We are now a week into the great German farmers’ protest, and the main event is set for tomorrow in Berlin. 10,000 demonstrators are expected; the rally will begin at 11:30am. Speakers will include Johann Rukwied, President of the German Farmers’ Association, and also Finance Minister Christian Lindner. I doubt he will be well received.
I’ve travelled to the capital to report on these events in person. The tractors are slowly collecting on the Street of June 17th, between the Siegessäule and the Brandenburger Tor. As of about 11am this morning, hundreds had already arrived:
A great many more are expected. Some farmers are concerned that police, who have established a marked presence on all the main arteries entering the city, may try to limit arrivals, but I can’t find any confirmation that that’s happening yet. Police continued to escort newcomers into the barricaded boulevard throughout the afternoon.
There’s a heavy police presence…
…but the mood is not threatening. There’s a clear sympathy between at least some of the officers and the demonstrators, and a great many ordinary Germans were on hand too. Some were just mothers with young boys eager to inspect the farm equipment, but also hundreds of people came by to chat with the farmers and show their solidarity.
The media, on the other hand, were conspicuous by their absence. I expect there will be much more press tomorrow, but today is a great opportunity to interview the participants in a relaxed environment. I guess it’s no surprise that our journalists aren’t very interested in doing that. I did see one camera crew from CNN Turkey. I stalked them for a few of their interviews, and all their questions seemed openly supportive. I also saw a few live-streamers with their cellphones on selfie sticks, one of them providing hostile commentary I guess to a leftist audience. Otherwise, there were no direct counter-demonstrators, although the Greens did show up on Pariser Platz this afternoon to demand yet again that Alternative für Deutschland be banned.
It’s very clear, both from the signs and the few brief conversations I had, that the protest has grown much, much bigger than the tax-hike on agricultural diesel that set it off. It has become a broader anti-tax protest and a statement of profound displeasure with the Government in general. In contrast to most leftist protestors, the farmers are eager to explain their grievances, they welcome photos and are otherwise highly conscious of public relations. One of them had even set up a stand to hand out free sausages to passersby, as an excuse to engage ordinary people in conversation. Politically and, for better or worse, they’re very vocally centrist; talking about the AfD makes them nervous, though they’re eager to cite growing support for the party as evidence of dissatisfaction with the traffic light coalition. Given their high levels of organisation, this is probably due at least in part to simple messaging discipline. Rukwied has made many tedious statements distancing the protests from the “right” and the protestors on scene this afternoon seemed to support this line.
One man I talked to assured me that a core group of protestors plan to stay where they are well after tomorrow. He said a lot of them are veterans of earlier actions, including the Dutch farmers’ protest that culminated in 2022, and they’ve brought supplies for many weeks. I can confirm that they seem very well prepared.
Below I provide some pictures of their signs and placards, with English translations, to give you a flavour of the protest. I’ve cropped all number plates out of the photos, because some leftists are reporting these to police, in hopes that their owners will be fined for operating them on public roadways. (This is a pretty dumb campaign and unlikely to succeed, but better safe than sorry). You’ll have to take my word for it that they’re from all over Germany; I looked for the promised Dutch contingent but couldn’t find them, I suspect they have yet to arrive.
“Want to save energy? Turn off the traffic light”
“Without us, Ricarda would never be full” – The reference is to the obese Green co-chief Ricarda Lang
“Political shit is not fertiliser!”
“Beware of storm and wind, and enraged farmers!!!”
“Break the Green wave, stop the traffic light”
“There is no lord so high in the land, that he does not live from the farmer’s hand”
“Failed your training? Become a politician”
“OLAF! Did you forget your oath of office? For the good of the German PEOPLE!”
“No additional taxes for farmers! No more Green Deal and Farm to Fork! Food imports only according to our standards! Cancel free trade agreements and duty-free imports! Smash the monopolies in trade and the food industry! Ban genetic engineering and lab-grown meat! Affordable food is the most important prerequisite for social harmony. But not only on the backs of the farmers!”
“In chess the farmers make the first move, and in the end the king always falls!”
“They neither sow nor harvest, but they always know better”
“Soon all wheels will stand still, because the Government wants it that way!!!” – Highlighted in red in the German word for government, Regierung, are the letters GIER – “greed”
“Better death than slavery”
“The scourge of our country” – The effigies are Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock
“The German trades have had enough! Because it’s not just about the existence of small businesses, but also about their employees and children! Dear traffic light, please for once do something right and collectively resign!!!”
“This car identifies as a tractor!” – I saw various jokes of this nature posted on the cars taking part in the protest
“You go to work, and the state takes 50%. You go shopping, and the state takes 19%. You go to get gas, and the state takes 70%. And if you ask why you have so little money, suddenly it’s Russia’s fault” – I’m happy to say that this guy is a fellow Bavarian, from Rosenheim.
“While the farmer is scapegoated, NGO bank accounts are overflowing!”
“Too much is too much. We are the people”
“Agriculture and farmers are the pillars of the fatherland. So German people, be on your guard. Protect farming as your greatest treasure”
“That’s enough. Our Government has money for all the countries in the world, but none for its own people. If there are no more farmers, there’s nothing to eat. Away with the stupidest government of all time!”
“We don’t need sex. The traffic light fuck us every day”
I’ll be posting a full account of tomorrow’s rally. Because my plan is to be there until the bitter end and document as much as possible, I may not be able to publish until Tuesday.
This piece originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Go German farmers! I am with them. Their issuesbare the same here. Climate change is being used as a weapon to control us. There will be a backlash and it will hurt politicans and green communists.
