[Nicky91]

The far-right AfD could win eastern state elections, dealing a blow to German democracy and especially the parties that make up Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left coalition in Berlin.

In the spa town of Bad Langensalza, Thuringia, a couple hundred people have gathered in a car park to hear a speech from a man in a pristine white shirt considered one of the most dangerous people in German politics: Björn Höcke, leader of the Thuringian branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The event, overlooked by the town's ivy-covered old city wall, has been pitched as a "summer party." There is beer, bratwurst, and balloons; children are getting their faces painted. Höcke, the last of several speakers, fairly springs onto the small stage with his arms spread wide, glowing with self-confidence.

No wonder: His party has been comfortably leading opinion polls in Thuringia for several months. The elections here and in neighboring Saxony are now just days away, on September 1, and the AfD could well win both of them.

The day before, a much less popular man in eastern Germany was visiting Dresden, capital of Saxony, to stick a symbolic spade in the ground for the foundation of an EU-supported Taiwanese semiconductor factory expected to provide 8,000 new jobs to the region.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz was there partly to save his future. His center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is hovering around 5% in opinion polls in both Saxony and Thuringia. That is a knife-edge — 5% is the hurdle for representation in the state parliaments, and if the SPD fails to clear it, Scholz could face serious questions before the national election in the fall of 2025.

"Scholz had great successes in the 2021 election in eastern Germany," Hans Vorländer, a political scientist at the Dresden University of Technology, told DW. "If they fail to make it into the parliaments now … I'm sure within the SPD there will be questions about Scholz's leadership ability and the next candidacy for chancellor."


AfD leader Bjorn Hocke

An election about democracy
However many semiconductor factories arise in eastern Germany, the region often seems bogged down in grievance and fear — depopulated, far-right leaning, still affected by the economic aftermath of the reunification of East Germany with the West. The AfD has made an art of fostering these residual resentments. In Bad Langensalza, Höcke finishes his speech by calling on people to vote for him to prevent "the demise of the country." This, he said, is an election about "whether we want a future or not."

The listeners seem convinced. Even the floating voters at this "summer party" aren't put off by the racist statements AfD figures occasionally make — or that Germany's domestic intelligence agencies consider the Thuringian AfD to be even more extremist than the AfD as a whole. "A few things he said were pretty good," one undecided man told DW. "Like lowering taxes. But all the parties promise that before an election."

Not that everyone in Thuringia accepts the AfD as a legitimate option. Wherever Höcke campaigns, he has to shout down a whistling, jeering counter-demo made up of various left-wing anti-fascist groups. Just a day before the Bad Langensalza "summer party," the AfD was forced to cancel a Höcke event in the city of Jena because counterdemonstrators managed to break police lines and get into the event itself.

Höcke has long since learned to channel this hostility into his speeches. In between claiming that transvestites are teaching sex education in primary schools and migrants are bringing crime to Germany, he says that the government is becoming increasingly authoritarian. His parallels with the communist dictatorship that once ruled East Germany go down well with supporters in Bad Langensalza.

This stirring of real or imagined grievances is what all the other parties in Thuringia and Saxony have to deal with, especially those belonging to Scholz's center-left coalition.

The AfD's approach appears to be working. In Thuringia, the latest polls put the AfD at around 30%, way ahead of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) at 21%. In neighboring Saxony, the CDU is putting up a better fight, matching the AfD at around 30%.

Saxony and Thuringia: Similar but different
Though eastern Germany is often seen as a homogenous region, there are major political differences among the states. While Thuringia has been governed for the last decade by the socialist Left Party under State Premier Bodo Ramelow, Saxony has been led by Michael Kretschmer of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2017.

These two politicians' fortunes in the current election campaign could hardly be further apart. Kretschmer's CDU has just recently retaken the lead from the AfD in some polls, while Ramelow's time in office looks all but over. The Left Party's ratings have halved since the last election in 2019 and now languishing at 15%, and its current left-wing coalition partners, the SPD and the Greens, may well be completely eviscerated next week.

That means that in both states, the only possible coalitions that keep the AfD out of government (and all the other parties have promised to do that) appear to be an uncomfortable alliance between the CDU and Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). It would be bizarre partnership: The former is a centrist party that likes to present itself as a rock of stability, tradition, and conservatism, the latter an upstart outfit less than a year old run by a former communist with a gift for populist rhetoric.

