Politico: The beginning of Merkel’s end

To calm the waters, Merkel agreed to open the Cabinet doors to a new CDU generation. It was a painful concession for the chancellor because it forced her to push out longtime political allies such as Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Health Minister Hermann Gröhe. [...]

Spahn, 37, has been vocal and public in opposing Merkel on issues such as migration and dual citizenship. At a party convention in 2014, he elbowed his way into the CDU’s executive board, beating out Merkel’s own candidate for the post.

Earlier in her career, Merkel earned a reputation for dispatching such renegades swiftly and often brutally. That she failed to do so with Spahn is seen as a sign of her weakening grip on the party.

The chancellor’s waning influence was palpable at Monday’s convention. While delegates rewarded her hour-long speech with polite applause, they saved their enthusiasm for another speaker — Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party’s new general secretary and a figure many would like to see as the CDU’s next leader. [...]

Despite the growing speculation over Merkel’s successor, chances are the chancellor will remain in control for some time. Earlier this month she dismissed suggestions she might step down after another two years as chancellor, insisting she “would like to serve a full term.”  

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Bloomberg: Angela Merkel Embraces German Nationalism With a Twist

This, of course, is something of an election campaign gimmick. During the 2013 campaign, a video that quickly went viral showed Merkel angrily taking a German flag away from a fellow party member who had tried to wave it while standing next to her. This year, the flags are back, and the flag colors get a mention on Merkel's list. Her Christian Democratic Union is trying to reclaim the patriotic ground from the Alternative for Germany populists. Affirming the German Leitkultur, lead culture, is one of the CDU strategies. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a Merkel ally, published his own "Top 10" of the Leitkultur's features in April, and it included Christianity but not any other religions; the Judeo-Christian tradition makes an appearance on Merkel's list, too. 

But, for everyone who might think she regrets letting in more than a million refugees into the country in 2015 and 2016, Merkel's list also includes "Muslims" and "migration background" -- something that 21 percent of Germany's residents have today. In that, Merkel echoes a campaign speech by France's new president Emmanuel Macron in Marseille, in which he held forth on how French national identity is driven by its diversity of immigrants: "Armenians, Comorans, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Malians, Senegalese, Ivorians." It amounted to a challenge to his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. 

The way these two leaders see national identity is a step away from the slogans of diversity, multiculturalism and supranational federalism. They're talking about a deep-rooted, old culture taking on some new flavors without straying too far from its traditional mainstream. It only looks progressive compared with the alternatives -- for example, the stump speeches of Le Pen or other nationalists across Europe.

At the same time, it's somewhat similar to the vision of Russian national identity that Vladimir Putin laid down in a 2012 article. He described ethnic Russians and the Russian culture as a "binding fabric" for historically multiethnic society. Putin quoted Ivan Ilyin, his favorite emigre philosopher whom many consider an early fascist ideologue (despite his troubles with the Nazi regime in Germany): "Not to eradicate, not to suppress, not to enslave outsider blood, not to strangle foreign and non-Orthodox life but to let everyone breathe and give them a great Motherland; to watch over everyone, make peace, let everyone pray in their own way, work in their own way and involve the best from everywhere in building a state and a culture."

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The Atlantic: A New, New Right Rises in Germany

Kubitschek is the architect of Germany’s “Neue Rechte,” or New Right, a movement rooted in the concept of an ethnopluralist clash of cultures, whereby dominant national cultures and identities co-exist but do not merge. He and his wife, Ellen Kositza, began cultivating a self-described conservative elite in 2000, through the think tank Institut für Staatspolitik (Institute for State Politics), Antaios, a publishing house, and a bi-monthly magazine called Sezession (Secession). Kositza has become the face and voice of the publishing house, reviewing books and promoting Antaios’s new releases on her YouTube channel, while Kubitschek is one of its ideological doyens. [...]

Most experts trace the Neue Rechte’s beginnings back to the 1960s, when a left-wing radical student movement swept West Germany, recalibrating government institutions, media, education, gender politics, and popular culture. Like the parallel Nouvelle Droite school in France, the Neue Rechte considers itself a counter-revolution battling to correct the left’s wildly deviant course. But unlike its French counterpart, the Neue Rechte is haunted by the shadow of Germany’s past. Its forebears are political thinkers from the last century, such as Armin Mohler, Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt, all of whom had controversial ties to the Nazis. To cast off charges of neo-Nazism, Kubitschek has sought to fashion the Neue Rechte as serious and highbrow, focused on identity and culture, not race and ethnicity. [...]

According to Kubitschek, Islam is a religion to be respected at its origin. But Muslims have no place proselytizing in Christian countries, particularly ones that have lost sight of their Christian values. Volker Weiss, historian and author of the book The Authoritarian Revolt: The New Right and the Downfall of the West, writes that the Neue Rechte’s true enemy is “not Mohammad’s message, but rather global modernity with all its consequences.” Kubitschek indeed spends more time lamenting decadent secularism, left-wing liberalism, and political correctness. [...]

The AfD is on course to win around eight percent of the vote in September’s federal elections, according to the weekly “Sonntagsfrage” poll, but its peak numbers have fallen. Still, the party was founded only four years ago, and is already represented in 13 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments. Barring catastrophe, it will enter federal parliament after September’s elections. Most significantly, the AfD has also forced Merkel’s government to adjust to its rhetoric. Earlier this month, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere from Merkel’s party triggered widespread controversy when he presented a ten-point plan to cultivate a dominant German culture. It was widely seen as a nod to right-wing voters.

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Deutsche Welle: Germany is not shrinking

However, according to revised scenarios the German government has presented in its latest summary of demographic-political developments, this shrinkage apparently isn't happening. The message is that ongoing high immigration, coupled with a recent increase in the birth rate, could keep the country's population stable for another forty years. [...]

The birth rate also shows an upward trend, the government says. It had been dropping for decades, but now appears to have stabilized. The Federal Statistical Office assumes that 1.6 children are currently born for every one woman in Germany. This is also included in the report: "With net migration of 300,000, combined with a birth rate of 1.6 and a more pronounced rise in life expectancy, the population of Germany would remain stable at around today's levels until 2060." [...]

So does this mean the oft-mentioned demographic crisis has been averted? De Maiziere says not. Despite immigration and rising birth rates, the government's latest prognoses show that the average age of the population will increase significantly. According to the report, this means that with a net migration figure of 300,000, the old-age dependency ratio would be only slightly lower than in the variants with lower immigration. In recent years, average life expectancy in Germany increased by almost 2.6 months a year, to 78.2 years for men and 83.1 years for women.

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