So, so sad to hear that the amazing Danielle Moore has left us. She was just the best; thee definition of a beautiful human being. Heartbreaking. 💔

The 2nd-yearly Leipzig Authoritarianism Study (last one out in late 2022) found far-right attitudes were in decline in the east even as AfD support was rising. Hard to explain greater pro-AfD "conviction" as ideological. uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetail/…

Like the big far-right parties of the 1920s-40s, the AfD & its ilk contain some truly bigoted & authoritarian activists & apparatchiks. Unlike those parties, they have no mass social base (c.f. electoral support) to speak of. As socially weightless as today's decaying mainstream.

Treating the AfD as if it has a Hitler-like social power base might work transiently as a scare tactic, but it distracts from the mainstream's own unravelling as the central cause of its rise. That won't be properly solved by either the mainstream or the new "populists".

Eugyppius’s politics are light years from mine but he’s one of the most perceptive, empirically-based, big-picture commentators on German politics today. Agree with much of the analysis in this piece. Definitely worth your time to read.

As self-defeating an approach to dealing with the rising AfD vote as you could conjure up. Unfortunately this morally superior bunker mentality is all too common among Berlin progressives. All but ensures they won’t have any luck changing voters’ minds. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Bizarre that someone would think that this — from a key architect of US geopolitical-decline-via-forever-wars — is anything other than a gift for Trump.

The sound of the “joy” balloon slowly deflating.

Biden won in 2020 because of a shift of white voters away from Trump (while Trump saw blacks & Hispanics shift towards him). 3.5 years of Biden-Harris has unwound that Dem edge.

The hate for Trump among the political class & its media hangers on is always shaped by fear of & contempt for the public.

Given so much of Harris’s campaign has been about suppressing internal Democrat divides by running as an empty vessel, hard to see how this was possible without risking dangerous fractures. She’s trapped by her own lack of authority & her campaign’s resulting insecurity.

Merkel ran Germany as the EU power pushing hardest for political union. Less than a decade later its current insecure & weak government is retreating behind national borders by reintroducing “temporary” border controls to look tough on immigration. dw.com/en/germany-ext…

The panic of an enfeebled German political class is palpable in its every move. Unlikely this kind of reaction will do much to staunch the AfD & BSW eating away at the remains of the post-WWII political order, however.

The symbolic defeat implicit in Germany reintroducing border controls (even if only in a political panic) after it morally cajoled other EU nations to take refugees in 2015 — as part of asserting its leading role in the Union — is pretty humiliating.

For sure that debate should put to rest those nutty conspiracy theories that the MSM has taken the side of the political establishment against Trump. 🙄 (NYT news analysis headline pictured.)

I suspect in voter land Trump’s inability to get on top of the pile on from the moderators & Harris will look less like the decisive defeat that much of the MSM is spinning it as being. Interesting comments from undecided voters here. nytimes.com/2024/09/11/us/…

So much of the Harris campaign is inward looking, managing but not resolving tensions within her camp, with only the sunny vibes that come from this superficial unity to show undecideds.

Powerful piece by Michèle Sedgwick (whom I met through my interest in her father Peter's book 'Psycho Politics') on the material & mental freedoms we need as individuals & as part of a greater collective humanity. Pluto Press Neda Tehrani Mike Casey allourfootsteps.uk/newwriting/fin…