Return of the Ugly German?
The Riots in Chemnitz and Their
Aftermath
In Chemnitz, refugees find themselves under threat by
neo-Nazis and hooligans. Politicians have pledged to take a hard line against
right-wing extremist violence, but they look helpless nonetheless. Meanwhile,
the right wing seems to have the upper hand in Saxony. By DER SPIEGEL Staff
August 31, 2018 08:46
PM
Three cities in Germany. Three crimes. On Oct. 16, 2016, in
Freiburg, the Afghan asylum-seeker Hussein K. raped a 19-year-old university
student, leaving her unconscious on the banks of a river in which she then
drowned. For weeks afterward, there was a palpable sense of anxiety in the
city. A demonstration against the federal government's refugee policies was
registered, but only very few turned up to march. Six months after the crime,
the perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison, after which the anxiety
dissipated. The message: Freiburg wants to remain a liberal city, despite this
horrific crime.
On Aug. 16, 2018, in Offenburg, a city in southwestern
Germany near the French border, a 26-year-old man from Somalia stabbed a
general practitioner to death in his practice in front of his assistant. A
state parliamentarian from the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany
(AfD) party ascribed "direct complicity in the death of the doctor"
to both the Baden-Württemberg state government as well as the federal
government in Berlin "due to their misguided migration policies."
The party called for a rally, which was attended by a couple
hundred people, but the counter-demonstration was just as large. Later, some
400 people -- including asylum-seekers -- held a march to commemorate the
beloved doctor. A relative of the murder victim published an open letter addressed
to the AfD politician. The doctor, he wrote, "had contributed to
integration instead of preaching hate and revulsion like you." The
message: Offenburg refuses to allow the crime to be exploited for political
purposes.
Then, at 3 a.m. on Aug. 26, 2018, in Chemnitz, Yousif A.
from Iraq and Alaa S. from Syria are suspected of having stabbed a 35-year-old
Cuban-German man to death. Just hours after the crime, some 800 demonstrators
marched through the city, some of them shoving police to the ground while
others threatened people who looked like they might be refugees. The next
evening, some 6,000 right-wingers and right-wing sympathizers gathered.
"We'll get you all," they chanted as some of them stretched out their
right arms in the Hitler salute. The message: In Chemnitz, neo-Nazis and
hooligans are leading the city's response to the crime.
Three crimes, three different reactions. There are
similarities: anger, disgust, grief, anti-foreigner prejudice and the question
as to whether these felonies might be connected to the refugee policies that
have stirred up and divided this country for the last three years. But in
Freiburg and Offenburg, the sober-minded have the upper hand, those who see the
crimes for what they are: isolated cases. Sad, to be sure, but not the direct
result of misguided policy.
In Chemnitz, by contrast, a strike force was quickly
assembled, made up of neo-Nazis, hooligans, AfD supporters and so-called
"concerned citizens." They cast blame on migrants as a group and
declared open season on them. The images they created are evocative of an era
that Germany had thought it had left behind; they are reminiscent of the racist
1992 attacks in the Lichtenhagen neighborhood of Rostock, which saw a mob set
fire to an occupied hostel for Vietnamese workers as neighbors stood by
applauding. The mob is back, is the message sent by the images from Chemnitz,
just like 26 years ago. We have regressed.
The revulsion over this fact can be heard in many voices,
from the chancellor to the German president, from German business leaders to
foreign commentators. The ugly German -- racist, xenophobic and full of rage --
is back. And his stage, once again, is in Saxony. Why is it always Saxony?
Bautzen, Freital, Heidenau, Clausnitz and now Chemnitz.
These places have become shorthand for scenes of enraged crowds, their faces
contorted in anger as they chant vulgarities against refugees or the
chancellor. They chase down and attack migrants, they set fire to asylum-seeker
hostels, they have apparently abandoned human decency itself, along with
civilized debate and the political system of representational democracy. They
apparently dream of a different model: nationalist, monoethnic, authoritarian
and anti-liberal. A bit like Trump, a bit like Orbán.
Fertile Soil
The hoodlums are, of course, far from being in the majority
in Saxony. But they are currently much louder than the majority. And the effect
they are having becomes apparent when you read the back pages of the newspaper.
The advertising agency Wurzelschläger & Friends, for example, has announced
that it has withdrawn its bid for the image campaign being launched to attract
companies to Leipzig. "Our feeling is that Saxony's image cannot be
translated into a global selling point," the agency said in a statement.
It is a disaster for Saxony, a state that, on the one hand, has been remarkably
successful. Its economy is doing well, its schoolchildren score well on the
international PISA test comparing educational attainment, its tourism industry
is flourishing and it has the second-lowest unemployment rate among the five
eastern German states. On the other hand, though, it is widely seen as having a
neo-Nazi problem.
Saxony is the fertile soil out of which Pegida (which stands
for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) sprouted, the
xenophobic group that has been staging weekly marches against Muslims since
autumn 2014. And the group is still going strong in Saxony, with hundreds of
sympathizers still taking to the streets each week. In Saxony, demonstrators
confront reporters, as happened most recently in Dresden, when a (now former)
employee of the State Criminal Police Office accosted a television team from
public broadcaster ZDF. The man's German-flag hat quickly became a symbol of
right-wing simpletons who join such marches. But since then, he has been
supplanted by the Hitler salutes seen in Chemnitz.
The police in Saxony likewise hit the headlines with
predictable regularity when they, for example, prevent journalists from doing
their jobs or fail to mobilize enough officers, thus forcing them to stand by
passively as right-wing extremists rampage through the streets.
Right-wing extremism is a nationwide phenomenon, not a
specifically Saxon one. That has been the mantra of Saxony's political
leadership for years, whenever the criticism has mounted. It is half true, and
half false. Saxony has become a breeding ground of right-wing activists, with
right-wing structures having become solidified shortly after German
reunification. In no other German state is the AfD so successful: According to
the most recent surveys, the party stands to win 26 of the 60 direct mandates
in the state in next year's election. Every fourth voter plans to cast their
ballot for the right-wing populists, putting the party in second place behind
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
It is, of course, inaccurate to say that AfD supporters are
synonymous with right-wing hooligans. But they do have quite a bit in common:
They all believe that they are part of a rebellion against the West, against
its established political parties and against the "lying press."
Indeed, against the liberal, universal values of an enlightened, cosmopolitan
society. The scenes from Chemnitz are merely the ugly symptoms of a gradual
process of separation.
