Many years ago, my daughter had to write an extended essay on civil liberties and how seemingly small or arduous actions can influence politics. She was not amused and left it to the very last moment to start. Luckily, her mother had been active as a trade union member in the Irish boycott of SA goods while she herself was just a tiny toddler. On top of that, there is a weak and distant family link to the 19th century Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell who basically invented, some say re-invented, the idea of an effective non-violent action - the name derives from a cruel landagent, Charles Boycott, but surely everybody knows that. Anyway, she gathered enough inspiration and wrote her essay, it's somewhere in a box in the attic I think.
Today, our local paper published a list of goods to boycott, many of the large retail shops, several local restaurants have signs on their doors telling their customers, which US goods will no longer be available, no coca or pepsi cola, no ketchup, no almonds, no Kraft sweets etc.
Click here to watch a little video from far away Australia. Does it matter if it will have any effect? See for yourself.
However grim things look, whatever the overwhelming odds you face, you will not face them alone. I will not be complicit in the tyranny of the USA. I will not buy into the tyranny of the USA. Because when this is over, one way or another, I want my name to have been recorded, in my memory if nowhere else, in the column of the names of the people who said "I will not be complicit." and not among the names of those who sneered and sniggered; or worse, who cheered the tyrant on.
Feb 28 is a national boycott day here. Don't buy anything from anybody. There is also a list of businesses on SM and an app for your phone available of companies and businesses that support Trump/Musk so that you can boycott their products and services. Canada is also removing American products from their shelves and not buying more. Power of the purse. Power to the people!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link to the Australian man. It does help actually, to know that there are others who feel the same way, and who will have our backs. I had to buy some groceries this morning and made sure I bought Canadian if I could. The American stuff, that was optional, was put back on the shelf.
ReplyDelete"I will not be complicit."
Chills! This is so very powerful! I will not be complicit. Thank you. One more thing for the list I am compiling of actions I can take, concrete things I can do. I wonder if the leadership of the US understands how reviled their nation is becoming in the world? I wonder if they care?
ReplyDeleteCodex: Companies care if it affects their bottom line as Ellen mentioned above. The leaders won't but that's irrelevant at this point.
DeleteThank you for this post. Did not know where the word "boycott" came from. It is heartening to know how many people around the world and in the U.S. are refusing to feel powerless or live in fear and are doing what they can.
ReplyDeleteWe wondered why fellow citizens were silent, seemingly accepting or too disconnected to care or do anything against the Dastardly Duo. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteCodex: It's global. Number of countries are participating. Only problem is stores would have to "notice" that certain products are remaining on shelves.
ReplyDeleteIn my city, many stores are not even putting the stuff on the shelves.
DeleteCodex: Are you moderating? Comment did not post.
ReplyDeleteThank you. i am crying. My god but I needed to hear that from an Australian. I'm not sure why but it made me feel as if perhaps the world is behind us here in the US where our freedoms and rights are being silently and illegally pulled from beneath our feet daily. What a beautifully and passionately well-said man he is.
ReplyDeleteCodex: What is your or the common opinion about Merz?
ReplyDeleteDo you want the detailed long answer with examples and evidence or would it be enough for me to say that he is an inexperienced opportunist with lobbyists paying him to keep things ticking over for the wealthy?
DeleteCodex: Detailed, please. Scholz was not assertive enough, Merz appears to be the frontrunner. Sadly, I don't think there has ever been a politician who isn't backed by some industry. It's just a matter of degree.
DeleteGermany is a democracy with several parties, unlike the US, where you seem to have reduced politics to a battle between two warring factions. Also, our election process differs.
DeleteWe do not judge individual politicians simply as assertive or strong or successful since behind every one of them is a whole set of individuals who work and influence various ministries, committees, working groups etc. These individuals are also elected members of parliament and in most cases are influencial and well known with public support. Here, the actual program and actions of a political party play an important role. But that's just background.
What Merz has done in recent weeks is copy some of the US methods, i.e. tall tales, pledges impossible to keep, blaming immigrants and the green party - depending on who he is addressing - for everything from criminal statistics to blocking essential health services. None of his claims holds out against fact checking and he knows that and so do a large proportion of his fan base. But it seems that it does not matter, indeed there is a fairly blatant relief among his voters that this can be done without negative consequences, finally and with glee. That you do not have to really care any longer whether something is actually true or not as long as it serves the purpose of some kind of nostalgic dream of a return to Germany's Wirtschaftswunder times.
Merz has been a member of partliament for the CDU since the early 1980s, but always only as an elected memeber, his party was not interested in elevating him to any position of responsibility or partcipation in the actual governing cabinet. Neither Kohl nor Merkel saw any role for him. Mainly because he was useless in the daily work of government, had stupid ideas and rarely attended meetings and parliament debates etc. In 2008 Merz published a book on capitalism (Mehr Kapitalismus wagen/Daring more capitalism) where he claims, inter alia, that a successful market economy can only thrive on social injustice - remember that Germany is a social market economy, with freedom and responsibility, subsidiarity and solidarity, something we learn in school. He is not interested in improving life for disadavantaged people, instead proudly and openly always has marked his place among the wealthy. In 2005, the tax office noted that he was not really attending to his duites as an elected member of parliament and asked him to disclose his sideline activities - which were by that time well known, he had joined several large corporations/businesses as a well paid consultant. Members of parliament are required by law to state all secondary income/work. He was also reminded that he has to spend at least half of his working time in his elected position in government. Instead of disclosing anything, Merz dropped out of being a politician and spent the next 15 years as a business consultant in various large investement co. such as BlackRock. He never held any position in politics ever, not even as a volunteer, nothing that would qualify him as chancellor running a country. This matters, we are not yet a trump/musk "democracy".
