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The National
29-06-2025
- General
- The National
There is a chasm at the heart of politics across the West
However, there is now a growing feeling that the very idea of the future – how we think, imagine and act upon it – is in deep crisis affecting how we reflect and behave in the present and see our capacity to bring about change. This essay will assert that this crisis of the future is not something far-off which can be parked until we have time to think about it. Rather it is a crisis in the present and of where we are – and where we are going. It matters and has consequences for all humanity and our planet. READ MORE: Angela Rayner called out over 'tone deaf' message about terminal illnesses It will examine the notion of past, lost and alternative futures, the rise and fall of 'the official future' and the danger of being mesmerised by the allure of 'a single story'. The idea of the future reveals much about the current times we live in. Hence, the future is often a projection of present times or trends, hopes and fears, and entails a temporal dimension whereby past, present and future are linked. Past Futures Still Present THE future has been with us for a long time. In the 18th century, a genre of utopian fiction arose that addressed epochal changes across the Western world such as the rise of industry, empire and a mercantile class. In the 19th century, collective movements and ideas explored the explosion of wealth, trade, technology and inequality, rooted in the socialist and collectivist traditions which posed the prospect of a new kind of society based on equality and co-operation. In the 20th century, scarred by two deadly World Wars, the march of modernity continued politically, culturally and through architecture, design and style. Fritz Lang's iconic 1927 film Metropolis captured a view of the future – of skyscrapers, densely populated cityscapes and flying cars – informed by his first experience of visiting Manhattan. Despite Lang's anti-Nazi beliefs, the film was loved by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, and by senior Nazis who saw their brutal dystopian plans foregrounded in its images. Post-1945, such cities as the new capital of Brasilia, Le Corbusier's designs, the Bruce Plan for Glasgow all represented peak modernity. There was a faith in an innate optimism, and that humanity and human relationships could be remade in a new ordered, clean environment. It turned out differently. The post-war rise in living standards and consumer revolution across the West revolutionised how we lived. One symbol was the explosion of car ownership and what it inferred about its owner. It was not just about getting from A to B but stood for an expansive vision of the future representing independence, choice and the safety of a privatised freedom where you could create your own journey through time and space. (Image: Archant) This transformation was marked by a technological revolution in the home and a shift in how we saw planet earth environmentally and from space. The Space Race between the US and USSR witnessed a plethora of films, drama and writing about science-fiction futures. These were often shaped by threats to earth and how humanity organised and came together to repel, or civilize, it – from Star Trek's first variant in the 1960s to a host of cheaper UK variants such as UFO and Space 1999. Cold War Scenarios and the Rise of 'the Official Future' THE Cold War era produced a huge military-industrial complex in the US and USSR. In the former, this saw the creation of the Rand Corporation which advised the US government on how to compete with the Soviets in nuclear weapons, technology and how to practice 'deterrence' and even the fallacy of how to 'win' a nuclear war. Rand brought together experts, academics and military planners who changed how futures thinking occurred. Their version of the future was influential, had access to the highest levels of government, and was a future about levels of classification and secrecy. In this it fuelled the idea of a secret future which government and authority are deliberately keeping from the public. Rand and other like-minded bodies contributed to the explosion of conspiracy theories which now litter public discourse from 9/11 to Covid. Rand introduced the world to a host of future thinking tools, namely 'the official future', scenario planning and a 'war room' as the centre of decision-making: mimicked by mainstream politics. Later Shell Corporation pioneered innovative scenario planning in the 1970s spurred on by that decade's oil price spike and global instability. The Year 2000 produced by the US Hudson Institute in 1967 attempted to provide a comprehensive survey of the next 33 years. It was an impressive collation of materials, trends and data, addressing increasingly complex nature and demands upon government, and expansion of education and skills at work. More revealing is what they missed – including the changing status of women in Western societies, the rise of identity politics, and the emergence of radical Islam. All of which underlined the blinkered nature of privileged 'policy wonk' intelligence in the US and West. This reinforces a wider truth about such 'official future' thinking, that in their top-down way of analysing the world they have built-in biases. The values inherent within them are often unstated or assumed without scrutiny. The Year 2000 found the Western economic model so universal in its merits that it