The farmers’ protests have reached a radical level that the majority of society does not have to put up with. And that even goes beyond the action of the climate adhesives. Political strikes are not allowed in Germany. Certainly not violence.
It was probably just a miracle on Sunday evening that farmers didn’t kill innocent people. Near Wustermark in Havelland, people who should no longer be called “demonstrators” or “activists” dumped several hundred meters of manure and dung heaps onto the busy federal highway 5. In the evening. Without light. Then two cars crashed into the potentially fatal obstacle: three injured and extensive property damage.
Where will this end? Or does there have to be a first death before the farmers realize what is happening in their name?
Actually, it is forbidden to hold an entire movement responsible for individual lunatics in its ranks. This also applies to the farmers and their fight against aid cuts or an obvious excess of expensive bureaucracy. On the other hand, according to everything we know: The farmers’ protests of the last few weeks have nothing to do with the attack on the federal highway. They join in the attempted intimidation of politicians they don’t like – mostly Greens.
Conservative farming milieus in particular, with their certain inclination to take robust action, should also ask themselves what they thought and cursed about the blockades of the last generation in the past. And what would be going on in the country as a whole now if the last generation had the victims of the blockade on the B5 on their conscience. The radical climate activists have already come under severe criticism, and rightly so, when ambulances with flashing lights were stuck in the traffic jams they deliberately created.
When it comes to egomania and excessive means, the radicals of both groups don’t give much effort. The difference lies in the support of society as a whole: the farmers have a bonus; even in the 21st century they are sometimes considered the mythical “breadwinners of the nation”. That’s what they are and the first guardians of the homeland as well. That’s why they as an industry have been subsidized for longer and more heavily than any other in Germany. That is why politicians deal with them more often and more intensively than with other sectors of the economy. However, many farmers do not want to believe the latter. Or better said: They understand it fundamentally wrong – and that’s where it becomes criminal.
What began with protests against a manageable subsidy cut (based on last year’s profits) has long since become a movement that the federal government ultimately wants to clear. The justification is that the aid cut was the last straw in the overflowing barrel. Maybe, but that doesn’t justify everything.
The federal government has quickly and widely accommodated the farmers. Only a small portion of the original reductions are still valid. But right up to the top of their association, the farmers insist on a complete victory: Everything is enough. And in truth, many of them seem to want more. They see themselves as the spearhead of a revolt across society against “those people in Berlin”. It’s as if many farmers have tasted blood.
However, if the only way to satisfy these groups was for the traffic light coalition to step down – it would have crossed a line that even the worst climate sticklers have not gone to. Is that what the farmers want? In any case, it is not something that the majority in the country has to put up with. Political strikes are not allowed in Germany. And certainly not violence.