The violence in Chemnitz "is the intentionally provoked
apex of a development that has been coming for almost 30 years," Christian
Wolff, the former pastor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, writes on his
website. "The systematic implementation of ethnonationalist, right-wing
nationalist ideas in too many heads and hearts, rejection of liberal democracy,
militant xenophobia, suspension of fundamental rights -- and all of it with the
acquiescence or even support of the Saxony CDU, consummated by Pegida/AfD and
violence-prone neo-Nazis."
Colorful Lights
Even if you might not agree completely with all aspects of
Wolff's analysis, it makes one wonder: What has happened in eastern Germany, in
Saxony, in the 29 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall? The question isn't
exactly new, but it must be asked once again following the escalation seen last
weekend.
It was a weekend in which the people of Chemnitz actually
wanted to celebrate. The city was observing its 875th birthday and organizers
were expecting more than 250,000 visitors. Six stages had been set up along
with a Ferris wheel and more than 200 booths. The rapper Namika performed and
City Hall was lit up by colorful lights.
Daniel H., 35, was also at the festival along with his
friends. The son of a Cuban father and a German mother, Daniel H. grew up in
Chemnitz and had been working for the last two years at the commercial cleaning
company Hausgeister. His co-workers liked him and his friends say he was always
in a good mood, always ready with a smile.
At 3 a.m. that night, the group wandered over to the central
boulevard of Brückestrasse, apparently to get money from an ATM machine. That's
where they ran into Yousif A. and Alaa S. An argument ensued, perhaps over
money, perhaps over cigarettes -- many details remain hazy, though alcohol was
likely a factor. Yousif A., allegedly the main perpetrator, apparently began
stabbing Daniel H. suddenly. He succumbed to his injuries in the hospital a
short time later.
Yousif A. was registered in Annaberg-Buchholz, a village of
half-timbered houses where cows graze in the fields. He lived with three other
refugees -- one from Syria, one from Iraq and one from Iran -- in a shared
apartment located in multifamily dwelling. Yousif A. had a room to himself even
though he only ever slept there twice a month. The rest of the time, he lived
in Chemnitz, apparently at a friend's place.
Even if they didn't know him well, his apartment-mates
describe him as a nice guy who liked to drink, sometimes to excess. Yousif A.
came to Germany in late October 2015 by way of the Balkan Route, as did so many
others from Iraq and Syria during the peak of the refugee crisis.
Initially, according to his files, officials wanted to send
him back to Bulgaria because they believed that he had submitted an asylum
application there. And Bulgaria had already approved the application. Indeed,
it is unclear why he was never deported back to Bulgaria. Following the passage
of a deadline in fall 2016, Germany assumed responsibility for him. On two
occasions, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) interviewed
him, most recently just a few weeks before the murder of Daniel H. -- almost
three years after he had entered the country.
Falling Afoul of the Law
Yousif A. told the officials why he had to flee the northern
Iraqi province of Ninive, and it had nothing to do with the political situation
there. He said he had fallen in love with a girl, but her father and uncle were
not happy with the situation. They threatened and beat him, he said, and even
injured him with a knife. It was "a question of honor," he told the
BAMF officials.
The officials didn't believe the story was particularly
credible. And there was another thing that fueled their doubts about its
veracity: Two personal documents that he presented were, according to a BAMF
examination, "complete falsifications." On Aug. 29, 2018, the agency
rejected the 22-year-old's asylum application -- three days after he is
suspected of having stabbed Daniel H. in Chemnitz.
Yousif A. already had a police record for criminal assault,
among other things. He first fell afoul of the law just a few months after his
arrival in Germany. And repeatedly thereafter.
On one occasion, he sprayed pepper spray into the faces of
two refugees in the Annaberg-Buchholz asylum-seekers' hostel. Another time, in
February 2016, he ran drunk in front of a snowplow and other vehicles at around
3:30 a.m. and was charged with traffic interference and given a fine. Public
prosecutors believe he had intended to commit suicide.
Alaa S., his alleged accomplice, was likewise approachable,
at least according to Mohamed Yousif, the boss of the Zana barber shop in
Chemnitz who taught S. how to cut hair. They knew each other because they both
come from the same city in Syria. "I tried to take care of him a
bit," says Yousif. When asked about the knife assault on Daniel H., Yousif
says: "It simply doesn't fit."
Two weeks ago, Alaa S. returned to Germany from northern
Iraq, where he was apparently visiting his parents. His father is involved in a
pro-Kurdish political party. "I asked him: 'Why did you come back?'"
says Yousif. He answered: "'I have a future in Germany.'" Alaa S. has
been in pre-trial detention since Tuesday and has apparently cooperated with
the police.
Triggering the Fury
Not even five hours after the bloody crime, the tabloid
website tag24.de published a report under the headline: "35-Year-Old Dies
after Stabbing in the City." Rumors relating to the news item spread
quickly: Daniel H., it was said, had been trying to protect a woman from sexual
assault. Though the police have said that there is no evidence for that version
of events, the story has persisted. After all, it fits perfectly into the
right-wing cliché of the instinct-driven refugee. It triggers the fury that
drives people out onto the streets.
Even before the first official police announcement, the
hooligan group "New Society 2004" issued a call for a protest march
on Facebook, a post that was widely shared on the internet, along with slogans
like "our city, our rules!" and "let's show who has the last
word in the city!" The meeting point was set for 4:30 p.m. in front of the
"Nischel," as the people of Chemnitz call the Karl Marx monument in
the center of the city. Out of fear that festival goers might be attacked,
organizers called off the party on Sunday afternoon.
Around 800 people collected not far from the site of the
stabbing. Without registering with the police, the group set off, with some
participants chanting "We Are the People!" Bottles were thrown. The
police didn't have enough officers available and were overwhelmed by the
situation. They requested backup from Leipzig and Dresden, but videos of the
rampaging mob spread quickly on the internet. Neo-Nazis began threatening
people they took to be immigrants.
The right-wing group "Pro Chemnitz" then called
for a protest to be held the next evening and mobilized 6,000 people. The
organization "Chemnitz Nazifrei" (Keep Chemitz Free of Nazis) quickly
arranged a counter-demonstration to which 1,500 people showed up. The two
groups were separated only by a meager chain of 591 police officers. In some
spots, there were no law enforcement officers at all between the two blocks.
Firecrackers and smoke bombs flew through the air, as did
paving stones. Some participants covered their faces to avoid being identified
while others raised their right arms in the Hitler salute. Again the police
were overwhelmed and again, they were unable to disperse the demonstrations.
They allowed the march to proceed hundreds of meters through the city center
and advised immigrants to stay at home.
