Worries about the economy and migration pushed up share for far-right AfD in Hesse and Bavaria, while coalition parties did worse
German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fractious centre-left coalition has received a sharp rebuke from voters in the key states of Bavaria and Hesse, with economic woes and immigration fears boosting the opposition conservatives and the far right.
At the elections on Sunday the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party burst out of its post-industrial eastern strongholds to score its best ever result in a western state. Polls showed it on course to be the second largest party in Hesse, home to the financial capital Frankfurt.
All three parties in Scholz’s federal coalition – his Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) – did worse than five years ago in the states, which together account for about a quarter of the German population.
At this rate, Germany or France could very well be the first to fall to a new wave of Fascism. Either AfD are going to land themselves in a strong coalition government because of how badly the CDU fumbled under Merkel’s reign or Le Pen is going to win the next French presidential election because of how deeply unpopular Macron is.
Either outcome would be disastrous for the European Union or even NATO in general. If you thought Britain leaving was bad enough, imagine the EU losing another of its biggest economies. Now imagine that these governments would be pursuing policies in direct opposition to NATO’s ideologies.
This is why capitalists are playing a dangerous game with the economy. 1917 Russia and 1930’s Germany are living proof that people turn to more radical political beliefs in times of hardship.
What kind of coalition you are talking about ? Right now every other political party has denied them a possible coalition and will continue to do so. Also the CDU you are talking about is sadly performing very strong in the latest elections, so it’s gonna be probably them again who will reign in germany
Yea that is a bad situation. Belgium did the same thing and there needed to be a coalition of 7! parties to sideline the right. That many parties never see eye to eye and agree on nothing, it basically puts Belgium without a government because nothing gets done. There is a constant fear if 1 party leaves, the majority is gone and the government will fall.
Childish politicians obviously use this as leverage.
Hey Europe. You weren’t supposed to laugh at us Americans and then start mimicking our horseshit.
There’s lots of Germans here on lemmy so I have a question. What exactly is pushing the far right movement other than “immigration fears”? Also how far right is far right? American far right are fucking turbo racists, but as i hear most say EU right would be considered liberal in the US.
They are far right enough that courts and prosecutors have decided repeatedly that one of their main leaders can be publicly called a fascist and a nazi because it is based on facts and a permissible „value judgement“. This is rather exceptional, as things like that are usually taken very seriously here as an insult and can cost you hundreds or thousands of Euros.
Here is what one prosecutor had to say (translated):
Against the background that the person concerned, according to general opinion, belongs to the extreme right-wing fringe of his party, has expressed himself in recent years, as evidenced by a large number of press publications, in a clearly nationalistic-folkish manner with racist overtones and emphasising a natural claim to leadership of the Germans, and in doing so has repeatedly used formulations that belonged to the standard vocabulary of the representatives of National Socialism before May 1945…
There are moderates in the AfD, but they are increasingly silenced or leaving. And in that case „moderate“ means not demanding that migrants be shot at the border, not defending holocaust deniers, not attending concerts where the hitler salute is shown, not conniving with Reichsbürger (our own mad version of „sovereign citizens“), not calling for the death of government officials, politicians or doctors …
The turn to the right in Germany have a lot to do with the state of the media in Germany.
Far-right groups have sucessfully established isolated media channels on various platforms, among them Telegram and YouTube, but also on Facebook and Twitter, with very little coherence to other media and the actual state of things. Its output is achieved by informally and ideologically recruiting laypersons as influencers who constantly create content which acts as a sort of pyramid scheme of attention, thus self-replicating.
The content also appears on the feeds of already right-wing journalists of very popular and sensationalist newspapers of the Axel-Springer-Verlag (very sketchy and influential publisher) with half a century of experience manipulating the German political landscape.
For additional context it is also necessary to consider that yesterday (Sunday, 2023-10-08) there were elections in two German states, one of which (Bayern) has a history of being more right-wing and religious than the other West-German states.
I would say a lot of people in Germany are feeling left out/alone with their problems.
It’s been like this for at least 10, if not 20 or more years.
Most stuff is lobby and economy driven and we’re getting nowhere.
In came the afd offering easy solutions and appealing to the public (never mind their program stating completely otherwise) so I guess it gave people the feeling of someone doing something and caring for them.
And if not, pissing off the rest of the politicians.
At least the latter is working.
I do not support or condone this behaviour but it is not that hard to read.
And instead of approaching the real current issues (inflation, money issues, buerocracy, environment) directly most parties even try to move further right, to get the afd voters back, which is the worst they could do.
As a German I’m so fucking disappointed by the sheer amount of dipshits in my country…
Someone who doesn’t share your views, aren’t necessarily dipshits. Your attitude is just as bad as those dipshits.
voting for nazi scum is a dipshit move, can’t change my mind.
Nazi and right-wing are not synonyms. Your right government are not building concentration camps to gas jews, they are not going for the uber aryan race, they are not going to reintroduce slavery and torture, they are not going to line up people before a wall to get shot, they are not going to start a war to expand their territory.
The word nazi and racist have lost a lot of weight because of incorrectly overly used.
I can tell you’re not happy with it, if they are really that bad, the next election will be different. Just hang on.
members of our nazi party are denying the holocaust, are racist, are lying and are also supporting neonazis and their cause. They don’t give a fuck about our environment, want to exit nato and the european union, openly support putin and his war and denying covid and its dangers, so please stop excusing those dipshits!
They have to be stopped right now, not in a few years when they start their nazi shit all over again and have driven our land to a new crisis because their agenda is bullshit and grounde on lies and the fear of people.
If you vote for those idiots you are an idiot yourself in the best case and in the worst case you are supporting everything those Nazis stand for. They don’t need to build concentration camps to be nazis they simply are, what a stupid argument to make…holy shit please just let it be and move on.
Yes that is bad. But you shouldn’t get so wound up over an opinion of some nobody internet dude like me. You’ll be fine, germany will be fine.
you were making false statements about those nazi dipshits and and tried to play them down. If you have no idea about our right winged politic parties, try not to start discussion how harmless they are.
We just need to keep and increase the number of dialogues we’re having with our neighbors on life and our government. Apathy is powerful and hopelessness doubly so but we can build a better future working towards solutions with our neighbors.
Capitalist’s are pushing the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. We have tools that can reverse that disparity and with it remove the intoxicating push to the far right.
I blame the FDP holding up any relief spending that could have blunted this
