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by erikb 3208 days ago
A few points from a German:

It is not true that the Left is more liberal. They are more socialist, which is simply not listed in these article's diagrams. A strong socialist pariticipation in Germany results from a huge part of it being under Soviet control for a few decades.

It is also not true that neither top party has aimed at the social system. Both actually do try to minimize it. But they frame it into pro-social-system-wording because otherwise the people would start to fight them.

In terms of climate change we actually found a great way to make a profit from it. Since we are one of the high tech leaders in the world and climate save technologies are usually high tech, we can use that to gain bigger global market shares in many markets that were locked up previously.

Why is 3000€ considered high income? Is that post-tax? Pretax it's less than what Germans would expect with a college degree or higher.

I consider myself liberal, education, high tech focussed. But I would also agree that Islam is political and not just religious. Just look at its history. That statement alone doesn't mean one should fight Islam. The bad thing about hte AfD is that they want to fight Muslems. Educated people of course frown upon discriminating on such a simple fact.

3 comments

> It is not true that the Left is more liberal. They are more socialist, which is simply not listed in these article's diagrams

This is an important point which trying to ram non-US political parties into a US-based single left-right spectrum does not account for.

Another important distinction which people miss is "Islam" (the religion) vs "Islamism" (its involvement in politics).

Yes, in Germany left means Socialist, right means Fascist, and the differentiation between conservatism and progressiveness is actually something you can find in each of the corners. I also believe that Germany is not the only country like that. E.g. I have just finished watching season 3 of the tv show Narcos and it seems to me as if in Colombia this distinction also exists and it is enforced even stronger, with the liberal power being in government, and both left socialist and right fascist parties being military forces on the outskirts (considering the ability to kill as a political power as well).

I agree that there is a distinction between Islam and Islamism. However I wouldn't say one is political the other religious. In the same way we can't put German parties on a US spectrum, we can't put Islam on a Christian spectrum. For Islam politics and religion are not two separate topics. It's one topic. If there's a distinction for Muslims it is for other factors, which I sadly don't know however. (If a Muslim reads it feel free to educate me on that part. I'm certainly interested)

Maajid Nawaz would disagree with your assessment of Islam and Islamism.

For Christianity politics and religion used to be as inseparable as they are for Islam today. Not so long ago most heads of state were subject to the Vatican (whether ceremonially or literally) and granted their authority by divine privilege alone.

The separation of church and state in the Christian world is largely a relatively new phenomenon and ultimately dates back to the Peace of Westphalia (the 17th century is much closer to the present day than to the birth of Christianity) which established the counter-intuitive idea that it's okay for other nations to have other religious beliefs than your own.

For many Muslims today, Islam is Islamism, with varying degrees of urgency, but that doesn't mean you can't have Islam without Islamism or that you shouldn't make the distinction. Islam is just lagging behind Christianity when it comes to holy wars and acceptance of other faiths (even other sects of Islam itself). There are plenty of explanations for why that is the case and not few of them at least partially blame the West, but it's an evolution that's still happening in Islam and that needs to happen for Islam to peacefully coexist with other religions and the non-religious.

Indeed. Not to mention that German politics has both a "Christian Democratic Union" and "Christian Social Union". Let's not pretend that the West is a nice cleanly separated secularist utopia.
True. The only secular countries in "the West" I can think of are Turkey and France. And sadly Turkey has very nearly abandoned their secular foundations by embracing Erdoğanism.

However despite Germany's faults at least Germany is not Christian by law. The reason Islam doesn't enjoy the same privileges as mainstream Christianity is that Christians are better organised and less sectarian.

The Catholic Church in Germany needs no explanation but the Evangelical Church in Germany is a union of Lutherans, Calvinists and other protestants. The Islamic sects are far too disunited to form an alliance like this. A single Islamic faith group (Ahmadiyya) managed to organise as a public corporation (i.e. a recognised religious group) and they only exist in two out of Germany's 16 states and represent a minority group compared to other Islamic sects.

To give you a better idea, here's the list of recognised religious groups in the most populous state of Germany:

http://www.bmi.bund.de/PERS/DE/Themen/Informationen/Religion...

Most of them are Christian, even including Mennonites and Jehova's Wittnesses. There are also numerous Jewish communities. There's even a Hindu temple. Yet not a single Islamic group. This isn't the result of a Christian bias, it's entirely on the Islamic communities.

That's a very new idea for my, so I have to think about it before I could argue for or against it. Thanks for opening up my mind for it.
Are you asserting 'Islam is political' as in, Muslim citizens participate in civic duties of the land they call home? If yes, then you're correct. However, if you think Islam not being just a religion, is there to "take over" and "subjugate" then that's not only incorrect but instigating fear. The typical 'separation of Church and State' does not apply to Islam because there is no Church in Islam. What does apply is the Balance between person's Material World and Spiritual Faith (duties to the world she cohabits, and duty to the faith she follows) which by the way, has no clash. One cannot separate the two into different compartments. It may be a difficult concept to understand under a Christian lense.
One thing that irritates me about the political terminology in the US is the use of the word 'socialist' which often comes across as an insult.

In my opinion there are big differences between beeing 'social' and beeing "socialistic". [0]

The big german party SPD and even Die Linke rather fall into the category social than socialist.

[0] https://spfaust.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/socialism-vs-social...

Yes, also hard to express for me. Die Linke of course is not just social, but really socialist, as in pre-communist.

The SPD itself also started out as the socialist-like-communist party in its very early days. Then it became a social-but-not-socialist party, and now it's hard to define any political agenda for them.

Of course your direct political rival is associated with the devil, but for Germany Russia is even a possible political partner, just like the US. So being socialist is not really bad in itself. Many educated people actually have a pro-socialist view on the world here. What probably also need to be considered for non-German readers is this: The word socialist itself has a different meaning. It is more focussed on helping each ohter and helping the poor, than on political agenda. The same way a US citizen wouldn't consider a "Liberal" as a monoply-supporting exploiter, which is a common interpretation of the word "Liberal" here in Germany (which is why the FDP is one of the less strong parties). it's always important to consider that people don't mean the same thing as one would think, when they say such big words.

I would not compare die Linke with the KPD.
I don't compare them with the KPD. I just say they are Socialist. And they say so themselves.
>It is not true that the Left is more liberal. They are more socialist, which is simply not listed in these article's diagrams.

Ever since I first found the Nolan chart[1], I've always tried to tell people about it, but I think the reason why the distinction doesn't make a ton of sense is because reducing 4 dimensions to 2 will always be lossy, so something is going to get lost. There may be a lot more ways to slice this pie, but the quadrants seem to me to strike the right balance of pragmatism and descriptiveness.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart