Germany's
Corona Divide
Berlin Fears Populists Will Exploit Protest
Movement
A vocal minority in Germany opposes the restrictions
put in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, including right-wing
radicals, but also people at the center of society. How can the government best
address the protest movement?
15.05.2020,
18.52 Uhr
By Felix
Bohr, Markus Feldenkirchen, Florian Gathmann, Julia Amalia Heyer, Valerie
Höhne, Martin Knobbe, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Veit Medick, Ann-Katrin Müller,
Christopher Piltz, Lydia Rosenfelder, Jonas Schaible, Christoph Schult,
Christian Teevs, Severin Weiland, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt and Steffen Winter
German
parliamentarian Franziska Brantner recalls how in the beginning, the emails
were sporadic. She says that four or five weeks ago, the main issue in the
mails was the question of herd immunity. Why, people asked in the mails, can’t
we do things the way they are in Britain and Sweden?
Weeks
later, she now receives around 100 complaints each day. There are complaints
about the government, "this emergency regime,” and sometimes critical
questions and expressions of hatred. "Why don’t you stop this harassment
from the government,” one asked? Brantner, who is 40 and has served in the
federal parliament as a member of the Green Party representing the district of
Heidelberg since 2013, says she answers the emails from people who don’t insult
her. She has expanded her office hours for her constituents and she has also
hired a half-time employee just to answer letters from concerned citizens.
No Longer a
Given
Brantner
responds to some of the mails herself, like one that arrived on Tuesday night.
"I can understand both your frustration and your criticism very well,” she
wrote to a person she knows. She closed the message by writing, "And thank
you for expressing your displeasure in democratic circles, which is no longer a
given these days"
Brantner
says that many of the concerns people are expressing are justified or at least
comprehensible. What worries her is the sheer speed of the political debate,
the controversy surrounding calls in Germany for immunity certification for
people who have survived COVID-19 and rumors about an alleged vaccination
requirement once a vaccine is developed for the coronavirus. "Sometimes
members of our own party don’t even grasp our positions,” she says.
Brantner
says she was taken aback when, a few weeks ago, a long-time member of the Green
Party, a retired judge, sent an e-mail declaring the end of the constitutional
state because of the measures imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
That’s the point when Brandtner realized that the side-effects of the global
pandemic could include fundamental doubts about democracy, even among people
who hadn’t been receptive to such doubts before.
The crisis
sparked by the novel coronavirus has now reached its third stage. At first,
concerns were focused on health, followed shortly thereafter by worries about
the economy. But now there’s a third concern: the health of liberal democracy.
The source
of this new worry are the protests against coronavirus lockdown policies by
many German citizens on streets, in town squares and on social networks. They
don’t share the belief that we need to yield many freedoms in order to contain
the virus, and they consider their quality of living to be threatened by
measures to slow the spread of a disease that they don’t even think is all that
dangerous.
These
people represent a minority of Germany society right now. A survey commissioned
by DER SPIEGEL found that 19 percent of Germans consider the lockdown measures
taken to be excessive. The vast majority, 70 percent, consider the measures to
be appropriate. Nevertheless, that figure is still 4 percent lower than it was
three weeks ago, despite the recent loosening of lockdown measures in states
across Germany.
A Perfect
Storm for the AfD
And that is
making German politicians nervous, because it is evoking memories of the
consequences of the refugee crisis in 2015. At the time, the country’s
right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party began gaining traction,
becoming a catch basin for people protesting against established politics,
particularly German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and its rise was accompanied by
conspiracy theories of every nature.
At the
time, the AfD had the potential to attract 20 percent of all German voters, and
it shook up politics in the country. In the wake of the refugee crisis, Merkel
stepped down as the chair of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
party. Then her successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, failed in the position
after her party in the eastern state of Thuringia cast its votes together with
those of the AfD to elect a new governor, an absolute political taboo.
Countries abroad looked to Germany at the time with deep concern: Is there
something bad still slumbering in those Germans?
It’s
through that lens that you have to look at what is happening now. The
conspiracy theories are circulating once again and the AfD is stirring up
protests. The difference this time is that German prosperity isn’t secure in
the way it had been in recent years - this time the economy is crashing and
millions of jobs are at risk. This is precisely the kind of opportunity the AfD
has been waiting for.
