The Price of Delusion – Why Germany Must Be Careful Not to Import Trump Conditions

The numbers speak a brutal language: 62 out of 100 points on the financial distress scale. Texas, Florida, and Louisiana – precisely those states that present themselves as beacons of conservative politics – lead the American statistics on evictions, personal bankruptcies, and defaulted loans. Texas in particular is a paradox: with a gross domestic product of over 2.9 trillion dollars, the state is considered the seventh largest economy in the world – ahead of countries like Canada or South Korea. And yet, according to the US Census Bureau, over 14 percent of Texans live below the poverty line, almost one in five has no health insurance, and the number of people without regular access to health care is higher than in any other US state.

The discrepancy could not be greater: on one side, the oil and gas industry is booming, technology and space companies are moving to Austin and Houston, and the governor celebrates a “Texan economic miracle state.” On the other side, millions of people face eviction, struggle with exorbitant power bills, and rural hospitals are closing in droves because they are underfunded. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than a quarter of Texan children live in households classified as “food insecure” – a euphemism for having to skip meals regularly.

Florida and Louisiana show a similar picture: tourism, until Trump came, and the energy industry generated record profits, but the population pays the price. Rents in Miami have risen by more than 60 percent in the past five years, while median wages have stagnated. In Louisiana, life expectancy is at the level of Albania, child mortality is among the highest in the US. These numbers are not just an American problem – they are a warning signal for Europe. Anyone in Germany who votes for a party that advocates neoliberal deregulation, tax breaks for corporations, and the dismantling of social safety nets should look closely at what Texas has become: a gigantic economic power built on the backs of millions of people living without protection. A future that draws nearer when one considers the current polling figures: the CDU/CSU and the AfD are tied at 25.5 percent. What is already reality in America threatens to become the German nightmare.

The mechanism is always the same: first comes the grand promise. Liberation from the “system,” a return to supposedly better times, simple solutions for complex problems. In Texas, people were promised prosperity through oil and gas, freedom through less government, security through tougher borders. The result? Families who can no longer pay their power bills while energy companies export billions in profits to Europe. Hospitals on the brink of collapse. A life expectancy among the lowest in the US. The AfD is copying this playbook with frightening precision. No wind turbines, no solar plants, but a return to fossil fuels – as if the energy crisis of 2022 had already been forgotten, when Putin turned off the gas tap and brought Germany to its knees. It is the same disastrous logic: you make yourself dependent on autocrats and then act surprised when that dependence is used as a weapon.

The Escalation of Violence

The excellent BBC graphic on Russian missile and drone attacks is more than just a statistic. It is a seismograph of political consequences. With Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, the numbers explode: from about 2,000 to over 6,000 attacks per month. It is no coincidence that Moscow escalates precisely at the moment when Washington signals that aggression will no longer have consequences. Putin understands this language. He understands that an America under Trump is no longer the guarantor of Western values but an unreliable partner who would drop Ukraine like a hot potato.

And here the circle closes to the AfD. A party that “understands” Putin, parrots his propaganda, turns the aggressor into the victim and the invaded country into the culprit. It is the same moral bankruptcy that can be heard from Mar-a-Lago. The same contempt for democratic values, for territorial integrity, for international law. Anyone who votes for such a party is not just voting for a political alternative – they are voting for capitulation to tyranny.

The massacres of Bucha, the abducted Ukrainian children, the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure – all this is ignored, downplayed, denied. Instead, they present themselves as the party of peace, as if Chamberlain had secured peace in Munich in 1938 and not paved the way to world war. History does not repeat itself, they say. But it rhymes. And the rhyme we hear today sounds eerily like the 1930s.

The Age of Deportation

“The Age of Deportation” headlined the New Statesman, and the cover image burns itself into memory: people in orange suits, lined up like cattle, marching into the belly of a plane. It is the visual manifestation of a policy that degrades people to numbers, to problems that need to be “solved.” In Los Angeles, the Supreme Court has just decided that the immigration agency ICE may once again stop people solely because of their skin color, their language, or their workplace. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned urgently of an “abuse of the emergency procedure” that sacrifices the constitutional rights of millions.