could not believe it would not be irresistible and spread across the globe. The Power of Storytelling ALTERNATIVE ways to imagine the future are available, and one obvious way is through the power of human creativity, imagination and story. Studies about the importance of story and storytelling abound but one of the most ambitious in recent decades has been The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker. Booker states there are a finite number of archetypical stories – an argument as old as humanity. He poses that a common theme informing many of them is the search for light and the allure of the dark and the continual battle between the two: an observation he uses to illuminate our ongoing fascination with Nazis in fiction and epic narrative such as Star Wars. A corollary of this is put by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche who in a 2009 TED talk identified 'the danger of a single story'. She was addressing how Western opinion has traditionally viewed Africa and Africans as 'a basket case', 'hopeless' and 'helpless', and how these external caricatures have come to be internalised by Africans themselves contributing to these descriptions taking even more of a hold. Adiche posed that rejecting the constraints of 'a single story', whether it concerns Africans or any other group, is a kind of release and liberation. She argues that it aids people to overthrow external attempts to disempower them and helps them make their own story and future by empowering them to tell a more nuanced account of their lives. These insights informed two futures projects, Scotland 2020 and Glasgow 2020, undertaken with the UK think tank Demos which I led. The Scotland 2020 project came first and entailed both scenario exercises and generated a set of stories, along with a series of policy recommendations. The more wide-ranging project Glasgow 2020 followed and deliberately did not commission scenarios (there already being an entire industry of such production in various city agencies). It concentrated on the development of stories by the people of Glasgow via events across the city where they created characters, plot lines, relationships, choices and values of its citizens in that future. The story events represented a representative cross-section of the city, over 5000 people, and involved immersive, deliberative conversations. Humans have an innate ability to talk about the future if they feel they have agency, are respected, trust processes and know that any real future involves difficult choices and trade-offs. Then as now, the 'official future' of the city was laid out in glossy documents. This 'official future' was nearly always sectoral in the account it told whether about tourism, shopping, culture, economic development. For all the talk of joined-up governance, it was anything but. The stories of the future that people told were not sectional. Instead, they were cross-cutting, value-based and centred on the philosophies in the most general sense people wanted government and public bodies to champion. People did not address narrow areas such as public health or crime levels; rather they addressed how people related to each other and yearned for official bodies that spoke the same language as them. Many suspected when they spoke about the values of government that, for all the soft ways in which officialdom tried to present things, they were far removed from the values they wanted them to champion. They felt there was a democratic deceit at the heart of how government was conducted. Tomorrow cannot just be a bigger version of Today PRESENT in all these discussions was the spectre of 'the official future' – an account with an instrumental view of people, progress and the future which reinforces a prevailing sense of powerlessness. Core to this view of the future is something we came to call 'linear optimism' – a phrase that not one single person verbalised throughout the project but which they often described. Linear optimism embodies the notion that the future should be, and will be, a better, bigger version of the present. In this it has, as one of its central conceits, a denial of future choice. It says underneath its fake optimistic gloss that all of us outwith government, public bodies and corporates should not bother considering the future because it has already been decided by bodies more important and knowledgeable than ourselves. It says the future is closed and not open for discussion. Critically for its adherents it has increasingly failed to deliver on its central promise: economic growth, greater prosperity and wider opportunities. The mantra of the globalisers and their vision of a free trade world driven by market forces became the dominant global order after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet for all its self-assuredness it has increasingly failed to deliver the goods with flatlining living standards across the West since the banking crash, an unsustainable Chinese economic model driven by debt and a trade deficit with the US, global instability, and the West's neverending wars in the Middle East (which globalisation apologists such as Thomas Friedman said would not happen in a world of interconnected trade). The New York University-based Centre for Artistic Activism, led by Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert, utilises similar creative tools as a different way of advancing social change and the future across the world. They make the case that too much radical politics do not contain