A Hardline Approach
Federal prosecutors have since gotten involved in the
incident. DER SPIEGEL has learned that the chief federal prosecutor has
launched a formal investigation with agency sources saying they were
"concerned" about the events in Chemnitz. The sources say that
prosecutors are particularly interested in the speed with which the right-wing
extremists mobilized for the protests in Chemnitz and are eager to find out if
hidden structures may have played a role. Part of the mandate of federal
prosecutors in Germany is the prosecution of terrorist groups.
Shortly after assuming his current position in 2015, Public
Prosecutor General Peter Frank told DER SPIEGEL that he would take a hardline
approach when it came to right-wing extremists. Should "pogrom-like
situations" against refugees develop in which people were killed or
injured, he said, then the government would have to "send a
counter-signal."
The right-wing demonstrators used the victim of the knife
attack as an excuse to stage their demonstration of power. Yet Daniel H.
doesn't really fit the role of martyr for the right-wing cause. Cheerful,
good-natured, more to the left of the political spectrum: That is how his
friends describe him. On Facebook, he liked Bob Marley and Left Party floor
leader Sahra Wagenknecht in addition to following groups like "No Need for
Nazis." "These right-wingers that are now taking advantage of this
incident, we used to have to fight them because they didn't think we were
German enough," wrote one of Daniel H.'s friends on Facebook.
This friend, who is also named Daniel, had known him for
almost 20 years. They met at a party when they were teenagers and discovered
that both of their fathers had been allowed to attend university in East
Germany because they were foreigners from socialist countries. The father of
this friend is from Tanzania while Daniel H.'s father is from Cuba.
"Daniel was the kind of person who would have done anything for his family
and friends," says the friend. "He never would have wanted the
protests." He has no explanation for why acquaintances of his friend
nevertheless called for revenge. "There are idiots everywhere," he
says. But he also notes he has seen an increasing number of people drifting to
the right, even within his own circle of friends.
Chemnitz and its surroundings have been a right-wing
stronghold ever since reunification, even if Germany's domestic intelligence
agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, currently counts
only 150 to 200 extremists in the city. The organization "Blood &
Honor," which was banned in 2000, had a foothold in Chemnitz and
distributed right-wing music from the city to extremists across the country. It
was also the place to which Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt -- the
three members of the right-wing terror group National Socialist Underground
(NSU), which murdered 10 people between 2000 and 2006 -- fled when they went
underground in 1998. Even today, the right-wing scene has its own shops in the
city and PC Records is also based here, one of the most important right-wing
extremist music labels in Germany. "One could see from the participants in
the marches that the old structures can still be used for mobilization,"
says Ulli Jentsch of the Anti-Fascist Press Archive in Berlin.
The archive has been monitoring the right-wing scene across
Germany for almost three decades, including the one in Chemnitz. The spectrum
of those active in the region is extensive, he says. "From functionaries
with the New Right to ethnonationalists, Reichsbürger to the neo-Nazi party
Third Path, they have everything," Jentsch says. Initiatives that seek to
put a stop to the right-wing groups repeatedly have the windows in their
offices broken. In November 2016, an explosive device blew up in the shop window
of the culture center Lokomov, after it staged a play about the NSU. In the
Chemnitz neighborhood of Sonnenberg, where Lokomov is located, right-wing
extremists wanted to establish a "national liberated zone" a few
years ago, an area that would adhere exclusively to radical right-wing
ideology. Over the course of several months, there were attacks on alternative
cafés and clubs while a Left Party lawmaker was forced to find a new office.
After 20 attacks, her landlord cancelled her lease.
In Chemnitzer FC, the local football club, there are a lot
of neo-Nazis among the fans. "There are tight links between hooligans and
Kameradschaften," says hooligan expert Robert Claus, the latter a
reference to loose alliances of neo-Nazis.
Part 2: The Consequences of Hate
August 31, 2018 08:46
PM
One group, called "HooNaRa," has attracted particularly
close attention over the years, its name standing for "Hooligans Nazis
Racists." Officially, the militant right-wing group dissolved back in
2007, but networks among its members are still active.
One of those networks is the fan group "New Society,"
whose members refer to themselves as "NS Boys," a clear play on
National Socialism. Its logo includes the image of a Hitler Youth member. Like
the right-wing fan group "Kaotic," members of "New Society"
used their channels to mobilize people for the demonstrations in Chemnitz. Both
groups are under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution and have been banned from the football stadium for years, but
their influence on the more moderate scene is considered to be extensive.
On the second floor of a villa, Andreas Löscher scrolls
through Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to find reports of attacks on
migrants and to verify them. He is a social worker with RAA Sachsen, a project
that helps victims of racist violence. Löscher has drawn up a list on a piece
of paper. "Summary of Attacks on Aug. 26, 2018," it says. A Syrian
man was pulled to the ground and kicked while another Syrian was hassled. A
Bulgarian filed a criminal complaint for assault. In total, Löscher counted seven
incidents on Sunday, with 11 more coming on Monday.
"These are just preliminary numbers," Löscher
says. And yet he is certain that he has never seen anything like it before in
Chemnitz. Thirty-seven years old, Löscher has been familiar with the right-wing
scene in Chemnitz for more than 20 years. Last year, he counted 20 attacks. In
2016, there were 32. This year, he believes the total will be higher, given the
number of incidents that have taken place in the last several days.
On Monday, Löscher presciently posted a warning on Facebook.
On the page belonging to RAA Sachsen, he wrote at noon: "Even if it is
difficult to express these thoughts, we recommend that migrants avoid the city
center this afternoon." Essentially, the post said that the center of
Chemnitz, a German university town, had become a no-go area for immigrants.
"For us as an organization, it was basically a capitulation," says
Löscher. "But we can't put anyone in danger."
Two young women relate just how quickly things can become
dangerous in Chemnitz. Indeed, they are even afraid to use their real names, so
we will call them Antonia and Marie.
Fear as a Dominant Feature
"Chemnitz is a big village," says Marie. "You
run into right-wing extremists here as soon as you walk out your front door.
For many in Chemnitz, there is absolutely no problem with being right-wing. But
those who become active as political leftists run the risk of being
threatened," says Antonia.
The two women live in Kompott, a leftist-alternative
cultural and residency center. It has lots of graffiti on the walls, homemade
furniture in the yard and quite a few cats wandering around. Kompott has
frequently been the target of right-wing attacks. In 2017, for example,
neo-Nazis threw rocks through the front window of the reading café. A mother
and her son were sitting on the other side but were luckily unharmed.
Fear seems to be a dominant feature of life in Chemnitz.
Senior city official Miko Runkel has been in charge of security in Chemnitz for
the last 10 years. Prior to that, he was a public prosecutor and a judge. In
recent days, he says, he has seen citizens of his city saying on television
that they no longer dared go out on the streets, adding that he was at a loss.
