Good grief - I misread that as she’s about to retire.
Maybe I should.
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Merkel was bad, her successor is very likely to be worse, the end.
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It’s more complicated than that-- the Greens aren’t easy to peg down as “left” or “right” at least as we see it in the United States. I worked in Germany for nearly a decade-- and they truly do have the social democracy thing down, oh if only we could import their commonsense on college and daycare to the US. And the Greens support all these social policies, as well as an end to Mideastern wars and strong environmental policies. In this sense yes, there are “liberal” or “left”.
But on immigration the Greens in Germany and many other countries there are actually pretty restrictionist though for different reasons. They argue that mass immigration hurts the poor and working class due to oversupply of labor and reduced wages, they oppose multiculturalism explicitly because they say it hurts the social fabric and consensus for social policies, and they want more aid to migrants in their own countries to reduce migration. And also, the Greens want to stop all Mideastern wars and damaging environmental policies, which they see as a contributor to migration in the first place. Also, the Greens are a major supporter of the rights of indigenous peoples around the world-- including in Europe, and they oppose mass migration of any peoples (including other Europeans) if it would hurt indigenous cultures.
We have to be very careful declaring “left” or “right” in Europe because the ideological lines are blurry there the way we see them. Somehow, supporting high levels of immigration in the US are considered a “left” issue, but many in Europe see mass immigration as a “right” platform (at least in the sense that multinational corporations support it) since it hurts wages and the working classes. Maybe because we’re stuck with a two party system the way our winner take all elections work, we see these things as “left-right” in America. But Europe is multiparty, and so there’s not a simple left or right over there. Maybe ironically, the Greens are actually a lot closer to the AfD on immigration then they are to Merkel’s CDU, though they obviously differ considerably on other issues.
Whereas, both the AfD and Greens attack the CDU and SPD as being “globalists” supporting mass immigration against the societies of the indigenous Europeans (and in other countries) and hurting incomes for workers. Though that’s about the extent of the overlap. On almost other issues, the Greens and AfD differ considerably, and the Greens are a lot more consistent in being supporters of social democracy.
Again, politics in Germany and Europe is more complicated than left and right because they’re multiparty, compared to a 2-party system in the US where we see things as left or right. The Greens would be considered very left here, yes, on things like social democracy, safety nets, environmental protections and being anti-war. But on immigration, their platform is quite restrictionist. In the US we call pro-immigration platforms “left” and restrictionist platforms “right” but they don’t see it that way in Germany or Europe, to them, the Greens’ opposition to heavy immigration isn’t “right” as much as it’s a policy to protect working class wages and jobs against corporate attempts to cheapen labor and weaken unions. The Greens also want to restrict immigration to protect social cohesion and safety net support, and they’re no fans of multiculturalism. Although this aligns on the surface with a lot of AfD platforms, the difference is, the Greens correctly identify the stupid Middle Eastern wars as the root cause for these mass migrations and thus have an antiwar platform, as well as supporting more foreign aid for affected countries and better environmental policies. It’s not just a left-right division over there.
In practice she probably is going to retire within months, the parties have little interest in not only a lame duck, but a powerless one stripped of her office as party leader with diminishing internal support. The most likely outcome is something like in Italy, where “left” and “right” come together (from our US perspective) but in practice, it’s more of a populist, anti-globalist movement that supports the working class and opposes heavy immigration for varying reasons, though (in the case of the Greens and their equivalent in Italy) due to the damage that heavy immigration can have on the wages for working-class people.
When you say “we”, I think you primarily mean “Americans”. As I’m not American, I tend not to need to categorize German politics in terms of the simplistic definitions of “left” and “right”. I think your comments say a lot more about the degeneracy of political discourse in the US than they do about how party politics works in Europe.
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