That German election? As I wrote last August:
Here is an all too typical Euro-headline:
'Tens of thousands demonstrate against AfD after stabbings in Solingen'
Gotta love the commitment of the diversity lemmings. Even as they're on the ground punctured by multiple stab wounds, they'll be fretting that the amount of their blood all over the sidewalk risks provoking even more 'Islamophobia' from the 'far right'.
So yes, the AfD had a good night, coming second and doubling their share of the vote to a smidgeonette under twenty-one per cent. But the remaining seventy-nine per cent voted to keep stabbing themselves for the next four years. The "conservative" Friedrich Merz and his CDU/CSU "won" the election with 28.5 per cent and immediately announced that he would not form a coalition with the AfD because the "far right" is "happy if the problems get worse and worse".
Actually, it's Herr Merz who will ensure that Germany's problems get worse. The threat from the "far right" prompted Merz to butch up for the election on immigration - not terribly convincingly in my opinion, but even a perfunctory genuflection is telling. However, the campaign's over, and it's time to butch down again. To govern Germany, he will need to form a coalition with the SPD - which is, in Yank terms, like a pre-Trump Republican Party forming a coalition with the Dems. If Merz needs a third party in his coalition, his friends in the CSU would prefer it not be the Greens - which is like a pre-Trump GOP forming a coalition with the Dems plus a leftie nutters' party led by AOC and exercising a veto on anything that might make a difference.
So we're back to where we were before the previous government fell apart - a Uniparty ministry of all the wankers that will be unable to do anything that's needed, and whose sclerosis is a conscious choice: The "mainstream" parties' share of the vote fell to its lowest since the foundation of the post-war republic. Of course, that's what we used to call "West Germany", but, if you look at the electoral map at top right, you'll see that, as a practical matter, the Berlin Firewall is an eerily precise recreation of the Iron Curtain: East Germany was the only Warsaw Pact member to get folded into western Europe, and three decades later is excluded from participation in the national government.
Back in those days, the East was economically moribund, but the West was going gangbusters. Today the failure of the German state is reflected not just in its Diversity Stabbings of the Day but in its commercial and business torpor. The EU's Franco-German leadership has rested on the latter as an economic powerhouse. Now, economically, Germany is turning into France, and the EU's leadership is a pantomime horse with two rear ends.
And yet Merz's first statement is that nothing will change.
But at least, when you're ploughed into the asphalt at this year's Christmas market, no-one will be able to say you're "far right".
When I first began writing on Europe's demographic transformation, at the beginning of this century, there was still time to arrest it and reverse it within the bounds of more or less normal politics. Now there isn't. Yesterday, significant numbers of the Diversity über alles crowd gave up on the bollocks. But not quite enough, not fast enough. Unless the rate of conversion accelerates, it will be too late.
At least for "West Germany". The East could always secede.
~DELUSIONAL WANKERS ALERT! Herr Merz's first substantive pronouncement was that Germany needs to declare its "independence" from the US. That's mainly because the US has left the building. Headline from The Daily Mail:
Donald Trump 'abandoning war crime prosecution of Russia for invading Ukraine' - as US blindsides Europe by calling for 'swift end' to conflict at UN
I had no idea the rest of Nato and the EU were still ploughing ahead with giving Putin the blindfold and cigarette in absentia, but apparently so:
Washington could also leave an international effort to attempt to prosecute Vladimir Putin in a Nuremberg-style tribunal.
This follows US officials' refusal to label Russia as an 'aggressor' at a meeting to discuss efforts to try to put Putin on trial.
In response an official at the International Criminal Court in The Hague told the Daily Telegraph that unless the US acknowledges Russian [sic] as the aggressor it can't participate.
It should hardly be necessary to point out to any creature more sentient than an earthworm that an essential condition for "a Nuremberg-style tribunal" is that the guy you want to put in the dock should have lost the war. Putin has not lost. In any objective sense, it is Zelenskyyyyy's patrons who have lost: The most senior figures in the Uniparty - Joe Biden on the one hand and Lindsey Graham on the other - demanded regime change in the Kremlin.