"Every attack is one too many and terrible for the
victims," Runkel says. "But in every city of 250,000, murders and
rapes unfortunately occur. I can't confirm that refugees play an outsized role
in such crimes." In 2015, Chemnitz hosted the initial reception center for
all refugees who came to the state of Saxony. "We had 70,000 refugees in
the city," Runkel says. "Of course there were scuffles," he
says, before adding that the situation has calmed down significantly since
then. Runkel can't remember a single crime from the last few years that was
comparable to the one that just took place. In the city council responsible for
crime prevention, loitering youth from all nationalities are an issue, as is
better lighting. But not stabbings.
Recently, the city began investing 80,000 euros annually in
a project aimed at promoting democracy, tolerance and cosmopolitanism in
Chemnitz. Video cameras have recently been installed and a mobile police
station has been set up where citizens can report their concerns. "The
security situation in Chemnitz is good," Runkel says.
Nevertheless, even before the deadly attack on Daniel H.,
nothing had been so vigorously debated in the city as crime and alleged no-go
areas in the city center. Customers were no longer frequenting restaurants.
"But if you ask people, they say that nothing has ever happened to
them," Runkel says. "There is a large amount of irrational
fear."
Crime statistics for the state of Saxony support Runkel's
assessment. The number of all crimes committed in Saxony dropped slightly last
year, by 0.5 percent. There were fewer break-ins, fewer car thefts and fewer
robberies. The number of crimes committed in communities along the border to
the Czech Republic and Poland is at its lowest number in more than 10 years.
Who Cares About Statistics?
When it comes to serious crimes like murder and
manslaughter, the number of cases is so low that fluctuations are more
indicative of chance than of shifting trends. Last year, there were 27 murders
and 69 cases of manslaughter in the state, which has a population of just over
4 million. Between 2011 and 2014, there were only around 110 cases of rape and
aggravated sexual assault reported in Saxony each year. In 2015, the year of
the huge influx of refugees, there were only 81 such cases. The numbers from
2017 can no longer be compared because of changes made to sex crime legislation
and to the way in which statistics on such crimes are kept.
But who cares about the official statistics? Three AfD
parliamentarians from Saxony certainly don't. They presented their own view of
events at a press conference, with Tino Chrupalla, deputy AfD floor leader in
the federal parliament, saying that citizens feared for their own safety and
that of their children. He said there has been an increase in crime,
"particularly in serious crimes like murder, theft and rape." A
correspondent from public broadcaster ARD asked how he could reach that
conclusion given that official statistics show that violent crime is dropping
in Saxony. "I am not aware of your statistics," Chrupalla replied.
"You'll have to show them to me, where they come from." They were
from the State Criminal Police Office in Saxony.
Those statistics, though, also show that around one-fifth of
the perpetrators -- exactly 18,949 of them -- are non-Germans, with around half
of those being migrants. Police officials believe that 677 repeat offenders,
mostly from Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Georgia, were responsible for over
7,000 infractions.
Around 17 percent of the cases related to bodily harm, with
sex crimes making up 1.5 percent of the total. Crimes that resulted in a death
accounted for just 0.2 percent. But who are the victims? The statistics contain
a number of conflicts inside of refugee hostels in addition to incidents of
domestic violence. The statistics do not show how many Germans have been the
victims of crimes committed by migrants.
At the same time, Saxony has long been at or near the top
when it comes to right-wing crimes committed in Germany. According to a report
compiled by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, there were 95
such crimes in Saxony in 2017.
Those who are responsible for ensuring that the citizens of
Chemnitz can live in the city free of fear now find themselves in the position
of having to explain how they underestimated the size of the right-wing
protests. Despite the fact that the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution had warned of a number in the "mid four-digit range,"
the Chemnitz police declined to request backup ahead of Monday's protests. The
"ugly images" from Chemnitz could only have been prevented with a
"significantly larger force," says Jörg Radek, deputy national head
of the Union of Police, one of two main police unions in Germany. "They
certainly could have been requested from other states and from the federal
government." But that didn't happen. "We underestimated the
situation," a police spokesman admits.
Difficult Balancing Act
It isn't the first time that the Saxony police find
themselves faced with suspicions of failing to confront the right wing with the
necessary determination and force. The police, says a senior officer in an
attempt to explain the sympathy held by some officers for AfD and Pegida, is a
reflection of society and its development. The center of society is eroding,
and the fringes are becoming stronger, he says. The police are not immune to
such developments. "The balancing act is becoming increasingly
difficult," the officer says. "Either you are a pro-refugee extremist
or a Nazi."
Add to that frustration and an overload of work. In the
early 2000s, Saxony began systematically cutting jobs in the police force. Each
year, more people retired from the force than were recruited. Precincts were
closed, leaving entire regions with almost no police. Hagen Husgen, state
chairman of the police union, complains that there is little continuing
education still available to the police forces in Saxony. Political education,
he says, has been "entirely eliminated."
But there have also been some positive changes in Saxony,
and Sebastian Reissig is keen to talk about them. Reissig is managing director
of Aktion Zivilcourage, a nonprofit organization with 22 full-time employees
that promotes civil courage. The initiative was launched 20 years ago as a
voluntary youth association in the town of Pirna in response to the strong
election showing by the neo-Nazi political party NPD and to violent acts
carried out by far-right extremist groups. Reissig, who was 21 years old at the
time, was one of the association's founding members. Today, he and his staff
teach the basics of democracy and personal respect in schools and day care centers.
"The support provided by the state has grown, but so has the need,"
says Reissig.
That such work can have a long-term effect can be seen in
Pirna, a town south of Dresden that is home to a large number of active civic
organizations and where those groups have a good working relationship with the
responsible government authorities.
Reissig also points to the positive example set in Heidenau,
the site of an incident which saw hundreds of demonstrators seeking to prevent
asylum-seekers from entering their dormitory. Hundreds of people from around
the region responded to a call for a civil courage initiative, one that
resulted in many helping and volunteering to work with the refugees. But the
40-year-old laments that the national media are no longer interested in that
story.
He says he's also aware of how big the right-wing extremist
problem remains in Saxony today. "Political education and the addressing
and discussion of controversial issues at school" has long been frowned
upon, he says. "Neutrality in party politics was misunderstood as
socio-political neutrality." But the new state government under CDU
Governor Michael Kretschmer has finally made the issue a focus and has launched
an extensive education program called "V as in Values" in schools. Saxony
also has one of the most comprehensive extremism prevention programs in all of
eastern Germany.
A History of Failure
But the history of the CDU in Saxony and the handling of
right-wing extremism has for the most part been one of failure. Even Marco Wanderwitz,
today a top official in the Federal Interior Ministry, admits: "We as the
CDU in Saxony didn't look closely at right-wing extremism for many years and
didn't do enough about it."