DeleteOn top of it, he is a chauvinist. He voted against several laws on women's rights including making rape in marriage a criminal offence. He likes to talk about "women and other minorities" and regularly patronises female politicians in public.
I could go on.
But the absolute worst for me is how he - and here he is not alone - and his party have put any actions against climate change on the back burner. Climate change denial is no longer possible in Germany, he knows that so he uses empty phrases like being technology-open, whatever that means. He blames renewables and "the Greens" for Germany's eceonomic downturn, knowing full well that this is not true. Just like trump, he is an old man (70) with a fragile sense of self who feels he has been unfairly overlooked (by a woman, Merkel, no less) and now wants his due. None of his election promises will stand the test, all of his plans on migrants are in breach of German, European and International law. He knows that. The majority of voters this time in Germany are aged 60 and older, the biggest group are people 70 and older and that age group is statistically better off than younger people and want things to be as always. He will get his votes there.
You asked for the details.
Codex: Thank you for the summary. Food for thought and concern. I suspected as much.
ReplyDeleteI will not be complicit.
ReplyDeleteI will not be complicit either. I'll fight their fascism any way I can.
ReplyDeleteCodex: if you don't mind. Want to ensure I understand correctly. This was a vote for seats and coalition, not yet chancellor? When is that? Afd is mostly east germany, but how much power will they have?
ReplyDeleteThis was the parliament election or you could call it the federal election. All voters (German, aged 18+) have two votes, the first (Erststimme) and the second (Zweitstimme) vote. With the first, you elect a listed candidate from your constituency, ie where you live, to represent yourself in parliament. This is a direct vote. The second vote you give to the listed party of your choice, this is a proportional representation vote and it is the more significant one as it determines the distribution of seats in parliament.
ReplyDeleteThe next step, now that these votes are counted, is for the leader of the party that got the most votes (Merz, CDU) to start negotiations with whoever he/his party wishes in order to form a coalition as CDU doesn't have a majority big enough to govern alone. These talks will take weeks. The outcome this time will probably be what we call a great coalition of CDU and SPD which is very much like the Merkel/Kohl years, a local slang word for it also "standstill" or "keeping the status quo" coalition. Once coalition talks have come to a solution and a government can be formed, the chancellor is then elected by ALL members of the parliament, not just his own party of which he was the candidate. Once elected, the chancellor and his coalition partners will nominate their ministers, present it all to the German president who then has to give his blessing and we have a government.
Before you ask, the president has purely representative functions, he has some veto powers but nothing drastic.
The election and role of the German president is another story that most people find confusing, also the second chamber of government, Bundestag.
Have a read here: https://www.tatsachen-ueber-deutschland.de/en/politics-germany/political-system
The AfD has its stronghold in most of the former East Germany - with the exception of Berlin and some parts of Brandenburg, which are hinterlands of Berlin. In the federal election this week, they got about 20% of the vote. Mostly from these east German areas, but also elsewhere. In my city in the Rhineland, they got 7%. The AfD will have 152 seats in the new parliament (the majority is 316 seats) and to date, all of the other elected parties have expressed their refusal to work with them in any shape or form - remains to be seen but when in early Feb Merz used AfD support to get enough votes for a proposed change in the asylum legislation, literally millions of people protested on the streets and still do. Merz has quietly withdrawn his proposal but he knows the public is watching.
ReplyDeleteThe AfD has elected members, but not (yet?) in governing positions, in several federal states of the former GRD. Each of the 16 federal states of Germany has its own government with elections every four years.
In this parliament election, the voters for the AfD are, according to latest official election statistics in the majority male and from rural east German areas. Not necessarily all young men, surprisingly the younger voters shifted to the left, especially the female voters.
Codex: Thank you for the time and explanation.I'll probably have some more clarifying questions. They way it's presented here is that Afd got 40% and will cogovern.
ReplyDeleteThe AfD got close to 40% of the vote in some constituencies in some of the federal states in east Germany. Overall, today's figures, the have 20.1% of votes in the parliament election, i.e. Germany-wide, and will remain in opposition in the federal government.
DeleteThe 16 federal states of Germany each have their own government and elections are held every four years (not all at the same time or in the same year). Currently, the AfD is not in direct government in any of the federal states, not even in those where they reached a large vote return because the other parties formed either coalitions and/or agreed on minority governments to exclude direct government involvement of the AfD. That does not exclude any AfD co-voting or similar but so far, the AfD has been mainly known to not contribute in any meaningful way to the day to day government business in any of these states (and neither in any city and local authorities where they have members elected). They spend their time with complaints, threats, delaying tactics or don't even show up.
Codex: I really appreciate the explanation. They seemed to just want to oppose and disrupt.*sigh*
ReplyDeleteThe latest official statement (yesterday) regarding their political aims from the top AfD figure includes "we will hunt them down" - take your pick as to who they wish to hunt.
DeleteCodex: I think they are similarly funded by the same people that funded what happened here. Too much copying.
ReplyDelete