And yet the regime has not changed. They assured us Putin was isolated, a global pariah. But, when Russia holds a BRICS summit, all the world's rising powers seem happy to fly in and share a stage with him. Per Biden and Graham, the unprecedented sanctions would collapse the Russian economy within weeks. Instead, they rebounded on the Krauts.
We were told the entire planet was united against Putin - who, as the western media told us, was very sick and could die at any moment. Unlike Biden, who was in tip-top shape.
In reality, the planet was never united against Putin. It was always just America and its Euro client-states. And now Washington can't be bothered.
Meanwhile, the Euro-American expert class seem baffled at the Russians' disinclination, after three years of the above, to hand back any of the extensive Ukrainian turf they hold. In what approximation to reality does "Okay, we can't win. But we'd still like you to extradite yourself to the Hague for a war-crimes trial" make any sense?
~RICHARD M LANGWORTH, CBE, 1941-2025: We mourn the passing of Richard Langworth, Senior Fellow of Hillsdale College's Churchill Project and also my fellow Granite Stater - he lived some ninety minutes to the south-east of me in Moultonborough, NH, home to the Castle in the Clouds. Richard died in the early hours last Thursday, a great loss to Hillsdale and the wider world. Aside from the above distinctions, he was also a member of The Mark Steyn Club and an occasional contributor to our Comments section, most recently just last month with respect to the declining quality of the Commonwealth's endlessly bowdlerised national anthems. Had he been minded to respond to today's column, he would have pointed out that, while Churchill came somewhat grudgingly to string along with "a Nuremberg-style tribunal" for the Germans, the PM did not generally support the concept of "war crimes" prosecutions.
I always looked forward to seeing his entries below the fold because I'd usually learn something I'd never known or had carelessly forgotten. In his final comment, appended to "Waltzing Matilda', he reminded readers that John Buchan, author of three Tales for Our Time (of which Professor Langworth was a big fan), also wrote, while serving as viceroy, a verse for "O Canada". You don't hear it much - and, if you're wondering why, well...
O Canada!
Our heritage, our love
Thy worth we praise
All other lands above
From sea to sea
Throughout their length
From pole to borderland
At Britain's side
Whate'er betide
Unflinchingly we'll stand
With hearts we sing
God save the King
Guide then one Empire wide, do we implore
And prosper Canada from shore to shore.
Oh, dear. Still, it's more heartfelt than "O Canada/Our home on natives' land" or whatever the current approved version is.
Richard's books on Churchill are among the best in a crowded field, and a great part of his legacy. I liked the way he commented here on current events if he felt he had something useful to add, but I was glad he found time to weigh in on the music, too. He sent me a note once - can't recall in what context it arose, but it took in some supposed "news" about Churchill in Lady Astor's car, and he began his demolition of the item with the tease: "Pinched in the Astor car?" - a Cole Porter allusion he knew I'd get.
We treasure all our Club members, and we were honoured to have him among our number. Rest in peace.
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my column on last week's hideous Hamas hostage-return specatcle. My weekly music show was a cavalcade of song from Van Morrison to Ruby Murray, and Rick McGinnis's movie date offered John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Twentieth Century. Our Sunday Song of the Week celebrated the consummate chanson. And our marquee presentation was the conclusion of our latest Tale for Our Time - Robert Hugh Benson's extraordinarily prescient Lord of the World. If you've yet to hear it, you can start with Episode One here.
If you were too busy this weekend denouncing Trump's assault on the time-honoured independence of the executive branch, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We're thrilled by all those across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. We have quite a bit of fun in The Mark Steyn Club, with audio adventures, video poems, planet-wide Q&As, and much more (heart attacks permitting). We appreciate the Club is not to everyone's taste, but, if you're minded to give it a go, either for a full year or a three-month experimental period, we'd love to have you. You can find more details on The Mark Steyn Club here - and, if you've a loved one who'd like something a little different for his or her birthday, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
