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They are currently voting on amends to the regulation. The "Chat Control" proposal would legalise scanning of all private digital communications, including encrypted messages and photos. This threatens fundamental privacy rights and digital security for all EU citizens.
What is going on here with the German social democrats (SPD) voting in favor of chat control and the conservative "christian" party (CDU) against it?
It seems to be the case in most other countries. I don't get it either. I can only think that those barely left from center parties are all falling for the "gotta protect the kids against all evil by removing all anonymity". But all those right parties... Are they against chat control? Since when? Or is it the wrong kind of chat control for them? Don't get it at all, but well, at least this crap was rejected (until the next time they try again).
Exactly the same with the Portuguese parties. The conservative PSD voted against (like "Pirates"), and the socialist PS voted in favour (like the polish "PiS"). I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
They are eating the "think of the children" BS the police forces gave them as an excuse.
German Social Democrats are actual vegetables. They don‘t think. They just do what they‘re told. I genuinely forget they exist sometimes. It feels like this country is ruled by conservatives and no one else.
The SPD is social democrat in name only, in reality, since the first Schröder government, they have been a cheap CDU copy.
And when it comes to supporting authoritarian bullshit, they do have a long history. In the early days of Weimar Republic, the Ebert government did collaborate with far-right paramilitary groups in order to quell unrest. (Using machine guns on striking workers and murdering leaders of opposing political movements)
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
The SPD has been for it for atleast 20 decades. Cdu/csu...idk they are weird
If the CDU/CSU does something unexpected, it's always a good idea to assume someone is paying them for it.
Or paid not enough for them to vote for it?
Highly unlikely, because besides being corrupt to the core, the CDU are a bunch of authoritarian bastards who will happily vote for any dystopian police state bullshit even without being paid for it.
Which makes it strange, doesn't it? If they are so dystopian, who paid them to not to vote for that? Pretty much all the shady financial supporters should be for chat control and only dystopian parties didn't vote for it while allegedly progressive party did.
That is so weird to see ngl.
I don't even know anymore what progressive is supposed to mean, it's thrown around just like every other political bullshit word.
Also, the SPD has been a copy of the CDU in red for decades. From them, I expected that vote. The unexpected really is the CDU.
And PP and PSOE too
Probably offered consultant or manager positions for after their political careers as a bribe.
Austrians doing the same with SPÖ in favor and ÖVP against
The SPD turned into a third way economically liberal party around the same time Tony Blair did the same to Labour in England, and they haven't really reinvented themselves since. They're not necessarily evil but they're certainly not a progressive force. Infuriatingly the SPD had already won their election on a traditional social democratic platform, and just decided to change course for shits and giggles. At least Blair won an election, making the whole fuckup at least democratically rooted.
The CDU is at its core classical Christian Democrats. Their voter base is not bad people, just normal folks who are not particularly progressive but not necessarily backwards either. Remember it was Merkel from the CDU (alongside Swedish social democrats) that was the biggest proponent of humanity and solidarity when a bunch of asylum seekers arrived in 2015 - "wir schaffen das" and all that. Ironically Merkel's biggest mistake was her softness towards Russia, which is a stereotypical fault of left wing parties...
The leadership of the CDU has taken a turn to the right since Merkel, but there's still plenty of reasonable people within the party. And there's plenty of fools in the SPD. I wouldn't trust either of them to do the right thing, but I wouldn't be surprised when they occasionally do either.
Actually, the SPD under Schröder did imitate Tony Blair's "New Labour" strategy.
That really was just clever PR. Merkel originally wanted, following the party line, to close the borders, but since she isn't stupid and a bit of a legalist, had that plan legally evaluated. The evaluation came out negative, because doing so would have been in violation of both German national and international law. Accepting the refugees really was the only legal option. So she did the next best thing she could do after failing to fish for votes in the far right's disgusting brown cesspit, and sold the thing she was forced to do by having no other legal option as a humanitarian act of hers, to at least score some sympathies with less right leaning and more humanitarian voters.
Basically, they went back to their former self of outright right wing populism, and to brazenly and openly shitting on both national and international law, because they know exactly that nothing substantial will happen to them for it, the worst that will happen, is a court writing a sternly worded letter and invalidating a law that has been in force for as long as the court took to decide (usually many years).
Remember that the founding members of the far right AfD were pretty much all previous members of the CDU's right wing. These two parties fit together like an arse fits on a bucket.