The 35 Faces that explain GERMAN POLITICS

So a few months ago, my friend J.J. McCullough made a video he titled "35 tribes that explain Canadian politics"

In it, he described 35 distinct kinds of people, that he said you're going to meet when dealing with politics in Canada.

Like the "Gun Nut" or the "French Canadian" or the "Healthcare Fanatic"

and what I felt was so interesting about his video, was that he didn't really talk about ideology or political parties or anything but just

people! People with different lives different interests that together shape our political culture

and that's what I want to talk to you about today! J.J. actually asked me if I could

make a version of his video, but instead about my home country of Germany. I think this will be

fun even if you don't know a lot or anything about German politics, because talking about

people rather than the difficult political science mumbo jumbo should really break it down to a basic level.

So here we go the 35 tribes that - at least according to me - define German Political Culture.

All right let's start with a highly sentimentalized

character in German Politics: The LEFT-BEHIND EAST GERMAN.

So German reunification is obviously seen as this big cheerful moment in German

history, right? I mean the fall of the Berlin Wall, families finally reunited after years

apart, a peaceful end to the Cold War. But more than 30 years after the wall came down, we can

now reflect more honestly that it was less of a coming together between equals and

more of a botched takeover. I mean, the country of East Germany - which had existed up until 1990 -

crashed and fell along with its industry and normality. For a lot of Easterners, their whole

world turned upside down! Tons of people lost their jobs, while westerners came pouring in

and bought everything! Just houses, the economy, everything was cheap and up for grabs! Some of

the new Eastern states were even governed by Western politicians, so you can see how the West

kind of just "ate up" the East like Pacman. Even East Germans themselves are severely underrepresented

in German society, in politics, in the economy, even in pop culture! East Germans do indeed feel

like "second rate citizens" and bridging that gap is often hard... even 30 years after reunification.

All right, these next two are about how people view German culture. When you go around asking Germans

how they feel about their own country, you probably get one of two answers: The PESSIMIST will say that

German culture is just too slow, too stuffy and so obsessed with rules, that we'll never amount to

anything ever again. These people will often point to like the United States or the Nordic countries

or any other country, who supposedly "Does It Better"... whatever "it" is. Like bureaucracy or digitization or

anything else where Germany really is lagging behind. And then you have the polar opposite,

which is the PRO-GERMAN NARCISSIST. A person who thinks Germany is just the greatest country

on Earth! In case you mind has already gone there: Not in a supremacist kind of way. No, people

in this category really like to view German culture through our WORK ETHIC and EFFICIENCY!

That's generally how patriotism expresses itself in Germany. It's not flag waving and yelling:

"DEUTSCHLAAAAND! DEUTSCHLAAAND!"

No, it's more saying things like: "Well, if the Greeks would just work as hard as we do, they wouldn't even HAVE a financial crisis."

[offended Greek noises]

As you can imagine these people aren't exactly... popular on the continent. I mean, who likes being mansplained to?

GERman-splained! Aaaaah.