EU election

[Satinavian]

Tell me why this is wrong: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

Google says there are plans for a 20-30% increase in the number of reactors worldwide at the moment. Where are you pulling 20 years from?

It is in the first sentence "at the current rate of consumption". Currently nuclear provides roughly 10% of power, If you want so significantly expand that, the time uranium lasts goes down accordingly.

as for the numbers
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium
gives a current reactor demand of 67 000t per year and 6 078 500 tons in known deposits, which means it currently lasts about a hundred years, if we include existing stockpiles.


Not sure where your article pulls the 200 years from. Oh, found it. It is from 2009. Numbers 15 years out of date.

No wait, it is worse :

About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

That is just faulty math. Quite embarrassing for a dean. Maybe he means 230 yeas, if all the other measures mentioned later were implemented (which would in his estimate reduce consumption by 60%) but that is not what is written here. So yes, the article is just wrong, it should have been a hundred years with those numbers.



So if we were to build enough power plants to provide 40% of current energy need (only current electricity so far, no transport sector, no heating, etc) we would run out in 25 years.

As for the number of planned ones, well, my first google result gives me this
https://world-nuclear.org/informati...rldwide#nuclear-reactors-planned-and-proposed
this does match your 20-30% planned, however their requirement for planned is "Approvals, funding or commitment in place, mostly expected to be in operation within the next 15 years. " They also mention more than three times that number as proposed. "Specific programme or site proposals; timing very uncertain " which i also meant with "in early planning stages". Otherwise yes, those are newer numbers. Seems like a lot of countries have given up their nuclear ambitions or scaled it down recently. Then uranium will last longer. If those plants are all built, we only run out in 50 years while covering only 20% of covering our current electricity needs.

Sure, you could stretch it a bit with breeding but that would mean giving the around 70 countries planning civil nuclear use now easy access to nuclear weapons so no one wants to do that. There is no political will to promote breeding reactors. And they have other issues as well.

 

[tstorm823]

About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

That is just faulty math. Quite embarrassing for a dean. Maybe he means 230 yeas, if all the other measures mentioned later were implemented (which would in his estimate reduce consumption by 60%) but that is not what is written here. So yes, the article is just wrong, it should have been a hundred years with those numbers.

Pull out your calculator, divide 16,000,000 by 70,000.

If those plants are all built, we only run out in 50 years while covering only 20% of covering our current electricity needs.

Sure, you could stretch it a bit with breeding but that would mean giving the around 70 countries planning civil nuclear use now easy access to nuclear weapons so no one wants to do that. There is no political will to promote breeding reactors. And they have other issues as well.

So now we're at minimum well beyond the 20 you spit-balled while accounting for expanding usage without counting on any advances in technology and while only considering uranium as a fuel source from only known deposits.

Question: does the phrase "peak oil" mean anything to you?

 

[Satinavian]

Pull out your calculator, divide 16,000,000 by 70,000.

Ah, that makes more sense. We are completely counting the "undiscovered" stuff as supply that is readily available, sure. Assume we can get 3 times as much uranium as we know we can get. Sure, then it will totally last more than 200 years. If we are not expanding nuclear that is, of course.

What a pity that hardly anything of that has been actually discovered in the last 15 years of looking. Slightly over 1.5 million tons and it doesn't look like there will be that much more. Sure, there are places like Antarctica and parts of the northern permafrost region that are still not surveyed. But because it would be cost prohibitive to get any uranium from there anyway.
And we already used up a million tons in the time since your article was written.

So now we're at minimum well beyond the 20 you spit-balled while accounting for expanding usage without counting on any advances in technology and while only considering uranium as a fuel source from only known deposits.

Well, yes.

And while there have been some advances in technology over the last years, it doesn't make all that much difference and is already included in the figures i have given above. And there is little in the works that looks like it would improve classical reactors in the near future.

As for other fuel sources : I'll consider thorium reactors once commercial ones of them are running. So far we only have experimental ones. They will come too late to matter for energy transition anyway.

Question: does the phrase "peak oil" mean anything to you?

Yes. Why ?

Do you propose a similar peak uranium ? The issue with that is that nuclear power plants want a really long runtime. Otherwise they are not economically viable.
The average lifespan of nuclear plants is somewhere between 32 and 40 years (depending on source). Once our uranium supply drops below that, we get viability issues.

-------------------------------------

I always supported to let the exiting nuclear plants run. Those alone won't run into fuel issues, we have more than enough for their remaining runtime. We could even replace them when too old and still be fine for a century.


However i also always said that nuclear won't solve the energy crisis and let us get off fossils. It takes too long to build plants, and we really don't have the uranium to replace oil, coal and gas. And that remains true. Without primarily relying on wind and photovoltaics, we won't get rid of fossils, there is literally nothing else that could be used at the scale we need. (And yes, that includes water power which is nearly tapped out already, biofuels which are inefficient, tide power which somehow seems to struggle, geothermal power which has proven to be too expensive at most places)


As a side note : Seems as if indeed a number of planned plants were scratched after Belt and Road got problems.

 

[tstorm823]

They will come too late to matter for energy transition anyway.

I don't believe there will ever be a "too late" in the meaningful sense. We may transition to wind and solar faster than we develop thorium, but that transition doesn't make us sustainable. Everything we need for real sustainability: recycling, desalination, carbon capture, ammonia production, etc. all are energy intensive processes. They aren't solutions to large scale environmental problems without large scale energy inputs way beyond what we currently produce, at the sort of scale where renewables start taking up problematic amounts of the earths surface.

 

[Satinavian]

Oh, i have nothing against thorium reactors - as long as they are not used to justify delaying or abandoning other measures now. There is really no reason to not build new windparks just because we might get thorium in two decades.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Joe Biden just pulled out of the race

The EU is shocked and saddened to hear this, I'm sure.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

The EU is shocked and saddened to hear this, I'm sure.

Sorry thought this was the US election thread

 

[Summerstorm]

Well, digging this thread up again.

Was just browsing around on reddit, when i found something - german politics:

So we are having an problem with a very low trust in the government (I can understand)

Terrible confidence in established parties (i can understand)

and populistic, nationalistic young parties being pretty popular even though at about half their members are stupid nazis and the others are pro-russian or straight anti-democratic opportunists (that i can't understand)

The whole thing is a bit more of a problem in the old east of germany (They got fucked a bit harder by life... and you know... the west). The "small" state elections are coming up and it looks weird.

There is this project where the schools "practice voting" it is not representative (Someone has to volunteer to host local counts, and it isn't regulated and observed)
But the under 18 (can't vote) count of saxony came back as:



To explain: AFD (Alternative for Germany) is a radical-right party observed by the "Office for the protection of the constitution" (trnsl).
BSW is an offshoot of the left, but is somehow pro russian... and weird... and named after their leader.
CDU and SPD are the old "Baseline"-parties (christian conservative and pro-worker respectively)
Left is left, Grüne is green.

Smaller parties not mentioned are under 5% (Liberals and 13 diverse small parties)

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

Information on my stance: I too have stopped voting strategically (everything that the CDU isn't getting the power) and have voted Humanists (most aligned program to my beliefs) the last few elections, even if they have no chance (Getting fewer votes than the damn Animal-Protection Party) - Out of frustration.

 

[Agema]

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

By my experience, children mostly tend to express the same political allegiances as their parents, because they haven't yet developed their own voice. Also, I think children may be lower on empathy compared to adults: it requires development with age, maturity and experience.

I don't think mainstream parties pay much attention to youth. Firstly, young people tend to be much less likely to vote. Secondly, because our populations are increasingly age-heavy due to declining birth rates, the young are a smaller proportion of the population than they used to be. As has always been the case, they also don't have much money or status. For the short-term job of winning the next election, there are much better demographics to target. As a result, it makes sense that mainstream parties tend to overlook the young, so they're more easily captured by other parties.

Finally, I think a lot of niceties like the environment are sort of higher-order interests for people who worry less about finding work and putting food on the table. An insurgent party in a deprived area that focuses on poverty - and blaming other people for your deprivation - might be more appealing than to an insurgent party professing switching to solar and talking about shared human experience.

