It crumbles and crumbles and crumbles and crumbles – the fire wall.
Foto: iStock/Tim Parker
I really can’t hear it anymore. Fire wall here, fire wall there – the term has been part of the fixed repertoire for a few years when politicians: inside talk about the handling of their respective party with the AfD. On the one hand, I suspect that it cannot be so well ordered about the much -made fire wall if you have to summon it. And on the other hand, I am convinced that this fire wall has never really existed. Something away from the great public at the local political level, but also very openly in state politics was and is nothing to be seen from a fire wall. The actual bid that cooperation is consistently omitted is constantly broken. The examples of this are now countless.
The Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation provides an overall overview in a study that is appropriately overwritten. The author: Between 2019 and 2023, a total of 121 cases of concrete cooperation from other parties documented the AfD at the municipal level in East Germany. With a third of the cases, Saxony is once again the leader in this negative ranking. Unsurprisingly: the most common is about the cooperation between the CDU and AfD. But also examples of FDP, SPD, left and the Greens make you take notice. The most pronounced is the cooperation of the Par-Teen with the AfD in the joint voting behavior.
When it comes to the conservative of the conservatives or the prevention of hated projects, then it is generously overlooked over the bid actually issued by the CDU tip in Berlin, not to do a common cause with the AfD. It was CDU boss Friedrich Merz himself who initially had the matter offset. In the ZDF summer interview in July 2023, he reaffirmed the delimitation of his party to the AfD, in order to then restrict local politics in a restrictive manner – which was “something other than state politics or federal politics”. He advocates pragmatism here.
Merz will have been surprised by how much contradiction struck him from his own party. Party greats such as the ruling mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, or Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder contradicted Merz. On “X” he was compelled to explain himself again: “To make it clear again, and I never said otherwise: the decision of the #CDU applies. There will also be no cooperation between the #CDU with the AfD at the local level. «Never said anything else – Aha.
Of course, there is such a decision, only some party friends take care: inside the east very little. The Dresden CDU could not be quick enough to introduce the payment card for asylum seekers: inside. Although there was already a cabinet decision for the payment card system, the pilot project to gradually introduce the card in Saxony started on April 1, 2023-but still: In March 2023, the CDU parliamentary group of the Dresden city council voted an application from the AfD for the introduction of the payment card in Dresden to. The decision was also supported by the FDP and free voters. 33 to 32 votes was the result – for the payment card. The questionable system that is supposed to prevent refugees from transferring money back home would have come anyway. But no, it had to go a little faster in Dresden. So why this coordination behavior of the CDU in Dresden?
In any case, the case made high waves – after all, the CDU and AfD did not cooperate in any village in the Vogtland, but in the Saxon state capital. The Dresden CDU had shown Merz what it thought of his order: nothing. Merz was upset. »The decision is correct on the matter, unacceptable in the procedure. (…) That was a mistake. And we will talk to those affected about everything else. “
I don’t know what or if what happened. What I know is that the Saxon CDU is quite self -confident and is reluctant to say something – especially not from Berlin. In any case, the AfD rightly posted the vote as a huge success. “The fire wall collapses crashing,” cheered AfD city councilor Silke Schöps. These successes in the municipalities – in Dresden on the big stage, but also in the small villages – are particularly valuable for the AfD. First of all, normalization takes place and there is a broad acceptance on a lower political level, according to the calculation, then it is only a matter of time when it works on the next higher level …
One day after the devastating results of the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1, 2024, I drive to the Thuringian Zeulenroda-Trieb. As every Monday, there is a loudly drumming rally by lateral thinkers: inside and Afdlers. But there is also a counter -protest the day after the state election. There I meet Marcel Buhlmann. In outrage, he says that it just took 24 hours until Martina Schweinsburg (CDU), which had won the direct mandate in the Greiz I constituency, spent the exploratory talks with the AfD. Not a big surprise for Marcel, the long -time district administrator of Schweinsburg always moves on the right edge of the CDU.
Martina Schweinsburg said: »Over 30 percent of the Thuringians have chosen AfD. And that is a respect for the voter to talk to them that they chose. “And she continued to be announced:” This Pippi long stocking policy, in which one says: ›The AfD is an evil child, with You shouldn’t play that, “it failed.” Schweinsburg also claims that the AfD can be disenchanted in exploratory talks. Does she seriously believe that? Probably already. The former Greizer district administrator and newly baked member of the state parliament had previously been noticed by right tendencies and may even be completely satisfied with the election result. However, there is no reason for me, no need to talk to an anti -democratic party only because it has received many voices …
If I were a CDU voter, I find it extremely disgusting and outrageous when the state CDU fades the entire election campaign over the fire wall and emphasizes the incompatibility decision, only one day after the election makes a member of the state parliament for exploratory talks with the AfD . And if the same woman makes a clear attitude towards the AfD as a “Pippi long stocking policy”, it says a lot. The careless handling of the AfD, which Schweinsburg shows, is more than questionable. And that she is still serious about the ancient argument “Integration” is ridiculous.
This tactic has turned out to be wrong a long time ago. A look at our neighboring country is enough. For a long time, Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), founded in 1956, was considered a dirty child in the party landscape: a collection of old Nazis and eternal stages. Jörg Haider, one of the pioneers of populism, gave the party a modernization course without changing the extreme right -wing orientation … The scandals that really shake Austria cannot harm the extreme right. They continue to rush unmoved – with success.
Just as some tendencies in East Germany are interpreted as a harbing, you can sometimes also use Austria as a warning example of what could still come to Germany …
And this border shift does not only happen in politics.
Preliminary print with the kind permission of the publisher from Jakob Springfeld’s book, which will be published on January 31: »The West has no idea what happens in the east. Why the strengthening of the right is a threat to all of us «(Quadriga-Verlag, 224 p., Br., 18 €); Book presentation with the author on February 3 in the Kulturbrauerei, Schönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin, 8 p.m.
Jakob Springfeld, born in Zwickau, Saxony in 2002, is human rights and climate activists and a member of PEN Berlin.
First of all, normalization takes place and there is a broad acceptance on a lower political level, so it is only a matter of time when it works on the next higher level.
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