the fact that he changed his position in light of the upcoming election is a strong indication of where public opinion is headed.
Unfortunately, it is, yeah. Inflation and a rising cost of living leaves many citizen with not much choice, but to believe that their situation will improve, if we just stop accepting immigrants and stop helping out Ukraine and stop fighting climate change and whatever else there is.
Of course, the actual solution would be getting more money into poor people’s pockets.
Politicians without morals will rather risk a Fourth Reich, though, because the actual solution is hard, not just for them but also their sponsors.
A government that doesn’t care about the plight of its own people obviously cares about people in Ukraine even less. The solution would indeed be to start addressing the cost of living crisis that was caused by the war, and the first step towards that is to end the war which the current government is vehemently opposed to doing. Of course, when right wingers ultimately get in power, nothing is going to get better, so dark times ahead for Germany.
The war did not contribute much to the cost of living here. We now have to import natural gas from different nations, and apparently Ukraine was the #1 supplier of sunflower seeds, but that’s mostly it.
The cost of living mainly rose due to a housing bubble and inflation. And of course, you’ve got lots of individuals that lost their livelihood from COVID lockdowns, post-COVID chronic fatigue and climate-related catastrophes.
I also have no idea what you mean by the current government being opposed to ending the war. They don’t want to invade Russia to defeat Putin, no one here wants to try that. But unlike the far right, they are in favor of supporting Ukraine to hold Putin off.
If your idea of ending the war is giving Putin half of Ukraine and hoping he’s then satiated, I do not see how that should work. It’s not like Russia needs more territory. Putin started this war, because he’s mentally ill. He will start another war in a few years, if this one is “ended” by sacrificing Ukraine, because he will still be mentally ill.
Only one country can stop the belligerent invasion of this sovereign nation, and Germany isn’t it. The only way that’s going to happen is through absolutely massive and cruel sanctions and trade blockage.
Enough is enough.
Capitulating to the monster paying your salary isn’t really a choice. The people of Moldova, Georgia, Lithuania and Romania, among others, need the invasion stopped and reparations imposed or they know they’ll be next.