 

[tstorm823]

What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore?

Have you considered the possibility that they are, and perhaps you shouldn't judge a person's character by who the internet claims is a nazi?

 

[Agema]

Have you considered the possibility that they are, and perhaps you shouldn't judge a person's character by who the internet claims is a nazi?

To be fair, AfD are hardly lacking a Nazi problem.

Sure, they're not overtly advocating gassing Jews, but neo-Nazis rarely do these days: doesn't gain much enthusiasm from voters. It's more the chipping away at anti-Nazi sentiment, like saying it's ridiculous that Germany commemorates that whole Holocaust thing that happened 80 years ago, and it's time Germans stop remembering or feeling bad about it because it was no big deal, really. We'll realise it was no big deal just as soon as we learn that the way we understand it now is sort of a myth and what society really needs to do is give it a good, thorough, re-evaulation. Society could be more understanding towards those poor, maligned, wartime SS personnel, and maybe Germany needs more of that good ol' Nazi rhetoric and principles to build a better future. Just not the gassing undesirables policy (yet), presumably: they can try forcible expulsion to other countries first. And yes, they don't talk about a lot of this stuff often or loudly, so plenty of their less vigilant voters may well have little or no idea these conversations are going on amongst a significant chunk of the party upper echelons and hardcore supporters.

I also think empathy is partly a learnt experience. To some extent, people choose to extend empathy to others, and thus also choose not to. What right wing nationalist parties like AfD do is attempt to corral empathy into a narrow band of their approved "in-group": ethnic Germans and maybe some suitably adjacent people, in AfD's case.

 

[tstorm823]

I also think empathy is partly a learnt experience. To some extent, people choose to extend empathy to others, and thus also choose not to. What right wing nationalist parties like AfD do is attempt to corral empathy into a narrow band of their approved "in-group": ethnic Germans and maybe some suitably adjacent people, in AfD's case.

That's almost exactly what I say to left wingers who talk about empathy.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Well, digging this thread up again.

Was just browsing around on reddit, when i found something - german politics:

So we are having an problem with a very low trust in the government (I can understand)

Terrible confidence in established parties (i can understand)

and populistic, nationalistic young parties being pretty popular even though at about half their members are stupid nazis and the others are pro-russian or straight anti-democratic opportunists (that i can't understand)

The whole thing is a bit more of a problem in the old east of germany (They got fucked a bit harder by life... and you know... the west). The "small" state elections are coming up and it looks weird.

There is this project where the schools "practice voting" it is not representative (Someone has to volunteer to host local counts, and it isn't regulated and observed)
But the under 18 (can't vote) count of saxony came back as:

View attachment 11762

To explain: AFD (Alternative for Germany) is a radical-right party observed by the "Office for the protection of the constitution" (trnsl).
BSW is an offshoot of the left, but is somehow pro russian... and weird... and named after their leader.
CDU and SPD are the old "Baseline"-parties (christian conservative and pro-worker respectively)
Left is left, Grüne is green.

Smaller parties not mentioned are under 5% (Liberals and 13 diverse small parties)

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

Information on my stance: I too have stopped voting strategically (everything that the CDU isn't getting the power) and have voted Humanists (most aligned program to my beliefs) the last few elections, even if they have no chance (Getting fewer votes than the damn Animal-Protection Party) - Out of frustration.

It's difficult not to think of Germany as a lost cause these days. My political awakening, if you want to call it that, came in the mid 10's when movements like Pegida started to gain traction and the AfD entered the parliament. Honestly, that was the first time I felt like I saw this countries true face and it's an ugly one indeed. Well, not only that, it was more in how the media kept talking up our "welcoming culture" while refugee shelters were being set on fire and fascists were rampaging through the streets. I think to some extent, that obvious hipocrisy was what really woke me up. The dissonance between how Germany was presenting itself compared to what I actually saw.

I don't know, I feel extremely estranged from my country and alienated from my countrymen. If I could afford it, I'd pack by bags and go somewhere else, but I can't. Which is the other thing that makes me feel dread. That I know, that as a person with a mild disability who struggles holding down employment, people like me is who they're gonna come for next once they're done with foreigners and LGBTQ people.

