By Marianne Arens
9 November 2019
Following the recent election
in the state of Thuringia, there is a growing chorus of voices within Germany’s
conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) calling for collaboration with
the extreme right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Meanwhile the Left Party,
which won the largest vote in the state election and can fill the post of state
premier for the next five years (with its state chief Bodo Ramelow), is seeking
to form an alliance with the CDU. In this way the entire political spectrum is shifting
to the right.
Shortly after the election,
the deputy chair of the CDU parliamentary group in Thuringia, Michael Heym,
demanded that a three-party coalition of the AfD, CDU and neo-liberal Free
Democratic Party, be considered as a feasible alternative government for the
state. Such a coalition would in practice have enough seats to govern. In an
interview with journalist Gabor Steingart, Heym said that, in his opinion, the
AfD was “a conservative party” and were “not all Nazis.” He could well imagine
a situation in the state parliament where the AfD would “tolerate” a CDU
premier.
Meanwhile, 17 other CDU
politicians have issued an “Appeal” demanding their party “actively participate
in discussions with ALL democratically elected parties in the Thuringia state
parliament.” This includes, of course, discussions with the AfD.
In the state election the CDU
lost a total of 36,000 votes to the far right AfD, which gained 23.4 percent of
the vote and came second behind the Left Party. Now 17 leading CDU politicians
are demanding “open-ended” talks with the AfD. According to the appeal, “a
liberal society could not afford to ignore almost a quarter of the votes in
these discussions.”
The CDU functionaries issued a
pro forma acknowledgement that their party should not form a coalition with
either the Left Party or the AfD, but at the same time criticised the “haste to
exclude,” which “led to a very difficult constellation for forming a government
in Thuringia.” Heym had “analysed the situation very correctly. We therefore
expect the state executive to stand by him.”
The Thuringia AfD is headed by
Björn Höcke, the main spokesperson for the party’s openly neo-fascist grouping,
“The Wing” (“Der Flügel”). On Wednesday, Höcke responded to the offer from the
CDU ranks and offered to support a CDU-led minority government.
In a letter to the state
leaders of the CDU and FDP, Höcke proposed “talking together about new forms of
cooperation.” “An expert government sponsored by our parties, or a minority
government supported by my party, would be a viable alternative to “a
continuation of the status quo,” i.e., the state’s former Left Party-Social
Democratic Party (SDP)-Green (so-called Red-Red-Green) administration, the
letter read.
CDU General Secretary Paul
Ziemiak called the proposal by the 17 politicians “crazy” and rejected any
cooperation with the AfD as a “betrayal of our Christian Democratic values.”
This talk, however, is mainly directed at an upcoming CDU party congress, where
intense conflicts are expected to dominate. In fact, the CDU has been preparing
to cooperate with the AfD for some time and has contributed significantly to
boosting the far-right party’s prospects.
In particular, the
ultra-conservative “Union of Values” faction inside the CDU favours political rapprochement
with the AfD. Its most prominent member is the former head of Germany’s
domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who personally intervened in
the state elections in both Saxony and Thuringia to the applause of
enthusiastic AfD supporters.
Friedrich Merz, the candidate
of the Union of Values in the current struggle for the CDU leadership, has also
called upon the party to open itself up to the far right. Merz blamed the
“grotesquely bad” policies of the federal government for the CDU defeat in
Thuringia. “We are losing sections of the German army (Bundeswehr) and the
federal police to the AfD,” he told the Bild newspaper. Merz is a
lobbyist for one of the world’s largest asset managers, BlackRock, and heads
the company’s German subsidiary.
It is not only the right wing
in the CDU that promotes the AfD. The German federal government—a coalition of
the CDU and SPD—has largely taken over the far-right AfD program with regard to
immigration policy and military rearmament, entrusting the AfD in turn with the
leadership of the German parliament’s committees for budget, law and tourism.
The AfD is also intertwined
with the state apparatus. There are proportionally more civil servants, police
and soldiers in AfD factions in state governments than in any other party. At
the same time, the AfD is publicly demonstrating its fascist character in
Thuringia.
According to a court ruling,
AfD state spokesman Höcke can be described as a “fascist.” In September 2018 he
marched together with Brandenburg neo-Nazi and AfD member Andreas Kalbitz at
the head of a far-right mob in the city of Chemnitz. The mob harassed foreigners
along the way and a Jewish restaurant was attacked.
Following the election in
Thuringia, Höcke announced his “Deportation Initiative 2020” after being asked
what he would do first in the event of entering the state government. He had
previously demanded a “large-scale emigration project” to “forestall the
impending death of our people [ Volk ] due to population exchange.”
The measure would “involve a policy of tempered cruelty.” For his part
Alexander Gauland, the leader of the AfD, described the period of Nazi rule in
Germany as just a “speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German
history.”
Research has shown that the
AfD was not, as many claim, voted for by the “unemployed, the poor and the
hungry.” Taking into account abstentions, only about 10 percent of voters in
the prefabricated housing districts of Erfurt, where voter turnout was
extremely low, voted for the far-right party, compared to a national average of
15.5 percent.
The Left Party also bears
considerable responsibility for the AfD’s rise to prominence. The politics of
its party leader Ramelow did not differ from those of other state premiers.
Thuringia has been just as brutal in regard to its refugee and deportation
policies as other states and has repeatedly deported young people to war-torn
Afghanistan.
As far as police rearmament is
concerned, the budget already adopted for 2020 allocates more than half a
billion euros for domestic security, including more than 320 million for
improved police equipment. “We want well-motivated police who like to perform
their duties in Thuringia,” asserts the Thuringia Left Party’s website. The
state’s CDU predecessor government had “repeatedly starved the police of
funding.”
The state government has also
taken up the proposal of the federal defence minister Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) to make public vows to the Bundeswehr “in early
November as a sign of recognition for the soldiers.” In Thuringia, the vow will
take place on November 7. Ramelow had earlier thanked German troops for their
help in “coping with the refugee crisis” of 2015.
As for the secret services,
Ramelow dropped his earlier demand for the dissolution of the country’s
domestic intelligence service (BfV) even prior to taking office, although the
agency had been spying on him for years.
Following the election, the
Left Party has moved further to the right. While it was still celebrating its
“historic victory in Thuringia,” Ramelow had declared his willingness to “speak
with all democrats”: “Let us also explore what common powers exist in
parliament.”
In Thuringia, the party had
repeatedly managed to pull in the same direction on crucial issues “across all
party-political lines” the premier declared. Already before the election,
Ramelow stressed, with an eye to CDU leader Mike Mohring, that he was not
scared “to discuss topics with a CDU party and faction leader.” Ramelow
expressed his pleasure in going hiking with Mohring.
These developments make clear
that it is pointless to rely on so-called “democratic” parties to fight the
danger from the far right. Only an independent movement of the working class
can stop its rise. Such a movement must address the cause of the shift to the
right—the crisis of the capitalist system and the bankruptcy of the “left”
parties—and take up the struggle for a socialist alternative.
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