Angela Merkel: The German chancellor has once
again become the target of protesters and hatred from the far right. Some fear
it will spill over into the mainstream. FILIP SINGER/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
That
doesn’t mean, of course, that every person who protests or feels uncomfortable
with the many incursions into our freedom are disaffected and outraged people or
inclined toward the AfD. Indeed, it’s good that there are debates over the
state and federal governments’ policies. A clear distinction must be drawn
between democratic protest and conspiracy theories, as well, between serious
debate and between insults or new forms of protest like shaking hands. The
protests have also been accompanied by violence against police and journalists.
Are
Dividing Lines Blurring?
The
greatest worry among politicians right now is that the dividing line will blur,
that the societal mainstream will meld with conspiracy theorists,
anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism and right-wing extremism to the benefit of the
AfD or a newer movement like Widerstand2020 (Resistance 2020) in Stuttgart,
that the battle to save liberal democracy is entering into a new, even more
difficult round.
How can
politicians prepare for this threat? And what are the possible solutions? The
parties are struggling to form positions, they face dissidents and the
disaffected sowing confusion within their own party and what seems to be the
particularly German question of how a country that has coped comparably well so
far in the coronavirus can also get so easily rattled.
Friedrich
Merz, who still has dreams of taking over leadership of the conservative
Christian Democrats (CDU) and ending up in the Chancellery, agrees to meet with
the reporters for a meeting on Wednesday afternoon in Berlin. Only a few weeks
ago, he was homebound in bed after contracting the coronavirus. A tan has once
again return to his face, as if he had just returned from a vacation in
Tuscany.
Despite the
decreasing number of infections, Merz does not believe the virus has been beat.
In his view, the economic outlook is disastrous and he sees a Europe that is
descending into chaos and, meanwhile, a growing movement in the country of
people pretending the coronavirus is like a light cold. It’s madness, Merz
says. "I find the apparent shift in sentiment very disturbing."
Merz
doesn’t always say the things his party wants to hear from him, but in this
case he does. At the moment, fear is rampant with the CDU – worry that public
sentiment will shift and fear that everything could break down again. The party
had actually seemed more or less stable in recent months. The leadership
quarrels surrounding Kramp-Karrenbauer seemed forgotten and the scandal over
the gubernatorial vote in Thuringia had subsided, but unrest is growing within
the party again now.
Vulnerable
to the AfD
The images
from the recent protests in Stuttgart, Cologne and Munich have alarmed the CDU
and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), more than any
other party. Back during the refugee crisis, the protests also began in
splinter groups before becoming more mainstream and boosting the position of
the AfD, which presents more competition for the CDU and CSU than it does any
other parties.
Many a
Christian Democrat is clinging these days to the party’s recent healthy showing
in the polls, where it has the support of 38 percent of voters. But Norbert
Röttgen, a prominent Christian Democrat who is also a candidate to take over
chairmanship the CDU, considers those numbers to be deceptive. "The boost
in the polls,” he says, "is likely attributable to the first weeks of the
crisis. Many were relieved to that politicians acting quickly and in a united
way.” But since then, some have tried to benefit politically from the crisis
and are polarizing the handling of the pandemic. "Sentiment is shifting
and the frustration is starting now,” says Röttgen.
But why?
The responses differ depending on who you ask among the Christian Democrats.
The fatalists argue that there’s nothing that can be done – sooner or later the
internal disputes will return. But others say that two governors – Armin
Laschet of North Rhine-Westphalia and Markus Söder of Bavaria – are to blame
because they were in a competition to prove who was the best at crisis
management and, in doing so, at times created the impression that they were
less interested in peoples’ health than in their own political careers.
Röttgen
says the chancellor also bears some responsibility. "Merkel has long been
perceived as a bulwark,” he says. He says she did "very well” for several
weeks. "But then she may have gotten caught in a rationalist trap. She has
pursued her policies persistently, but she also should anticipated a shift in
the sentiment and registered it when it started happening. By not reacting, she
left herself vulnerable to the politicians who were trying to build pressure
for a loosening of the lockdown measures.
The
skittishness is particularly palpable in the party’s parliamentary group in the
Bundestag, where many members of parliament are sensing firsthand the growing
doubts of people in their constituencies toward the measures. Andreas
Mattfeldt, a CDU member of parliament from Lower Saxony, says he had hoped that
the opposition parties, like the business-friendly Free Democrats, would
express criticism of the government’s crisis strategy. "Instead, it is now
becoming an issue for the AfD, and I’m afraid that the uncertainty in the
population is getting out of hand.” He warns: "The crack running through
this country is much bigger than we thought.”
