The Curse of Swamp Creatures

Fighting dirty in Germany as the election approaches.

Yesterday marked a high watermark in the on-going hystericisation of public discourse in Europe as Elon Musk chatted inanely about German politics and space stations on Mars with Alice Weidel, the party chair and hopeful Chancellor candidate of the libertarian-conservative party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) while Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta, the company he controls and which owns the ubiquitous social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, will be dialling back the odious “fact-checking” departments, those ultra-political left wing thought police cells that had embedded themselves into almost every public content producing and mediating internet platform institution of note. As Eugyppius has noted in his regular acerbic commentary on the unfolding clownshow that is German public adminsitration, these two events, exacerbated by Mr. Musk’s previous wholly unacceptable interference in the sanctity of the hitherto unblemished German democratic political process, have sent the talking heads and establishment politicians along with their mandarins into what can only be described as a hissy fit of hitherto unexperienced dimensions. Please read Eugyppius’ posts from the last two weeks on this melodrama of establishment entitlement for a timeless lesson in hypocrisy and power abuse.

When not particularly intelligent but deeply entrenched and privileged functionaries who have grown accustomed to having things their own way suddenly find themselves under concerted pressure to accept responsibility for the appalling outcomes of their policies and mismanagement, you get to see who they really are and what they stand for. The EU - an institution I have loathed for its arrogance, lack of accountability, corruption, stifling of entrepreneurial energy, self-serving, economic ignorance and wastefulness since its inception - has fostered and facilitated the ascendency of a particular type of political functionary. Superficially well-schooled, bland, metropolitan, socialist but of the globalist managerial flavour, marinated in the virtues of the 17 UN Sustainability Charter SDGs, condescending to the peasantry and working classes (which includes everyone who doesn’t work, if that is right word, in government, administration or for the right NGOs) , ignorant of history, disdainful of national culture, and cloaked in the luxury beliefs that allow them to stand in their own virtuousness without having to suffer any of the consequences of them and lacking even a shred of what might be called worldly wisdom. This clever but profoundly ignorant class - who love being refered to as the elite - has been running the world according to its own tastes more or less untrammelled since the beginning of this century and nowhere with less trammells than in Brussells.

Used to making up its own rules without opposition, this autocratic and labyrinthine superstructure, running the second largest economic area on the planet is coming apart at the seams as we watch. Those seams are splitting under the combined pressure of the massive internal contradictions of its economic model - who thought that putting Germany and Greece into one currency with one interest rate policy was ever going to end well? - as well as its top down denial of the value citizens place on their own cultural integrity and its replacement with a cultural coding with all the heart-stirring power of an International Accounting Standards paper on the correct treatment of operating leases. (Here it is if you are having difficuties getting to sleep). One look at the previous beauty of the Deutschmark* or Franc bank notes compared to the current Euro notes tells you all you need to know about the care and dedication those responsible for issuing these notes felt towards their respective currencies):

By their fruits, ye shall know them…

The tenure of a miserably incompetent political caste is now coming to its inexorable and long overdue end and it hates it. With a shiny passion. It loathes those who painstakingly point out the manifest failure of its favourite policies - the Green Energy Transformation, the open border policy which sought to “redistribute” the world’s population more evenly in the name of multiculturalism and cheap labour, Safetyism, Woke ideology, rigid and backwards looking industrial policy, globalism and the undermining of national identity and of course inflationary fiscal policy financing the utopian fanatsies of a bureacracy on steroids.

The cows are now truly coming home to roost, as Belfast mayor Tommy Patton might have said (again). Growth has been scelrotic if not negative once real price increases across all factors of production are taken into account since the introduction of the Euro and only sheer bloody minded political willpower has kept the show on the road. Old Europe - and especially Germany - are way behind the rest of the world in terms of innovation and the build out of a digital infrastructure. Added to which are disastrous energy policies which are disproptionately affecting the industries on which Germany has become almost solely reliant and at the same hampering any attempt - if such there were - to catch up in the field of AI which itself - as any fule kno - requires egregious amounts of cheap energy to drive the processors. Not that Germany need worry about that of course: the time required to process planning application necessary to build an AI capable processing farm would ensure that such a venture would be DOA from the start.

