Funny, those guys don't usually agree on that much
Funny, those guys don't usually agree on that much
Do any of them know what the word "liberal" actually means?
You're viewing a single thread.
Do you know what the word 'liberal' actually means
It has 2 common definitions:
- Neo-liberal: a political approach that favors free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending
- Leftism in general.
You're almost never going to hear the right-wing use #1. Authoritarian communists will use #1 as a catch-all for modern capitalism.
The US is such a right wing country that liberals are the mainstream left. In Europe, liberals are centrists and they aren't further to the right than American libs.
The meme says "American Republicans" so I thought we were considering this from an American pov. Definitions are going to change going to other countries and doubly so when talking about politics.
It isn't just about it meaning something else when 'going to another country'. 'Liberal' has an actual definition with a history.
I'm honestly kind of confused about american liberals digging their heals in on this definition when it has historically been taken to mean something they don't seem to agree with anymore.
'Liberal' has an actual definition with a history.
The word "awful" has an actual definition with a history too. That history starts with it meaning "full of awe"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/awfulWord usage and definitions change over time. If you know people use a word differently then you need to at least explain the definition you are using or you're just going to confuse or alienate people who understand the word differently.
I'll happily state my case for whatever usage I'm adopting, and ask for clarification when I suspect someone is operating on a different one, but I don't see any case to be made for the vague american label when discussing anything beyond american electoral politics - for the same reason i'm happy to jab at the usage in the same context, because it's the assumption of neutrality it asserts that I take issue with and am calling attention to.
But the definition doesn't really change. Take universal healthcare. A liberal idea that's considered common sense in Europe and left wing in the US. Obamacare would be something you expect from a center right European and a left American. Both are called liberal.
And if the meme was from an exclusively American pov, it wouldn't specify "American Republicans"
You're correct, I specified "American republicans" to refer to the political party because everywhere else "republican" means anti-monarchist
Yeah, this is about as confusing as it gets, I feel like those labels rarely make much sense :(
It's extremely frustrating hearing this repeated so often here.
It's fine if this is the colloquial definition you're used to hearing and using, but this is certainly not the way it's used outside of American politics and pretending like it's the only use comes off as both ill-informed and condescending.
When used derisively from the left, rest assured it is not referring to either of your adopted generalizations but a very specific ideology.
ok, so among English speaking countries, how is it more often used? we've got multiple people in this thread aggressively telling him he's wrong, but no other definitions.
Like I said, it's fine assuming your own definition if that's the one most familiar to you, but that doesn't mean you have to stubbornly double down on semantics when confronted with a competing definition. When used derisively from the left it is almost certainly being used in the original sense of the word as per John Locke
The definition I see most often used here on Lemmy is: Liberal - literally anybody who doesn’t have Xi Jinping’s and/or Vladimir Putin’s cock(s) alllllllll the way down their throat
Ok. But this meme says American Republican.
The meme also says 'authoritarian communists' but there are plenty of anarchists and socialists who use liberal as a disparagement.
Yeah, this meme was close to something, but I think OP doesn't actually know much about politics.
pretending like it's the only use comes off as both ill-informed and condescending.
That works both ways. Pretending the European usage of the word is the only use comes off just as ill-informed and condescending.
The people who are using liberal derisively are playing off the american liberal self-identity. They're acknowledging both definitions in the jab.
Liberalism has never meant "leftism in general." It has always been an ideology supporting the individual via private property rights. Neoliberalism is the modern form of it.
Liberalism was considered left when feudalism was right, but liberalism has never meant leftism.
I'm sorry but this is just flat out wrong in the way that only an American can be wrong
Thanks for your input. I learned a lot.
Open-minded, permissive, tolerant
It means you support capitalism, hence why "liberalization of the economy" means selling off public utilities, land, housing, and resources.
That seems like one very specific definition specifically for economically-neo-liberal, only mentioned below all the actual definitions
It's also the definition used in any serious literature since the mid 1800s.
My parents used to called corned beef stew "Pig soup" so my brother and i would eat it. That doesn't mean it was pork in there.
Look rather than dunk on you, I'm going to recommend Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, because it gives a fair overview of what the liberal revolutions were about, why socialism grew out of that moment, and how there came to be this irreconciliable beef between liberalism and socialism. The whole thing is great, but 1848 is the real crisis point if all you care about is the schism.
For a more succinct answer:
It's obviously tongue-in-cheek, but it gets the point across lol
A liberal believes capitalism is broken and needs to be fixed.
A socialist believes capitalism is working as intended and needs to be destroyed.
What's someone who believes capitalism is broken and needs to be destroyed?
Confused.