Mattfeldt,
an uncomfortable parliamentarian who has been a thorn in the side of leaders of
the party group for years, says he believes Merkel’s initial response to the
crisis was the correct one. He also
supported shutting down public life for a time. But he was bothered by the fact
that the virologists the government was relying on for advice proferred
contradictory assessments. He was also unhappy about public appearances made by
the head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, the country’s center for disease
control. But most importantly, the events on the ground in his own constituency
didn’t match the actions that were being taken in Berlin.
As Merkel,
German Health Minister Jens Spahn and virologist Christian Drosten all warned
of the possibility that Germany could become the next Italy, with its overrun
hospitals, and state governors competed to see who could impose the strictest
lockdown, the messages coming out of many hospitals in his constituency were
different: There was no onslaught of patients and the situation remained calm.
In April,
Mattfeldt canvassed parliament for possible allies sharing his skeptical view
and soon assembled two dozen others who were dealing with similar concerns.
Three weeks ago, they met in the offices of the German parliament for their
first exchange. They were also joined by colleagues from the business-friendly
Free Democrats.
A
”Dangerous Mix”
Absent at
the meeting were members of the center-left SPD, who have had less traumatic
experiences with the AfD than the CDU and CSU have, and are thus able to brush
off the protests more easily. SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil says he
understands the uncertainty people are feeling and that he even engages in
discussions with people who believe in conspiracy theories. But there are also
limits to his tolerance: He says anyone who fights for fundamental rights, but
then goes to protests attended by "Reichsbürger (a movement that rejects
modern Germany), neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers at which journalists are
attacked” must also be aware of who they are keeping company with.
He calls it
a "dangerous mix.” Klingbeil says that people who took to the streets to
protest the government’s refugee policies are back at it again. "There are
intellectual firebrands there who create the kind of climate that results in
attacks against police and journalists. They’re exploiting the coronavirus
crisis to divide people and incite them.”
German
Family Minister Franziska Giffey of the SPD also finds it frightening to see
all the different segments of society attending the protests, not to mention
how fast conspiracy theories are spreading. "I fear a spill-over into
mainstream society, also because fabricated news is spread so fast through
digitization.”
But it’s
the SPD of all parties, that is currently creating difficulties for the
government on the corona policies front, specifically an official at the
Interior Ministry.
"A
Global False Alarm”
In an email
that Interior Ministry official Stephan Kohn sent last friday to state interior
ministries, he wrote: "There was probably no point at which the danger
posed by the new virus was beyond the normal level.” He also issued a strong
recommendation that the government’s protective measures be "completely
lifted.”
Kohn’s
paper is more than 190 pages long, including attachments. He also poses the
question of the undesired collateral damage caused by the coronavirus
containment measures – through postponed operations, for example. He writes
that more deaths through heart attacks and strokes are to be expected because
those with ailments are less likely to go to the doctor. In the paper, he also
draws attention to the suffering of people in need of care and the mentally
ill. All things that are certainly worthy of consideration.
Some 10,000 people gathered at a fairground
midway in Stuttgart to protest the government's coronavirus lockdown last
Saturday. MARC GRUBER / 7AKTUELL.DE
All in all,
however, the paper exaggerates on a grand scale. He calls the coronavirus
pandemic a "global false alarm.” Some of the sources in his paper are
dubious blogs that no serious government official should be relying on.
Kohn has
been raising his concerns for weeks at the ministry and had even sent out
abstracts of his paper, although in a more reserved tone. People conveyed to
him that some of his ideas were interesting, but that on other points, he is
either wrong or out of date. His superiors signaled to him that he should stop,
that he isn’t even responsible for these issues.
But Kohn
didn’t. One day, when his boss wasn’t there, he sent out his paper as
"expert advice” from Department KM4 at the Interior Ministry. In it, he
also writes that the state could ultimately turn out to be "the biggest
producer of fake news.”
Speaking of
Kohn, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer says: "Everyone knows that I
maintain a high degree of liberalism in my ministry. So, I have no problem with
him having his own opinion. What’s not OK is that he used the ministry’s
infrastructure and letterhead to create the impression that it was the
ministry’s opinion. Despite all the liberalism, there also has to be
loyalty."
Kohn has
since been suspended from duty. He was advised to obtain a lawyer and his work
laptop was confiscated.
Kohn’s
family has experienced plenty of negativity in the past. Three of his brothers
were sexually abused by a Lutheran pastor, with their family sharing their
woeful story with DER SPIEGEL in 2010. Later, Hamburg Bishop Maria Jepsen
resigned from office in response, even though she bore no personal
responsibility. Kuhn also ran to become the chair of the SPD against Andrea
Nahles and failed spectacularly.
A Difficult
Situation
On the
internet, the suspended government official has since become a hero to those
bucking the coronavirus line. The right-wing conservative blog Tichy’s Einblick
is portraying Kuhn as a kind of whistleblower. Hans-Georg Maassen, the
controversial former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution,
which is responsible for monitoring extremism in Germany, has also voiced his
support for Kuhn on Twitter.
Kohn’s
paper has put the government in a difficult situation. One the one hand, he
expresses some warnings that are justified. On the other, though, he places one
foot into the world of the conspiracy theorists. The very groupings that are
now trying to shift the mood against the government’s lockdown policies. The
same people are now alleging that the Interior Ministry is suppressing
criticism.
At a
meeting of the parliamentary group on Tuesday, several members of parliament
with the Christian Democrats brought up Kohn’s paper, including digital expert
Christoph Bernstiel of Saxony-Anhalt. "What’s our communications strategy
for this paper?” he asked participants. He warned against ignoring the document
and appealed to the Interior Ministry to respond to the accusations officially
and soberly. Bernstiel has been quoted as saying that if the work is just
dismissed as that of some nutcase, it "will just be throwing fuel on the
fire of conspiracy theorists.”
Interior
Minister Seehofer didn’t attend the virtual meeting, so his representative in
parliament, Günter Krings, responded for him. He expressed his firm opposition
to treating the document seriously. If you start analyzing papers like that,
Krings warned, "then pretty soon you’ll be inviting the guys with the tin
foil hats to parliamentary hearings.” Men in tin foil hats is a term used to
describe people who believe in conspiracy theorists.
Veronika
Bellmann, a CDU member of parliament from the eastern state of Saxony, accuses
Seehofer of prematurely rejecting the paper. "The basic premise of the
paper, that the threat posed by the coronavirus has been exaggerated, is one I
share completely," Bellmann says, adding that the public official was just
doing his job. "That he has now been portrayed by the Interior Ministry as
a crackpot bothers me. By doing so, we are adding fuel to the conspiracy theory
fire. I have the expectation that we give his ideas serious consideration."
Almost all
parties are dealing with dissidents who are disinclined to follow the general
course of action that has been laid out. In the Green Party, it is Tübingen
Mayor Boris Palmer, who said that we are "likely protecting people who
would have been dead within half a year anyway."
More
Contentious Debate
This
comment has divided the Greens into two camps. The larger camp, and therefore
the strongest, consists of those who had already lost patience with Palmer and
his provocations. Numerous Green Party members thus welcome the proposal from
party leaders to withdraw all party support from Palmer.
But the old
guard is opposed to the idea, convinced that the party could benefit from a bit
more contentious debate within its ranks. After all, they say, the Green Party
is a civil rights party. Just a few days ago, a group of Greens released an
appeal demanding that both state and federal party leaders engage in dialogue
with Palmer and to abandon the "reprimand reflex." One of the
signatories was Antje Vollmer, a former Bundestag vice president.
Party
leaders, though, would rather ignore the Palmer issue. When approached by DER
SPIEGEL for comment, party heads Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck said only
that they had nothing more to say on the issue.
Within the
FDP, meanwhile, the most prominent dissident is Thomas Kemmerich, the
politician from Thuringia who triggered a massive political scandal in Germany
by initially accepting his election to the post of state governor, despite
landing the position thanks to support from the far right AfD. He quickly
stepped down once the uproar could no longer be ignored, but the damage was
done.
In Gera, he
recently spoke at a demonstration made up of conspiracy theory enthusiasts and
AfD supporters. He was welcomed as the "only currently legitimate
governor" of Thuringia - and he didn't say anything to contradict that
characterization.
In a
special session of FDP leaders held to address that incident, Kemmerich
apologized half-heartedly and announced that he was resigning from his position
as part of the party's federal executive committee. Parliamentarian Alexander
Graf Lambsdorff responded by saying Kemmerich should consider whether that step
was sufficient, with other meeting participants agreeing with Lambsdorff.
