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Farmers' protest against planned subsidy cuts in Berlin
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
These days, the protests of German farmers are supposedly very, very much and very, very big. Their ears must be ringing: the farmers blocking the motorway are the "protectors of democracy", says the popular philosopher of parliamentarism Hubert Aiwanger. They are "the top performers of our country," adds Markus Söder, a subsidy economist from southern Germany. They are the vanguard of the "general strike," says the AfD in Thuringia, led by the pure German systemologist Björn Höcke.
In addition, the rallies and parades were supposedly also the spearhead of a nationwide "The traffic light must go" movement, a revolt against green-authoritarian popular re-education and the storming of the cities by the flat countryside. In short, rarely have so many people wanted to ride on German tractors. The entire CDU/CSU also wanted to join in, the Union that has provided the Minister of Agriculture for 16 of the past 18 years, but they are not ashamed, they are suppressing it. So the farmers have enough false friends. Do they know that?
Speaking of knowledge: Even at the height of the farmers' week, it is easier to say what the protests are not than to say what they really are and what they rightly stand for.
I say this without malice, but with conservative melancholy: When I started as a business editor at the »Berliner Tagesspiegel« more than 30 years ago, I was assigned agriculture as a topic, among other things. And yes, I liked it, it doesn't let you go, I even got a prize for a long text about the French farmers. In 2018, when the eternal spokesman of the farmers' association, Michael Lohse, said goodbye after 25 years, he wished for a little discussion on stage with me. So much for my street credibility.
Peasant Revolt: Angry Land
So what are the farmers' protests not with the reasonable view from the right of the center: They are (so far) nothing that the "country has never seen before," as farmers' president Rukwied boomed threateningly at the beginning. The corona protests were also more extensive, not to mention the trade union marches against Agenda 2010. Sometimes only the farmers' cheeks are thick.
The protests are also not the last rebellion of an industry before economic ruin. Initially, this was also violently tremulated, but the cuts in question are two to three percent of last year's profits, which have developed splendidly since 2020. In other words, it amounts to around five percent of the total of nine billion euros in national and EU aid annually. I know that these subsidies – like the higher consumer prices due to some import duties – are also paid for the extra services of farmers that are desirable for society as a whole. Nevertheless, there is no threat of barren deserts or famines in Germany if the state's agricultural diesel reduction is phased out in three stages. Can we leave the church in the village? What are companies supposed to say when their business model has really been destroyed because perfectly timed globalization no longer exists and cheap Russian gas no longer exists? Or all those industries in which structural change does not mean "farm death" in an eerily beautiful way, but bankruptcy or personal insolvency? Should they all buy a tractor now and get on the A7?
And there is something else that the farmers' protests are not: they have been infiltrated on a large scale by some right-wing extremists. They might like that, but I believe everyone who writes to me that 99 percent of the farmers reject the intimidation attempts against the Minister of Economic Affairs on the ferry.
What I take seriously about the farmers' protests is how they express anger at metropolitan pseudo-elitism, because it is precisely this anger that has catapulted Britain out of the EU, Donald Trump into the White House, and Marine Le Pen possibly into the Élysée in a few years. In East Germany, the Berlin resentment may also have special roots all the way back to the GDR, but that's not the point. Nor does it detract from the seriousness of the matter that the farmer's president stupidly trumpeted that no one had ever "worked" or "sweated" in Berlin's government district. If he's lucky, he'll only see the sentence again with Hubert Aiwanger. If he is unlucky, as a quote in the AfD program.
Historians on peasant protests:"The peasants learned early on to assert their interests even in conflict with the state, if necessary"An interview by Jonas Breng and Eva-Maria Schnurr
I myself went to primary school in a village. As an adult, I wouldn't have liked to stay there, it seemed cooler not to hang dead over the fence here for the rest of my life. Was that conceit? After all, almost 60 percent of all Germans live in municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, and by far the largest number of municipalities are those with 200 to 2000,<> people. Or did it only become unbearable for those in the countryside when the culture war began and left-green urban milieus moralized almost everything in order to assert social sovereignty of interpretation? Elevating fertilisers, diesel, hunting, pork, oil heating and so on to a question of character is not without consequences for those who like all this or cannot do otherwise. In some parts of the country, there is already a lack of family doctors or schools, there are hardly any pubs, and the shop does not have four shelves of tofu, but four wheels. Does anyone have any genuine sympathy for that?
The wolf is one such example. What looks like cute, harmonious renaturation to many city dwellers is a dead sheep in the countryside that should have brought in money. Or the wind turbines. If you live in a city centre, you don't have to worry about the limp noise, the shadows, the eternal glow or the seemingly endlessly high tower. These things are all in the countryside. Does anyone say thank you?
Nevertheless, life in the countryside is anything but hell and is likely to be freely chosen in the vast majority of cases. But if the farmers and their achievements are currently being exaggerated in an almost mythological way and they are applauded from the roadside, this also has to do with the unspoken guilty conscience of many city dwellers. Nevertheless, most people will continue to shop at the discounter, and they will continue to curse about the high prices from which the farmers earn money. So, dear farmers, be mad at whomever you want. But beware of the many false friends.