joy, fun or irreverence, and instead come over as a chore and weight on people's shoulders, leaving people feeling exhausted and lectured. In their opinion, much radical protest is about going through the motions and not looking at the world and gains that people want to make and then thinking about what this would change – and seeing if that change can be advanced and nurtured. The two Steves put creative imaginations at the core of their work. Their residential in the run-up to 2014 in Newbattle College attracted an amazing array of participants of all ages and backgrounds, of which one said, 'I have been coming to political events since 1961 and this was the most inspiring set of discussions I have ever experienced'. A major take away from their work is the importance of art, specifically that 'art needs activism and activism needs art.' Lost Futures and Post-Capitalism THE future of the future needs to address what Mark Fisher described as 'lost futures', drawing on the concept of Jacques Derrida's hauntology. This is, in Fisher's words, 'a society haunted by the remnants of these lost futures, leading to a cultural landscape where nostalgia and revivalism prevail': all contributing to an absence of alternative futures in the present. These 'lost futures' are felt profoundly, producing a truncated, predictable menu of stale choices curtailed by 'the official future.' The radical science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin added to this the observation, asking whether we can dare to have the capacity to imagine a post-capitalist world and future? Can we outline, beyond such works as Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Iain M Banks Culture series and the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, a real, viable alternative idea of the future? Jonathan White's recent book In The Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea poses that the notion of the future is about the present and the notion of temporal space, language and capacity: an intelligence which connects past, present and future, and which kicks against the short-termism of party politics today. The space to create that set of connections needs to be made in a world driven by short attention spans, by instant gratification and simple solutions, and by the failure of mainstream politics to treat voters as adults who can make difficult choices. One view of the future increasingly influential is put forward by Silicon Valley tech bros. They present a view of capitalism, transgressing being human and planet earth which takes a transformative view of AI, transhumanism and even life beyond the limits of our planet. This is a power elite who have been fawned and told that they are unique and that their every desire should be indulged, with their private fantasies projected onto a version of the future which aligns with their capitalist interests. The absence of futures thinking and literacy in present-day Scotland can be seen in political debate and independence. In office, the SNP have said implicitly don't worry about the future; this is intertwined with independence and any other major choices can be decided the other side of statehood. This is another example of a closed future saying this subject is not up for discussion. This is a major missing dimension of Scottish political debate and a subject I will explore in a follow-up essay. One issue which needs addressing is agency. The hollowing out and exhaustion of mainstream politics and political parties across the West aids the crisis of the future. This can be seen in the collusion of the traditional Westminster parties in clinging to the broken UK economic and social model and in an inability to map out an alternative terrain on political economy, capitalism and repairing the social contract between government and people. The geo-political global environment raises major questions not just for politics but the idea of the future. In the immediate post-war era, in the 1950s and 1960s, America represented the future with its open expansiveness, its growing economy, cultural clout and military power – all offering an intoxicating mix of 'the American dream' of freedom and opportunity. Trumpian America has dealt a deathblow to that version of the US. There can be no going back to how things were before, America is no longer watching the back of Europe and is no longer the shining idea and future. America has become another 'lost future'. Related to this is the prevalent feeling that we are living in 'end times' – whether that is imminent environmental collapse or the march of technology and AI. This contributes to a diminishing of timescales and temporal space with numerous elections presented as 'the last chance' to save democracy or something else precious. That raises the stakes in numerous contests and the benefit and loss between winning and not winning as seen in the recent American and Brazilian Presidential elections. The same dynamic can be identified in COP summits and the protests of Extinction Rebellion and from a very different perspective American survivalists. COP summits regularly present humanity as close to 'the midnight hour' to try to motivate the delegations to come to global agreement. But the cumulative effect is an arms race of language. The Closed Future has to be defeated THE future cannot be closed. It cannot be left to experts, governments or corporates. The crisis of the future is a major phenomenon in an age of change, disruption and shocks, and cannot go unexplored