You mean the center that has been plowing rightward for decades? How about no. Also, fuck you.
Did you actually read the article?
One of the Greens’ key problems is personnel. At their peak in 2021 they had two lead figures in Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, who were widely regarded as pragmatists – a prerequisite for effective government in Germany’s compromise-oriented system
The party elected a new leadership duo – Franziska Brantner, 45, and Felix Banaszak, 35 – and new Green Youth leaders: the climate activist Jakob Blasel and the self-proclaimed “leftwing radical” Jette Nietzard.
You could practically hear the collective sigh of relief at the top of the party when Nietzard announced that she wouldn’t run for the Green Youth leadership again this autumn. She has repeatedly alienated the centrist voter groups the Greens are trying to win back, appearing in clothing imprinted with the anti-police acronym “ACAB” and the anti-capitalist slogan “Eat the rich”. Last month she pondered whether resistance to any future government coalition containing the far-right AfD should be “intellectual or perhaps with weapons”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/08/green-party-politics-germany
It’s not about policies. It’s about not saying stupid shit.
You don’t get elected by saying stupid shit to only appeal to your base.
Eat the rich is a smarter slogan than anything the center-right has to offer.
I could probably think of a million slogans better than “eat the rich”.
“Make billionaires extinct”
“End the oligarchy”
“Redistribute the 1%”
“Tax billionaires to death”
“Billionaires should not exist”
“No taxation without representation”
Etc, etc
There is no environmental policy that is compatible with the existence of individuals with the net worth of a small sovereign nation.
Yes, eat the rich.
There is no environmental policy that is compatible with the existence of individuals with the net worth of a small sovereign nation.
I agree. Billionaires are a huge problem.
Yes, eat the rich.
This slogan is how you lose an election.
First lesson of politics: You don’t need to win your supporters. You can’t convince your enemies. You need to win those who are unsure
Not saying what you stand for in a futile attempt to appel to the “middle” (which doesn’t take exist, it’s just right wingers hiding their power level) is also how you lose an election.
“Eat the rich” is great messaging for the radical wing of your party. Then the main group has to hem and haw a bit and talk about actual policy. Then the radical guy goes “of course that’s what I mean (wink wink).
Then the radical guy goes “ACAB”, and the main group has an opening to talk about how the administration of justice works in practice for people that don’t look like me. And then again, radical guy goes “yeah that (but also ACAB)”.
The right has been doing this for literal ages with way less popular things. It’s how you get the fringes inside the big tent.
If you really think a guy going “eat the rich” loses elections, you have NOT been paying attention.
we need more of this and less of what that other person is selling
Well the Greens lost about a million supporters in the last election. This constant thinking in terms of tactics instead of proper positions, is one of the reasons why the “center” parties have been failing and then moving hard to the right, only further failing.
What decides how people vote for the most part, is what the public discourse is about. By parroting right and far right positions, the Greens and the SPD helped strengthen the Fascists. Instead what would have been needed is a “left” alternative as in supporting the constitutional and basic human rights of people, limiting the influence of money on politics and modernizing infrastructure based on proper tax income (wealth tax, inheritance tax without loopholes.) Instead the Greens went for “tough on crime and deport the brown people!”
The Greens have never been a centrist party, except for rare outliers like the Greens in Baden-Württemberg who at times are indistinguishable from the CDU with green stripes added.
They didn’t lose the center, they tried to take it over since CDU/CSU and now even SPD are drifting further and further right. Habeck and Baerbock were the spearhead of the “Realos”, the centrist movement of an otherwise left leaning party. Both are now on the way out after failing to capture the elusive “Merkel-Mitte”: Basically conservative middle class people who have been mostly favouring CDU so far and supposedly are not willing to fowollow the proto-fascist course that Merz is plotting. Except either these people people don’t exist or they simply didn’t vote for the Greens. Worse, all Habeck and Baerbock achieved is that they massively lost left leaning voters to Die Linke.
Chem Ödzdemir, possible the next President of the German State of Baden-Württemberg recently said the Greens should avoid leftist ideas and focus on their core ideas. Which are what exactly? The modern Greens formed formed out of an environmental movement from West-Germany and a anti-authoritarian movement from East-Germany after the Reunification. Those are inherently “leftist/woke” ideas.
