Alexander Neubacher pens an editorial at Der Spiegel:
Sunday night marked the end of politics in Germany as it has been known for decades. That’s not something that needs to be overly dramatized: In the Netherlands, there are more than a dozen parties in parliament and governance in the country is just fine. But there’s always a risk in trading a proven system for a new order, the advantages of which aren’t currently clear.
It is rather ironic that the party which wanted most to hold onto the old party order ended up destroying it. Unlike Merkel, the CSU has been unwilling to yield the right-wing of the political spectrum to another party. And there’s nothing wrong with that impulse, at least in principle. But putting it into practice would have required extensive political skill of the kind the CSU leadership is unfortunately lacking.
Now, the entire country must bear the consequences.
I think he’s discounting something a little too cavalierly. There is already a Bavarian independence movement which, despite the German court’s determination that the Free State of Bavaria has no right to separate itself from the balance of the German Federation, has been given new legs by Chancellor Merkel’s feckless immigration policy. Bavaria has a history, culture, identity, and politics distinct from the rest of Germany. Bavaria is the second most prosperous of the Länder and home to two of Germany’s biggest companies, BMW and Allianz. Don’t be surprised if there are more calls for Bavarian independence as Germany lurches along a path down which Bavaria does not care to follow it.
As I’ve been pointing out for decades, the ethnic states of Europe have a choice before them. They can either remain the ethnic states they’ve been and accept the consequences of that or admit “foreigners”, grant them full participation, stop being ethnic states, and accept the consequences of that. Denmark, once 98% ethnic Danish and culturally Lutheran, is trying to straddle by compulsorily inculcating Danish culture in the children of these “foreigners”. I think there will be other such experiments. It remains to be seen how successful they will be.
If the Danes succeed in converting immigrants to Danish culture, they might well try their hand at converting their LGBs to heterosexuals.