 

[Satinavian]

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

Corona and schools was an utter mess.
A mess children lived through. And one where the AfD very loudly and constantly blames the established parties for.

Otherwise, AFD has long had better numbers for younger voters that don't remember the GDR well. It won't just go away with time.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Macron appoints conservative Michel Barnier as prime minister

The appointment of the EU's former Brexit negotiator, a member of the right-wing Les Républicains party, comes after almost two months of deadlock following legislative elections that produced no clear majority in Parliament.

www.lemonde.fr

So Macron wants to appoint a right wing candidate from the 4th place party that didn't even help with keeping the RN out. The politics of the move is obvious, it's a concession to RN so Macron doesn't have to work with the left, and if the left tries to fight it he'll say it makes them look petty. I'm just wondering if he's accounting for the fact that everyone is watching him, and him "killing" the left will lead to his own defeat in future elections.

 

[Agema]

It's difficult not to think of Germany as a lost cause these days. My political awakening, if you want to call it that, came in the mid 10's when movements like Pegida started to gain traction and the AfD entered the parliament. Honestly, that was the first time I felt like I saw this countries true face and it's an ugly one indeed. Well, not only that, it was more in how the media kept talking up our "welcoming culture" while refugee shelters were being set on fire and fascists were rampaging through the streets. I think to some extent, that obvious hipocrisy was what really woke me up. The dissonance between how Germany was presenting itself compared to what I actually saw.

I don't know, I feel extremely estranged from my country and alienated from my countrymen. If I could afford it, I'd pack by bags and go somewhere else, but I can't. Which is the other thing that makes me feel dread. That I know, that as a person with a mild disability who struggles holding down employment, people like me is who they're gonna come for next once they're done with foreigners and LGBTQ people.

Interesting article:

Everyone is terrified of a far-right return in Germany. Here’s why it won’t happen

The deep historical, political and cultural split between east and west acts as a brake on the rise of the AfD nationwide

www.theguardian.com

The tl;dr is that there has always been a "West" and "East" Germany. West Germany was where the Germans originally came from, and East Germany was formed by colonialism, conquest, and exploitation of the natives. Even 1000 years later, all that colonialist shit still has a grip on the mindset of the East: but not the West, and it won't travel that easily.

No idea whether it's true, but it's an interesting hypothesis.

 

[Satinavian]

Interesting article:

Everyone is terrified of a far-right return in Germany. Here’s why it won’t happen

The deep historical, political and cultural split between east and west acts as a brake on the rise of the AfD nationwide

www.theguardian.com

The tl;dr is that there has always been a "West" and "East" Germany. West Germany was where the Germans originally came from, and East Germany was formed by colonialism, conquest, and exploitation of the natives. Even 1000 years later, all that colonialist shit still has a grip on the mindset of the East: but not the West, and it won't travel that easily.

It is a load of nonsense

- The current East West divide does not match the old extend of the slavic settlements all that well
- that was roughly a thousand years ago
- none of the baltic adventures has anything to do with current eastern germany. The territories of the teutonic knights were not even part of the HRE
- Neither Western Prussia nor Eastern Prussia are in todays East Germany.
- Sure, Prussia hat a lot of other territory, particularly Brandenburg. But it also hat lots of territory in current day western Germany
- The territories the recent elections happened however never have been part of Prussia anyway (and roughly a third also was never Slavic, not even 1000 years ago)

But you will always find some such articles where someones tries to propose far fetched historical causes for whatever. It is as useful as explaining current British politics via old norse myths, because Norman invasion.

 

[Agema]

It is a load of nonsense

- The current East West divide does not match the old extend of the slavic settlements all that well
- that was roughly a thousand years ago
- none of the baltic adventures has anything to do with current eastern germany. The territories of the teutonic knights were not even part of the HRE
- Neither Western Prussia nor Eastern Prussia are in todays East Germany.
- Sure, Prussia hat a lot of other territory, particularly Brandenburg. But it also hat lots of territory in current day western Germany
- The territories the recent elections happened however never have been part of Prussia anyway (and roughly a third also was never Slavic, not even 1000 years ago)

But you will always find some such articles where someones tries to propose far fetched historical causes for whatever. It is as useful as explaining current British politics via old norse myths, because Norman invasion.

