Poor Ukrainians: In East Germany, 40 percent voted for parties that have contempt for humanity, commit perpetrator-victim reversal and worship dictators. And now winter is coming.

*Partial translation*:

The AfD and BSW have less in common than is often claimed, and the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance cannot be placed on a right-left scale, unlike the extreme right-wingers who are proud of it. But if it were only about the war in Ukraine and the German money for it – the two parties could form a coalition right away. They and together more than 40 percent of voters in three eastern countries would sign this: Ukraine does not want peace, Nato wants Russia’s downfall, and Germany, as a vassal of the Americans, should pay, pay, pay. Or literally this: “For the Ukrainians you have 20 billion, and for us you have nothing.”

Voilà, here is the social brutalization that is being talked about so much these days: If Russia’s leadership is deliberately shooting bombs at DIY stores or repeatedly firing missiles into homes and hospitals, then AfD and BSW voters don’t seem to give a damn. What the Russian soldiers have done to the Ukrainians in the occupied territories at the behest or with the approval of their leaders also seems to have been forgotten.

The fact that Putin could stop the killings every day if he wanted to – that doesn’t seem to matter to AfD and BSW voters either. The AfD and BSW voters also don’t seem to care that Russia has been shooting the heating and power plants throughout Ukraine, not just at the front, to smithereens for months. According to EU data, 80 percent of the heating and power plants have been destroyed. This has exactly one goal that everyone can see: Ukrainian women and children should freeze to death or flee in winter. If you don’t like this Russian war against women and children, I don’t think you should vote for AfD or BSW.

Let’s not misunderstand each other: This is not a voter bashing, but a stocktaking. Everyone should vote for what they want, fair enough. And I still think voting for AfD or BSW is better than not voting at all. But voting for Wagenknecht or Weidel is no longer a game when it comes to Ukraine, it’s not a protest pyro. Anyone who votes this way should listen to what they have bought. Once again: cynical contempt for humanity, perpetrator-victim reversal, dictator groupies.

It is these two parties that benefit most from the victim myth of East German milieus, although they de facto mock Ukrainian victims. It is these two parties that have hijacked the “We are the people” slogan in the three eastern states and know how to charge a diffuse anger at “those up there” in an eastern way: against the multicultural Westerners, of course, but also against “those in Berlin” as in GDR times. Back then they were called Ulbricht or Honecker and today they are called Merkel, Scholz or Habeck.

Defense Minister Pistorius, who will perhaps be talked about even more than he would like in the coming days, recently said on a panel at “Die Zeit”: “Those who are campaigning against refugees are the same people who are triggering the next wave of refugees by refusing to help Ukraine.” So it is, a devil’s dance of perfidy, and Ukraine can pack up unless a miracle happens.

This is not meant metaphorically, but practically: when the Ukrainians pack up, they put their belongings in suitcases and head west. The number of refugees is rising again, but they are not the Muslim “knife men” that Ms. Weidel so often rants about. It will be children of the Christian faith who are crossing the East German borders. They will come because they don’t want to freeze to death in their homes. Nevertheless, I’m already betting that the AfD and BSW will continue to say: “Why doesn’t Ukraine finally make peace? It’s their own fault.”

Why does that make me angry? Because Putin’s war against Ukraine is actually a clear case of good and evil in these rather complicated times. But AfD and BSW want to blur even this rare clarity because they want to blur and confuse everything: first and foremost, people’s sense of decency and of right and wrong.

Those elections are a great source of shame for me as a german.

AFD is voted for because of the migration issue, not because of their position related to Ukraine. BSW, however, is fully a Russian puppet

Unfortunately, a lot of people here in the East, especially in rural areas, think that Russia is only defending itself and NATO is the aggressor.

The reason is probably because of how badly the reunification was done. Many people lost their jobs, their education became worthless or was not accepted, rich people from the West bought up the whole industry and many things went downhill after that. People here therefore have bad experiences with “the capitalist West” and miss “the good old days” under Russian influence. They tend to forget all the bad stuff and all the people that were killed by the government in the East.

Mix this with a lot of young people that feel betrayed by the old parties because of housing prices, rising costs of the retirement fund, that they will never see any significant money from and general resignation in terms of politics and society. AfD and BSW use this to their advantage and know how to influence them on social media.

Unfortunately, you can talk and try to convince people as much as you want, but if they aren’t listening and don’t understand the complexity of the problem, there’s not much you can do, except hope for the best.