Dude Georg 🇪🇺

The end of Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime is a victory not just for Hungary, but for people who value democracy around the world. Congratulations to Tisza, to incoming leader Péter Magyar, and to Hungarians everywhere.

I left Germany 7 years ago. And the longer I'm gone, the clearer I see it: this country is heading for a wall. Germany is in serious trouble. Economically and politically. The economic part can probably be fixed if people really commit. The political part, I'm not so sure. Most Germans don't see it because they're too close to it. If you want to understand Germany, you need to understand one thing: World War II left a trauma in our DNA that still shapes how we think, judge, and react. It's a living operating system. Germans, especially the educated elite, see the world through a moral lens first, a pragmatic lens second. But it makes honest conversation about real problems almost impossible. In 2015, over 800,000 refugees came to Germany in a single year. Merkel said "Wir schaffen das" (we can do this), and the media ran with it like a PR campaign. Professors were cited saying refugees would lift the economy. BILD, the biggest tabloid, printed "Refugees welcome." Thousands of Germans showed up at train stations, applauding as refugees arrived. I remember watching this thinking: something else is going on here. Of course many people were genuinely warm. But for a lot of them, it felt like a chance to finally show the world (and themselves) that Germany can be the good guys too. Decades of guilt, and here was a moment to redeem it. Emotional, collective, and not up for debate. That's the part that broke things. Millions of Germans had real concerns. Not because they were Nazis. Because they were worried about capacity, integration, safety, money. But those concerns were not represented in the media. Not in politics. Not anywhere. If you raised them, you were brushed aside or associated with the far right. And German media, dominated by progressive, academic city people shaped by that same WW2 guilt, did PR for the government instead of holding it accountable. This is when Germany lost millions of voters to the AfD. The AfD caught every person who felt unheard. Yes, there are extremists in that party. But there are also a lot of normal people who just wanted someone to acknowledge their concerns. Instead of engaging with that, the political establishment built a "firewall." Whatever the AfD proposes gets rejected by all other parties. No discussion. Just: they're far right, so we don't talk to them. This makes the political climate toxic. If the AfD says the sky is blue, the other parties have to disagree. Whatever they propose, you have to be against it, otherwise you're one of them. Here's what bothers me the most: the AfD has never governed. Not once. All the problems Germany has right now were created by the parties in power for the last 30 years. Insane bureaucracy. A pension system so broken it needs tax money to survive. Housing so expensive normal people can't afford it, and so many regulations developers can't build their way out. In Cologne, you can't build higher than the cathedral. That's an actual rule. I live in Bangkok, skyscrapers everywhere, room for people to live. Germany can't do that because there's always a rule preventing it. But instead of taking accountability, the old parties and media point at the AfD and say: those are the real troublemakers. Easier than looking in the mirror. The CDU, which used to be the people's party, can't coalition with the AfD without being destroyed by the left. So it's forced into coalitions with parties that don't represent what CDU voters actually want. A political system that's totally gridlocked. I don't think the AfD will solve any of these problems. They're populists. But the way the rest of Germany is acting, the denial, the finger-pointing, the refusal to have an honest conversation, that won't help either. It'll only make things worse.