Firstly, it's actually true that 1000 years the Elbe was roughly the dividing line between the Germans and the Slavs, so swathes of the territory that is now eastern Germany was conquered and colonised by Germans, it's not just the Baltics. Prussia was merely the furthest extent and maybe most extreme form. Brandenburg was very much part of this expansion and the border with Poland - it may well have shared similar ideas with Prussia. As to Prussia at its widest extent, I think the fact it politically controlled bits of West Germany for a time doesn't matter, because it wouldn't necessarily instill much in the way of attitudes in such a short period. Nor is it really 1000 years ago. Tensions persisted to the 20th century - and I absolutely bet you that colonisation and subsequent tensions were a lot of what made it easy for the Nazis to portray the Slavs as inferiors.

Funny you should mention the Norman invasion of England. In the space of a few years, virtually every Anglo-Saxon noble in the land was replaced by a Norman. And even to this day, the average wealth of Britons with a French-Norman surname is over 10% higher than Anglo-Saxon. Similar studies have been done in other places. A study looked at the richest people in Florence, and found that surnames of the richest people in Florence in the 1400s are still heavily overrepresented in the richest people in Florence today. If there is still a legacy of economic benefit measurable so many centuries down the line, why not also cultural and political attitudes? After all, generations bequeath their ideas to the next ones along, not just the money. I think there are studies looking at attitudes in the USA (e.g. to education, I think), and noting that there's a lingering difference between the South - plantations, slavery, etc. - and North. Studies in China finding that individualist / collectivist attitudes seem to map to traditional wheat and rice-growing areas, even in those who don't work in agriculture.

Sure, I think skepticism is reasonable. But I'm open to the possibility that the legacy of history on our beliefs and values can be extraordinarily long-lasting.

 

[Satinavian]

Firstly, it's actually true that 1000 years the Elbe was roughly the dividing line between the Germans and the Slavs, so swathes of the territory that is now eastern Germany was conquered and colonised by Germans, it's not just the Baltics.

That is true. Elbe and Saale was the dividing line. I did not write anything else. But huge parts of East Germany are West of them. Of the two states that we are now explaining election results of, only one was once Slavic, in the other Slaws only had settled in the Eastern bit. And some parts of West Germany were East of the Elbe. It is just an overall bad explaination.
Also Brandenburg and Prussia were very different before one inherited the other. Brandenburg was Germanized earlier and with more settler movement, part of the HRE not not ruled for centuries by a crusade order.
And sure, tensions against Slavs persistet into the 20th century. But that is about people actually continuing to speak a Slavic language. The Sorbs, but mostly the Poles that came under German rule during the partitions of Poland. The people living in the territory of todays Eastern Germany had (with the exception of some Sorbish communities) long been considered Germans, thought of themself as Germans spoke German and for the most part would not even have understood a Slavic dialect. Because indeed that particular expansion had started roughly a thousand years ago and basically ended 1300.
I mean, significant parts of todays Austria were once Slavic as well, but no one considers Austrian culture as basically the same as Prussian culture for it. And neither should Saxon culture get that treatment.

Honestly, if one really wants to go down that far, it would be more appropriate to explain the election with the old Germanic tribe of the Thuringians. Their core territory was in one of those states (todays Thuringia) and they made up the vast majprity of the settlers that Germanized the other (todays Saxony which is named so for political reasons and has no relation to the Saxon Germanic tribe). Both even now have similar dialects that can somewhat be traced back to that event. But it is obviously still nonsense.



That stupid article does mention the slavic population in East Germany, but then tries to link the Germanic expansion to the 2nd crusade (totally forgetting that nealry all the territory in question had been Karolingian marches and Germanic settler movement had been well underway for some time. And after that it mostly talkes about the crusader states in the Baltics and Germanic expansion into Polish territories. Oh, and Prussia of course. And then we go to personal stories about East Prussia and Lithuania and the authors father in law ... that has nothing to do with East Germany and even less with the elections.