Also the Greens in the West had much more social security and anti capitalist positions until the late 90s early 00s when the former students started making big money in the German industry.
Yes! Become even more irrelevant! Exchangable! Redundant!
If the German Greens moved towards the actual centre they’d end up further left than they are. I support this plan.
These political parties never learn. It’s mind-boggling. How many failures of the Democrats in the U.S. or similar parties do you need to finally understand that trying to cater to the right wing will only validate the far right and alienate whoever is left to vote for you? The more a society shifts to the right, the harder left you must be. Double down!
People go to the far-right out of bigotry, but not just this, they go to them because in the end they always end up being the only ones proposing solutions, saying that they’re going to change their lives, whereas the rest of you are just saying, oh, vote for us or otherwise it’s gonna be the mean far-right in power, but we’re not planning on changing anything.
Capitalism is failing and crumbling all around us. People are begging for something to change. The far right is promising that they will change things, by throwing minorities under the bus, it’s a false promise, it’s not a solution, it’s not gonna change anything, but at least they’re saying something, while the rest of you are just… doing nothing. They lie, they cheat, they manipulate everyone, but in the end they’re still the only ones saying that they’re gonna do something!
There is one minority that deserves to be thrown under the bus and we all know which. It’s the wealthiest, the 1%, the billionaires, but all of you are too cowardly to take the fight to them so instead you throw us all to the wolves! You don’t care about the people, you don’t care about policy, all you care is keeping your fucking seat at the table.
I’m so fucking sick of seeing the same goddamn thing happen again and again and none of these people are taking any lessons from it! No one is coming to save us, that would require them to work and do something for once.
So … become more like the climate deniers and billionaire mafia?
I think that we have plenty of those already … how about an alternative … not moving to the centre.
So … become more like the climate deniers and billionaire mafia?
You remind of US democrats attacking Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
She won a tough race in a rural conservative area. She agrees with progressives on labor rights, abortion, medicaid, medicare, increasing taxes on the rich.
Yet leftists living in New York City are attacking her online because she never talks about Palestine 🤦
The only, little, tiny thing is that she’s abetting the single worst man made humanitarian tragedy in recent memory?
What’s a bunch stick in the muds!
You run for office with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.
400 000 people have been killed in Sudan recently. I didn’t see you post about it. Take a look in the mirror before claiming you have the moral high ground over her.
Or, maybe, you know, you try and do the right thing and explain and convince people? You know, engage in rhetoric and persuasion?
Opinions are not static. Abetting war crimes and worse is not the only option. Also, genocide generally has horrible approval numbers, even on the right. Choosing not to fight here is a) morally corrupt and b) politically asinine.
Regarding your edit: fuck all the way off. You don’t know what I do and don’t do. Also, making the argument “if you don’t post about everything wrong you have no right to post about anything wrong” is just revolting.
If they move towards the centre they won’t stand for anything anymore and become irrelevant.
They are already in the process. This is what Özdemir and other “realos” want. A party for people who would vote FDP or CDU but make sure their groceries are “bio” labeled and “compensate” the emissions of their holiday flights.
Ok, so I despise the “realos” in the German Greens and think the Greens have already moved far to the right in recent years, but personal opinions aside, who else is going to weaken the CDU so that a CDU+AfD government becomes impossible?
The SPD is maybe able to capture a bit of it if they stop being completely brain-dead, but there is a large centrist wing of CDU supporters that would never vote for them, but have shown to be willing to vote for the Greens under certain circumstances.
All the anti-green rhetoric of the right-wing part of the CDU/CSU is precisely because they know that the Greens are their main competition for voters.
JFC what is with social democrats and running completely brained campaigns?
The have a lot to offer voters, and 80% of the policies would draw large majorities, but they never seem to want to talk about it. Instead they let the agenda get hijacked by the far right and they get beat up on national tv.
Wake up you bunch of useless cunts! Pivot! Pivot to stuff you stand for. Pivot to stuff that you know is popular. You decide what comes out of your mouth.
I certainly wouldn‘t vote for them if they move more towards the center (meaning right).