The FDP's
political adversaries, of course, were more than happy to take advantage of
Kemmerich's most recent misstep. "That the FDP is taking part in
conspiracy demonstrations in Thuringia is shocking," tweeted Marco
Wanderwitz, a CDU politician who is responsible for eastern German issues for
the federal government and a native of Saxony. "I'm afraid such ideas also
have widespread support in Saxony."
Raw Tones
Such
accusations anger FDP members who have clearly distanced themselves from the
AfD and the corona truthers. People like Frank Müller-Rosentritt, 37, who has
been head of the state FDP chapter in Saxony for the last six months. "The
FDP in Saxony stands for cosmopolitanism, diversity and tolerance and took part
in a demonstration, to name one example, with the CDU general secretary in
Saxony against PEGIDA, the AfD and other tin foil hats," Müller-Rosentritt
says. In response to the tweet to Wanderwitz, he wrote: "I don't know what
you sprinkled on your breakfast this morning, but the ignorance and
maliciousness of this disgraceful accusation cannot be topped." The tone
is getting rawer.
Boris Palmer, the mayor of the university town of
Tübingen, drew rebuke across Germany when he recently said the coronavirus
measures are "likely protecting people who would have been dead within
half a year anyway." Cira Moro / DER SPIEGEL
The Saxony
FDP head says that members of his party don't belong at demonstrations that
include people from the hardcore right or extreme left. "Many take part
who have grown comfortable in their fake news bubble," he says. Freedom,
though, "is not the opposite of reason," Müller-Rosentritt
emphasizes. "We have to be careful that extremists and conspiracy
theorists do not misappropriate the term freedom for their own purposes and
reinterpret it."
The
demonstration where Kemmerich spoke was organized by Peter Schmidt, until
recently a senior member of a CDU economic council in Thuringia, although he is
not a member of the party. In 2018, Schmidt's company won a prestigious prize
awarded annually to mid-sized companies. One acclamation noted that the company
emphasizes the integration of foreigners. Schmidt's company also apparently
donates money to help children suffering from cancer and sponsors a cycling
team.
"I
registered the demonstration of my own volition and did not receive outside
support," he wrote on Facebook in defense of the Gera demonstration. He
added that he would not allow himself to be instrumentalized by any party or
organization. But if someone shares his views, he wouldn't "subject them
to an ideological examination."
Schmidt
sees himself as a victim, saying he warned that people with competing views
were either being ignored or accused of being Nazis. Now, he says, he has
personal experience with the phenomenon, but isn't planning on organizing
another demonstration. "It was an honor to me to light the spark, now you
have to carry the flame."
Gera is in
Thuringia, and Governor Bodo Ramelow has a large favor he would like to ask of
his electorate: Namely that they not allow themselves to be deceived by global
conspiracy fantasies, anti-vaxxers, those who accuse Merkel of being a dictator
and other delusions. "There are many legitimate questions and
misunderstandings," Ramelow says. And that is completely normal and
appropriate, he adds, particularly in a democracy that thrives on a diversity
of views. "Speaking nonsense is also covered by the democratic right to
free speech. But intentionally misleading people, taking advantage of their fears,
inciting them against each other and thus endangering their health is
dishonorable, obscene and morally abhorrent."
Whereas
most parties tend to be suffering from the protests, the right-wing radical AfD
is ecstatic. Functionaries at all levels are hoping that those who are now
taking to the streets, insofar as they aren't yet voters, will choose the AfD
in future elections. Many of the demonstrations are now being registered by AfD
members, doing their best to pose as the original corona skeptics in an effort
to pull the rug out from under Widerstand2020 ("widerstand" is the
German word for "resistance"), the new party that is currently being
formed.
"Fundamental
Democratic Rights"
Senior AfD
members have also begun joining the fray. Party head Tino Chrupalla has taken
part in demonstrations in Zittau and in Weisswasser, two towns in Saxony.
Chrupalla considers the measures imposed by the federal government to be
"totally disproportionate," adding "it's no wonder that people
are taking to the streets." He professes not to understand the criticism
that has been leveled at the protests. "Citizens that protest are
exercising their fundamental democratic rights," he says. When it's
pointed out that there have been attacks on police officers at some of the
demonstrations, Chrupalla says that he knows nothing about such things. But he
nevertheless insists: "The interior ministers want to play the police off
against the populace."
