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Only on a very surface level, as in “the far-right reached second place in an election again”. But other than that, no, the situation in Germany is not very comparable to the late Weimar republic at all. Party militias aren’t terrorizing the streets, there is no hyperinflation, we’re not geopolitically isolated and our constitution is not as flawed and weak. Not to say the situation is rosy, but pretending we’re literally at the inception of the fourth reich is not realistic or useful.
Another analog is that eastern Germany voted very differently than western and southern Germany.
One major difference, in 1930 the far right was anti-Russia, and today they are pro-Russia.
Geographical aspects are incomparable between 1930 and 2025. Germany is a lot smaller in 2025 than in 1930 and German division hadn’t happened yet in 1930.
Eastern Germany has been voting differently pretty much all the time, or didn’t it? Like definitely more counties voted right wing for like a decade or two.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
-Antonio Gramsci
Until Socialism usurps Capitalism globally, we will exist in a time of great friction.
If you think of history as often involving opposing material and social forces, then patterns will emerge. We are constrained by the material in what actions we can take to resolve a major conflict in interests, often escalating to, for example, war. So war has happened repeatedly. That’s not quite history repeating itself so much as a consequence of historically common conditions.
Under this way of thinking, you could expect conditions that are even more similar to one another to lead to similar outcomes - though not necessarily identical. For example, the revolution in Russia that led to the first sustained socialist revolution had precedent in similar conditions jn the few decades prior, and for the same basic reasons (driving material forces): a rising but weak bourgeoisie, unpopular war foisted on the population, frustrations at capitalist oppression at home, and various unpopular domestic policies that were a holdover from monarchist ways of thinkinh that liberalism had made unpopular. During the prior revolution, the masses (and representative organizations) were too idealistic and believed establishing a Duma and some reforms would address these problems. They were wrong: the Tsar simply reversed most of the policy concessions once the people went home and were no longer organized, dragged his feet on the Duma, and eventually established one that was purely representative of ruling class interests. At the same time, the Tsar went after the organizations that had participated in the failed revolution, banning them and jailing their members.
And when similar conditions occurred and people became again colocated and agitated by these conditions, those organizations were back in force, grew rapidly, and learned their lessons. The group that won, the communists, correctly identified that even the current offered concessions were similarly false and that the defeat of the Tsarist-bourgeois ruling class required them to be fully deposed and that the time to do so was ripe.
So, the similar conditions led to a similar culmination (mass action, strikes, etc) but had a different outcome due to their differences (learning the lessons of the previous failure).
Yes. First as tragedy, then as farce. We’re in the farce stage, for those not already aware.
Hopefully not. Although I wouldn’t put it past Merz to still form a coalition with the AfD. But the SPD is usually pretty weak willed. He’ll probably like that in a coalition partner.
I think the next four years will really show what German democracy is worth. I suspect that the last government was the last chance we had at starting a ban initiative.
It is a shame that SPD and Union did not work together in the last government to try to resolve some of the problems that cause the voters to move to the right.
If the communists start getting a lot more votes, then maybe you could make a parallel. Otherwise it’s a very different situation.
No but it rhymes.
If they don’t fuck up as badly, and it would be really hard to reach Wiemar levels of failure, it’s probably not a great analogy.
Thalmann and the communists were going with accelerationism and straight up wanted Hitler to win, so they blocked every coalition they could. The SPD reacted by ruling by decree (something they could do in that system) and didn’t even bother to pick popular decrees, so when a new president was chosen he basically just blocked that as well, and a crisis ensued.
July 1932 was a snap election in that moment. More dysfunction happened between that election and November 1932’s snap election (where Hitler actually lost ground), and then the famous Reichstag fire and Hindenburg pact stuff happened.
If the AfD succeeds further it will be for different reasons, basically.
Thalmann and the communists were going with accelerationism and straight up wanted Hitler to win, so they blocked every coalition they could.
That’s… not how the situation unfolded.
To further understand the position taken by the KPD against the SPD, Ernst Thälmann’s 1932 speech “The SPD and NSDAP are Twins” reveals how the KPD leadership envisioned its struggle against fascism in all forms. Thälmann’s incendiary speech declared that “joint negotiations between the KPD and the SPD… there are none! There will be none!”¹³
This was not to say that the KPD did not recognize the [Fascist] threat, as Thälmann articulated that “KPD strategy directs the main blow against social democracy, without thereby weakening the struggle against […] fascism; [KPD] strategy creates the very preconditions of an effective opposition to […] fascism precisely in its direction of the main blow against social democracy.”¹⁴
It is imperative to recognize, though, that the KPD only advocated the blow against the SPD leadership. As Thälmann argued, The KPD’s policy envisioned, the creation of a “revolutionary United Front policy… [that mobilized the masses from below through] the systematic, patient and comradely persuasion of the Social Democratic, Christian and even National Socialist workers to forsake their traitorous leaders.”¹⁵
His reward was imprisonment and a bullet to the head.
Here’s another choice Thalmann quote from that election’s Wikipedia: “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis [will] arrive more quickly”
Unfortunately the source given doesn’t provide a path all the way to a primary one, and my geography and language skills aren’t conducive to searching newspaper archives for it. That gives you a sense of the philosophy of the KPD, though, at least until the last fucking minute in the other election later that year when they woke up.
Your link reads like a giant wall of text to paper over a straightforward historical mistake.
Oh. I never thought about that before. That is a good point. I wish that I were as smart as you.
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