and unchallenged. If it were, major and negative consequences flow for politics, humanity and the planet. The open future is the opposite of the closed future. It is a rejection of 'the end of history.' It is not some Blair-Clinton 'third way' narrative and hangover from the era of peak globalisation. Rather it is about prising open the debate on our collective future. Rejecting the end of the future. Debate across the West cannot be reduced to a choice between a failed neoliberalism and bust economics; a watered-down social democracy which has many historic achievements but is now exhausted and hollowed out and a populism presenting itself as the main challengers to the status quo. In such circumstances the forces of the populist right will have many advantages pretending to be insurgents. All the above share common ground on economics, the broken social contract, and the way they regard most people as incapable of creating and deciding their collective future with others. They believe the future has been determined. Mainstream politics are part of a single problematic story which stresses that there is no alternative. Breaking out of that single story that limits, diminishes and depowers us would be a kind of freedom and liberation. But it will require developing visions of different futures, not accepting that the future is over and closed, and finding new forms of political expression beyond the current inadequate forms of party and democracy. Those different versions of the future and different ideas of society, the world and our planet, are already here. They can be found in fiction, arts and culture, and innovators and imagineers working beyond the mainstream. But 'the official story' wants to hold on, despite its failures, and tell us the lie that there is only one single story – that 'There is No Alternative' to the present state. That deception and the dehumanising, diminishing, reactionary values it represents must be defeated by a vision of the future which tells a very different, more hopeful story of, for – and by – all of us. We can see all around us dissatisfaction, anger and rage at the status quo and 'the official future' from our communities, across Scotland and the UK, to globally. People know the existing domestic and global order is rotten and indefensible. That feeling and resistance has to be used to create the resources and ideas for that alternative future.
India.com
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- India.com
Meet actress, whose great grandfather had connection with Adolf Hitler, her mother was forced to leave the country, she is now..., her name is...
From making her debut in Karan Johar's Student of the Year and being called a product of nepotism to now becoming one of the most loved 'products of nepotism' after delivering some of the most iconic performances in Raazi, Gully Boy, and Gangubai Kathiawadi — Alia Bhatt is more than just a film industry legacy kid. Alia Bhatt's maternal bloodline holds a riveting and rather grim chapter from pre-WWII Germany Behind the stardom, glam, and blockbuster films lies a chilling slice of history that even Alia Bhatt's most devoted fans might not know. Yes, you read it right! Her maternal bloodline holds a riveting and rather grim chapter from pre-WWII Germany. According to a report, in an interview, Alia shared that her maternal great-grandfather, Karl Hoelzer, wasn't just a German citizen during the Adolf Hitler era—he was a rebel in hiding. As fascism swept across Europe, Hoelzer bravely ran an underground newspaper opposing Hitler's regime. It was an act that nearly cost him his life. He was arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp, but escaped death thanks to a sharp lawyer. Forced to flee Germany, he relocated to England, where Alia's grandmother was eventually born. Well, after a while, Alia's mother, actress Soni Razdan, added deeper context to the story. Though the family wasn't Jewish, Karl's anti-Nazi stance made him a target. Years later, that legacy of resilience would echo in Alia's cinematic portrayals of strong, defiant women. According to the reports, Alia Bhatt's grandmother, Gertrude Hoelzer, and her mother, Soni Razdan, were forced to leave Germany in 1937 due to political persecution. Gertrude's father was an anti-Nazi activist and ran an underground newspaper against Hitler, which led the family to flee to Czechoslovakia and eventually find refuge in England as political refugees. Alia Bhatt's net worth Today, Alia Bhatt sits on an empire. With an estimated net worth of Rs 520 crore, she's not just ruling the box office but also fashion racks. Alia Bhatt's entrepreneurial journey Acting wasn't enough for her, and that's why she launched her very own brand, Ed-a-Mamma, which is aimed at kids and maternity wear. It soon caught the eye of Reliance Retail, which bought a 51% stake in 2023. It's a business win that hints at her ties to the Ambani circle—not surprising given her husband, Ranbir Kapoor, is close friends with Akash Ambani. Alia's personal life has been equally headline-worthy. She married Ranbir in 2022, and the two welcomed daughter Raha later that year. But the actress is not slowing down. She's set to appear in Alpha, a new entry in the YRF Spy Universe, releasing Christmas 2025. The film also stars Sharvari Wagh, Bobby Deol, and Anil Kapoor. From a great-grandfather who defied a dictator to a granddaughter rewriting what stardom looks like—Alia Bhatt's journey is more layered than any film role she's ever played.
