicted on their neighbors, right?
Do you just plan on paying reparations until the end of time?
Would you care to rephrase that?
1. The German people freely elected the Nazis.
incorrect
The Russian people did not elect the Communists;
incorrect
The Russians are not responsible for the USSR.
I have lived to read everything.
Israel’s gross domestic product is currently over $200 bn a year. The reparations paid in installments between 1952 and 2006 were contextually quite modest sums. A summary is here:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/german-holocaust-reparations
I’d also agree with Germany paying reparations to the Herero. I don’t seriously expect or favour Germany paying money to Poland, but it would be nice if they stopped haranguing them about taking immigrants, especially when these people don’t want to be in Poland in the first place.
The Nazis got 44% in March 1933; the Bolsheviks got 24% in November 1917.
So a majority in both countries didn’t elect the Nazis/Bolsheviks, but the Nazis clearly had far more popular support in Germany.
The Latvians contributed vastly more on a per capita basis, besides being the most pro-Bolshevik region in the Russian empire, the Red Latvian Riflemen may have played a deciding role in the critical earliest phase of the Civil War; the Jews and Poles also went beyond the call of duty.
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/yroslav1985/28993233/74354/74354_original.jpg
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/yroslav1985/28993233/74514/74514_original.jpg
I believe any reparations queries should be directed towards Riga, Tel Aviv and Warsaw can chip in as well.
The Latvians contributed vastly more on a per capita basis
Any speculation on why this was the case?
From Wiki:
% for Bolsheviks
…
Petrograd 45
Moscow 47.9
Transcaucasia 4.6
Estonia 40.4
Livonia 71.9
Vitebsk 51.2
Minsk 63.1
Smolensk 54.9
…
In the US, I suspect, the elites won’t give a shit to differentiate. They couldn’t care less. Celebrities do. George Clooney, and such. Good for business.
@Anatoly Karlin: It would be better to look at the November 1932 elections in Germany, though; after all, the March 1933 elections were filled with Nazi coercion and intimidation.
Also, in regards to Russia, it’s a shame that we don’t have separate vote totals for the Right SRs and the Left SRs; unfortunately, this makes looking at the Russian situation in 1917 more difficult (given that, as far as I know, the Left SRs supported the Bolshevik Revolution while the Right SRs opposed it).
@AP: In regards to Germans electing the Nazis, that’s a good point. However, please keep in mind that the Nazis then proceeded to outlaw all other parties as well as all further elections. In other words, while the Germans elected the Nazis in 1932 and 1933 (albeit with the 1933 elections being somewhat less fair due to Nazi coercion), Germans didn’t get the opportunity to vote against the Nazis in the future (or even to really speak out against the Nazis, for that matter).
Also, please keep in mind that the passage of the Enabling Act was done in part through Nazi coercion and that the Nazi consolidation of power in 1934 (after President Hindenburg’s death) violated the (pro-Nazi) Enabling Act:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933
“Ironically, two, and possibly three, of the penultimate measures Hitler took to consolidate his power in 1934 violated the Enabling Act. In February 1934, the Reichsrat, representing the states, was abolished even though Article 2 of the Enabling Act specifically protected the existence of that chamber. It can be argued that the Enabling Act had been breached two weeks earlier by the Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich, which transferred the states’ powers to the Reich and effectively left the Reichsrat impotent. In August, Hindenburg died, and Hitler seized the president’s powers for himself in accordance with a law passed the previous day. Article 2 stated that the president’s powers were to remain “undisturbed,” which has long been interpreted to mean that it forbade Hitler from tampering with the presidency. A 1932 amendment to the constitution made the president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor, first in the line of succession to the presidency—and even then on an interim basis pending new elections.[13] However, the Enabling Act provided no remedy for any violations of Article 2, and these actions were never challenged in court.”
Thus, Yes, the Germans voted for the Nazis. However, the Nazi takeover of power was filled with coercion and illegal acts and Germans didn’t get the opportunity to reject the Nazis in future elections. In turn, this means that it’s not as clear-cut as you make it out to be, AP.