Someone who doesn't have conspiracy-brain. The people that say capitalism is working as intended seem to live by the inverse razor of "never attribute to collective stupidity of the implementors what can be attributed to deliberate malice by illuminati-like mechanisms."
"Deliberate malice," "rational self-interest [of the owner class]" — tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to.
But capitalism doesn't explain itself in terms of "the owning class" screwing everything up out of self-interest. Capitalism will talk about positively channeling people's self-interest. The intent is to construct a system that benefits people the most.
It's objectively not working as intended unless you think there's like... a hidden conspiracy behind capitalism where the elites carefully inculcated an economic theory over generations in order to normalize a system that would end up solidifying their status for hundreds of years to come.
It's not working as intended, and it won't work as intended, therefore we shouldn't try to fix it.
Anarchist, maybe?
Nah anarchists also fall within the "capitalism is working as intended and must be destroyed" camp. They just have different ways of doing it.
Liberals are, to quote Phil Ochs: "ten degrees to the left of center in the good times, ten degrees to the right of center when it affects them personally"
First time I've heard of that podcast and it sounds interesting. Is there a season that touches on it more than others or is it just an overarching theme throughout the different seasons and revolutions covered?
I'm going to echo everyone else recommending this podcast, it's absolutely incredible non-fiction story telling and it will really deepen your understanding of how we all got to this point in history.
To answer your question, I actually think season 8 (all about the French Commune in 1871 and how external pressures can end up causing liberals and socialists to go to war with each other) is the best one for explaining it, but it will be really confusing if you don't listen to season 7 first (which is all about 1848, when France revolted against a liberal monarchy and most of western Europe went "hey, we should do that too, but differently"), which will be really confusing if you don't listen to season 6 first (all about France 1830, when the liberal monarchy who would be overthrown in 1848 overthrew the absolutist monarchy that came before them) and all its supplemental episodes (all about different western European leaders who would see rebellions in 1848).
Season 3 (all about the French revolution everyone knows about in the 1790s) will help understand a few things going on in 6 and 7, and is also worth listening to just to understand why and how liberalism got going, but I don't think it's strictly necessary to get seasons 6-8, and 3 is ridiculously long season because the French revolution is just an insane series of back and forth plot twists that doesn't let up.
That all said, if you're prepared for something ridiculously long, the final season (all about the Russian revolutions, 1905 and 1917) is an incredibly informative and interesting listen too, and kind of completes the series (this is extremely reductive, but season 1-3 are sort of the "liberalism was a big improvement over what came before it" seasons, 6-8 are sort of the "but liberalism had its problems, which socialism tried to answer" seasons, and 10 is the "but socialism has its problems too" season).
Lastly, it doesn't really touch on the liberalism vs socialism thing, but season 4 (a history of the Haitian revolution that highlights how incredibly destructive racism and colonialism are) is probably the one season I would make everyone in the world listen to if I could.
Yeah agreed, Haiti really opens your eyes to how race and class intersect imo — and the potted history at the end to bring us up to the present is absolutely heartbreaking.
I highly recommend this podcast. He does a great job of differentiating what the different authors say and what are his own opinions. And he adds corrections to the episode when listeners point out his mistakes. The French, Haitian, 1848, and Russian revolutions really changed how I see the world. Be warned, they can hit dozens of episodes each.
The American and English civil war are OK, not Duncan's fault, it's just the non Anglo revolutions were better material IMO.
I recommend Revolutions too. Mike Duncan is an awesome researcher and writer.
OK, but that's not what the word liberal actually means to most people in my experience. Or perhaps another way of saying it is that a lot of people I see getting angry on Lemmy read the word "liberal" and assume economically liberal, whereas every person I've ever encountered IRL would use it to mean socially liberal.
In the US political media 'Liberal' is deliberately used to reference the policies of the Democratic Party, which is demonstrably Neoliberal. This confusion is working as intended.
Thanks Rush Limbaugh and all the hellspawn you've enabled.
With respect, if you describe yourself as liberal, vote for an economically liberal party, and refuse even to accept economic policy as part of the question, I think the "authoritarian leftists" have your number tbh
The very idea that a liberal can't be socialist and a socialist can't be liberal is nonsensical. They are orthogonal concepts.
The division between liberals and socialists is plainly promoted in order to divide people.
Liberalism supports Capitalism, Socialism supports Socialism. They are incompatible.
That's ridiculous. Liberal socialist societies have been and still are the best to live in.
No such thing.
lmao
Pff.. you're way too nice to not be a liberal
There's a difference between ideology and affect. I'm sure plenty of Nazis are "nice"
added, should I begin at the beginning or are there recommended episodes I should listen to first over others?