Atlantic
22-05-2025
- General
- Atlantic
In Times of Trouble, Seek Moral Beauty
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest and Franciscan friar who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 for hiding Jews and publishing anti-Nazi tracts, then sent to Auschwitz. He might have survived the camp and the war had he looked out for himself. Instead, he volunteered to take the place of a man randomly selected to be starved to death in retribution for another prisoner's escape. After several weeks without food, he was still clinging to life and leading other prisoners in prayer. The impatient guards finished him off by lethal injection. Kolbe submitted calmly, offering his arm to the executioner and waiting for death. His story lives on, in no small part because the man whose place Kolbe took, Franciszek Gajowniczek, did survive the camp. In the decades after the war, his account of Kolbe's self-abnegation came to inspire millions of people, of all faiths and no faith. This is an example of how an act of moral beauty—visible in any form of charity, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, courage, or self-sacrifice—can acquire an extraordinary power. When you can see moral beauty in others, you will find goodness in yourself as well. If you're frustrated with, or cynical about, the state of the world today, or if you simply want a sure way to get happier, looking for such moral beauty might be just what you need. Jonathan Freedland: The unheeded warning Acts of selflessness are at the center of many ancient teachings and religious traditions, both Abrahamic and karmic. Kolbe's own Christian faith teaches, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Charity toward others is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Dharma in Hinduism refers to the righteous path that a person's life should take, which includes being honest, avoiding causing harm, and showing generosity toward others. Although self-sacrifice might seem unnatural and against human nature, the reverse is true. Some evolutionary biologists contend that altruism is an innate trait that evolved to foster cohesion in kinship groups; they note that the characteristic is also found among nonhuman primates. This behavior extends even to laying down one's life for friends and kin, a phenomenon that scholars believe occurs because of what they call 'identity fusion': I am willing to die for you because I believe my membership in this community is paramount, so defending it is worth my sacrifice; in that sense, I am dying for me, too. Such courage and self-sacrifice toward kin can certainly be inspiring, but moral beauty is most striking in acts of goodness toward others with whom one does not have obvious ties, exhibiting a degree of altruism that is clearly contrary to one's individual interests. This occurs when a person helps another for no reason at all, forgives someone who truly does not deserve it, or—in the most extreme circumstances—gives up their life for a stranger. Witnessing this kind of moral beauty elicits what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls 'moral elevation,' which is experienced both psychologically and neurologically. Indeed, researchers writing in the journal Brain Research have identified specific areas of the brain that are stimulated by moral beauty. The psychologist Rhett Diessner has written a great deal about moral beauty and elevation. With his co-authors, he notes that this association induces 'pleasant feelings of warmth in the chest, feeling uplifted, moved.' Further, as Diessner told me by email, new research undertaken in his laboratory at Lewis-Clark State College, in Idaho, demonstrates that these 'magical' feelings lead to a desire to be better people ourselves and to help others. This results in prosocial actions, which can provide higher levels of individual and collective happiness. Happiness derived from self-sacrifice is much deeper than plain positive feelings. Psychologists writing in 2016 showed that people feel that their life has more significance when they either help another person, without self-aggrandizement or any expectation of gain, or work to make the world a better place. The scholars found this has the greatest benefit when people are suffering from a loss of their sense of significance, perhaps after being rejected in a relationship or losing a job. Arthur C. Brooks: A compliment that really means something Putting all the research together, we