As for Russia, it isn’t quite clear whether a majority of the population supported the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Basically, the issue is that we don’t know what percentage of the vote the anti-Bolshevik Right SRs and the initially pro-Bolshevik Left SRs would have gotten if their lists were put separately on the ballot. Indeed, if the Bolsheviks plus Left SRs would have won a majority of the vote and seats in the Russian Constituent Assembly, then the Bolshevik Revolution would have had some legal backing to it. Of course, the subsequent Bolshevik monopolization of power was illegal—but in this regard the Bolsheviks weren’t much different from the Nazis in Germany.
Thus, in regards to your point #1, it’s not entirely clear that the differences between the Bolshevik and the Nazi seizure of power were that great. At most you could say that the Nazis had a clearer mandate—but that was in 1932/1933, not necessarily in 1939 or later.
As for your point #2 here, I would like to point out that the areas around Vilnius and Lvov had very large Polish populations. Thus, it is not entirely clear that the Soviet Union would have won a plebiscite in these territories. Heck, I’m not even sure that the Soviet Union would have decisively won the Ukrainian and Belarusian vote considering that some/many Ukrainians and Belarusians might have been turned off by the Soviet Union’s terror and mass collectivization. In turn, it should come as no surprise that the Soviet Union didn’t bother holding free and fair plebiscites in these areas after it captured them in 1939.
Thus, in the grand scheme of things, the Soviet Union wasn’t exactly innocent in regards to this either.
As for the consequences of the Iraq War, are you talking about ISIS here?
Also, I agree that the Soviet occupation of a part of Germany was a predictable consequence of attacking the Soviet Union (and losing afterward, of course). Indeed, I am simply saying that it would have been fairer for the Soviet Union to withdraw from eastern Germany–and indeed, from all of Eastern Europe (at least if a reunified Germany would have agreed to recognize the Oder-Neisse Line as the new, final, and permanent German-Polish border). After all, I don’t think that it was very fair to punish non-Nazi voters as well as children for the crimes of the Nazis. (As for reparations, though, the Soviet Union should have certainly been entitled to them–including to various factories and whatnot which it then proceeded to dismantle and ship back to the Soviet Union.)
Anyway, my point here is that, while Nazi Germany might have very well been more in the wrong than the Soviet Union was and while Germans might be more culpable than Russians were, it still isn’t a completely black-and-white issue.
@Anon 2: Agreed about the strength of Poland’s claim to the Oder-Neisse Line.
@iffen: Given those numbers, it’s certainly interesting that the Bolsheviks failed to conquer Latvia at the start of the 1920s.
@Anatoly Karlin: Why not also ask for reparations from Germany considering that they are the ones who sent Lenin and many other Bolsheviks to Russia in the first place (in the hopes of destabilizing Russia and thus getting Russia out of World War I)?
Germany finishes paying WWI reparations, ending century of ‘guilt’
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1004/Germany-finishes-paying-WWI-reparations-ending-century-of-guilt
WWI down, WWII to go.
Those World War I reparations don’t include reparations to Russia for sending the Bolsheviks over there, though.
Anyway, my point here is that, while Nazi Germany might have very well been more in the wrong than the Soviet Union was and while Germans might be more culpable than Russians were, it still isn’t a completely black-and-white issue.
See the cascade in favor of local Nazis and the pro-Nazi Sudeten Party in Danzig and Czechoslovakia respectively. Also,awful lot of cheering on the streets when the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938, even though the Nazis and the Heimwehr combined won less than 10% of the vote in the parliamentary elections 8 years earlier (and the Nazis themselves just 3%).
Nazis won the election of 1933 with 44% of the vote. In a multiparty election that is a very solid win. In the last German election, for example, Merkel’s CDU got 41.5%. Trudeau got 39.5%.
The 1933 election did involve some voter suppression so was not totally free, but was not a fake election.
The 1932 elections were completely free – the Nazis won both, with 37% and 33%, making them the top party.
Communists lost the election in 1917 in a landslide.
@Art Deco: The idea of a union with the Reich was very popular in both the Sudetenland and Danzig. In turn, this might help explain the high Nazi percentages in those areas.
As for Austria, union with the Reich was very popular there as well. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if a free and fair election in 1938 would have resulted in a majority vote in Austria in favor of joining the Nazi German Reich.
@AP: Didn’t the Left SRs initially support the Bolshevik Revolution?
It is open for debate as to which way reparations should flow for that incident. 🙂
did involve some voter suppression
This might get the understatement of the year award.
Let’s just go large focus here.
The right was preferred by the majority of voters in Germany.