The troubles began immediately after the fall of communism,
when Kurt Biedenkopf scored an election result of 53.8 percent, becoming the
state's first post-communism governor. At that time, in September 1991, 500
people rioted in front of two foreigners' hostels in Hoyerswerda. The scenes
were gruesome. Biedenkopf explained in an interview that people from the east
simply weren't used to living together with people from other cultures. The
conversation culminated in his realization that: "The real problem is
immigration."
Only nine years later, he would claim that the Saxon
population was "completely immune" to right-wing extremist
temptations. In Saxony, he said, no buildings had been burned and no one had
been killed yet. The truth, however, is that five people had been killed since
the fall of the Wall in crimes fueled by far-right extremism. Even back then,
the political opposition accused the government of having lost touch with
reality.
Rather than dealing with the problem of radical youth in his
state, Biedenkopf preferred to cultivate a brand of cozy regional patriotism.
He promoted the image of "Saxons as being a particularly intelligent,
particularly proud of their state and particularly amiable, possessed of a
wonderful nature and producers of a fabulous generation of technicians,"
says Frank Richter, a theologist who was an East German civil rights activist
and has long been the head of Saxony's State Center for Political Education.
The tenor was: "Yes, perhaps we are better than the others." There
was never a trace of self-criticism.
Little changed in terms of the state's commitment to
combatting right-wing extremism under Biedenkopf's successor, Georg Milbradt.
In 2007, an extreme right-wing mob attacked a group of Indians in the town of
Mügeln in Saxony. The authorities refused to acknowledge that the crime might
have been motivated by right-wing extremism, in part because Milbradt was
concerned about the state's image. The official line was not that migrants has
been attacked in Mügeln, but that the reputation of Mügeln itself had been
attacked by outsiders.
For his part, Stanislaw Tillich, the subsequent state
governor, a man who some rejected as a true Saxon since his family belonged to
the state's Sorbian ethnic minority, at least changed the rhetoric. In a major
speech delivered in July 2015, he issued a plea for greater international
character and cosmopolitanism, and he strongly condemned violence and hatred
against refugees. "I expect everyone in the Free State of Saxony to
categorically oppose this," he said at the time. "We will not tolerate
any of this." The attacks in Heidenau followed a short time later. Once
again, Tillich offered clear words. "This is not our Saxony. A minority
here is brutally violating Germany's values and laws." The problem is
that, by that point, he was constantly having to make statements like that --
because similar events were happening all over the state.
Ugly Images Dating Back to Communism
To get a better picture of why the east, in particular,
seems to provide so many ugly images of aggressive neo-Nazis, it helps to dive
into history. Even under communist rule, pogroms took place in the state.
Berlin historian Harry Waibel searched the East German archives and listed more
than 8,600 instances of neo-Nazi, racist and anti-Semitic propaganda and
violent crimes in the GDR and found that at least 10 people died.
During the communist era, foreigners, most of whom
originated from the so-called "brother states" of the Eastern Bloc,
were accommodated in their own halls of residence. The state didn't actually
want those residents to integrate with the domestic population. Waibel's
research shows that at least 40 racist attacks on these dormitories took place
in the GDR since 1975. By contrast, Waibel notes that there were no known
racist mob attacks on foreigner hostels in western Germany until 1992.
The reasons the researcher provides for the attacks sound
familiar: social envy and social Darwinist views. Foreigners were accused of
having the wrong attitudes toward work, and their personal hygiene habits were
disparaged as "disgusting." The dissatisfaction of many Germans about
their own political and economic situation manifested itself in aggression
against migrants. The authorities in the east routinely turned a blind eye to
what was happening.
The same slogans and epithets being used today were also
present back then. In 1987, 50 Germans and 50 Arabs clashed in Leipzig, with
the mob calling out: "Germany for the Germans," "Foreigners get
out," and "Germany awaken." In the town of Merseburg, a rampaging
mob drove a group of Cubans into the local Saale River, resulting in two
drownings. No one was ever held accountable. The investigation was closed with
the consent of the East German public prosecutor's office. "Particularly
since there are no significant health and material damage," officials
noted in the file.
The Mob Is Raging Again
Now the mob is rampaging once again, and one politician from
the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) believes that only one thing can help
restore democratic attitudes among the electorate in the long term: People need
to start talking to each other. Saxon Economy Minister Martin Dulig is one of
the few politicians who has spoken out clearly for years when the state has
been hit by right-wing extremist riots, in part due to his own personal experience.
In June 2015, right-wing extremists used baseball bats to strike a car they
suspected was carrying supporters of a refugee hostel in the town of Freital.
Dulig's son was one of the five passengers.
In response, Dulig literally donated his kitchen table to
the cause of societal enlightenment two years ago. The state cabinet member
takes it with him as he travels across the state to lend people his ear and a
bit of support. Thus far, he has taken the so-called "Kitchen Table
Tour" on the road 44 times.
On Tuesday, the table was high above the city of Meissen, in
the ballroom of the former royal castle. The event was well-attended and there
were eight chairs around Dulig's kitchen table. One of the chairs was occupied
by the city's representative in federal parliament, Frank Richter. Like Dulig,
Richter is a member of the SPD and would like to become Meissen's next mayor.
The unoccupied chairs could be used by members of the audience who wanted to
participate. As always at his events, the rules were clear: No interrupting and
stick to the facts.
The main issue, of course, was Chemnitz. "I'm very
depressed," Dulig said in the ballroom, adding that he had nothing but
compassion for the family of the man who died, "but that nobody has the
right to engage in vigilante justice." He also said, though, that the
fight against right-wing extremism cannot be delegated solely to the
politicians.
A woman took a seat and asked if it was acceptable to boo
the AfD. Richter responded in the affirmative, but also warned that it might
fall into the right-wing's strategy of driving society into combat mode. As
such, he said, it's helpful to pull back and look at the forest through the
trees and to focus the discussion on the actual issues. "With loud
resistance, they get what they want," he said.
A restaurant owner who has employees from all over the world
complained that people don't want to be served by foreigners. "I just ask
those people to leave," he said. He then made a plea for immigration,
reminding the audience that the German society is aging. "We need more
offspring -- we haven't produced enough ourselves."
The subject of the AfD came up repeatedly. Dulig
interjected. "Our greatest political opponent is not the AfD. It's the
fear. We have to counter it with hope and confidence."
