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→ Sahra Wagenkecht plays kingmaker in Germany
The centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is reportedly open to coalition talks with the Left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which performed well in the recent German regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony. The far-Right AfD won the highest percentage of votes in Thuringia and narrowly lost out to the CDU in Saxony. The AfD will, however, likely be excluded from power due to coalition talks.
A coalition between the CDU, BSW and Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) would still not be enough to gain power. As UnHerd asked before the elections: who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Now we know the answer: not the centrists.
→ Tim Walz’s family stumps for Trump
Kamala Harris’s running-mate Tim Walz has been billed as the country’s father figure, but all isn’t well in his own family. Eight of his relatives wore “Walz’s for Trump” shirts in a photo that went viral after a family friend leaked it to a Nebraska state representative. The VP candidate’s estranged older brother plans to vote for Donald Trump, and has explained on Facebook that Tim is “not the type of character you want making decisions about your future,” musing suggestively about “the stories I could tell”.
Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something…@realDonaldTrump @JDVance #SaveAmerica pic.twitter.com/zp08nuKAun
— Charles W. Herbster (@CWHerbster) September 4, 2024
Walz isn’t alone in hailing from a politically divided clan. Earlier this year, numerous members of the Kennedy family came out against Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with John F. Kennedy’s sole grandson calling the campaign a “vanity project”. Malik Obama, meanwhile, has been trolling his more famous brother online for years. Republicans aren’t immune either: Mary Trump has made a windfall out of trash-talking her uncle. Keep your enemies close…
→ Jill Stein takes on AOC
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is engaged in a no-holds-barred social media fight with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after the young congresswoman called Stein “predatory” and inauthentic for “just showing up once every four years” to disrupt Democrats’ election plans.
Hey y’all, this is a little spicy but I had thoughts about @AOC calling me and the Green Party “not authentic” and “predatory.” pic.twitter.com/F1jniwO77X
— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) September 3, 2024
Never one to be upstaged, 74-year old Stein clapped back with a video attacking AOC for misleading her voters about the Democrats’ Israel stance. The fight ostensibly centres on Stein posing a spoiler threat and Ocasio-Cortez selling out her progressive base, but the real bad blood is more personal. AOC soared to national fame in 2018 while making the Green New Deal her signature issue, but according to Stein, she “appropriated” this issue from the Green Party without providing any credit. And what’s the point of advancing one’s policy goals if this doesn’t bring about personal fame and glory? Will Stein spoil another election for the Democrats?
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SubscribeExcited to see what happens. She more or less mirrors my own views – if you ask me about the economy, trade unions, etc. I’m all in favour of it, from strikes to sectoral bargaining.
But I don’t see how you maintain a society capable of sustaining that sort of delicate social democratic system when you import people of profoundly different cultural values. That they have different values doesn’t mean they must be punished in any sense – but they might well need to be kept outside our borders.
Denmark refuses, and has done for about five years now, to provide citizenship to refugees. Their argument is this: We abide by international law by allowing them leave to remain here while the conflict which puts them in danger, but no further; once the danger ends, they go back. No citizenship, certainly not by default.
There are many other elements of it, but it’s something we can and should learn from.
I’m pretty certain refugees don’t ever get citizenship “by default” – there’s almost always a range of requirements to be met, from a certain period living in the country whose citizenship they apply for, absence of criminal record, meeting certain income requirements etc.
What Denmark could have done with its citizenship laws is to say that if someone comes to the country as an asylum seeker, then the period of time that they legally reside in Denmark as an asylum seeker/as a person granted asylum or subsidiary status does not count towards the period of residency required to become a Danish citizen.
But what with other EU countries loosening their citizenship laws (Germany), then former refugees/beneficiaries of subsidiary status can still move to Denmark once they have attained EU citizenship from another EU country. I reckon the numbers that do that must be fairly low, though.