BlackRock becomes chancellor
Party atmosphere in Silicon Valley: Friedrich Merz, a lobbyist for tech billionaires, has also made it to the highest political office in Germany. The repression against large sections of the population will be different than under the traffic lights - but it will certainly not be less.
The champagne corks are probably popping again in Silicon Valley. Following its triumphant rise to the top of US politics, the western tech oligarchy has now secured maximum political influence in Germany too. With CDU leader Friedrich Merz, BlackRock will, to put it bluntly, move into the German chancellery: to the benefit of the incessant profit streams and wealth growth of the most influential multi-billionaires, at the expense of wage earners and their democratic rights.
After the USA, Germany is thus visibly becoming what the economic moguls and their media propagandists, who are hungry for access to raw materials and markets, accuse Russia in particular of being day in, day out: a pure oligarchy. With a lot of PR, but also friendly advance support from the previous government of the SPD, Greens and FDP, it was even hoisted into power in a “Western-democratic way”.
Friedrich Merz is not just some neo-liberal fanatic who regards the unemployed as “ballast” and would let them starve to death without batting an eyelid, or at the very least, let them become completely destitute, as he once demanded years ago. He has now threatened his political opponents, albeit through a veil but clearly enough, as a precautionary measure: the left is over with him.
Merz's political opponents are certainly not, as this suggests, the SPD and Green parties, which are conspicuous for their ingratiation and permanent betrayal of voters. As is well known, they have long since abandoned their “left” and “green” credentials in favor of opportunistic warmongering. He will eventually have to form a coalition with them. His political opponent is not the AfD either, even though, unlike Merz, it is at least verbally opposed to the further armament of Ukraine and the CDU leader is still talking about the famous firewall despite all the setbacks.
All those who seriously oppose the capitalist interests that Merz intends to push through will have to dress warmly. The repression against certain critics over the past few years - protests against the corona measures, for peace or the liberation of Palestine come to mind - could have been just a foretaste of worse things to come. It remains to be seen who Merz will ultimately include among his political enemies. One thing is already certain: critics of the system will probably have nothing to laugh about.
Merz is also a lobbyist for the Western oligarchy straight out of a picture book. As Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the German branch, he helped the multi-billion US asset manager BlackRock to gain profitable economic influence in Germany from 2016 to 2020. During this time, the financial giant bought even more lucrative stakes in Germany's largest real estate companies, including Deutsche Wohnen SE, which is now part of Vonovia. These real estate sharks have repeatedly hit the headlines in the past with extortionate rents.
For almost two decades, Merz worked first as a partner and then as a consultant for the US law firm Mayer Brown, which advises super-rich clients from the financial and other major industries, not least on how they can “save” on taxes. Until 2019, he served as Chairman of the Atlantic Bridge for ten years. To this day, he is listed as a member of several organizations that bring lobbyists and top politicians together, including the founding circle of the New York section of the CDU Economic Council and the “Society for the Study of Structural Policy Issues” under the umbrella of the liberal Ludwig Erhard Foundation.
According to the journalist Werner Rügemer https://multipolar-magazin.de/meldungen/0183, Merz earned millions with his well-paid positions on supervisory and advisory boards and with contracts for large corporations. He is also said to have sat on the board of directors of the chemical company BASF. Its shares spontaneously rose again after the Bundestag elections on Sunday.
The candidate for the chancellorship and his party prefer to remain silent on the subject of BlackRock. If anyone does ask, they always say that Merz has severed all ties with the financial giant. This is not credible: on the fringes of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Merz recently gave a speech at a dinner to which BlackRock boss and multi-billionaire Laurence Douglas (Larry) Fink had invited him.
US President Donald Trump praised the Union's victory under Merz as a “great day for Germany”. Trump's advisor, tech billionaire Elon Musk, had previously called for the AfD to be elected on his own platform X, which he has now censored, but is likely to be just as pleased with Merz. Whether Germany and other EU states now start a war against Russia themselves can be of secondary importance to the USA due to its geographical location. As we all know, wars are a great way to make money.
The question that needs to be asked here is: how is it that Donald Trump suddenly seems to have the entire tech elite on his side during his second term of office? As we know, he was still pretty much on the sidelines during his first presidency from 2017 to 2021. Three and a half years ago, Silicon Valley also seemed to be betting on red-green-yellow for Germany. Like the US Democrats, the traffic light party famously propagated “green capitalism”.
The tech billionaires had probably hoped for plenty of sponsorship from taxpayers' money - and were then disappointed by the paltry result. In addition, there was political interference by means of censorship in their “social” media. They want to censor themselves, as can currently be seen with Musk's X.
Merz on compulsory military service: “Freedom is more important than peace - there is peace in every cemetery”
“The thoughts of the ruling class are the ruling thoughts in every epoch,” wrote Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx 180 years ago. Which oligarch wants to let politicians take away their status as the “ruling intellectual power”? Warned by the additional economic mismanagement caused by the traffic lights, which also threatened to be at the expense of their profit rate, the billionaire tech elite has now apparently increasingly changed its mind.
It almost makes you rub your eyes: the diversity show that was put on from the top until recently, with all its fake feminism, anti-racism and LGBTQ posturing, seems to be over. In truth, all this says only one thing: Monopoly capital is a chameleon; it always presents itself as ideologically flexible as seems most useful to its profits and economic power - sometimes liberal, sometimes conservative, sometimes more, sometimes less antisocial.
The current development could be described as a rebellion of the economic liberal elites, who have always only approved of political barriers if they are to their advantage. Sometimes they propagate open borders and more migration like the red-green party and, under Angela Merkel, the CDU. Sometimes they drum up support for “nations first”, like Donald Trump and Friedrich Merz.
But no matter how much they talk about freedom: They only ever mean freedom for capital - and this automatically results in a lack of freedom for all wage earners. This is because workers' rights, such as vacation, sick pay, unemployment benefits or strikes for higher wages, are disruptive restrictions that squeeze profits - a thorn in the side of all “liberals”. Economic and political liberalism are a contradiction in terms and never work together in the long term.
That is why economic liberalism needs the authoritarian state, regardless of whether the latter is red-green, yellow, black or blue. Authoritarian politics is not tied to a specific ideology: Sometimes it dresses itself in progressive, sometimes in conservative garb. Merz will set different priorities and target other groups. But the dictatorial interventions against normal citizens will certainly not decrease.