A few days ago, I noted that German farmers planned to renew their tractor demonstrations around the country to protest the end of agricultural fuel subsidies that their elite politicos didn’t feel were necessary for the new budget.
As I reported, the new protests began in earnest across Germany this week.
German farmers kicked off a week of nationwide protests against subsidy cuts on Monday, blocking roads with tractors and piling misery on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition as it struggles to fix a budget mess and contain rising far-right forces.Convoys of tractors and trucks gathered on roads in sub-zero temperatures in nearly all 16 federal states, while protesters clashed with police and leading politicians warned that the unrest could be co-opted by extremists.The protests have forced Scholz’s unpopular government into a tricky balancing act, trying to keep a lid on the unrest while sticking to fiscal discipline after a constitutional court ruling in November threw its spending plans into disarray.”No beer without farmers,” read one protest banner, while another tractor had a poster from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that read “Our farmers come first.”
Naturally, the politicians under fire had their response ready to go: Have the media portray the demonstrators as members of the “far right”. This report for Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) is a classic!
Communications consultant Johannes Hillje describes this as part of a “strategic battle fought by right-wing extremist media-makers.”Far-right activists have rallied behind the farmers’ protest on platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and X. And their comments are seen to be deliberately fanning the flames.The far-right populist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is using the protests on its many social media channels to attack the ruling center-left coalition government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) and express solidarity with the farmers protesting against the cuts in subsidies for agricultural diesel.
Of course, count on our own Politico to join the fray!
“Right-wing extremists and other enemies of democracy are trying to infiltrate and instrumentalize the protests,” a spokesperson for Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said in Berlin. The country’s federal police, Faeser added, believe these groups want to foment a “general strike” or even rioting to trigger an “overthrow” of the government.It would not be the first time far-right groups have tried to gain political sway by latching onto protest movements in Germany — something similar was evident in pandemic-era anti-vaccine protests and in demonstrations against military aid to Ukraine.The infiltration concerns come after some 100 farmers tried on Thursday to accost Greens Economy Minister Robert Habeck, preventing him from disembarking from a ferry in northern Germany following a private visit to an island in the North Sea. Police described the encounter as “very, very tense.”
We all recall how brutally Justin Trudeau and the Canadian progressive bureaucracy treated their truckers, who organized massive demonstrations against the continuing COVID restrictions in 2022. Compare the treatment of the “Freedom Convoy” to that enjoyed by anti-Israel activists today..
German politicians may be gearing up to treat their farmers with Trudeau-like arrogance. However, I suspect that the Netherlands model will be closer to reality and that Germans will begin to disempower their ineffective and out-of-touch bureaucrats.
This is especially true now that most people recognize the media as purveyors of propaganda paid for by the elite establishment.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY