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The author directs the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.
The average German is not easily moved by spontaneous mass cries of “This cannot be tolerated.” So it was quite a moving surprise to see so many of our compatriots marching in the bitter cold for more than two weeks after dark in protest against the onslaught of the hard right. Especially the hilarious parts.
The uproar was sparked by revelations about a secret meeting of right-wing extremists planning mass deportations of immigrants and German nationals with immigrant backgrounds. For those closely following the public radicalization of Germany’s far right, this was probably less than news. But for many concerned citizens, it may have been the proverbial last resort.
In big liberal cities like Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, turnout was so high that police had to disperse demonstrators. But ordinary Germans also took to the streets in hundreds of small towns. They also marched to far-right eastern strongholds. Germany hasn’t seen such large crowds since the 1988-89 protests against the elderly government in communist East Germany.
The nervous reaction of the far-right parliamentary wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) suggests that all this is a terrible shock for a party that thought it was coasting towards a change of government. . The party recently polled at 22%, outperforming all three struggling parties in Prime Minister Olaf Scholz’s “traffic light” coalition.
Some people expressed gloomy opinions, suggesting that the images of dense urban centers may have been generated by AI. Party co-chair Alice Weidel tried in vain to change the subject, telling this newspaper that she supported Germany’s withdrawal from the European Union, Digit.
But problems are also arising in other parts of Germany’s political sphere. In response to reports that Turkey’s authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to establish a party of Turkish immigrants in Germany, German Agriculture Minister Cem Ozdemir, who was born in Germany to Turkish immigrant parents, said: “That’s what we need most,” he posted. But the Turkish government has so far overestimated the loyalty of the diaspora.
A threat by stricken former domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen to create his own far-right party is also likely to prove ineffective. The conservative Christian Democratic Party, which he unsuccessfully tried to woo into AfD supporters, just expelled him for using “language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues.” Masen is noticeably unattractive.
The same cannot be said of the Sala-Wagenknecht Union (BSW). Mainly because its founder and leader bears the name. Born in East Germany, she joined the Communist Party in the spring of 1989, a reversal of her rise through the ranks. She called the peaceful protests that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall “counterrevolution.” After unification, her party became (slightly) more liberal-democratic, and she eventually called herself Die Linke, or left wing. She rose to lead it. She dealt a perhaps fatal blow last year by recruiting groups to work together to form a new movement.
Wagenknecht, 54, was an erudite and accomplished agitator with a firm sense of his own destiny, and wrote his master’s thesis on Marx and Hegel. Last weekend, she drew rapturous applause at her party’s founding convention with her left-wing nationalist narrative for the 21st century: taxing the wealthy, locking out immigrants, and displacing Americans. It is called a “digital colony”). , she abandons Ukraine and embraces Russia. Although she herself is not known for her sense of humor, she could possibly be the idea of a very black joke in history.
The BSW she leads currently has an approval rating of 3-4% nationally, but hopes to strengthen its position in the European Parliament elections in June and the three eastern German state elections in September (13-17% of the vote). ing. The far-right magazine Compact claims that Wagenknecht could unite the two parties, but some analysts believe that despite striking similarities in tone and message, he could garner votes from the AfD. I think it’s sexual.
In fact, it is too early to tell whether these extreme parties will succeed. But their presence will make Germany unstable and unpredictable in a year of high-stakes politics across the West. It will also become more difficult to form and govern a coalition government. It could fall into the hands of extremists. But Scholz’s hapless coalition government in Berlin may need some encouragement from the merry marchers. Germany’s center is no longer silent.
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