know that witnessing acts of moral beauty can elevate us to higher happiness, all the more so if we imitate these acts. We should seek out moral beauty in our lives, especially in times of suffering, when we need inspiration and a reminder that there is good in the world. Here are three ways to do so. 1. Keep more morally beautiful company. One obvious way to find more moral beauty in your life is to spend time with people who are generous and dedicated to other-serving behavior—and to avoid those who are not. This is not always easy; in fact, we commonly seek out people who are negative in the ways that we are—especially toward others—because making common cause helps us feel bonded to them. But this can create a vicious cycle that only intensifies unhappiness through mutually reinforcing negativity. So ditch the gossip circle, and find friends who are more positive and generous than you are, people who model the moral beauty—and thus the happiness—that you want in your life. 2. Make moral beauty your leisure pastime. I have met many people who have dramatically improved their lives by dedicating their leisure time to serving others. They may spend their weekends and free time volunteering in their communities or take service trips instead of beach vacations. What they typically tell me is that when they volunteer for the first time, they're deeply inspired by the people they meet, and want to feel that way more. When they make serving others a way of life, their happiness and sense of meaning rise—just as the research predicts. 3. Practice gratitude. Humans are not by nature grateful creatures. Our survival as a species has favored individuals who are vigilant, suspicious, and hyperaware of threats, rather than those who bask in the glow of gratitude. This has resulted in what psychologists call 'negativity bias,' which causes things we resent, such as others' bad behavior, to grab our attention, whereas the things that we're grateful for, such as acts of moral beauty, tend not to. (This shared bias obviously explains in part the appeal of the mean-gossip circle.) You can override this tendency by consciously focusing on things you're grateful for. By taking time each day to reflect thankfully, you will start to notice acts of generosity and self-sacrifice, and people who are good and kind. You'll see moral beauty all around you if you only stop to notice it. Arthur C. Brooks: The bliss of a quieter ego One last, important point: We are naturally drawn to moral beauty, and it is very good for us to follow that attraction. But many of us have a competing fascination with moral depravity. By way of illustration, from 2018 to 2021, documentary content on streaming services increased by 63 percent, with the largest growth in the genre of true crime; from 2019 to 2024, the number of true-crime-podcast listeners nearly tripled. According to the Pew Research Center, these trends were especially clear among women and people under 30. Scholars have tried to account for this rising interest only in a glancing way, suggesting that it provides a complex kind of pleasure that combines pursuit of knowledge with 'cultural tourism.' Maybe this anodyne description suffices, but it's hard not to feel that, at some level, such morbid curiosity is akin to focusing not on the beautiful acts of Maximilian Kolbe, but on the sadistic, deviant behavior of his captors. This is not actually an argument based on taste—or, rather, distaste. It concerns the risk to well-being, with potential longer-term damage to character. We know that consuming news about crime can raise fear and lead people to overestimate the danger of being a victim of crime. By analogy, treating moral ugliness as a form of entertainment may almost certainly arrest and even reverse the effects of moral beauty in your life. Instead of achieving elevation, expect depression. But choose what's morally beautiful, and you will be rewarded.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla's Sales Are Somehow Continuing to Fall
