The voting data in Germany disprove the thesis of the uneducated electorate: Here are the reasons for the historic transition from the blue suits to the German right-wing parties. And why the Italian left should worry
The strategy of the left against Afd and the other parties that are emerging on the German model in the rest of Europe are taking shape. It is urgent to ban voters who vote for similar movements, with the motivation that those who have chosen Alternatives for Germany he is ignorant. Yes, for comrades the voters of the far right party are not worthy of voting because they are louts, people who have not studied, people who do worthless jobs. In short, we are at the Bonaccini theorem, relaunched by Paolo Gentiloni and corroborated by learned analyzes of the Corriere della Sera (as well as by the entire progressive press). To cut to the chase, voters vote AfD because they are stupid, easily manipulated, unable to discern good from evil.
Where does all this come from?
Come on electoral flows. Among the workers, the far right obtained almost 60% of the votes, while among those in a disadvantaged economic situation the percentage reaches almost 70. Among those with medium-low level qualifications, i.e. secondary or professional school diplomas, the voters of Alternative für Deutschland are very popular, with percentages above 50%, while graduates are just 30. According to the Corriere, all this is a «key indicator for understanding the vote in Saxony-Anhalt». And for most left-wing politicians and commentators, it is enough to say that it was the “poorly educated” voters who voted for the far right, i.e. the people on the margins.
The denial of numbers and the generational crossroads
In reality, the electoral flows also tell us something else, and do not seem to confirm the theorem dear to the president of the Democratic Party. To begin with, the analyzes of the vote explain that 42% of young people under 25 years of age voted for AfD, while only 5 chose to put the cross on the symbol of Cduthe party that governed the Land for a quarter of a century. Do we want to believe that almost half of Saxony’s twenty-year-olds are patently ignorant? If anything, a large part of those who have just entered the world of work, with a diploma or degree (30% of AfD voters have in any case attended and completed a university course), have considered the political offer of traditional parties, such as CDU and Spdnot very interesting and perhaps we should ask ourselves why.
There’s more: the vote shows that only 3% of people in a precarious economic situation voted for the Social Democrats. That is, the party considered in theory closest to the popular classes was ignored by them, who preferred to turn to Afd. A choice that was repeated among the workers, of whom only 6% voted for the SPD, while 7% opted for the Linke, the most radical left. What’s surprising about all this? That today these voters are said to be uneducated and marginal workers, i.e. laborers or so. However, this was once the constituency of the left. Workers, peasants and wage earners were the subordinate classes addressed in Italy by the PCI, in Germany by the SPD, in France by the communists and socialists. And no one at the time would have thought of saying that this army of workers and voters was made up of ignorant people only because they put the cross on the hammer and sickle. So, why now do fine intellectuals and politicians allow themselves to argue that hundreds of thousands of people are stupid and poor just for having made a political choice different from the one hoped for by journalists and statesmen?
The failure to listen on the Green Deal and jobs
The cultural racism that I have noticed in the comments of many says a lot about the difficulty of the ruling class in understanding complex phenomena such as that of Afd. If in Saxony-Anhalt workers and laborers instead of voting for the left chose the right it is simply because they believed that the latter would listen to their problems on issues such as Green Dealimmigration, wages. It doesn’t take long to understand, but even educated people, who pride themselves on knowing much more than those with only a professional diploma or a minimum wage, fail to grasp the concept.
With the result that even the boom in voter turnout, much hoped for as a deterrent against populism (the last person to deprecate abstentionism was, in Cernobbio, Sergio Mattarella) becomes a destabilizing and dangerous element, capable of putting democracy into crisis. Faced with these enlightened reflections, the future moves appear obvious: if we cannot ban the AfD and the parties that in the rest of Europe resemble Alternative für Deutschland, sooner or later we will have to ban the voters, finding a way to ensure that as few votes as possible are possible and allowing the elites, of Brussels and of the system, to govern without asking them.
After all, when the left says that we need more Europe and that decisions can no longer be taken unanimously, what does it mean, other than that the “ignorant” must be expropriated of the right to vote?