Odd Contradictions
In the summer of 2017, the German pollster Infratest dimap
surveyed around 1,000 Saxons on behalf of the governor's office. The results
revealed some odd contradictions: That the overwhelming majority of those
surveyed consider Saxony to be a well-governed state, but they are deeply
distrustful of the "politicians," for example. Some 81 percent want
more direct democracy, but when it comes to political participation, they
prefer to stay away.
They consider the most important problem facing the state to
be "asylum policy" and "too many foreigners" as opposed to
poverty among the elderly or public infrastructure. Fifty-six percent already
consider the number of foreigners in the country to be "dangerous"
although most of them claim that they hardly ever have any personal contact
with foreigners. A full 38 percent would like to ban Muslims from immigrating
to Germany.
At the same time, most in the state are satisfied with their
own life situation -- their work, housing and free time -- and Saxons tend to
be optimistic about the future. Yet many remain deeply convinced that they are
not getting their fair share. Many Saxons feel that they are treated like
second-class citizens.
"This ambivalence is typical of Saxony," says Hans
Vorländer. The professor of political science at Dresden Technical University
offers an explanation that focuses on the population's feeling that it is
somehow being slighted. The first slight the professor identifies is the
state's history. "There's a very specific Saxon victim narrative," he
says. "It is rooted in the myth of the innocent, beautiful baroque city of
Dresden, which was laid to ruins by British and American bombers." The
Nazis cultivated that myth, as did the East German Communist Party. The city
hosts an annual event commemorating the destruction of Dresden on Feb. 13,
1945, and with each year, the feeling gets more firmly entrenched among the
population that they were the victims of uncontrollable events.
Then came the fall of communism and the invasion of
outsiders: The West Germans, or Wessies, who occupied important positions in
the state and often acted as if they were better at everything. This time, says
Vorländer, the feeling of being slighted, the feeling of being punished through
no fault of their own, spread far beyond Dresden and across the entire state.
And, finally, the third slight: the immigration of numerous
Muslim migrants in 2015, which many Saxons perceived to be the next foreign
invasion. "For many, this marked the final collapse of a world that had
defined itself as Saxon."
But the state government, he says, ignored these slights and
the lurch to the right that followed them. Even the middle classes for the most
part kept quiet about what was happening. "There was a lack of a
middle-class sounding board that could clearly articulate itself,"
Vorländer says. The emergence of a civil society with strong institutions and
organizations, which took decades to establish in the West after the war, never
happened in the GDR. The middle class defined itself in its niches through art,
culture, science and literature. That's how things were -- at least until the
strangers came from the West and thoughtlessly and often arrogantly turned
things upside down according to their own rules. That, at least, is the perception
of many who lost out as a result of the changes that came after reunification
in 1990.
As Vorländer emphasizes, however, many in the state are now
standing up against right-wing extremism. They provide support to the refugees
and, as a civil society, do not accept hatred and violence. "They may be
less visible, but they are the majority," he says.
A Surge in Support for Right-Wing Populists
In many places, Vorländer says, a crack is now running
through the middle class in Saxony. Take, for example, the confrontation in
Dresden between Durs Grünbein and Uwe Tellkamp, two authors born in Dresden who
can no longer stand each other. Grünbein, a cosmopolitan type with homes in
Berlin and Rome, and Tellkamp, who has spent most of his life in academic circles
in Dresden's upscale Weisser Hirsch neighborhood. "Two different worlds
are colliding here," says Vorländer. "Terms like heimat (homeland)
and a strong regional identity on the one hand, and a cosmopolitan openness on
the other."
This is where AfD and Pegida come into play, he says,
"with the way they project things onto the foreigner, the Muslim and the
black man from Africa who sexually harasses women. That's what the right-wing
populists do. They give people a voice and explain the world to them. Migrants
take away our jobs, they threaten our culture and they threaten our women. We
have to get rid of the migrants, so that everything will go well for us
again."
The AfD benefits demonstrably from this victim narrative.
Polls conducted by Infratest dimap for German public broadcaster MDR, which
broadcasts in the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, show that
support for right-wing populists has risen significantly in the region. In
Thuringia, support for the AfD currently stands at 23 percent, an increase of
10 percentage points over the previous year. In Saxony, the party is at 25
percent (an increase of 4 percentage points) in the polls, trailing the CDU by
only 5 points. At the time of the most recent polls, the deadly knife attack in
Chemnitz hadn't happened yet. But few doubt that it will fuel pro-AfD
sentiment.
For quite some time, right-wing populists have been
deliberately searching for suitable violent crimes they can exploit to gain
political capital. And the wording of their propaganda often even surpasses the
inflammatory jargon of the right-wing extremist NPD. Just look at the rhetoric
of AfD parliamentary floor leader Alice Weidel, who said after the attack:
"The slaughter goes on and on." AfD parliamentarian Markus Frohnmaier
tweeted: "Today it is a civic duty to stop the deadly knife
migration." He also indirectly called for vigilante justice. If "the
state can no longer protect its citizens," then "the people will have
to take to the streets to protect themselves."
When criticism mounted against Frohnmaier's tweet, AfD party
boss Alexander Gauland stepped in to try and mollify critics.
"Self-defense is certainly not vigilante justice. It doesn't mean anything
more than that." But in the state of Hesse over in western Germany, AfD officials
felt so empowered by events in Chemnitz that they waged a general attack on
press freedom and issued a massive threat against journalists not to their
liking.
Militant Voices
In a Facebook posting on Tuesday, the AfD chapter in a town
near Frankfurt wrote that reporters would "still be given a chance to turn
away from the system and report the truth." But then they added a warning:
"In the revolutions we've known, at some point the offices of the
broadcasters and publishing houses were stormed and the staff dragged out onto
the street. Media representatives in this country should think about that,
because if the mood finally flips, it will be too late." In this instance,
too, the heads of the Hesse state chapter of the party distanced themselves
from the posting and it was eventually deleted.
The militant comments made by the AfD politicians don't
appear to just be a couple of off-the-cuff remarks made by loose cannons.
There's a method to them. Confidential documents from the AfD
"Convent," a body that helps to determine the party's political
direction, show that considerations were made early on about how the party
could strategically exploit headline-grabbing violent crimes.
In late summer of 2016, leading members of the AfD state
chapter in Hesse made plans for turning public sentiment against the chancellor
in the event of "Islamic attacks with fatalities or serious
injuries." One motion made to the party convent was for "professional
signs and banners" to be made that were to be emblazoned with "Thank
you, Mrs. Merkel," that could be posted at "highly frequented
sites." The banners should be "designed in the typical AfD
look," distributed to state and district chapters and kept "in
stock" there.
It isn't without irony that it is in eastern Germany where
Angela Merkel, herself of East German extraction, is so passionately hated.