Chrupalla
is pleased that other milieus can also be found on the street. "The fact
that resistance is also prevalent in the center of society," he says,
"should make the government think." He predicts that the
demonstrations will grow, and he isn't bothered by the fact that extremists are
among them.
It is an
open question whether the AfD can attract new voters, particularly from eastern
Germany. A survey commissioned by DER SPIEGEL found that 20 percent of people
in western Germany find the anti-pandemic measures to be excessive, but only 13
percent of those in eastern Germany. In the East, satisfaction with the
government's measures is slightly higher than in the West, which is hardly ever
the case.
Saxony
Governor Michael Kretschmer of the CDU considers the protests to be legitimate
and is at pains to avoid giving the impression that anyone's viewpoint is being
suppressed. The government, he says, was democratically elected and those who
have a problem with the anti-corona measures should "be able to express
that at any time in a reasonable way." But, Kretschmer is quick to say,
"such a crisis becomes lethal when populists are in power." As such,
he says, he has great faith in people's restraint.
His
counterpart in Saxony-Anhalt, Governor Reiner Haseloff, likewise of the CDU,
says it is frightening to see the degree of anger that is present at the
demonstrations. But he also says that it in no way reflects majority opinion.
The majority, he says, is not pushing to return to normality as soon as
possible, but is concerned for their health and are uneasy about loosening the
lockdown. Every day, he says, he receives emails and letters expressing such
concerns.
The Fury
Hotspot
Indeed, the
German hotspot of corona fury is not in the East, but deep in the West – in the
city of Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg. On Saturday, the movement called Querdenken
711 (the German word Querdenken essentially means "thinking outside of the
box") brought 10,000 people onto a fairground in Stuttgart.
Baden-Württemberg Governor Winfried Kretschmann of the Green Party found the
demonstration "extremely unsettling."
One of the
main reasons that political leaders and security officials find these
demonstrations so concerning is their diversity. There are, to be sure, plenty
of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and Merkel-haters present, but they have
been joined by workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the economic
crisis and by single mothers. And, of course, by citizens who believe the
rights guaranteed by the German constitution are under fire. Last weekend,
there were 70 such marches with a total of around 19,000 participants.
What should
be done? Essentially, there are three possible strategies: communication, the
rule of law and money.
Friedrich
Merz is in favor of taking decisive measures. "Many people can hardly
point to an institution that they still believe in," he says. "For
that precise reason, politicians cannot be too defensive. All of us must stand
up more strongly to those seeking to attract insecure milieus with crude
conspiracy theories."
By
contrast, however, Tilman Kuban, head of the CDU's youth chapter, is demanding
that critics be taken seriously and that measures to combat the crisis be
better explained. "I want an open culture of debate," Kuban says.
There are "good arguments" both for the lockdown and for measures to
loosen it.
Lars
Klingbeil of the SPD, meanwhile, would like to get the authorities involved.
"We should not look away from such groups out of fear," he says. The
authorities, he says, "have to take a close look at what is
happening."
Things such
as the focused attack launched on Saturday against Rhineland-Palatinate
Governor Malu Dreyer. Her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts received
around 7,000 posts that day, including calls to assassinate Merkel.
Dreyer's
team forwarded the most serious threats to the office of the federal
prosecutor. "Insults and threats must be addressed by the judiciary. The
freedom of opinion doesn't cover everything," says Dreyer.
"The
Situation Is Explosive"
Ultimately,
though, it will likely be money that talks the loudest. The greatest open door
to the AfD and to the conspiracy theorists would be the widespread economic
suffering of people who lost their jobs because of the crisis.
Those
sitting at home with much less money than before, or those who are worried
about being able to provide for their families could begin looking around for a
scapegoat. The answer that such a person would find from the AfD or in social
media channels is clear: The German government and the policies it implemented
to stop the spread of the virus. The result could be a further loss of support
for liberal democracy.
"Of
course the situation is explosive," says Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
"We have 10 million people furloughed from their jobs, three times as many
as during the financial crisis. For me, we are now entering the most important
phase for taking the wind out of the protesters' sails. We quickly need a
stimulus program to remain liquid and to save people's jobs."
The first
laws to that effect have already been passed. The money that will now be spent
is essentially the price that must be paid to support our liberal democracy.
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