ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT PARTIES ON THE RISE
The AfD is led in Thuringia by Bjoern Hoecke, a man that some in the party considered so extremist they tried to expel him.
The former history teacher has called Berlin’s memorial to Nazi Germany’s Holocaust of Europe’s Jews a “monument of shame” and was convicted earlier this year for using a Nazi slogan at a party rally.
While voting patterns in the formerly communist-run east are still distinct 30 years after reunification due to weaker party allegiances and greater economic pessimism, Sunday’s elections give a flavour of nationwide and even European-wide trends.
As in France and elsewhere, the rise of anti-establishment parties in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing cost-of-living crisis are complicating coalition-building and governability.
“Everything has gone wrong with the established parties: we need a new direction,” said Thomas Leser, who was in the audience at the BSW rally in Suhl in Thuringia.
Created in January, the BSW, which combines social conservatism and far-left economics, is expected to win up to 20 per cent and 15 per cent respectively in Thuringia and Saxony, which could put it in kingmaker position.
“I’m also not happy when a party becomes strong in which there really are right-wing extremists and Nazis,” party leader Sahra Wagenknecht said at a rally this week.
“But who is responsible for the fact that so many people in our country vote for such a party out of anger and despair?”
“It’s the politicians who have been ruling over people’s heads for years,” she said.
Both the AfD and BSW, which together are polling between 40 to 50 per cent in Thuringia and Saxony albeit only 23 to 27.5 per cent nationwide, oppose arming Ukraine, a particularly sensitive issue in eastern Germany, arguing that Kyiv should make peace with Moscow.
“Let’s take a look at the supply of weapons, you also have to look for diplomatic solutions here, no matter with whom,” said Gerhard Iffert at a BSW event in Eisenach.
The party is only polling 7 to 9 per cent at national level but with Scholz’s Social Democrats down to 15 to 16 per cent from 25.7 per cent at the 2021 elections, every vote counts.
Source: CNA
