[ ... ]
Schäfer and the 1.3 million voters who cast their ballots for AfD sent a shockwave through the country last Sunday. Starting almost from scratch, AfD landed multiple delegates in three state parliaments, including two western German states. The party won 13 percent in Rhineland-Palatinate, 15 percent in Baden-Württemberg and fully 24 percent in Saxony-Anhalt. Fifteen AfD candidates were elected directly in Saxony-Anhalt and two others in Baden-Württemberg. No new party in Germany has ever been as successful so soon after its founding–not even the Greens, which provided the first significant jolt to Germany’s political party system in the 1980s. The Alternative for Germany is suddenly a force to be reckoned with. The party has thrown open the door to a new political era in the country.
A Revolt against Merkel
There are many explanations for AfD’s success. But at its core, the rise of the AfD is the story of strife and of growing alienation between the chancellor and a portion of the German electorate. The triumph of the AfD is nothing less than a revolt against Angela Merkel.
It is a rebellion targeting a CDU leader who has continually led her party to the left, stripping many conservatives of a political home. It also targets a chancellor whose open borders policy in the refugee crisis may be attractive to left-leaning Germans, but is one which strikes more conservative voters as high-handed. Hotelier Schäfer, for his part, thinks it is naive to believe that so many Muslim refugees can be integrated into German society. “We are endangering our freedom when we take in too many people who don’t want this freedom,” he says.
Above all, however, the revolt is aimed at the chancellor as a symbol of the country’s elite–an elite which has supposedly lost sight of the people and their concerns. For many in Germany, Merkel has become the personification of a “ruling class” ...
[ ... ]
It is a feeling that has led to the creation of new, angry, anti-elitist movements across the Western world. It is these people who throw their support behind Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France. Many of those who support such populists can no longer be reached by rational arguments. They follow their gut rather than their intellect. And that’s what makes them so dangerous.
Very informative article, but got a kick out of the passage above. When, when, when have the West's Open-Borders Overlords ever provided "rational arguments," other than gauzy feel-good utopian statements paired with reputation-damaging threats and hate words, trying to demonize average citizens as the 'far-right,' the 'xenophobes' and the 'racists'?
Building Dissatisfaction
With such an emotional undercurrent, all that was needed to transform the silent and embittered into vocal demonstrators and AfD voters was a concrete provocation. In Germany, it came in the form of the refugee crisis, which served as a catalyst for all the dissatisfaction that had been building up in recent years.
[ ... ]
n the CDU, as well, the impression began spreading that Merkel was walling herself off and was no longer reachable. A chancellor who had long been an outsider herself surrounded herself with loyalists in a manner foreign to the old CDU. It is a group that includes her long-time office manager Beate Baumann, government spokesman Steffen Seibert, chief of staff Peter Altmaier and CDU General Secretary Peter Tauber.
The group is united by complete faith in the correctness of Merkel’s refugee policies. The more intense the criticism has become in recent months, the more vehemently the chancellor’s confidants have defended her. Criticism, from the likes of Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, was largely drowned out.
[ ... ]
A vital part of any healthy democracy is having alternatives and parties that are distinguishable from each other. At the moment, it’s no longer possible to tell what it is that separates the CDU from the SPD or the Greens. The party is whatever Merkel says it is. There are close to no correctives left in Germany and there is no longer a balance of power. The more Merkel tries to peddle her policies as being without alternative, the greater the anger within the populace will grow. ...
Posts