There are few public spaces where the chancellor can make appearances there
without being subjected to verbal attacks. As soon as she appears, people show
up to scream at the "traitor to the people."
Merkel has never given a lot of consideration to eastern
Germans' sensitivities. For the young physicist from Templin, the GDR was a
small, old-fashioned world that she quickly left behind once the Wall fell. She
didn't share the nostalgia that many eastern Germans had after the fall of
communism. On the contrary: She was never able to completely hide her contempt
for people who failed to seize the opportunities brought by the new era.
But nothing has alienated eastern Germans from Merkel to the
degree the refugee crisis has. Of course, resistance against her open borders
policy also quickly formed in the West, but it has never been as hate-filled as
it has been in the east.
It was an alienation that could be felt on both sides.
Merkel had no sympathy whatsoever for the special mixture of self-pity and
aggression that enabled xenophobia to flourish in the east. And, in turn, many
eastern Germans feel doubly betrayed by Merkel -- because she never came across
as a champion of the east and when she suddenly found a heart for people during
the refugee crisis, it was for ones who couldn't even speak German. The ugly
term "traitor to the people," which Merkel is now slammed with in
every corner in the east, speaks not only of anger, but also of a strange
affront fueled by the belief that Merkel, in particular, must take special
account of the complex emotional state of her compatriots.
'We Can Win This Battle'
Michael Kretschmer, who has been governor of Saxony since
December 2017, also faces the challenge of determining where he will yield and
when he will draw red lines when it comes to the needs of the people in his
state. But the 43-year-old has already been astoundingly clear where he stands
in the fight against right-wing extremism. When a far-right rock concert was
scheduled to take place in Ostritz in Saxony in April, he took over the
patronage of the counter-event. During that event, he said: "Let's send
out a strong message together." Combating right-wing extremism is most
successful, he said, when it comes from the center of society. He then joined a
human chain. On May 1, he stood in the stands during a rally held by the labor
union DGB in Chemnitz and called on all people to fight right-wing extremism.
The result was that Kretshmer's reaction following the riots
in Chemnitz -- when he said that the events "need to wake up all of
us" and that we "cannot let up in the fight against right-wing
extremism" -- were broadly accepted as being authentic.
Kretschmer is from the city of Görlitz in Saxony. He's fond
of pointing out the city's experiences when it comes to the right-wing. At the
beginning of the 1990s, the city was home to a strong right-wing extremist
scene. But prudent prevention efforts on the part of the police, the public
prosecutor and schools have brought "peace and quiet" to the city. He
now wants to apply the concepts there to the entire state. "We can win
this battle," he says.
But that also seems like an astonishingly optimistic goal at
a time when fear is still prevailing in Chemnitz. When the governor traveled to
Chemnitz on Thursday for a long-planned town hall meeting, Pro-Chemnitz once
again sent out a call to protest. There was no counter-protest because the
participants' safety could not be guaranteed.
Chemnitz at the moment resembles a city in a police state.
After Saxony sent out a request for help, the federal police sent hundreds of
officers to the city, and other states also dispatched police reinforcements.
Police officers can be seen at almost every intersection. A private security
service stood guard at the meeting in City Hall.
But foreign students at the Technical University still
aren't daring to leave home, even to just go to the library. The local
theater's ballet director has also recommended to her dancers, many of whom
come from other countries, that they not walk through the city alone.
In Chemnitz right now, it's clear who's winning this battle.
By Matthias Bartsch, Maik Baumgärtner, Jörg Diehl, Jan
Friedmann, Lothar Gorris, Nils Klawitter, Martin Knobbe, Beate Lakotta,
Katharina Meyer zu Eppendorf, René Pfister, Christopher Piltz, Sven Röbel,
Fidelius Schmid, Charlotte Schönberger, Andreas Ulrich, David Walden, Wolf
Wiedmann-Schmidt, Steffen Winter
 |
German far-left leaders launch 'Stand Up' grassroots
movement
news@thelocal.de
@thelocalgermany
2 September 2018
11:40 CEST+02:00
Its battle cry is "Stand up", its public face is a
divisive anti-capitalist politician who supports limiting immigration, its aim
is to build a populist leftwing movement to shake up Merkel-era Germany.
On Tuesday, Sahra Wagenknecht, 48, will launch the
grassroots project which borrows from the campaigns of British Labour's Jeremy
Corbyn, French Socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon and US Democrat Bernie Sanders.
Its aim is to energise followers of her far-left Die Linke
party, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and ecologist Greens - but also
to win back disenchanted working-class voters who have drifted to far-right
protest parties.
Its website launched in mid-August cites reggae singer Bob
Marley's chant "get up, stand up!" and declares boldly that "no
politician, no party will solve our problems if we don't do it ourselves".
Tens of thousands have signed up online to join the fight
for secure jobs and pensions, good education, protecting the environment,
disarmament and "a true democracy not ruled by banks, corporations and
lobbyists".
The jury is still out on whether it will spark a political
revolution or quickly fizzle out.
Unsurprisingly, party leaders across the left, including
Wagenknecht's own comrades at Die Linke, have rejected the Stand Up
("Aufstehen") guerilla campaign as divisive and unhelpful.
The leader of the SPD, Germany's traditional labour party,
Andrea Nahles, quipped that she "wasn't losing any sleep over it".
Others have greeted the effort to re-energise the left as a
challenge to Merkel's centrist coalition government and the rise of the
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
News weekly Der Spiegel said that, after populist anger over
immigration swept the AfD into parliament last year, "it is high time to
launch a movement of rallying the left".
Open borders unrealistic
But even backers of the idea have wondered whether it is
being led by the right people.
Wagenknecht, 48 and hailing from the former communist East
Germany, is a lawmaker and polarising TV talk show star, married to a firebrand
leftist SPD defector, ex-finance minister Oskar Lafontaine.
Known as rhetorically brilliant but awkward with voters, she
is frequently critical of the EU and defends Vladimir Putin's Russia.
She argues that the SPD has sold out its principles and
failed to fight back against unbridled capitalism and Merkel's
neo-liberal" policies.
As Germany has absorbed a mass influx of migrants and
refugees, which has sparked a far-right backlash, Wagenknecht has also broken
with the left's traditional orthodoxy on immigration.
"The idea of 'open borders for all' is
unrealistic," she said in a recent interview.
"If the core concern of leftist politics is to
represent the disadvantaged, then the no-borders position is the opposite of
being on the left.
"All successes in restraining and regulating capitalism
have been achieved within individual states, and states have borders."
Berlin political scientist Dieter Rucht said such views may
indeed "please some of the AfD's voters", predicting success for the
new movement "at least in the short term".
Left and right meet
The idea of a cross-party leftist alliance has repeatedly
come up and been dismissed - in large part because of Die Linke's
uncompromising hard-left positions, such as wanting to abolish NATO and all
secret services.
Germany's three leftist parties won combined support of
under 40 per cent in last year's elections, which narrowly delivered a bruised
Merkel, until then dubbed "the eternal chancellor", her fourth
four-year term.
The SPD was dispirited and split after a historically poor
result, which forced it to reluctantly joined Merkel's conservatives again as
junior partner, further damaging morale.
The working man's party, which saw mass desertions after the
tough labour market reforms of previous chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, is now
polling below 20 percent, raising existential angst.
The mood is more upbeat among the ecologist Greens, who
under charismatic and pragmatic new co-leader Robert Habeck appear open to a
future government alliance with either the SPD or conservatives.
Carsten Brzeski, chief economist with ING Diba bank, was
doubtful about the future of "Stand Up", after "Germany's left
wing parties have failed to work together for decades".
He said Stand Up appears "nationalist in tone, with
anti-European and anti-refugee sentiments".
"Such rhetoric not only plays on the under-currents
running through society but is also a clear attempt to win back disappointed
Linke voters in eastern Germany, who are now voting for the far-right AfD
party," he said.
"It's where the left and right meet."
|
Germany's left and right vie to turn politics upside down
Opponents adopt each other’s policy angles as left launches
movement to counter AfD
Philip Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Sun 22 Jul 2018 11.33 BST Last modified on Sun 22 Jul 2018
16.13 BST
This article is over
1 month old
Die Link’s chairwoman, Sahra Wagenknecht
Die Link’s
chairwoman, Sahra Wagenknecht, will spearhead the as yet unnamed populist
movement.
Leftwing politicians are singing the praises of border
control while rightwingers call for expanding the welfare state. Old political
certainties could be turned upside down in Germany this summer as the far ends
of the country’s political spectrum both moot a “national social” turn.
A new leftwing movement soft-launching in Germany in August
aims to part ways with what one of its founders calls the “moralising” tendency
of the left, in an attempt to win back working-class voters from the far-right
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
The as-yet-unnamed new populist movement, partly inspired by
the British Labour party’s Momentum and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France
Insoumise, and spearheaded by the leftwing party Die Linke’s chairwoman, Sahra
Wagenknecht, will include former and current members of the Social Democratic
and Green parties, and prominent academics such as the sociologist Wolfgang
Streeck.
According to one of the movement’s founders, its defining
feature is likely to be its adherence to “the materialist left, not the moral
left”.
“When people live in social conditions that make them feel
secure, they are usually prepared to act generously and tolerantly,” said Bernd
Stegemann, an author and dramatist at the prestigious Berliner Ensemble theatre
who is working with Wagenknecht on the movement’s programme.
“When they live in increasingly precarious and atomised
conditions, however, they are also likely to react to challenges in a tougher
and colder manner. Brecht summarised it wonderfully. Grub comes first, then
ethics.”
As well as rallying around traditional leftwing causes such
as disarmament and a reversal of Germany’s Hartz IV labour market reforms, an
unsigned position paper circulating around Berlin political circles in recent
weeks suggests the movement will also advocate law and order policies and a
tougher stance on immigration. “Open borders in Europe means more competition
for badly paid jobs,” says the paper, which is headed “fairland”.
Stegemann, who is not a member of any political party, said
he was frustrated with middle-class leftwing intellectuals lecturing
working-class Germans for their sceptical reaction to Angela Merkel’s decisions
at the height of the refugee crisis.
We are dealing with
an absurd situation when the winners of neoliberalism tell the losers that they
must be more humane
“We are dealing with an absurd situation when the winners of
neoliberalism tell the losers that they must be more humane. And it galls me
when politicians think it is enough to pass down moral judgments. No, politics
must act.”
The launch of the new movement, which will start as an
online forum where supporters can upload and visualise policy proposals, comes
as the AfD is trying to win over disappointed Die Linke supporters in the
former states of East Germany. It is doing so by occupying positions on social
welfare usually associated with the left.
With three crucial state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg
and Thuringia coming up next year, east German branches of the AfD have started
to part ways from the party’s economically liberal roots. A new pension plan
unveiled this month by the Thuringian AfD MP Jürgen Pohl proposes stabilising
pension levels at around 50% of earned income, outdoing proposals made by Die
Linke, the Social Democrats or the Greens.
Non-Germans are largely excluded from the AfD’s newly
discovered welfare initiatives. A proposed “state resident’s pension” of €190 a
month could only be claimed by German citizens who have worked in the country
for more than 35 years.
Björn Höcke, the far-right politician who has emerged as the
leading architect of AfD’s “national social” identity in the east, has argued
that “the German social question of the 21st century” is not primarily the
redistribution of national wealth from top to bottom, or old to young, but
“inside to outside”.
For both Die Linke and the AfD, the new “national social”
formations – as a recent article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dubbed the
new political initiative – face opposition from within their own parties. There
are fears among the former’s strategists and activists that the new movement’s
launch proper in early September could backfire and destroy Die Linke’s already
low chances of entering parliament at Bavarian state elections in October.
Wagenknecht is a widely recognised politician whose
rhetorical gifts have made hera regular presence on Germany’s political
talkshows, but critics inside her own party say her popularity is an illusion. Unlike
Labour’s Momentum, her new movement has so far mainly attracted older white
men. In terms of policy, she runs counter to the successful socially liberal,
pro-refugee Berlin branch of Die Linke, which is leading polls for state
elections in 2021.
Inside Alternative für Deutschland, calls for higher
pensions and rallying cries against labour market deregulation clash with the
official positions of the party’s upper ranks, where its leader, Alice Weidel,
advocates Swiss-style pension funds as the model for Germany to follow, and its
deputy leader, Beatrix von Storch, rails against high taxes .
New research, however, suggests that political realignments
are not only taking place in party headquarters but across the country at
large. Sociologist Klaus Dörre’s of a
new “workers’ movement on the right”, based on more than 70 interviews across
Germany, reveals rapidly increasing support for the AfD’s “exclusive
solidarity” among functionaries and members at Germany’s unions.
Manual workers who used to vote for the far right or far
left in protestare increasingly solidifying their identification with the AfD,
Dörre said. “They used to be a fluctuating protest movement, but now they
follow the party line.”
One of the anonymous case studies quoted in the study, a
previously “exemplary” union activist who had fought for solidarity with Czech
temporary workers, expressed views that crossed over from “national social” to
national socialism: “In my view, the refugees have to go away ... I wouldn’t
have a problem if they opened up Buchenwald again, put barbed wire around it,
them inside, us outside.”
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