Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id767225426
Facing a growing demographic crisis because of declining births, capitalists and the political elite supported accepting a large number of refugees as a means of cheap labor.
id767225481
A common sense was established, seeing a constant influx of immigration as necessary to maintain the growth of an economy predicated on suppressing wages, which is increasingly dealing with a demographic crisis.
id767225430
This became known as the much-vaunted “Willkommenskultur.” This liberal humanitarianism made refugees be seen mostly as a useful economic resource, not as humans with a right to asylum.
id767225250
the German economy has stagnated, with households facing rising bills but not income growth. The federal government — a liberal-centrist coalition consisting of the SPD, Greens, and the neoliberal-hawk Free Democrats (FDP) — has responded with a crisis management consisting of economic interventionism on behalf of companies, wage restraint, and the immiseration of the population by refusing to enact price controls in response to growing inflation. The consequence: while large companies recorded major profits, workers’ real wages fell to the level of 2015, wiping out a decade of wage growth.
✏️ Another example of the state helping companies, hurting people, and saying that’s just how it goes. 🔗 View Highlight
id767225531
new common sense has been established by the right-wing opposition, consisting of AfD, the Christian Democrats (CDU), and the tabloid media, redirecting the brewing discontent: anti-collectivism, austerity, law and order, and racism have been rendered as the new common sense by utilizing divisions within and between classes, crystallizing around the figure of the illegal immigrant.
id767225691
thanks to a low-wage regime that left German workers worse off and gave rise to feelings of competitiveness and jealousy.
id767225738
Unemployed against the employed, refugees against the natives, deserving against the undeserving, striking workers against the wider public, have all been pitted against each other as means of popularizing an economic agenda for restoring the profitability of the German economy. Raising the retirement age, restricting the right to strike, lowering taxes for the rich, mandating forced labor for the unemployed, and disciplining the immigrant working class by threatening increased repression and deportations have become common opposition proposals, with much public support. By dividing the population, the AfD has been able to insulate the economic model from popular critiques.
✏️ Propaganda and divisive techniques to do what they want at the cost of the people 🔗 View Highlight