This whole mess reads like some vain attempt to connect a current event (the election) to the personal family history of the author who seems to have no connection at all with Eastern Germany. And then the closing basically laments that the "reunification can't be undone" and insinuates that East Germans are not real German ... What happened to quality control at the Guardian ? That would even have been bad as an opinion piece.


I mean, i have seen other, similar attempts to "explain" the divide. Usually iot is about Protestants vs Catholic values but that is roughly as stupid. The only versions that make some sense go in the urban/rural direction, noting that East Germany has less and smaller towns/cities that have often been founded later and thus a more rural culture.

Of course the actual explaination is the most obvious one : That East and west Germany are so different and that this difference follows exactly the borders of the FRG/GDR (and not slavic settlement extension, religious majority territories or anything else) is caused by the 40 years of very different experience past 1945. But i guess that is too boring to write articles about.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

That is true. Elbe and Saale was the dividing line. I did not write anything else. But huge parts of East Germany are West of them. Of the two states that we are now explaining election results of, only one was once Slavic, in the other Slaws only had settled in the Eastern bit. And some parts of West Germany were East of the Elbe. It is just an overall bad explaination.
Also Brandenburg and Prussia were very different before one inherited the other. Brandenburg was Germanized earlier and with more settler movement, part of the HRE not not ruled for centuries by a crusade order.
And sure, tensions against Slavs persistet into the 20th century. But that is about people actually continuing to speak a Slavic language. The Sorbs, but mostly the Poles that came under German rule during the partitions of Poland. The people living in the territory of todays Eastern Germany had (with the exception of some Sorbish communities) long been considered Germans, thought of themself as Germans spoke German and for the most part would not even have understood a Slavic dialect. Because indeed that particular expansion had started roughly a thousand years ago and basically ended 1300.
I mean, significant parts of todays Austria were once Slavic as well, but no one considers Austrian culture as basically the same as Prussian culture for it. And neither should Saxon culture get that treatment.

Honestly, if one really wants to go down that far, it would be more appropriate to explain the election with the old Germanic tribe of the Thuringians. Their core territory was in one of those states (todays Thuringia) and they made up the vast majprity of the settlers that Germanized the other (todays Saxony which is named so for political reasons and has no relation to the Saxon Germanic tribe). Both even now have similar dialects that can somewhat be traced back to that event. But it is obviously still nonsense.



That stupid article does mention the slavic population in East Germany, but then tries to link the Germanic expansion to the 2nd crusade (totally forgetting that nealry all the territory in question had been Karolingian marches and Germanic settler movement had been well underway for some time. And after that it mostly talkes about the crusader states in the Baltics and Germanic expansion into Polish territories. Oh, and Prussia of course. And then we go to personal stories about East Prussia and Lithuania and the authors father in law ... that has nothing to do with East Germany and even less with the elections.

This whole mess reads like some vain attempt to connect a current event (the election) to the personal family history of the author who seems to have no connection at all with Eastern Germany. And then the closing basically laments that the "reunification can't be undone" and insinuates that East Germans are not real German ... What happened to quality control at the Guardian ? That would even have been bad as an opinion piece.


I mean, i have seen other, similar attempts to "explain" the divide. Usually iot is about Protestants vs Catholic values but that is roughly as stupid. The only versions that make some sense go in the urban/rural direction, noting that East Germany has less and smaller towns/cities that have often been founded later and thus a more rural culture.

Of course the actual explaination is the most obvious one : That East and west Germany are so different and that this difference follows exactly the borders of the FRG/GDR (and not slavic settlement extension, religious majority territories or anything else) is caused by the 40 years of very different experience past 1945. But i guess that is too boring to write articles about.

Funnily enough,

How Former East Germany Became Home to the Far Right

The anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland made big gains in Germany’s state elections this Sunday. The grim outcome shows how the wounds of reunification are pitching eastern regions toward the far right.

jacobin.com