The left was preferred by the majority of voters in the Russian Empire.
(Let’s just ignore suffrage requirements.)
Nazis seized power from their electoral position in Germany and Bolsheviks did the same in Russia. Neither gave a rat’s ass for electoral politics after that, and neither did before, except as a way to power.
AD, everybody loves a winner.
Not really. The elections were by no means fake ones as in USSR, North Korea, etc.
Nazis won the election and that’s how they came to power. Communists lost the election, and seized power through a bloody civil war, by terrorizing and murdering much of the population. Enormous difference.
Sure – dislike of Poles/Czechs and being in their state (in Danzig’s case, in a special relationship with it) played a large role. These factors may have also contributed to feelings of Slavs as subhumans by these populations.
It seems to me that if this were a high possibility, the Nazis would not have invaded prior to the referendum.
But as your source indicates, it was vital to the early economy of the State, used “30 percent was to pay for Israel’s crude oil purchases in the United Kingdom and with the balance of 70 percent Israel was to buy ferrous and nonferrous metals, steel, chemical, industrial, and agricultural products from Germany” (perhaps those sales help German industry rebuild?). This reminds of the Japanese reparations to the Republic of Korea, which was used to help finance the industrialization of the latter.
@AP: In regards to the “subhumans” part, I suspect that this had more to do with the fact that ethnic Germans were the ruling class in both Austria and Germany. Indeed, there was a long and unpleasant history of Germany trying to Germanize the Poles of Posen Province and I know that there were some tensions between Germans and Czechs in Austria before the start of World War I (tensions which, to my knowledge, help explain why Adolf Hitler strongly disliked Czechs).
As for your second part here, please keep in mind that there appears to have been a 98-99% vote in favor of a union with Germany in the Austrian provinces of Tyrol and Salzburg back in 1919:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_German-Austria
Also, it appears that Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg planned to organize a referendum on Austrian independence right before the Nazis invaded. However, the wording of this referendum appears to have been controversial and many Austrians below the age of 24 (basically, those who didn’t belong to Chancellor Schuschnigg’s part) were excluded from this referendum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schuschnigg#Anschluss
Thus, in Hitler’s defense, one can argue that Hitler was afraid that Schuschnigg was going to rig this referendum and thus invaded in order to stop this referendum.
Also, for what it’s worth, it looks like Hitler initially wanted to make Austria a Nazi German puppet state but changed his mind when he saw just how popular the Anschluss was in Austria:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_State_of_Austria
“Hitler had originally intended to retain Austria as a puppet state headed by Seyss-Inquart. However, the enthusiastic support for Hitler led him to change his stance and support a full Anschluss between Austria and Nazi Germany. On 13 March Seyss-Inquart formally decreed the Anschluss, though President Miklas avoided signing the law by resigning immediately. Seyss-Inquart then took over most of Miklas’ duties and signed the Anschluss bill into law. Two days later in his speech at the Vienna Heldenplatz, Hitler proclaimed the “accession of my homeland to the German Reich” (see Austria in the time of National Socialism).”
Thus, I stand by my statement that I suspect that a majority of Austrians–though perhaps not quite as much as 99%–supported the Anschluss with Germany in 1938.
I don’t why this is so surprising given that one of the Bolshevik promises to them was independence. Presumably a lot of the Latvian Bolshevik voters just separatists who didn’t agree on much else and immediately started voting for other parties once they were established in independent Latvia.
A lot of people have a tendency to view nationalists and communists as opposite forces but especially with small peoples under empire it would be more accurate to view them as competitors who often courted the same support blocks and thus tended to rapidly swap between being the best allies and being the fiercest enemies. This isn’t limited to just independence, eg. in Latvia both communists and nationalists promised to dismantle the German landowning aristocracy so they competed over the same support.
The original Bolsheviks were of course well aware of this and in Lenin’s calculations independence of Western provinces would mean that all the political factions that had been united in support for independence would turn on each other and allow communists to take over since in the most industrialized provinces they had a big support base of workers. This was not a bad short term calculation and it worked once when a copycat coup in January 1918 brought the Reds in power in independent Finland exactly the way Lenin had predicted.