The importation of millions of low to no skill migrants whose only interest in Europe is in milking the social security system for all it is worth is diluting national productivity at an alarming rate whilst concurrently strip mining the culture in places where that is at its most vulnerable. Tax burdens - direct and indirect - are accelerating and the cost of complying with the bureaucratic burden is virtually impossible for businesses already established and a huge disincentive to those thinking of investing in Europe.

(with thanks to The Econolog for the graph)

Again from Econolog’s recent post

If disruptive parties become part of more governments or even lead them, they will have their hands full with unwinding the most outrageous legacy policies, like the exit from conventional power generation (especially gas and nuclear), the phase-out of ICE cars from 2035, or unchecked immigration. While they are generally pro-business and pro-trade, they are very critical of the current political establishment consensus, and their vision for the EU is a much smaller role, not much more than a trade union.

The EU has maneuvered itself into a huge legitimacy problem. Its strategic, enormously costly recovery programs, from Barroso to Draghi, never addressed economic weaknesses and were nothing but energy transition programs in disguise – agenda instead of crisis response. The outcome has been an unmitigated disaster. As there is no democratic process in place to renew the EU, unlike the U.S., the only logical outcome will be that member countries develop a new nationalist perspective, ignoring central EU programs (the EU has no formal authority over member countries. EU legislation needs to be ratified in member countries’ parliaments), or even pursue an exit for which Great Britain has provided a template. Derivates of the term ‘Brexit’ swirl all around.

Considering the institutional forces, I don’t think there is much hope. As the old saying goes – today, the EU is standing on the brink of an abyss. Tomorrow, it will be one step ahead.

The EU has Failed ~ Econolog (Substack Jan 07. 25) [emphasis mine]

Germany is heading into an election a few weeks time, the outcome of which is highly uncertain. What is true is that the AfD - currently the second strongest party polling at around 21% - is being subjected to a barrage of opprobium from the established parties and their handmaidens in the mainstream media probably without precedent in the post war era. The ire and fury of the established political oligopoly in Germany is identical to that experienced by every single politically entrepreneurial party moving into the (significant) market space resulting from the constant drift leftwards by it.

The label “populist” which quickly morphs into “fascist” and in Germany the particularly inflammatory “far right” or “Nazi” epithet is literally all the uniparty have to throw at the newcomers now making hay as a consequence of their own inability to fasten themselves to what were previously defined as core conservative principles. Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Miloni, Nigel Farage, Alice Weidel, Viktor Orban and others whose policy programs represent a definite NO/NON/NEIN or NEM to the main planks of the globo-socialist platform prioritise national cultural interests way above those of non nationals whatever their migratory backgrounds. That quite reasonably resonates with those disadvantaged by the current regimes. The feather spitting and lawfare isn’t working very well and is predictably having exactly the opposite effect, increasing visibility, keeping the newcomers in the news and shining a spotlight on the incumbents own entitlement and inability to address the policy failures for which they are solely responsible. Having spent years deplatforming the AfD from mainstream political talk shows, it is rich irony indeed for the entire German establishment to be now crying foul when Alice Weidel finds herself invited to chat with Elon Musk, garnering an audience of over 300K on the X Space yesterday evening.

The lizards are working overtime to have Alice Weidel and her party banned or discredited before the election on the 23rd Feb. They will be unsuccessful no matter what rabbits they magic out of their lawfare hat. There is a strong sense that the real level of support for the AfD is much higher than the polls are currently showing due to the fact that years of “brown smearing” are making it difficult for middle of the road voters who are sensitive to surrounding opinions to admit to their sympathies and voting intentions. Recent calculations have put the AfD probable share of the vote at the ballot box much closer to 30%.

Whilst I have no idea whether Weidel will do in Germany what Herbert Kickl of the FPÖ in Austria managed to do in last September’s election and nudge out the establishment conservative party and its beyond useless Chancellor or whether if she does she will have to endure the same humiliation as Kickl did, when against all normal democratic practice the Bundespresident decided not to task him with forming a government, bypassing him instead for the establishment figureheads - who lost decisively - to see if they could form a coalition government. Only after they failed last week after 100 days of wasted time was Kickl asked to form the government that should have been his the day after the election. However the game is wide open and it is as sure as eggs are eggs that the shenanigans will not stop with the election results in February.