If there's a light at the end of the tunnel for Tesla, it's an oncoming Model Y trapped inside Elon Musk's dorky Vegas Loop. Already in a dire deliveries slump while its brand image goes up in flames, the EV automaker experienced yet another devastating plummet in sales last month in several of its most important European markets, in what is the latest sign of how its CEO's bizarre behavior is driving customers away. In Sweden, Tesla's new car sales nosedived by a staggering 81 percent in April, Reuters reported, to its lowest level in two and half years. Sales in the Netherlands experienced a 74 percent decline, the lowest for that month since 2022. That decline looked like 59 percent in France, while Denmark sales dropped by 67 percent, and sales in Portugal fell by a third. Even worse, Tesla is trending in the exact opposite direction of the European EV market overall, which is blossoming. In the first quarter, according to new data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association cited by Reuters, Tesla sales in the continent, including the UK, fell by 37 percent, while EV sales rose by 28 percent. Last year, Tesla sold 86,000 cars over that time period. This year, it sold 54,000. This is Musk's vaunted business acumen at work. His support of far right politics, his role in the Trump administration, and his off-cuff Sieg Heils have made him an extremely unpopular figure in Europe, where customers have seemingly little patience for his thinly-veiled Nazi bullshit. Protestors and vandals, for example, have smashed up Tesla dealerships and spray painted them with anti-Nazi slogans. "The brand has taken a reputational hit here in Europe," CEO Ginny Buckle told Reuters. In a survey of over 1,642 people between March and April conducted by the website, 59 percent of respondents said that Musk made them less inclined to buy a Tesla. Tesla is also facing a lot more competition than it used to. Its fleet has remained largely the same, and its newest and most "exciting" vehicle, the Cybertruck, isn't even legal in Europe. "Tesla's technological lead has largely been eroded with the current model lineup," Andy Leyland, co-founder of supply chain specialist SC Insights, told Reuters. "Competition from both legacy auto and Chinese entrants will be weighing on sales." With so many red flags popping up, the automaker looks doomed for a repeat of last year, when its net profits more than halved from $15 billion to $7 billion and its revenue from car sales dipped by over $5 billion, experiencing its first-ever annual decline in deliveries. This year, Tesla revealed that its number of vehicle sales dropped by 13 percent between January and March, making it the worst sales drop in the company's history. During that period, its earnings fell by 71 percent compared to the same quarter last year — far worse than what analysts expected — while its total revenue slid by nine percent. Tesla could also lose its lucrative revenue from selling carbon credits, if Trump delivers on his promise to revert the Biden-era regulations that made them possible. All told, Tesla faces significant hurdles to restoring its sales and its image. Investors hope their savior will be the automaker's long-hyped, affordable $25,000 car — but it's unclear when that will even hit the market. More on Tesla: Elon Musk Erupts in Rage at News That Tesla Trying to Replace Him as CEO Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New European
08-05-2025
- Politics
- New European
This is what VE Day means to Germans
Flashback to 1945. The allies themselves didn't put an emphasis on freeing Germany. To America, Russia, Britain and France, May 8 marked victory over Hitler, the defeat of the Reich and its people, the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht. It took Germans some time to see May 8, 1945, for what it was: a liberation. And yet, that hard-won consensus is under fire again today. In April, Washington DC had issued a directive to the commander of the US forces that stated: 'Germany is not being occupied for the purpose of its liberation, but as a defeated enemy state.' In other words: The Nazis hadn't invaded the country, they were the country. To Germans, the day was – at best – complicated. In the East, the self-declared anti-fascist GDR, socialism celebrated itself, its heroes and the Red Army. In West Germany, Theodor Heuss, a liberal who would later become Bundespräsident, pointed out the ambivalence: 'We were redeemed and destroyed in one,' he said in 1949. In 1965, on the 20th anniversary of what he called 'the German capitulation', chancellor Ludwig Erhard of the CDU did not want to speak of a day of liberation in a broadcast address. In 1970, the SPD chancellor Willy Brandt, an anti-Nazi exile, called it a 'total defeat' of a 'total war'. When he used the term liberation, he meant others had been freed, from German rule, 'from terror and fear'. It wasn't until 1975 that President