[News]Germany mobilizes against the extreme right: "We have learned from the past"

[Blexfraptor]

The new generation strategists stir up the ghosts of 1933 because the Government coalition is losing electoral mass, but the current scenario has nothing to do with it
Germany is in danger of falling into the hands of the far right and reliving its darkest past. The fear that traditional parties transmit these days to citizens asking for the ban of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has sent thousands of people to the streets in defense of democracy. There are 178 demonstrations in total. On Saturday, more than 80 events were held with the participation of up to 350,000 people. This Sunday Hannover, Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden, Frankfurt and Nuremberg will mobilize.

"If there is something that can never again have a place in Germany, it is a National Socialist racial ideology," says Chancellor Olaf Schoz, who has called on all democrats to unite and to show that Germany "has learned from the past."

Scholz, unlike other social democratic leaders, has not spoken out about the ban on the AfD, but with his statements he has branded the 16.5 million Germans who voted for the AfD in the last elections as anti-democrats and fascists, including thousands of former voters of his party, SPD, the Greens and even the liberals (FDP), the three formations in the government coalition.

The German political scene has nothing to do with the 1930s, when the Nazi Party came to power, but when polls reveal political disaffection and the governing coalition has lost electoral mass due to failures, the strategists again generation always stir the ghosts of 1933.

A few weeks ago, the co-president of the SPD, Saskia Esken, suggested the idea of banning the AfD, which in addition to consolidating at the federal level, leads all the polls in the three federal states that will go to the polls in September, Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia .

At the federal level, the AfD reaches 22% in voting intention, only surpassed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its partner Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU), with 31%. The Government parties are deflating. Scholz's SPD now only has the support of 13% of Germans, the lowest level in almost four years. The Liberals touch the threshold of 5% and the Greens 14%.

In the three 'länder' called to the polls, the AfD would obtain more votes than the sum of the three parties of the federal tripartite. This pivotal formation may not even obtain the 5% of the votes required by law to access parliaments.

The discussion opened by Esken subliminally proposing these regional elections as a referendum between democracy and fascism did not have much progress. "If we ban a party that we don't like, but that continues to lead the polls, it will provoke even greater solidarity with it, and not only among AfD voters. The collateral damage would be very high. The political dimension of the matter is crucial," warned the Government Commissioner for East Germany, Carsten Schneider.

But the debate has resurfaced. Correctiv, a previously unknown non-profit research team, has just revealed that last November 30 people held a meeting at the Landhaus Adlon country hotel in Potsdam and discussed, among other things, of the mass expulsion of immigrants.

Among the participants were Martin Sellner, former leader of Austria's far-right Identitarian Movement, businessmen, two CDU members and an adviser to AfD co-chair Alice Weidel. The title of Correctiv's report to that meeting of individuals without public office or parliamentary seat was 'Secret plan against Germany'.

In the politics of hyperbole it is easy to draw parallels. The meeting took place a few kilometers from the place where the Wannsee conference was held in 1942 during which representatives of the SS, the NSDAP and various ministries of the Reich addressed the deportation and murder of Jews within the framework of the so-called 'solution final'.

It would be interesting to know if what Scholz says in Brussels to his European colleagues about the stability of the German constitutional order is what he says to his fellow citizens, because here what he has done is pull the populist thread: "What will the more than 20 feel now? million citizens of migrant origin? I want to tell everyone: you are part of us. Our country needs you."

Former German president Joachim Gauck has raised his voice: "If we act as if we had a main problem with the Nazis and treat the strange fantasies of expulsion of a minority as if that were the main problem, we would not be being precise in our political struggle." . And Gauck adds: "It is good that citizens take to the streets and express their adherence to democracy, but Germany is not at all on the brink of the Nazi abyss."

For Gauck, and in this he agrees with the Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, "in democracy, if people go to a party like the AfD, what needs to be done is campaign to get them to return to democratic parties."

What remains, then, is the impotence and failure of the traditional parties to act as a barricade to the extreme right with attractive programs and answers to their problems. "The AfD is being marginalized with German thoroughness, but there will be a price for that short-sighted firewall strategy and it will be paid for in the elections. Instead of taking advantage of the confidence of their democracy's impressive success story, the Germans are turning to the past to complicate matters for themselves. future and, in the process, the formation of effective governments," he writes in the Neuen Zürcher Zeitung.

In a fragmented Bundestag, there are no longer majorities for homogeneous alliances like those once formed by Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder or Angela Merkel. As long as the AfD remains demonized - and with it a quarter of the electorate - the alternative is a forced tripartite, like the current one, or the grand coalition. Both cases guarantee costly blockages and compromises at the expense of taxpayers.

The AfD has been able to capitalize on citizen discontent with the Government, which has reached the midpoint of its mandate with constant internal disputes, an economy that contracted by 0.3% last year and an annual inflation rate of 5.9%. the second largest since reunification. The coalition is also facing social protests after having to undertake cuts in subsidies in several portfolios to plug a hole of 17 billion euros in the 2024 budget.

Covering the 'mea culpa' under the blanket of the threat from the far right and the banning of the AfD as a party is a lack of political responsibility, according to CDU leader Friedrich Merz. "This debate only favors the AfD and leads to nothing, because after a hypothetical dissolution a new party would simply emerge," he maintains.

The Greens believe that the AfD is not a political problem but rather one for Justice, that is, for the Constitutional Court. The request for a ban can be presented by the Lower House, the Upper House or the Government, but it could only be successful if it is demonstrated that the party is manifestly opposed to the principles and values of the fundamental liberal and democratic order enshrined in the Constitution, and wants to eliminate them. in an active and combative manner, and also has the ability to achieve its objectives.

In the AfD there are very controversial figures, such as Björn Höcke, party leader in Thuringia, and regional groups declared by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution "possibly far-right", but there is nothing in its program as a party that attacks the established order. Until proven otherwise, the traditional parties in decline will make noise but gain little.

 

https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2024/01/21/65ad240f21efa0db158b457c.html