Great stuff!
I believe we need a new political system of proportional representation in Britain to allow new parties representing the countryside and other groups to flourish.
If a conservative party with an eighty seat majority can let us all down so badly, then first past the post has quite clearly had its day……
The event reported in the article is a direct fallout of a PR-based voting system. As is the situation in Scotland where the (hideously complicated) German voting system seems to have been carefully copied.
Yet at least they appear to have a political party that they believe represents their interests:
‘Many of the vehicles involved in Monday’s protests featured banners emblazoned with the logo of the AfD Party….’
The SNP represents no one except the SNP. But that party is now over. The SNP are plummeting in the polls and thank god they and the Greens will soon be wiped out.
Political parties are part of the problem and not part of the solution. What you get with PR is party leaders compiling lists of their preferred candidates and the only thing voters are allowed to do is to choose one of these lists. The people on the list are all professional politicians or aspiring to become professional politicians and this means their most important concern is retaining a list place which means they’ll actually get into parliament. This, they can only do if they remain on good terms with their party leadership. And the outcome is something like the German Bundestag, the largest parliament in the world with 736 MPs most of which are perfect vegetables: They grow there, do nothing but always vote as the party leadership wants them to vote and get very well paid for this.
As the British system is also infested by parties, the chances that people like Bridgen get re-elected as independant candidates are slim because they won’t have the money for an effective election campaign and party leadership is always trying to dupe voters into voting for parties instead representatives: “Elect whatever candidate we happen to field in your constituency if you want The Boris® as prime minister!” but it’s still at least theoretically possible. With the German system, people may stand as independent candidates in a constituency (Wahlkreis) but should they actually become elected, the list parties will be assigned additional seats in order to neutralize the undesired ones mathematically.
What the AfD will actually be doing once it has managed to break through the No coalitions with these guys! glass ceiling remains to be determined. But as it will then have become much more attractive to both people who’d like to ‘invest’ into elections (quote from Grantham Foundation guy) and to upcoming “My a*** is for hire, who’s paying?” career politicians, I have little hopes for this.
The countryside needs a voice, and it will not get one through first past the post; the conservative party has sold the countryside down the sewage polluted river.
The ‘Alliance Rurale’ will contest the 2024 EU election. Manuel Gallardo is looking to head up something similar in Spain. The FarmerCitizenMovement in the Netherlands has had some success. Ireland has the Farmers Alliance party.
Our political system prevents the countryside having a voice and we see the consequences all around us.
Conservative in name only, certainly not conservative (small ‘c’).
The conservatives are certainly averse to change; no progress since 2010 on anything much.
The Conservative party, in reality, no longer exists and certainly does not deserve a capital letter..
I advocate larger constituencies which then provide let’s say 5 MPs each, based on PR within that constituency.
The problem with straight PR is the huge power of the urban vote as you see in Germany and the Netherlands.
That’s precisely why the SPD invented it. If you politically control voters in a few urban areas, originally industry workers, nowadays academics and Spoils of vote! foreigners who’ve been granted a right to vote and/or citizienship for this exact purpose, people living in most parts of a country end up with no effective voice.
It’s very telling that supporters of the Green Party believe the best way to protect democracy is to outlaw parties opposed to policies of the Green Party. Maybe, banning the Greens instead would work better for this end.
Socialists always hate you having a choice, because they know there is every chance you might not choose them. ——I would vote for a chair first before any socialist, especially the pretend to save the planet ones that hijacked the environment for their communism. This is why they want to ban everything. They even would ban words that appear in the dictionary incase you use those words against them.
If anything, these people are anti-socialists as they’re always in favour of the financial elite at whatever level they happen to be operating and always against the people. German Bundesgreens (ie, Green MPs) work for the Davos/ Climate Change/ UN-anything crowd. If in office at the local level, they’re also very much in favour of razing every useful building to the ground to build some more high-rise tower-blocks of empty buy-to-let flats. That’s a much more efficient way to stow away people than families living in houses and hence, much better for the planet (they’re actually saying that, eg, in Hamburg).
I use the term “socialists” loosely. I usually prefer the term Liberal Progressives, but actually parasites is what I really mean.
I don’t think much will improve in Germany until Germans will again have learnt that their most dangerous enemies aren’t other Germans, ie, until this silly distancing has become a thing of the past. To use the example in this article, We are opposed to the government but we are even more opposed to the opposition! is just silly. What do you believe your political options are? Habeck – Ich fand Deutschland schon immer zum Kotzen!¹ – suddenly turning away from climate change policymaking because he discovered his conscience?
¹ A somewhat famous quote from the current Green German minister for the economy. In English, it’s Germany always makes me want to puke! Imagine an British minister making such a statement in public … oh wait, I’m so guilty of being a racist white colonialist! is not that much different from it. And that’s a realistic possibility whose given name is Keir.
Cracking piece
The WEF has learned nothing from 1989.
Too bad!
Remind me? I wasn’t aware of the WEF in 1989, I was asleep…
The German Farmers need to align themselves with the Dutch Farmers and the French Yellow Vests.
This needs to become a Europe-wide revolt.
Die Energiewende ist ein Kommmunisticher Putsch. ——–When will Europe wake up from their sleepwalk and bring down this pretend to save the planet tyranny? We need a Blitzkreig of everything GREEN.
JFTR: kommunistisch and Blitzkrieg.
bitte
?
The only sense this makes in German is Pardon?, possibly with an air of indignation.
Ich Kann nicht so gut Deutsch sprechen. —–Entschuldigung.