Walter Scheel, again a liberal, dared to give the 'contradictory' date its full dimension. In Bonn's Schlosskirche, he said: 'We were liberated from a terrible yoke, from war, murder, servitude and barbarism… But we do not forget that this liberation came from outside, that we, the Germans, were not able to shake off this yoke ourselves.' The trouble was: No one was ready to hear it. It took Marvin J Chomsky's 1978 TV mini-series Holocaust to jolt the post-war German public awake. And it was the younger generations who fully embraced Richard von Weizsäcker's now iconic speech to the Bundestag on May 8, 1985 – probably the most celebrated (and controversial) in the last 80 years. 'Most Germans had believed that they were fighting and suffering for the good cause of their own country,' the Bundespräsident said. 'And now it was to turn out: Not only was it all in vain and pointless, but it had also served the inhuman aims of a criminal leadership.' The abyss was history, but the future was dark and uncertain. And still, he insisted, 'What we all need to say together today: May 8 was a day of liberation. It liberated us all from the inhuman system of National Socialist tyranny.' He also expressed sympathy for Germans who had lost loved ones, were victims of expulsion or rape. But he made one thing very clear: the cause of 'flight, expulsion and lack of freedom' for many Germans, particularly in the East, hadn't been the end of the war – but the tyranny that led to the beginning of the war. 'We must not separate May 8, 1945 from January 30, 1933,' he said, reminding everyone that Hitler had never concealed his hatred of the Jews, that everyone knew or could have learnt about the deportations, that people chose to look away. 'Who could remain unsuspecting after the burning of the synagogue… the incessant desecration of human dignity?' he asked. Weizsäcker's conclusion: 'We certainly have no reason to take part in victory celebrations on this day, but we have every reason to recognise May 8, 1945 as the end of an aberration in German history that held the seeds of hope for a better future.' Today, this sounds self-evident, blindingly obvious – but back then, it really stirred things up. The applause was mixed with massive outrage. Criticism didn't just come from people who remembered the nights of bombing, the loss of their homeland, hunger and helplessness but especially from the far right and from within Weizsäcker's own party. More than 30 MPs from the CDU and CSU boycotted his speech. A defeat, it was said, could not be celebrated and wasn't it time to stop the endless self-flagellation – the notorious Aufarbeitung? That sort of view had nearly vanished from public life. But now, it's back – courtesy of the far right. Only recently, Brandenburg's AfD state parliamentary group whinged that calling May 8 a liberation was 'inappropriate and historically ignorant', demanding the state government to drop the term. The motion flopped, but it's part of a bigger pattern: the AfD railing against the 'left-Green unpatriotic' narrative that – in their eyes – robs Germans of pride in their 'glorious' past. 'Hitler and the Nazis are just a flyspeck in our 1000-year history,' as then-chairman Alexander Gauland said back in 2018. Another complaint: not enough focus on German suffering. The AfD wants to put local victims front and centre. In Berlin, where May 8 is a public holiday this year, the local AfD fumed that it didn't 'do justice to the victims of Soviet oppression in Eastern Europe'. At best, they said, it was a 'half liberation'. In Thuringia, they accused the left of 'walking over dead bodies' just to get a holiday out of it. One problem for the AfD, though: their Russophilia doesn't quite gel with their remembrance agenda. You can't snuggle up to Putin while erasing WWII and the Red Army from memory – Russia, after all, treats its war dead as sacred. Pick a lane. Meanwhile, the Bundestag didn't invite Russia's ambassador to this year's commemorations. He kicked up a fuss about being left out – but tough luck. When your country justifies war crimes by falsely claiming it's 'fighting fascism', you don't get a front-row seat at memorials. 'The Red Army liberated Auschwitz, we will not forget that,' said President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. But today's Kremlin is pushing a 'manipulative historical narrative' around Ukraine. And Germany has its hands full already – keeping its own history from being reframed.