But Red Finland only lasted half a year before the Whites dismantled it in the Civil War and after that failure of Lenin’s 4D chess schemes Bolshevik policy towards Finland & Baltic states changed completely to favor re-annexation. Obviously this caused a pretty big drop in pro-Bolshevik sentiment and it’s not reasonable to compare support for Bolsheviks in Latvia in 1917 when Bolshevik policy was pro-Latvian-independence to later years when Bolshevik aim was re-annexation of Latvia.
The commonly cited reason I am aware of is ethnic resentment against the old German aristocracy on the part of the Balts, they were strongly loyal to the Tsars and owned much of the land.
I don’t know to what extent this could have also extended to Russians. Although Jaan Kaplinski argues Estonians were loyal to the Empire, one striking counter-example, who helped the Germans finance Lenin to the tune of 500,000 Reichsmarks, was Alexander Kesküla, who went from being a Communist agitator to an Estonian nationalist; when asked what would happen to Petrograd after Estonia conquered it by a Finnish friend, he said its palaces would make for an excellent stone quarry).
Good counterpoint. However, the Left SR’s only won 40 mandates to the Right SR’s 375 and the Bolsheviks’ 175. So they would not have cardinally changed this picture, accounting as they did for just 30% of the Assembly.
Besides, their main sin was to end up going along with the Bolsheviks, and with some internal dissent as well (to be rewarded with their own eventual liquidation).
They could in this sense be compared to the Centre Party in Germany, whose support was crucial in enabling Hitler’s dictatorship. Nazis + Centre Party = 55% (a majority) in the 1933 elections.
The Catholic Zentrumspartei wasn’t allied with Hitler’s NSDAP. I think you’re confusing them with the DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei), a rightwing nationalist party than won 8% in the March 1933 elections and entered into a coalition government with the NSDAP.
The Zentrum did vote for the Enabling act (which needed a 2/3 majority), but that was more due to intidimation and a desire to protect Catholic interests that out of ideological affinity to Nazism.
EDIT: Ok, I probably misread your post, seems you were referring to the Enabling act all along – but I’ll still let my post stand anyway.
Hi Anatoly,
“This rabble will be ruling Russia in another two decades”.
I actually hope you are wrong about this. I consider Russia as the “last bastion” for the survival of ethnic Europeans. The Western European nations and especially Scandinavia are gone cases, unsalvagable, doomed to be replaced by a mixed race population which is no longer European. If what you predict is true, then there is no hope for the Europeans. Visegrad nations like Poland etc are , by virtue of being in EU, doomed too. I am East Asian but am also a Europhile(a true Europhile will always hate the EU …). If this is the road the majority of Europeans want(ie ethnic suicide), who am I( as an ‘outsider’) to comment?(But I comment nonetheless…) I think we East Asians(Chinese, Japanese,Koreans) are still ethnocentric (‘ racist’) enough (but this too is changing …thanks to American influence)to resist this type of idealism and don’t have the ‘ethnic identification’ with Western white elites like Eastern Europeans do( I think a very potent insulation).
The economic success of the Western elites coupled with their moralistic arguments are very seductive and hard to crack. I don’t think anyone who has rather strong beliefs in ‘ethnocentrism’ or ‘nationalism’ can persuade the majority of Middle and Upper class youngsters in the West(and perhaps even in East Asia) as well as these liberal Western elites do. There is always Adolf Hitler the monster as a demonstration of how ‘immoral’ ethnocentrism or nationalism is. We have lost before we have even started…’thanks’ to Adolf Hitler.
I would suggest something quite ‘inhuman’. To demonstrate that the ideals of liberals are suicidal, perhaps we should allow(ie no longer oppose) the wholesale adoption of these ideals in at least some of the countries who champion it( eg Scandinavian nations).
The Adolf Hitler moment for liberast ideals is to have societies/countries adhering to these ideals fail economically, politically and culturally(with concurrent persecution /assimilation etc of formerly indigeneous ethnic groups by overwhelming ethnoculturally incompatible migrants). Let the African and Middle Eastern migrants flood …replace…assimilate. Only by having examples right before their eyes will people wake up from their mad idealisms.
And…perhaps the best way to turn the tide is actually(although it feels so wrong to say this) is the demise of the USA as an economic superpower( and with that ‘cultural’ influence). In my view, the multiculturalism( and multiethnicalism) of America coupled with their Imperial adventures will ultimately ruin them: the writing is on the wall. Can Russia and other nations not yet fully infected by these idealisms , resist long enough to not collapse first before this eventuality?