STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Germany Has Its Own Tea Party!
By Staff News & Analysis - July 20, 2011

Germanys-season-of-angst … Why a prosperous nation is turning on itself … Here in the industrial core of Europe, things have never been so good. Germany's western flank has become the greatest exporter in the Western world, second only to China and far ahead of the United States. The container ports along the Rhine are working day and night to deliver record orders of German products to southern and western Europe, the US and especially to China. Shops are busy. Home sales are rocking. Unemployment has not been so low since the '80s. In terms of growth, profits and productivity, the current German economic boom has surpassed even the "wonder years" of the '50s. These are, by several measures, the most successful people in the world. Yet it is very hard to find anyone here who is happy about this state of affairs. – Today

Dominant Social Theme: The Germans are ungrateful.

Free-Market Analysis: The Germans have their own Tea Party movement. We didn't know this until a feedbacker mentioned it recently. But we looked it up; it's true. The entire country is convulsed; it's bigger than what's happening in the US. You've read about it, haven't you? … Haven't you?

Now here is a question: If Europe's key state, perhaps the third most important economy in the world, a country over which two world wars has been fought, is in the convulsive grip of an anti-state, anti-government movement, isn't that news? Shouldn't that be cause for headlines around the world?

The movement is called "Wutburger" ("angry citizen"). We looked it up on Google. About 8,000 mentions, most of them in German. We then looked up "Brittany Spears cuts her hair" (this was an unfortunate incident that happened several years ago). Nearly three million cites.

This is the state of the world today. A great nation is convulsing in the throes of a vast populist movement of radical proportions and there are less than 10,000 Google mentions. Brittany Spears, heavily medicated, takes a scissors to her locks and the controlled, Western press spews out three million cites.

We were aware of course that there is considerable and growing resistance in the EU to the "European project." This resistance rises higher along with the PIGS indebtedness. Every time the Iron Chancellor Angela Merkel (above left) attends another EU summit, she loses another election.

But what we didn't understand is that this movement has a name and an organization. This article (excerpted above) provides us with a very good introduction. It is also representative of an elite dominant social theme: "The Germans can't be serious!"

Much of the article is taken up with a recitation of how good the Germans have it today and thus mocks the movement. "Unlike the great Rhineland industrial booms of the '50s and '70s, this one is provoking Germans to turn against their government, against Europe, against technology and growth, against outsiders. It is an inward-looking, self-questioning moment in a country that the rest of Europe very badly needs to be involved in affairs outside its borders."

You see. The Germans are pulling back just when the "world" needs them to stop forward. We have not heard this world! That's probably because we're not listening hard enough. We learn, as well, that there is "an entire consulting industry devoted to analyzing the 'national angst'."

We are inevitably introduced to an expert, Mr. Stephan Grunewald, a Cologne-based psychologist who recently interviewed 7,000 citizens for his book, Germany on the Couch. "What we are repeatedly finding is that, despite the very good economic data, there is a huge amount of unease and uncertainty. There is a manifest crisis of trust … The Germans have at the moment a mood, a feeling that things can go to pieces, a feeling of being in a situation in which one is completely incapable of action."

This is an extremely widespread feeling, so we are informed. "Europe's strongest economy is so delicate and fragile that the outside world could destroy it at any moment." The reporter, with an irony he doesn't perceive, explains the reasons: "You can see it in numerous places – notably, this week, in the dark public mood toward the Greek bailout, which will cost German taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros, and in the widespread public resistance to a larger solution to the Greek crisis (which would entail rebuilding Greece, perhaps with a united European fiscal plan, so it would no longer be a country prone to debt and crisis)."

Now to us, the German mood is entirely reasonable, given this explanation. They are being told that they may have to spend "hundreds of millions of euros" on Greece. And Germans, being a seemingly logical people, are no doubt inclined to ask why, if they are collectively on the hook for Greece, they might not end up being equally responsible for Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and even France. No wonder they believe their prosperity is fragile.

This seems a perfectly logical conclusion to us. Not to the writer, though. His name is Doug Saunders, and he's a member of the Canadian-based Globe and Mail's European bureau. It's puzzlement for him. Here's some more from the article:

Ms. Angela Merkel … has repeatedly delayed, postponed and weakened successive rescue efforts, a hesitancy and timidity that many analysts feel have made things much worse in Greece … You can see it in Germany's decision not to participate in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation to support Libya's rebels – a decision driven, it appeared, entirely by a lack of public or political desire to get involved. You can see it in the internal politics of Germany, which are defined by a new, outspoken sort of protester, a citizen infuriated by progress and change, known in the media by the neologism "Wutburger" ("angry citizen").

The actions of the Wutburgers have dominated headlines here for a year. Their most dramatic action is a mass blockade designed to prevent Stuttgart from building a major railway station that would make it a hub in a high-speed intercontinental line running from France through to Hungary. There are many reasons for this protest, but there is an overarching sense that Germany should not be involved in something so high-tech and international – a mood that links it to the other great Wutburger movement, the dramatic turn against nuclear power.

