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Comment by undfg | Hacker News Reader

The three candidates seem to be from the left. That's really odd. I guess things there are like here in Spain and the right wing is ridiculously emasculated?

(Someone flagged this but I would still like an explanation. If you don't want to post it that's fine but you don't have to flag it)

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The CDU is the largest center right party And most definitely NOT on the left of the German political scale.

The greens have some conservative views and are quite popular with middle class, middle wealth people. (White collar workers)

Most Germans would not consider CDU/CSU to be "left". I think they understand themselves as a center-right conservative party.

Western European center-right is often described as left in the USA.

Yeah, I've read that Hillary Clinton would be considered right-wing in e.g. Germany.

Well, a US right-wing party would be called fascist around here and might get forbidden at some point.

... Which is nonsense.

Those (both American leftists, and Europeans who listen to them) who say that "Democrats in the US would be right wing in Europe/Canada" have to (for example) then agree that all major political parties in Canada and every European country outside the UK and Ireland are right of US Democrats, because there is no significant opposition to voter ID laws anywhere. Macron's Les Republicains got elected because voters liked his vow to get tough on unions and union pensions, and privatize more infrastructure, neither of which appears in Biden's campaign platform.

Speaking of which, several European countries have privatized post offices; not just telecom companies that were parts of PTTs, but entire postal services. It is the rare European country that hasn't sold off at least part of their postal services. The EU explicitly requires postal monopolies to end in member states; whether government-owned or not, EU postal services do not have the USPS's monopoly on first-class mail. Yet no major party in the US seriously talks about privatizing the USPS.^1 Does this mean that American politics is "far to the left" of that of Germany and the UK, both of which have completely sold off their postal services to private investors?

^1 And no, it's not because of the Constitution. Article I Section 8 only gives Congress the authority "To establish Post Offices", as opposed to requiring a government-run one. Certainly nothing in the Constitution mandates the USPS's first-class mail monopoly.

The most likely chancellor candidate is CDU (Christian Democrats, which is right of the middle), and the next likely is from the Greens. IMHO even whether the Greens are actually "left" can be debated, most of their voters are well off city dwellers with green, but not necessarily left political views.

If you mean the chancellor candidates, the most likely one is Laschet from the CDU, which is certainly not left. They're the major conservative party in Germany.

I read their party programme and they weren't conservative. They are, like "right wing" parties in Spain, conservatives only in name. They are as progressive as the rest of left wing parties. Hence my question.

You seem to use a different definition of "left" and "right" than me. What points in the party programme make them a "left" party?

This is kind of a philosophical question, innit? To me, social progressivism is left, and these CDU people seem to be full of it.

They are the ones slowing down or preventing pretty much everything I would expect to be labelled "social progressivism", so I have no clue what you are on about.

I admit I didn't read the programme yet, can you give some concrete points which you find socially progressive? I can't remember much social progressiveness coming out of that party in the past, but my memory is usually pretty bad.

Ecological sustainability, sexual equality, integration policies for immigrants... All I've seen just from skimming through their PDF

I find it amusing that you group sustainability under social progressiveness, imho conserving natural resources so that future generations can live a similar life to current generations is an important part of conservative politics. Caring about the environment was for example a popular policy of the NSDAP ("Umweltschutz ist Heimatschutz" is something you still hear some nationalist parties say). Arguably environmentalism gained popularity at least in part because of nationalism.

For the other points I think the devil is in the details. If you only count parties as "not left" that are completely against sexual equality and immigration you will have a hard time finding anything. Perhaps the AfD would be closer to your "not left" definition, but even they have openly homosexual members in important positions, and I believe they're not against immigration of highly qualified workers...

Do you want to live in an industrial wasteland? If not, then Umweltschutz IS Heimatschutz!

Even if the wasted lands are afar, pollution tends to seep out. It's all connected, you know?

They're making a point of being fiscally conservative.

They're advocating for more surveillance and "tough on crime" policies. Mentioning this weird media-hyped "crime family problem".

They're against more integrated school-system reform.

I want to see where you're finding all this social progressivism in their program. Only thing I can see is like "more women in positions of leadership" maybe. But that's about it from what I can see.

They are conservative in the sense that they don't want too much change and only slowly adapt to new things.

Being sceptical of flag waving nationalism, in favour of global trade agreements and the EU and taking an (at least verbal) stand against the far right (and the far left) is the definition of a conservative mindset in Germany.

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