Hacker News Reader

Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com