Germany’s New Chancellor Is a Man Without QualitiesThere is a telling rumor in Berlin political circles. Upon his appointment as leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) in 2022, Friedrich Merz was gifted a copy of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) by his conservative colleague Wolfgang Schäuble, the veteran former finance minister and then president of the German parliament. A dismayed Merz is said to have handed back the book shortly after, exclaiming: “But this is a novel — what am I supposed to do with this?” The novel in question, narrated by the last aristocratic ruler of a remote island principate in Sicily, revolves around the old social order’s attempt to contend with the threat of rapid political change, encapsulated by its most famous phrase: “If we want things to remain as they are, things will have to change.” On the surface, this isn’t too dissimilar from the situation in which Merz finds himself. The new German chancellor, sworn in on Tuesday after a shaky confirmation vote in parliament, was once dubbed “the prince of neoliberalism” and is very much an unreconstructed representative of a system whose time has come.
https://jacobin.com/2025/05/germany-merz-chancellor-cdu-neoliberalismIn May Immortals Week: The Main Thing On The Path Of Fhe Immortals is Organization And The Struggle! — DKP/BÖGThe struggle for revolution and socialism has always been carried to the present day by paying a great price in the lands we live in. It is not possible to be revolutionary without paying a price in the geography we live in. We are also representatives of a political tradition that has paid a great price for the freedom struggle of the working class and the oppressed based on the needs of the class struggle. Our Party Founding Leader, Commander and Teacher Ulaş Bayraktaroğlu, who played a great role in bringing us to this day, was immortalized on May 9, 2017. Our immortals will always continue to lead and guide us in our march to the future. On this occasion, we consider it our duty to state once again that we will walk with the most determination in the revolutionary march opened by our immortals in the person of our Commander, Leader and Teacher Comrade Ulaş Bayraktaroğlu (Mehmet Kurnaz), which is the beginning of the Immortals Week.
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