From our correspondent
BERLIN – The dam has receded twice in less than a month. The first is in Sonneberg, a picturesque center in Thuringia, and until then known only for the production of plush teddy bears, whereAfD candidate Robert Sisselmann was elected mayor of a major district council with 53% of the vote. Last week the second in Rajon Jesnitz, a village of 10,000 inhabitants in Saxony-Anhalt, which chose the mayor of the far-right nationalist party. Either way, it was It was futile for all the other political forces to block their wayConvergence of their votes on the alternative candidate.
small in size, The AfD’s two electoral victories are already having a major impact on German politics. Not only because they give her tangible administrative powers for the first time, in Sonneberg also the power to welcome immigrants or not, but also because they point to something much deeper. National polls say, If the vote takes place on Sunday, the AfD would receive 21% of the vote, second only to Cdu-Csu. (down by only 5 points) and ahead of the SPD-certified Chancellor’s Party by 19%. Moreover, in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony, the eastern territories where regional parliaments will be renewed next year, the party took first place, around 30%.
In the diverse and changing landscape of far-right Europe, the AfD represents a separate case. First, because we are in Germany, where every ultra-nationalist regurgitation stirs up the ghosts of history: “a dangerous choice,” defined the vote in Thuringia Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Jewish community in Munich. secondly, because while elsewhere we witness real or supposed turning points in an intermediate sense, In the Federal Republic, success in the polls coincides with a disturbing radicalism, consisting of xenophobia, anti-Islamic hatred and veiled outbursts of anti-Semitism.. A name for everyone, the name of former history teacher Bjorn Hockey, a Thuringian leader and true center of inner power, who regularly draws on the vocabulary of the Nazi strategic army in his speeches. So much so that, as already the case for the AfD in its home turf, it too is personally targeted by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which wants to put it under surveillance as a potential danger to democracy.
The rise of the AfD literally throws the German political class into a panic, which without exception repeats its total rejection of any alliance or agreement, but is unable to go any further. thereSuddeutsche ZeitungHe talks about “despair” and “surrender”. Democratic parties blame each other for what is happening. The idea of banning the Alternative for Germany, relaunched by some Cdu advocates and the Greens, betrays a complete absence of proposals and projects that must be presented to the electorate.who is apparently tempted by his delusional and dangerous qualities, but in fact mostly expresses protest and anxiety.
Indeed, the Traffic Light Coalition led by Olaf Scholz is in the dock for the success of the AfD, torn from the inside and the protagonist of strange and unpopular decisions in terms of energy savings, such as those that would have forced all German families within a short time to replace their water heaters with expensive heat pumps. After it was amended in the race, the Karlsruhe court declared the law unconstitutional yesterday, because it was too hasty and was not sufficiently discussed in the Bundestag. To increase fears and insecurities, the return of inflation, the eternal German obsession; The contraction of the economy is already technically in recession and the number of immigrants has increased to levels not seen since 2015. “We’ve exacerbated people’s fears,” admits SPD leader Lars Klingbeil.
The fact that the extreme populism of the AfD hovers above everything else in the eastern regions is another Confirmation of the deep fault that divides GermanyMore than 30 years after the reunion. “The peoples of the East – says Klaus Duhr, Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Jena – feel devalued three times: as economic subjects, as aussies and as persons.” Against the backdrop of insecurity, anger and a sense of social exclusion wrought by the war in Ukraine and its economic consequences, the AfD has staked its cards in the land of the former DDR. «I think – says Bodo Ramelow, Prime Minister of Thuringia and sole ruler of Necke – so It is necessary to redefine the spirit of German unityBy bringing East Germans with us, instead of nurturing the impression that we are gossiping or worse, laughing at them.”
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