German farmers have discovered Western elites’ kryptonite

German farmers have discovered Western elites’ kryptonite

By: Rachel Marsden

BERLIN — Few things seem to strike fear into the heart of the Western establishment like big vehicles. Covid mandates suddenly disappeared in Canada when Freedom Convoy truckers and their rigs converged on the nation’s capital almost exactly two years ago. Now, ripping a page from the same playbook, German farmers have started congregating in at least three major cities this week for a planned Jan. 15 protest that threatens to be a repeat of the mid-December gridlock that blocked traffic around Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate with tractors and farm vehicles. All because feeding the average citizen is getting prohibitively difficult — with Berlin’s green-obsessed government to blame.

A little background is in order. In February 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood silently beside U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House as Biden responded to a press question about what the United States would do about the Nord Stream pipeline, carrying cheap Russian gas from Russia to Germany and into the rest of Europe, if Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine. Biden replied that he’d“bring an end to it.”

On Sept. 26, 2022, Nord Stream was mysteriously blown up, cutting the economic umbilical cord with Russia that made Germany a global industrial powerhouse and a competitor of the U.S. The prices of energy across Europe skyrocketed as the bloc was forced to switch to more pricey liquified natural gas from the U.S. and Norway — incidentally, the two nations that Pulitzer Prize- winning investigative journalist, Sy (Seymour) Hersh accused of leading the covert operation to blow up the primary driver of Germany’s economic engine, citing intelligence sources.

So up went the price of everything from baguettes to borscht. Meanwhile, European officials, like German vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, initially bragged about how he was successfully decreasing his shower time, and encouraging German citizens to do likewise to hit Russian President Vladimir Putin right in the wallet by using less energy — apparently ignoring that less supply means higher revenues for Russian fuel, and that Russia could just pivot and sell it to other countries, some from which Europe might even end up buying it. It’s not like fuel molecules coming into Europe are going to have Russian passports.

For Green party politicians like Habeck, the energy crunch became an opportunity to expedite an agenda. No need for fossil fuels when windmills and sun were going to power Germany’s industry! But it turned out that the renewables on which Germany had been banking weren’t ready for primetime, leaving German industry struggling — including with energy-intensive farming and food production.

Amid a sizable chunk of German industry decamping to the U.S. and elsewhere in order to avoid the EU energy crunch, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s team quietly moved about €60 billion from a Covid recovery fund to a “green” industry fund — only to be ordered by the courts to put it back because it broke a law meant to prevent governments from digging a debt hole. Whoops, too late. Team Scholz couldn’t put all the cash back — like a teenager who steals your wallet, gets caught, and can’t repay the money spent. So looking around at who to hit up for €17 billion to plug the budget deficit, German farmers were targeted as cash cows — all under the convenient pretext that the government tax subsidies for the sinful diesel fuel that powers their equipment deserve to be canceled. It all sounds so virtuous, and not at all like scrambling to compensate for a major flub. In response, the farmers blocked the roads of the capital in December, demanding a policy reversal for a sector that was already bleeding — not just from market deregulation and ideologically-driven green and anti-Russian policies of their own government, but also from the supranational EU’s flooding of the bloc with cheap foreign farm products through successive free trade deals that undercut their own farmers.

During his 2024 New Year’s Day address, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to rewrite history to absolve himself of responsibility and instead blame everyone’s favorite bogeyman, claiming that this whole mess came as a result of Russia turning off the gas tap. But leaving aside the fact that it was blown up, the EU also cut Moscow off from Western finance, then wished them good luck in getting paid for anything. That’s like going to your local store, taking your purchase to the cashier, telling them to come get it inside your pants — then blaming them for not selling to you.

Putin didn’t blow a hole in Germany’s budget. Berlin’s own mismanagement did. And the farmers seem to know where the blame lies. Last weekend, they blocked top-Green, “10 second shower” Habeck, as he attempted to disembark from a ferry. Just hours earlier, as protest plans took shape, Berlin partially reversed course, announcing that the fuel tax breaks would phase out more gradually.

And much like Freedom Convoy truckers demanded lifting of all Covid mandates — German farmers have so far refused to settle for partial victory. And why should they? As owners and operators of tractors, they control some of the only tools that have proven successful in blocking the slippery slope toward authoritarianism in Western democracies.