A lesbian, a former Goldman Sachs banker, a parliamentary leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and apparently a bitcoiner.
What they have in common is Alice Weidel, a blond 39 year old who, after Germany’s version of Republicans and Democrats agreed to a coalition, might become the de facto leader of Germany’s official opposition.
This fiery woman is already making strides, scathingly criticizing Merkel to wide applause in the Bundestag. To her is attributed the rise of AfD, and now perhaps her own rise.
An economics student at university, she lauds Hayek, and even quotes his book, the Denationalization of Money, which in many ways forms the intellectual foundations of competing free market currencies.
Something which apparently led to her being invited to the Unchain conference in Hamburg to be held in May this year. A media storm, however, seemingly forced her to cancel the invitation.
The left accuses AfD of all sorts of things, but as we saw with Trump and as we saw with Brexit, and even perhaps as we saw recently with Corbyn, the mainstream media does at times have a tendency to exaggerate.
And with that background, we won’t believe a lesbian is a nazi. Nor will we believe someone who quotes Hayek is an authoritarian. But AfD and other traditional or otherwise institutions in the continent do keep making the mistake of not translating their policies into english so that we ourselves can judge the primary sources.
In the absence of such full information, what might be the case is two fractions within AfD. One fraction, which might be taking discredited nonsense slightly more seriously than due, and another libertarian fraction to which Weidel seems to belong.
At the end of it, it is all about the economy, money. In particular, the Euro. Weidel doesn’t like it, although she is happy to stay in the single market.
A single market where goods freely trade is very different from a single currency. As the sick man of Europe, Italy, has found out, having one single currency, but not one single banking and even political system, means in effect subsidizing exporting nations like Germany.
That has benefited Germany, which stands out among western governments for having very low debt, but the events in Greece make the situation untenable and make necessary, if the Euro is to be kept, an in-effect re-unification of Europe in the same style as East and West Germany were unified.
Such unification would mean Germans paying Greeks. The Brits, of course, said no. A movement in Germany is now rising to in-effect say the same.
The Internacionale, sings the communist hymn. Sovereignty, sings the other side. That’s one way to see recent events from Brexit to AfD, with the rest adding distracting color.
But our preferred way to see the bigger picture, from which we think everything else derives, is Hayek vs Keynes. The former stands for decisions at the most local level, the latter stands for redistribution of wealth. The former argues for no barriers to the free market, not even to currencies, the latter would rather use money as a means of wealth distribution.
It is no secret that the Keynesians have been dominating, pushing through an agenda of bigger and bigger governments, as shown by Krugman having the microphone of New York Times.
But following the banking collapse, the Austrians have been gaining some confidence as the public more and more says the internacional has gone too far.
The latest sign that is indeed the case we have just seen. The leader of Germany’s de facto official opposition was silenced by a leftist press that dares call a lesbian a nazi. Just as they called Trump a nazi even though his daughter is married to someone from jewish descent. Just as they called all those who voted for Brexit racists.
And when we look back at the French election, they made us think calamity would descend if Macron did not win. Yet look at France’s treatment of this space now. Who is the authoritarian?
“Alice Weidel is a graduate economist, a follower of the Austrian school and a Hayek competition of currencies. And she’s starting a Bitcoin startup herself. Fits perfectly,” Aaron Koenig, the organizer of Unchain conference, said before the mainstream media started ringing the bell of shame.
Now, we won’t know what bitcoin start-up she planned exactly, nor will we know what she had to say about money, which was the subject of her speech. Nor will we know what vision she had for a post euro Germany.
That’s despite her being one of the most potent political force in Germany, and thus in all of Europe, for the incomprehensible joint governance of Germany’s Republicans and Democrats has left the country with no other voice, within this space and outside of it.
