U.S. Faces Germany-Sized Disaster

Hysterical liberals and some Establishment Republicans apoplectic at the thought of a Trump presidency often like to make comparisons between Donald Trump, his supporters, and 1930s Germany.

However to understand Trump’s rise — and his supporters’ enthusiasm — they should look not to Germany’s past but to its present. There are currently striking economic and social similarities between the United States and Germany. And those similarities are producing similar results: the rise of a strong right-wing populist movement. In the U.S. it is Trump and the populist wing of the GOP. In Germany it is Frauke Petry and her nationalist-conservative AfD party — the Alternative for Germany.

Much like the United States, Germany’s experience with globalization has seen the shrinking of the middle class and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, despite its ability to game the Euro system in order sustain its manufacturing base.

A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released in May 2015 found that the top 10 percent of earners in Germany made nearly seven times as much as the bottom 10 percent. Germany’s wealth gap is the widest it has been in decades — in the 1980s it was 5:1. This should sound familiar to U.S. readers. A 2014 Pew study found that the median net worth of American high earners was 6.6 times the money than that of low earners, the exact same ratio as in Germany. In the 1980s the gap was around 4:1.

[lz_bulleted_list title=”Germany and U.S. Compared” source=”Pew, Reuters, Edelman”]Wealth disparity between top and bottom 6.6:1 in both countries|Around 40% of poor in both countries do not trust the government|Over 50% in both countries belief politicians put their own interests first|Both countries face migrant crisis[/lz_bulleted_list]

A November 2015 comparative report by Morgan Stanley on income inequality in 20 industrialized nations found that Germany ranked as the sixth most unequal, right next to the U.S. at fifth. And with increasing economic inequality in Germany, like in the U.S., came increasing mistrust of the Establishment and anger towards governments seen to be more concerned about making money for globalist bankers than with helping the German people.

Indeed, the Germans have even devised a new word to describe their citizens let down by economic globalization and indifferent, elitist governments: wutbuerger, a combination of the words “rage” and “citizen.”

A poll conducted by Der Spiegel magazine found that 57 percent of Germans agreed that those in government “will do whatever they want anyway, and my opinion doesn’t count,” while a 2015 Pew study found 74 percent Americans believe politicians put their own interests above the nation and her people’s interests. The 2016 Trust Index, published by public relations firm Edelman, found that only 37 percent of low-income Germans trust their public institutions. In the U.S. it is a similar 40 percent.

Germany is also dealing with its own immigration crisis, and a population of immigrants from an alien culture which, like in America, puts pressure on public institutions, is a source of crime, and erodes social cohesion. Of course, in Germany the cultural contrast of the new arrivals is starker, as their immigrants are mostly young Muslim men from the Middle East, not Mexicans who at the very least are nominally Western and practice Christianity.

These factors have given rise in Germany to Frauke Petry and the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). Like Trump, Petry promises to reign in immigration and run her country in the interests of its citizens and not the globalist money men who exploit them.

And like the hundreds of thousands of average Americans who have flocked to one of Donald Trump’s stump speeches, Germans are liking what they hear from Ms. Petry. In 2014 the party won just over seven percent of the vote and 7 out of 96 German seats in the elections for the European Parliament.

In local elections held in March 2016, Petry’s party scored double-digits in all three states that voted, receiving nearly a quarter of the vote in one. “We are the only party which has pointed at the problematic issues” facing Germany, Petry said at a press conference following her Party’s March electoral success.

“I want to point out that the middle class continues to slide into poverty, that families are under high financial pressure and the future of our country is at risk,” she finished in positively Trumpian fashion.