Katja Hoyer: If the Greens in Germany move towards the centre, they can become a real force again
If the Greens in Germany move towards the centre, they can become a real force again | Katja Hoyer
If the German Greens moved towards the actual centre they'd end up further left than they are. I support this plan.
Yes! Become even more irrelevant! Exchangable! Redundant!
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 🤦
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.
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.
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).
You mean the center that has been plowing rightward for decades? How about no. Also, fuck you.
Did you actually read the article?
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.
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.
The issue is actually solidarity: When Jette Nietzard says something mildly controversial and a bunch of right-wing asshats start a campaign against a young women, there is a large-enough, largely older male part of the Green party that will agree with, at least in part, with such right-wing "criticism". And that kinda behavior is in fact not how you win elections.
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.