Don't know why you're being downvoted.
Liberal literally means free. As in "If it doesn't harm me, you're allowed to do it". So yes, openminded, permissive, tolerant.
Don't know why a lot of the US-Americans had to twist the meaning of it.
Because in politics, liberal means something else entirely. It's an ideology defined by support for capitalism.
Free as in markets, not free as in people.
In Americans politics, and you guys are completely bonkers.
No, not just in American politics. Liberal politics is a very specific thing.
That's absolutely not what it means
In the very closest definition, liberal means "if there isn't a law against it, you're allowed to do it"
liberal more broadly is just as simple: "if it doesn't hurt me, you're free to do it"
I mean, what do you think a "liberal democracy" is? The majority of Europe is made up of liberal democracies while also being social-democratic. France is a liberal democracy despite being heavily unionized and having huge welfare. How does that work?
It works because that's not what liberal means.
Socially-Liberal, for example, is when you are liberal (freedom-loving / diversity-loving) in social aspects. You support gay marriages, you support freedom of religion, you support cultural diversity. Other Examples include religiously-liberal, culturally-liberal, or even politically liberal (you support the right to different political opinions than yours)
What comes closest to what you think it is is economically-liberal. Which essentially says that "as long as it doesn't hurt me, you're free to do what you want economically". But even that isn't what you mean. Is Pollution and accelerating Climate change harming me and therefore not protected under liberalism? yes, says the absolute majority of liberals.
Is lobbying harming me by making my Voice less weighted? Yes, say a lot of us.
So not even economically-liberal is a good term to describe what you mean.
I don't know, what a good term for it is. But it isn't Liberal. So please, for the love of god, stop misusing it. Words have meaning. Invent a new one if you have to, they all began that way anyways.
The problem here is that in the US it means a very specific thing, while in Europe it means another specific thing. I think it gets mentioned every other time when this holywar reappears in comments
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States
“if there isn’t a law against it, you’re allowed to do it”
That's literally every system.
It isn't / wasn't
There are/were a lot of systems where you need to be granted a privilege in order to do something.
And just as many where the laws aren't defined so anything can be laid out as illegal
There are/were a lot of systems where you need to be granted a privilege in order to do something.
Meaning there's a law against doing it without said privilege.
“If there isn’t a law against it, you’re allowed to do it”
Even in liberalism, what you said is still the case. I need to be granted the privilege of a driver's license to drive a car, I need the privilege of a medical license to practice medicine, etc. You're talking nonsense.
And just as many where the laws aren’t defined so anything can be laid out as illegal
Such as?
No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is systems where everything is illegal by default and laws give you privileges to do something.
Or even worse where the mood of a person is the law.
- Such as the new Russian law about discrediting the army.
Anything can be interpreted into that law
No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is systems where everything is illegal by default and laws give you privileges to do something.
That's not any system that has ever existed.
I understand we don't like capitalism on Lemmy, but I'm curious how liberalism fares versus the other capitalism-supporting ideologies that are more commonly found in the world.
I've thought about this for most of the day. Social Democracy (think Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc) is probably the best out of all capitalist ideologies, but is still subject to the regressive nature of private capital. Other than that, most of them are complete dogshit. Capitalist monarchies, "anarcho-capitalism" (read neo-feudalism), US libertarianism, capitalist oligarchy, fascism*, etc are awful for regular people and horribly lacking in their analysis of capital and it's relationship between the capitalists and workers. We're currently living under neoliberal democracy, so imagine things getting much worse for us. That's what most of those ideologies are like.
* it should be noted that fascism is mostly just a death cult that loves hierarchies like capitalism.
Fascism isn't merely a randomly appearing death cult, but the violent death throes of crumbling Capitalism. Where Capitalism is failing, fascism rises. That's why Leftists must thoroughly stomp out fascism while also pushing for Socialism.
The Israeli flag guy would think freedom means the freedom to exploit others.
The lemmy.ml guy would think freedom means the freedom to roll with tanks over peaceful Protestors demanding Freedom and Democracy.
See? Prejudice isn't nice, right?
Freedom to do what exactly? To spend half your income on rent and have no hope of anything better?
America is a democracy for the bourgeoisie, and a dictatorship for us. China is a democracy for the people and a dictatorship for the bourgeoisie.
Jesus fucking Christ, you're really a tankie.
In china, there is the largest discrepancy between rich and poor. In china, a huge part of the population still lives in poverty while rich billionaires vacate on yachts and the government eyes imperial expansion Billionaires and Party-Officials are practically untouchable, the government is actively putting minorities in concentration camps. When the people try to protest, tanks roll over them. So much for your "democracy"
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
btw, freedom to marry anyone (china recognizes homosexuality as a mental disorder), freedom to exercise your religion (china is putting muslims in concentration camps), freedom to protest (see tianamen square massacre)
"free" means nothing though, it's just a substitute for other values. It's not just free as in "if it doesn't harm me, you're allowed to do it". As another commenter pointed out, one person, they would espouse the freedom to have and own and use guns for self-defense, right? I could just as easily make the argument that guns, collectively, when this right is enabled, impinge on my freedom not to live in a gun-free, potentially less violent, or at least less lethal, society. The freedom provided by publically subsidized or collective single payer healthcare, vs the freedom to "not have to pay for everyone else's healthcare. If I just rely on freedom as a value, it indicates nothing. It's a sock puppet ideology. There's always another value there which is being substituted for it. Liberalism can't just equal freedom, or else it's just totally meaningless. While it does have a broad specific meaning as it refers to a specific school of thought, it's not totally meaningless as it otherwise would be.
Liberalism is a political and economic philosophy which espouses the merits of the free market as a collective decision making structure, which can allocate resources according to price signals. I.e. take resources in the economy and allocate them to where they best need to go, which is sort of what any idea of the economy has to do. It also generally espouses an idea of a naturally occurring meritocracy and rational actors, which the free market relies upon to be of real merit. At the extreme end you get shit like idiot anarcho-capitalism and the austrian school of economics, which is very resistant to government interventionism and kind of holds a religious adherence to free markets and their freedom from governance or regulation by governments. Guys like adam smith. Maybe in the middle you have more standard forms of liberalism, that still support free markets, but also support a pretty decent government and sort of see the two as being opposed to one another. Probably that would slot in a little more into neoliberalism, on the side of markets, and then classical liberalism leaning more towards government intervention. And then on the far end you get shit like nordic government and social democracy more broadly, which would try to engage in capitalism while still building out large support structures, as generally opposed to democratic socialism which seeks to basically eliminate conventional capitalism altogether. You also maybe get "market socialism" somewhere in there, inasmuch as a kind of inherently contradictory ideology like that can exist.
None of what I said really has any commentary on general social issues. You won't find it in there, in any of those mostly economic philosophies, you won't find positions on gay rights or trans rights, generally, civil rights more broadly, or drug use, or crime and punishment. There's not any position on civil rights more broadly which is specifically intrinsic to any of those philosophies. Nothing on "open-mindedness". The same could be said of communism, or really any economic philosophy outside of like, normal fascism, which everyone kind of has a hard time defining. Libs, mostly, but I won't elaborate on that one until you press me on it.
In any case, that's what liberalism as an economic philosophy all tends to mean, tends to refer to, that's the larger, broader category. As you might intuit, it's mostly just kind of, "capitalism", in it's many different forms. None of this is meaning-twisting, this is all just shit that's existing in the academic literature for a long while. I'm not a language prescriptivist, so I'm not going to say that it's wrongly used, when it's not strictly conforming to academic definitions, and I will freely admit that most of the reference I see to it in colloquial conversation is kind of just like, to mean "woke", you know, to refer more to socially progressive outlooks more broadly. But I think it's important to question kind of why that is, why it's seen as this thing that's only kind of half-invisible to the population, why it's completely divorced, colloquially, from any economic definition, and instead just refers to like, ahh, that guy, that guy's a lib, that guy thinks black people should have rights, what a lib cuck, kind of a thing.
Tracking the warping of language is a pretty important thing to do, because it tells you all about the intentionality with which it's used, the broader political strategy, the core philosophies of the people using it, it tells you where they've come from and what they're referring to. More specifically, these kinds of changes of meaning that take place within certain words, they serve to cordon off, or, serve as an evidence of the cordoning off, of certain populations from others. The word is transformed in such a way as to make communication between groups impossible, and is also transformed in such a way as to totally eliminate that to which it previously was in reference to.
I don't think using liberal to mean "socially progressive" is necessarily the wrong way to do things, but I do think that the academic definition, the academic reference, the idea there, it still has a lot of value. If one serves to obfuscate the other's shorthand, I would find that to be kind of a tragedy.
"I spread my butter liberally."
This discussion is funny from a German pov, as our main local liberal party (the FDP) is pretty right wing and has been so since the 1940s. "Liberalism" always had a quite neative connotation to me therefore. They are also the party most open to working together with the far right (the AFD).