The AfD rhetoric of “remigration” and “asylum stop” is not harmless campaign polemic. It is the linguistic preparation for exactly such scenes. Today they speak of “consistent deportation,” tomorrow of internment camps, the day after tomorrow of special treatment. Dehumanization always begins with language. In Rwanda, Tutsis were called “cockroaches” before they were slaughtered. In Nazi Germany, they were “parasites” and “vermin.” The AfD speaks of “knife men” and “cultural enrichers” – the cynicism barely hidden, the intent crystal clear. One must visualize the scenes from Texas: families torn apart in the middle of the night. Children crying as their parents are led away in handcuffs. Employers losing their workforce because half of them are suddenly “illegal.” Communities bleeding out because the people who kept them alive have been deported. This is not dystopian fiction. This is reality in the US since January 2025. And it is what the AfD wants to import.

The tweet “The AfD is inevitable” under the New Statesman cover is more than tasteless – it is a threat. A declaration that they are ready to implement the same inhumane policy. That they see the images of crying children and desperate families not as a warning but as a blueprint.

The Price of Delusion

It is precisely the states with the harshest anti-immigration policy, the most radical rejection of renewable energies, and the loudest cries for “freedom” where people suffer the most. Our independently researched statistics show clearly: Texas, Florida, and Louisiana not only lead in financial distress, they are also at the top for lack of health insurance, teenage pregnancy, and illiteracy. This is no coincidence but a system. Republican policy promises “the little people” salvation and delivers misery. It promises jobs through fossil industries and delivers environmental destruction. It promises security through isolation and delivers social disruption. And while the average family in Texas can no longer pay its electricity bill – in a state bursting with energy resources! – oil and gas companies are raking in billions. It is the perfect illustration of what Noam Chomsky called “socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.”

Nevada with a score of 58, South Carolina with 56 – the list reads like a map of Republican America. Meanwhile, Vermont (21), an exceptional case, Oregon (30), and other Democrat-led states have the lowest levels of financial distress. The governor of Vermont (Phil Scott) may be a Republican, but he belongs to the moderate wing of the party and governs in a clearly blue state. The contrast could not be clearer. And yet the AfD wants to import exactly this failed model into Germany. The warning these numbers convey is unmistakable: right-wing populist policy does not make you rich, but poor. It does not make you free, but dependent. It does not make you safe, but vulnerable. Texas’ 62 points are not an abstract statistic – they mean families losing their homes, the sick unable to afford treatment, children going to school hungry.

The young generation in Nepal has shown in recent days what happens when the measure is full. They burned down parliament, forced the prime minister to resign, sent the political class fleeing. It was an act of desperation, born of the realization that traditional democratic means had failed. Germany does not have to reach this point. The population still has a choice. They can still decide whether to follow the siren song of the populists or learn from the mistakes of others.

The warning signs are unmistakable. Texas, Florida, and Louisiana show where right-wing populist policy leads: not to prosperity but to poverty, not to security but to chaos, not to freedom but to oppression. The escalation of Russian aggression under Trump shows what happens when democracies cower before autocrats. The deportation machine of the USA shows how quickly rhetoric becomes reality.

Anyone who still believes that everything will be better with the AfD is free to do so. It is their right, but self-reflection and independent questioning have never hurt. History teaches us that the road to tyranny is paved with promises. Promises of greatness, of purity, of simple solutions. In the end, only ashes remain. The question is not whether we could know better. The question is whether we want to do better. The answer to that is given at the ballot box. Every vote for the AfD is a vote for the Texan model of social misery, for Trump’s capitulation to Putin, for the deportation machine that turns people into numbers.

History does not forgive repeated mistakes.