It is as if millions of people, faced with the technology and connectedness that built their prosperity, are together yelling: "Stop." And you can see it in the new politics of immigration – a decided turn against outsiders, in mood though not, really, in practice. This shift was marked last year by the publication of the anti-Muslim bestseller Germany Abolishes Itself by central banker Thilo Sarrazin, who became a celebrity among those Germans (and his book sold a million copies) who see outsiders as a threat to German society. And it was marked by an ambiguous but highly publicised speech by Ms. Merkel in which she denounced "multiculturalism."

This excerpt contains some interesting points. It is well known, though denied, that the Anglosphere elites in their urge to homogenize every powerful nation state in the world planned to bisect the United States with a 20-lane modern highway that would have stretched from Mexico to Canada, running right through heart of Texas.

Texas Governor Rick Perry was a big proponent of this idea, though he denies it now. In fact, he denies the idea even existed – though some remnants of construction continue. Apparently the Germans have their own version of this super highway. If one cannot do away with a culture by force, there is always the option of flooding it with so many others.

Explaining this is not "racist." One of the big tools used by the Anglosphere elites as they attempt to break down Western tribal cultures throughout Europe and America, is to use immigration as a weapon. If one can sufficiently dilute a culture, then it poses little problem in terms of pushback when it comes to globalization.

Ideally, immigration should be a marketplace solution, left up to the business and cultural interests of a given region. But the elites have weaponized immigration and turned it into a tool of the new world order.

The article is not a short one and thus its continuance gives Mr. Saunders ample room to voice his growing puzzlement. Germany is a successful country with a growing economy. Usually this sort of movement (according to him) is triggered by "economic downturns and depressions that turn voters toward isolationism, natives and fear of the outside world." He doesn't understand.

Again, from our point of view, the ambition to hold onto one's culture and traditions is a perfectly understandable human determination. But for Mr. Saunders it makes little sense, or is at least beside the point. He tells us that Germany's success is so overwhelming that the government has plans to important nearly a million more immigrants to help Germans cope with the rising tide of market demand.

He writes, "This, at least, explains why people … feel like they are being assailed by the world outside and forced to play a part in solving its troubles. It does not completely explain why Germans, who have played such a forward and active role in Europe and in world affairs during much of the postwar period, have responded to this new interconnectedness with such alarm."

Of course, as we've already pointed out, it doesn't seem like such a big mystery to us. Germans didn't want to participate in the union in the first place. The larger EU was implemented with explicit assurances that the Germans would not end up paying for the rest of Europe's excesses. If Greece wanted to build a thousand invisible marinas and send the money to Switzerland, that was Greece's business. It should not be the German's.

The Germans may believe implicitly in the advantages of globalism but – like most people – not enough to support it with euros. It is only the Anglosphere elites who have decided that internationalism is a cause that everyone ought to subsidize.

We can see from this article that the Wutburger movement is a big deal within Germany and has many resemblances to the Tea Party movement. Both are driven, in our estimation, by pushback to what regulatory democracy is becoming.

To begin with, regulatory democracy is modest. But over time it grows until it invades every part of human society, even the places within one's heart. It is voracious monster that will not rest until people are chipped and regimented, then marched in straight line to the guillotine to address what the elites consider to be the intractable problem of overpopulation.

The German Wutburger movement is not anomalous within the larger context of what's going on in the world today. We're sure there are analogous movements elsewhere in Europe and certainly we can see the unrest building in Greece, Spain and other countries afflicted by "austerity."

Editors note: Help us help others to live free, enlightened lives. The Internet Reformation, which we cover daily, is real. It is driven by a process of electronic self-education that supports the needs of people to know how their monetary and sociopolitical systems work. The entire construct of Western civilization is organized (manipulated) but so few report on it! Knowledge is power; the reality is painful but necessary. Ignorance is not bliss and sometimes can be deadly. We are at a critical juncture in the dawning days of a 'Net Reformation; the elites, more desperate than ever, are moving quickly with their plans. Help us spread the word about what they are REALLY doing, not what the mainstream pretends (or ignores).

The Daily Bell is an advertising-free, non-profit publication that is funded in large part by the Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking (FAFMT). We need your financial assistance to enable us to implement ideas we have to further expand truth-telling each and every day, 365 days a year. With your assistance, dear reader, we can make a difference. Consider making a small contribution to support the cause. Click here to donate now.

After Thoughts

The idea is to make people so upset and desperate that they will do anything to end the pain, even agree to global government – authoritarianism in its extremest form, totalitarianism. But in the interim, the mainstream media is going to try to keep the pushback hush-hush, given that a shared sense of indignation and resultant antagonism is dangerous to elite plans. In the Internet Reformation era, however, it is very difficult to keep a secret.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
loading
Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap