Daily ‘Die Welt’ Reports German Greens Facing Political Extinction…”Apocalyptic Narrative Approaching An End”
Germany’s once formidable Green Party just held its annual convention in Hamburg. Over the past few years Germans in general have grown fatigued of the planet-rescuing Greens and their dire warnings that man’s technology was destroying the planet. So faced with the prospect of slipping into irrelevance, the Greens are now scrambling to find an issue that will re-energize public enthusiasm. German flagship daily Die Welt here has just published an online analysis of the Green Party’s convention. The piece is dubbed: “Farewell Apocalypse – the Greens are running out of issues“. Once a party of devout Luddites, Die Welt writes: The Party Convention shows that the Greens, now in their fourth decade of existence, are hardly needed anymore. The technology that they used to vilify has since solved more problems than it has created.” One major problem the German Greens face is that the party is divided between the Fundis (fundamentalist greens) and the so-called Realos (hip progressives in business suits) who have taken over the party and adopted issues that other mainstream parties have long had in their platforms. Die Welt calls the German Greens “the children of Lenin and the Club of Rome“, a party whose leaders were “Maoists, Trotskyites and hardcore communists“; with the primary enemy: capitalism and the evils of a technological society, which they viewed would lead to global, ecological demise. Though popular in the 1980s, Die Welt writes that narrative no longer finds much public appeal today. It’s totally out. Today’s Green Party is now seeing its old anti-capitalist leaders going into retirement and its new leaders struggling to chart a meaningful course for the party’s future. The old Green zeitgeist is gone. The issues and philosophies that once resonated and brought the Greens huge success in the 1980s and 90s are today worn out, outdated. The appeal is gone, Die Welt writes. In their fourth decade of existence, the apocalyptic narrative is approaching an end. Failure from fatigue looms. The mantra-like repeated invocation of the apocalypse hardly has any remaining energizing potential.” Ironically, the Greens are facing a political extinction due to the very technology they once preached would lead to the global apocalypse. Die Welt: Fusion could be delivering energy in just 10 years. Architects are designing skyscrapers that produce more energy then they consume. 900-hp sports car will be driven by engines that get 50 miles a gallon. The transition away from CO2 in oil and petrol is just a step away from the assembly line. Contemporary capitalism has met the innovation challenges posed by ecology. […] This weekend’s party convention showed that after the end of nuclear energy and mainstream ecology, the Greens have run out of issues.” The Greens are now calling for an agricultural revolution. But as Die Welt points out: “capitalism has already long since recognized this. Thus there’s hardly any use left for the Greens“. After 40 years of hearing apocalypse, the zeitgeist no longer desires doom and gloom. Engineers and scientists are basking in a sea of hopes and real breakthroughs. Who still needs the Greens when air, water and food are clean?”
— gReader Pro
