Who should get more say at the ballot box?
The voting debate followed Theresa Hannig's October 27, 2026, column "Wo bleibt die ausgleichende Gerechtigkeit?" in taz's Über Morgen series. Hannig imagines the EU adopting age-weighted voting in the 2040s: people aged 100 or older receive one vote, with an additional vote for each year below 100. Under that fictional system, a 50-year-old would have 51 votes and an 18-year-old would have 83.
The demographic imbalance behind the thought experiment is substantial. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, or bpb, citing the Federal Returning Officer, people aged 50 and older accounted for 59.1% of eligible voters in Germany's 2025 Bundestag election, compared with 43.8% in 1990. The 2025 electorate included 29.6 million people aged 50 and older and 6.2 million aged 18 to 29, a ratio of about five older voters to one younger voter.
Hanns Kemen of Troisdorf sees ingenuity in Hannig's approach but doubts that youth offers protection against the problems associated with age. He imagines powerful interests, joined by token young representatives, demanding recognition for people who work longer or perform better. The result, he suggests, would be extra votes for the upper middle class, followed by legislation supposedly ensuring their fair allocation. His underlying argument is that democracy depends on widely shared morality, decency and honesty.
For H.-J. Sittek of Wedel, the scenario opens a dangerous discussion about devaluing some people's votes. Although he enjoys Hannig's writing, he objects to reducing voting weight with age, even hypothetically, because of the possible consequences. He emphasizes that money cannot buy anyone more than a single personal vote in their democracy. As a warning about attractive policy promises, he points to the sugar tax: in his account, its introduction is welcome, but the earlier promise of directing its proceeds to health systems has disappeared from the discussion.
The taz.de commenter fly challenges a different premise: the column's observation that older people have less time to live with the consequences of their decisions. To fly, that argument seems to assume the decisions will be bad. The commenter counters with developments they regard as positive over the past 50 years, including economic growth, child benefits and parental leave.
Schwarzer's influence and the women outside the spotlight
An article about Alice Schwarzer, "Ohne sie wäre die Frauenbewegung nicht da, wo sie heute ist," drew contrasting accounts of how the women's movement should be remembered. Writing on taz.de, miri recalls an Emma subscription opening up new possibilities while living in provincial northern Germany in the 1980s. Schwarzer's fearlessness, visibility and initiative were formative, the commenter says, and her presence communicated even more than her articles.
Miri acknowledges Schwarzer's later mistakes and describes her as personally formidable, while maintaining that her influence changed the commenter's life. Slatibartfas, by contrast, objects to the article's focus on a prominent individual, arguing that it perpetuates a personality cult at the expense of the movement's broader history.
Slatibartfas credits the many women whose names rarely appeared in the press but whose work in the streets, organizations and private life drove change. Winning voting rights, establishing women's shelters and raising awareness of sexualized violence, the commenter argues, depended on these largely unrecognized activists, who deserve greater remembrance.
How to judge Wüst's record
Matthias Müller of Braunschweig welcomes the portrait of North Rhine-Westphalia's minister-president in "Wüst of Change," but disputes part of its assessment of Hendrik Wüst's government. Using unemployment, regional rail problems and deteriorating bridges as evidence of a mixed record without sufficient context is unfair, he argues, and borders on populist polemic. Deep structural problems, he adds, can hardly be resolved within a five-year term.
An October 25, 2026, analysis by RP Online provides figures on the state's difficulties under Wüst. It reports unemployment of 7.9%, the second-highest rate among Germany's large federal states after Saxony-Anhalt. Economic growth in the first half of the year was 0.3%, compared with 0.9% nationally.
The same analysis cites approximately 3,900 industrial jobs lost each month, about 7,800 vacant teaching positions and a shortfall of 364,000 affordable apartments.
France's unrest and competing views of social order
Responses to "Linker Selbstmord" addressed the unrest in France and the political meaning of violence. On October 17, 2026, rioters set fire to Limoges' town hall, a building more than 140 years old. Prefect Maurice Barate said much of it had been lost. The fire took place during nationwide protests that drew 550,000 participants across roughly 90 cities, according to the Interior Ministry. Rioters also burned the tourism office on Lyon's Place de Bellecour, while a bust of Marianne was toppled in Marseille.
BBC News reported that a 34-year-old suspect linked to a far-left movement and listed on a French national security watchlist was arrested on October 20 in connection with the Limoges fire. Authorities reported more than 2,500 arrests since the unrest began and about 1,000 injured police officers. Curfews were imposed in parts of Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Nice, Lille and Bordeaux. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu pledged a large-scale police presence at further protests.
The commenter Abdurchdiemitte interprets the reaction to the unrest as a defense of the middle classes' own peace, order and rules, whether their politics are liberal or conservative. In this account, the postwar social contract sustained peace and relative prosperity across Western Europe for decades, but mainstream bourgeois parties abandoned that agreement before the left began challenging it. The commenter identifies the resurgence of fascism across Europe as one consequence.
Selbstauslöser instead focuses on what they regard as the everyday violence of powerful interests: redistribution from poor to rich, environmental destruction, destructive competition and dishonesty that erodes trust. The commenter rejects the promise that merit reliably produces prosperity. Comparing today's ultrawealthy with Britain's rulers in Gandhi's time, they argue that Gandhi could prevail nonviolently because his opponents were readily identifiable, whereas today's powerful interests are more adept at selling the promise of prosperity through individual achievement.
