The federal elections are coming up. And, as always, there is a lot of hustle and bustle in the election campaign: one party after another tries to attract the attention of the voters with meaningless election slogans and promises us all the skies of heaven.
Some try to pander to the supporters of Nazi parties; they adopt racist prejudices, demand increased and faster deportations to war zones like Syria or Afghanistan or deterrence at Europe’s external borders under the guise of “security”. Others come up with supposedly social election programmes including the promise of affordable housing, more climate and environmental protection or higher incomes for those receiving social benefits. Still others try a mixture of both.
While the inhumane demands of some are finding more and more ears in the ministries and draft laws, the social promises of others are never fulfilled. And in general, as a voter, you have hardly any influence on political events in the government and the Bundestag, and thus just as little influence on the basic conditions of your own life. All you do is put a cross on a piece of paper with a ridiculously long list of parties and candidates, and then supposedly representative politicians sit together in a small group and take away any decision and self-determination. In this round of elected parties, it is again not about joint decision-making, but about majorities and political tactics. With partly existential questions – deportations or right to stay; unconditional basic income or Harz IV; more surveillance and transparent citizens or data protection and citizens’ rights – the parties play a cruel game: If you vote in favour of our bill, we will vote in favour of yours… There is little concern for content or the realities of the lives of the people being decided for. Self-interest is what counts most: party donations and power (preservation) drive the parties. And the individual politicians? Corrupt, career- and power-hungry.
But even when it comes to content, a small minority of a few hundred politicians make decisions for 82 million people, not even taking into account their own election promises, which got them elected in the first place!
The way we want to live cannot be decided for us by a few. Nothing changes while we are repeatedly told that we are all the state or that “the people rule”. Because the state is a superordinate power apparatus that determines our lives and dictates the rules; politicians are merely highly paid talking heads who decide what is best for us and then enforce this “best” by force if necessary. We have never agreed to this construct that a few people decide for all of us what is right and what is wrong, what is necessary and what is superfluous. Our consent is simply assumed – because parliamentarianism is “best for us”. Is it? Is it good for us to have our lives dictated by others and our individual needs ignored? One thing should be clear: We alone can make our informed decisions about how we want to live!
None of this is new – and yet millions run to the polling stations every election, put a cross somewhere and then wonder why nothing changes (for the better). Some may say they only want to prevent the greater evil with their vote, and therefore vote “against Nazis”. But accepting one lesser evil to prevent a worse one is a regressive train of thought: on the one hand, Nazi and racist ideas are on the rise, whether we bring Annalena “faster deportations” Baerbock, Olaf “police violence did not happen” Scholz or Sarah “upper limits” Wagenknecht to power. On the other hand, even the supposed lesser evil does not change the fact that with our cross on a ballot paper, we are agreeing to a system based on hierarchies and foreign determination – and Nazis sit in various state structures and spread their dangerous ideology despite the well-intentioned vote.
Things will only change if we take our lives into our own hands – against the state and domination, as well as against nationalism and fascism!
