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

Carmen Valero Berlin

Berlin

Updated Sunday, January 21, 2024-15:18

• Protests Why the German countryside keeps its pulse on the Government of Olaf Scholz

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 for unity among all democrats 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, SPD co-president Saskia Esken suggested the idea of ​​banning the

AfD

, which in addition to consolidating at the federal level,

leads all 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 which 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 the far-right Austrian Identitarian Movement,

businessmen

,

two CDU members

and

an advisor 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 sidelined 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 groupings 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

.