Liberalism can be right wing or left wing. It makes more sense to structure the political specrum like this. But even that is far from prefect.
that's because liberalism in Europe is mainly "liberty" for rich people to do what they want
Isn't it the same in the US though? They still don't have universal healthcare or basic worker protection like protecting women from being fired over giving birth.
see, the difference is, in the US they already won, tho in the American context liberal s still more progressive than the neo-cons/fascists on the other side
Liberalism can be right wing or left wing.
Eh. Its traditionally in that "economically conservative, socially liberal" pocket, wherein you can do whatever you want so long as you've got enough passive income.
Fascists tend toward a more rigid social caste system (ideologically) wherein being rich isn't enough to save you from state violence. That's a big part of its popular appeal, particularly when liberal institutions decay into kleptocracies.
Traditional Marxism tends toward the social egalitarianism that fascists can't stomach (race mixing, gender equality, and worker internationalism) while advocating full public ownership that liberal rent-seekers can't stomach.
So, in the modern political spectrum, liberals tend to be "centrists" who use their economic influence to rent out social egalitarianism. Fascists tend to be "right wing", advocating for those same private entities to purge themselves of unpopular social groups. And Marxists tend to be "left wing", advocating for an abolition of rents and a full egalitarian economy.
But if you go back a century (or move over to a country that's more left or right leaning) the colonial era monarchies and theocracies end up forming the right-wing pole, while fascists join liberals at the social center, and Marxists join a much more lively native anarchist community that's in its last-gasp efforts to resist colonial occupation.
If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven't read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles and was more about whole "seperate spheres of excellence" thing. You are thinking more of the likes of Saint Simone and Robert Owen's Owenites.
Feminist scholarship has tried to adapt Marx by stripping out the veiws about women and applying his rhetoric more unilaterally but that's not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.
There is this habit to slap the name Marxist on a the most idealized reads of the work and call it his because he's the name people know and the few well known political labels on the far left or because people who have claimed the label of his movement after his death decided to non-canonically add to his work- but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to or attribute stuff to him that he doesn't particularly deserve. Marxism as a sort of brand name philosophy is misleading and disappointing to those who read his work and find that their ideals aren't actually well represented there.
If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven’t read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles
Marxism does not end with Marx any more than Newtonian Physics ends with Newton.
That said, I've seen plenty of liberal writers approach the original works with cynical and dishonest takes. So it helps to cite your reference if you want to be taken seriously.
that’s not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.
Sure. Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Chavez, etc, etc.
but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to
It's hard to escape Marx's gravitational pull without abandoning 19th century modes of industrial economics.
So long as colonial powers continue to apply old liberal economic theories of endless expansion and consolidated ownership in the face of diminishing returns, Marx's insights into failing rate of profit fueling economic contradictions will remain relevant.
I believe what you are referring to is Communism. Let us divorce at least the name of a singular man from a body of work that by your own admission is made up of a number of different writers on the subject just as the elaborations on Newtonian Physics is considered also a part but not whole of Classical Mechanics.
The reductions of bodies of political thought to singular authors is often used to exclude others. Very often on this platform I am told that I am not a Socialist because I am not a Marxist simply because he simply coined a term to a body of thought that predated him and extended far beyond him so why should I extend to Marx the authorial intent by the political realm of thought baring his name? If you said you were a Maoist or a Leninist or a Chavezist would I not conclude that you are in agreement with their very specific realms of their personal philosophy?
Let us divorce at least the name of a singular man from a body of work
If we had a collection of competing working applications of communism, that would be easier. But trying to divorce it from Marx is a bit like trying to divorce capitalism from Adam Smith or the more modern Anarcho-Capitalist attitude from Rothbard and Rand. Like talking about Protestantism without mentioning Martin Luther.
Show me a fully realized anarchist state and we might be able to talk about Peter Kropotkin or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. But anarchists from Republican Spain to the Bodo League of Korea to American Native Tribes were wiped out by fascist militarism.
You could draw sharper lines between Leninism, Maoism, and Chauvism, but you'd still start from their common Marxist heritage.
The reductions of bodies of political thought to singular authors is often used to exclude others.
They're influential for a reason.
I am told that I am not a Socialist because I am not a Marxist
I mean, you can call yourself whatever you want. But I see the term "Socialist" pitched around to describe everything from corporate liberalism to primativist anarchism. If you want to talk about AES states, you're talking about countries that rooted themselves in Marxist philosophy.
If you said you were a Maoist or a Leninist or a Chavezist would I not conclude that you are in agreement with their very specific realms of their personal philosophy?
If I said I was a Maoist, I just didn't agree with anything in Mao's Little Red Book, I would not blame you for calling me a bullshitter.
Are they? I would say the CDU under Merz is more likely to work with the AfD