Sadly, the once lionine Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU is now reduced to a weak imitation of his former combatitive self and is driving legions of his former supporters into the arms of Alice Weidel and her party, so pissed off are they with the man who 15 years ago promised to simplify the German tax code and free the entrepreneurial spirits shackled by Merkel and her intransgience. Merz’ desperation to finally claim the Chancellorship that he believes he deserves is so obvious it is embarassing. He is evidently prepared to abandon all conservative principles in order to cut a deal with the Greens and their idiotic, authoritarian and economically illiterate leader Robert Habeck in order to claim his prize. But he won’t, claim it that is, at least not without suffering the same ignominious fate as his French counterpart Barnier. Of all the German politicians capable - both intellectually and by dint of his personality - of incorporating the AfD and their policy program into the CDU and neutralising the brown fringe of that party, Merz is the only one who could have done it and led a wholly recentralised conservative revival of the party of Adenauer, Erhard and Kohl back to the principled path which the cynical untethered Merkel crassly abandoned in her third term of office. I expect a French style contortion act as previous conservatives bend themselves out of shape trying to find minimum political common ground with the ragtag assemblage of leftist, Greens and Communists - anything to stop the populist cuckoos taking over the well-feathered establishment nest, hell bent on cutting the EU down to size and massively reducing its power, influence and policy dictating scope. Pathetic really.

And all this against a background of disruption, geo-political tension and fiscal over-extension not seen this side of 1945. Forecaster David Murrin in his latest Murrinations Forecast for 2025 (behind a paywall unfortunately) paints a dismal picture of what awaits the world in the next twelve months. Inflationary surge, off the charts bond yield increases, asset price collapse across the board, currency disruptions and war on a global scale pitting the Axis of Autocracy against the struggling US hegemon. Other independent thinkers and strategists, whilst less aggressively dismal, also tend towards the pessimistic for what has every appearance of a top of cycle period of inversion and draw down. A recent chart from Martin Barnes’ Debt Supercycle talk at Russell Napier’s Library of Mistakes lecture series was a favourite from last year’s harvest

His point being that the brutality of the maths of current spending and the compound effect of debt interest and deficits as far as the eye can see means that sometime between now and the point at the top right hand corner of the chart, the trajectory will be interupted and change forced through crisis. An “as you were” path is simply not going to happen.

My own belief is that the turbulence and volatility we are increasingly witnessing in all aspects of civil society - political, communal, geopolitical, financial - is indeed indicative of a deep structural crisis in its early stages. I believe that the Trump Presidency will be defined by two distinct phases, a first, lasting two years, in which animal spirits will be released and economic good times experienced across the board as those aspects of his policy platform which he can effect immediately will be delivered and a second phase - I am looking to Herbert Hoover as a role model - in which the economic realities of those policies and the accumulated pressure of fiscal deficits plus tariff-driven inflation and contraction will break the debt bubble once and for all. I concur with David Murrin’s overall thesis and his estimate of the cyclic peak but think he is mistaken in his timing. End of 2026 after the midterms in USA seems to me the most likely outcome, when the majority of now prominent doomsayers have been drowned out by the klaxons of market exuberance and their warnings forgotten. Europe will I suspect experience the US crack up boom of 25 -26 as at best stagnation but be fully immersed in the drawdown when it finally comes.

But for the moment the lizards are being driven out of office, no doubt to regroup and plot their return, so there’s that to celebrate. I am not sure it is going to make much difference.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to you and thank you for your interest.

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• See the wonderful book issued in 1995 by the Bundesbank to commemorate the new series of bank notes under the title “Von der Baumwolle zum Geldschein” (Verlag Fritz Knapp GmbH / ISBN 3-927951-82-X) for background on the composition of each note and the biographical details of the historical figures represented on them embedded into the design. The current Euro series lacks every aspect of those Bundesbankers love, intellectual enthusiasm and commitment to the cultural integrity of the new series of bank notes.

• I couldn’t fit this reference into the text but I suspect the German equivalent of the Hilary Clinton “basket of deplorables” moment from 2016 has to be the recent publication of a senior journalist’s contribution to political thought in book form
  

  

  Entitled “Too Stupid for Democracy” this staggeringly arrogant book by one Mark Schieritz, the political editor of the now unreadable weekly broadsheet publication “Die Zeit” (which many decades ago I used to enjoy reading) pulsates with the same disdain for the concerns and opinions of the non-establishment class that charaterises the Democratic and other erstwhile parties of the people. A better icon to represent the current cloistered thinking of an entirely disconnected class of privileged midwits it would hard to find. Please don’t read it - the title tells you all need to know.