Alternative for Germany’s core supporters are sticking with the party despite allegations of dodgy links to Russia and China.
Will the sensational allegations of espionage and dubious links to Russia and China implicating politicians of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) be the decisive blow that ends the party’s long ascent in German politics?
For many of the party’s faithful, at least, the answer is clear: The allegations, particularly those surrounding Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate for the European election, hardly matter.
If anything, they may only deepen their loyalty.
As an American, this sounds all-too-familiar. I hope Germany can get rid of their Russian infiltrators, because we’ve gotten past the point where that’s possible.
We are looking at the AfD taking over hundreds of muncipal parliaments, and likely be involved in multiple state governments. The German “center” has moved in huge steps to the right and is unwilling to stop them, or even happy to help them into power.
The AfD were caught having a conference to discuss mass deportations of “foreigners” including german citizens and ethnically german german citizens that hold the “wrong” political opinions. They held this conference with members of the former conservative now far right CDU party and another fringe party in between the two. We are talking about mass deportation of about 10-20 Million of the 84 Million people living in Germany right now.
After this was made public there was a huge public outcry. While members of the current government parties SPD the “social democrats” and the “green” party joined some protests against “the right” they passed a new deportation law, limiting the human rights of rejected asylum seekers the next week. These protests were centered around upper middle class people and the protests pushed out groups from the Antifa or left spectrum in order to appeal to not lose appeal to the center-right. The protests since have died down and became irrelevant.
Instead of using the piles of evidence for the AfD being unconstitutional and could be prohibited through a constitutional court decision the center-right government parties and far right opposition are rejecting any move to actually ban the AfD. Over the past years they have taken over more and more points of the AfD including spreading racist, homophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories and fake news, to justify more and more hostility towards people considered “foreign”.
Everything right of the left party in German politics is directly complicit in helping the AfD and pushing for AfD policies. And the left party is divided with having too many pro Russia/pro China chills themselves too.
That’s very unfortunate to hear, but look at it this way- at least the AfD is not one of only two parties, so you have a leg up on us that way.
It deflates all the arguments that the two party system is responsible for the rise of the far right, though. If parliamentary governments are also having these issues, perhaps it reflects that the populace is moving right as well.
It’s really not as simple as the center-left party needing to move to left to inspire the apathetic youth while giving up on the independent center.