Upstart BSW
Sahra Wagenknecht, who splintered the Left Party she once led last year, has become immensely popular in eastern Germany, even though she is not actually on the ballot in the upcoming elections.

"Sahra Wagenknecht is a cult figure in eastern Germany. She leads the party autocratically, and she is a focus of the yearning for authority and leadership in the east," as Vorländer puts it.

An alliance with the BSW, which is polling at nearly 20% in Thuringia and over 10% in Saxony, is likely to be difficult to digest for some in the CDU. Apart from the fact that Wagenknecht was once a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the communist East German dictatorship, she is already making demands that will be difficult for the CDU to accept. For instance, that it should declare itself against the stationing of US medium-range ballistic missiles in Germany.

This kind of thing goes down well in eastern Germany, according to Vorländer. "A lot of people in eastern Germany have inherited a skepticism and rejection from GDR times against NATO," he said. "There are some anti-American attitudes, and there are still resistance reflexes to anything that comes from 'the West'."

In keeping with those instincts, both the BSW and the AfD have successfully tapped into fears among many eastern Germans about the Ukraine war, an issue that has come to dominate these elections.

And though the BSW has consistently distanced itself from the far-right AfD and ruled out any cooperation, one fact looms uncomfortably over this election: The two parties have more in common than sets them apart.

All this leaves Scholz's SPD in a desperate situation, especially because another eastern German state, Brandenburg, will hold an election three weeks later. Here, too, the AfD is leading the polls, with the SPD and CDU vying for second place.

Yet in some ways, it is Scholz's coalition partners that have the most to fear from these three elections. The Green Party, currently in government in all three states, is likely to lose that influence, while the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) are facing annihilation in the East — probably as punishment for hitching their wagon to the Scholz train. That does not bode well for Scholz's already fractious coalition.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-governm...ons/a-70036219

[arista]

Far-right AfD on track for its first win in
eastern German state vote

Sunday.


[BERLIN, Aug 30 (Reuters) - The far-right
Alternative for Germany is predicted to
come first in at least one of two elections
in eastern states on Sunday,
piling pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz's
federal coalition over the economy,
immigration and support for Ukraine.
The 11-year-old AfD, which has greater
support in the formerly communist-run east,
will be unlikely to be able to form
a state government even if it does win,
as it is polling short of a majority
and other parties refuse to collaborate with it.]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...te-2024-08-30/








https://news.sky.com/story/german-el...tions-13206058


[For some time now,
the national government in Berlin
has been casting anxious glances
beyond the city limits.

Surrounded by the states of what used
to be the communist east, politicians in the
capital are about to witness a lurch
to the right on its own doorstep]

[Nicky91]

yes i posted this earlier in the week

https://www.thisisbigbrother.com/for...d.php?t=392365

[Livia]

Waits for the shift further right. Germany has an even bigger problem with migrants than we do.

[arista]

SkyNewsHD Live in Germany

Exit Poll

Far-right AfD Largest Party
in Thuringia state

[Crimson Dynamo]

The German people have had enough

[MTVN]

It's no surprise given the failure of elected governments to respond to the issues that matter to people

[Crimson Dynamo]

[MTVN]

Looks like BSW have come third and their views are certainly interesting! From wiki:

The BSW has been variously described as populist,[8][34] socialist,[6] economically socialist,[10] anti-capitalist,[35] cultural conservative,[10] social-conservative,[36] left-wing populist,[37] left-wing nationalist[38] and left-conservative.[10]

[UserSince2005]

German want to be like brits.
We should do an elite union with Germany.
France can join as our bitch.
And then we should exploit the rest of Europe for all it is worth

[MTVN]

Originally Posted by UserSince2005

German want to be like brits.
We should do an elite union with Germany.
France can join as our bitch.
And then we should exploit the rest of Europe for all it is worth

No Italy?

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Livia

Waits for the shift further right. Germany has an even bigger problem with migrants than we do.

Originally Posted by Crimson Dynamo

The German people have had enough

Originally Posted by MTVN

It's no surprise given the failure of elected governments to respond to the issues that matter to people

Well yeah. If the only people who promise to respond to the migration crisis are "far right", they'll gain more popularity as the problem grows and continues to be ignored.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

Well yeah. If the only people who promise to respond to the migration crisis are "far right", they'll gain more popularity as the problem grows and continues to be ignored.

the problem is not the "far right" but the spineless cowards who do nothing about illegal disastrous "migration" OF CULT who support MILITARY AGED MEN FROM A backward culture being fed and supported in case people think we are not "progressive"

bookmark me

oh wait you did 4 years ago..

[arista]

Sky News Text:
[Germany's far-right is on course for its
first big electoral win since the Second World War,
with the Alternative for Germany's (AfD)
expected win in a state election in Thuringia,
The Times reports.]

[Nicky91]

Originally Posted by Crimson Dynamo

The German people have had enough

the german people need to shut their gobs


no need for the Nazi's to be back in power again, otherwise UK and USA need to invade Germany again, if they haven't learned their lesson from WW2

[Nicky91]

no more german music to listen to for me, no german tv shows for me either




seems like Germany also going into the same direction as Fuhrer Putin in Russia

[Crimson Dynamo]

Germany should invade Holland and force you to speak German and shut down all cable TV stations like Disney and Apple - only German state TV for you

[Nicky91]

Originally Posted by Crimson Dynamo

Germany should invade Holland and force you to speak German and shut down all cable TV stations like Disney and Apple - only German state TV for you

imagine supporting fascism in 2024

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Nicky91

imagine supporting fascism in 2024

Also wifi only 9 am to 12 midday

[Nicky91]

[Nicky91]

disgusting, Germany is Cancelled for me if those fascist idiots regain power again


might as well also have Golden Dawn neo nazi's back in power in Greece then while we're at it

[Nicky91]

Originally Posted by Nicky91

Bjorn ''Adolf Hitler 2.0'' Hocke

Höcke has links with neo-Nazi circles in Germany

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/w...rmany-afd.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20150530...e-mail100.html

In a 2014 email to party colleagues, Höcke advocated the abolition of section 86 of the German Criminal Code (which prohibits the spread of propaganda by unconstitutional organizations) and section 130 of the German Criminal Code (which criminalizes incitement to hatred towards other groups).[41] This would also have legalized Holocaust denial, which is illegal in Germany





and german people want this evil piece of scum in power, EWWWWWWWWW


really the time again for another British-American Invasion of Germany

[Crimson Dynamo]

Germany’s mainstream parties can no longer pretend the AfD is a political force that will
simply disappear.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Crimson Dynamo

This is very true. If people had been asked whether they wanted to take in millions of people who follow a backward religion, who do not respect women, who would raise the crime rate, who would change our whole culture and cost us billions people would have said no. But there never was a conversation and if you speak about it, you're far right. I have friends in Germany who live in a rural area and they tell me their local town is unrecognisable. They don't let their daughters out alone as many girls have been attacked and crime has risen exponentially, unlike Poland who've taken hardly any refugees and their crime rate has not risen. Germany and Britain are experiencing the same thing. The only recourse people have is to vote for the Right. It's the reason Reform polled a third if votes in the last election.

[Quantum Boy]

Originally Posted by Livia

This is very true. If people had been asked whether they wanted to take in millions of people who follow a backward religion, who do not respect women, who would raise the crime rate, who would change our whole culture and cost us billions people would have said no. But there never was a conversation and if you speak about it, you're far right. I have friends in Germany who live in a rural area and they tell me their local town is unrecognisable. They don't let their daughters out alone as many girls have been attacked and crime has risen exponentially, unlike Poland who've taken hardly any refugees and their crime rate has not risen. Germany and Britain are experiencing the same thing. The only recourse people have is to vote for the Right. It's the reason Reform polled a third if votes in the last election.

I agree but only to an extent and it's more or less why I consider myself entirely politically "homeless" at this point. Some of the things Labour do have my head in my hands -- not a surprise because some of what they had planned in 2008 was the same. The SNP has completely imploded. I cannot and will not be a Tory.

I think a lot of people feel the same and that's why they end up turning to parties like Reform (and Trumpism) all across the western world... but it's all snake oil. People with an agenda who know which strings of frustration to pull on the steer votes in their direction. Absolute mess, we simply don't have a mostly-centrist party with reasonable policies so what are we actually supposed to do .