Germany, what happens to the right-wing AfD party?
The analysis by Stefano Grazioli of Eastsidereport.info
In Saxony Anhalt the CDU clearly won over 37% and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the party of the right-wing national-populist strong especially in the eastern regions, stopped just over 20%. Head-to-head polls turned out to be wrong. Good for Reiner Haselhoff, the conservative minister president who will remain at the helm of the region, bad for Oliver Kirchner, the AfD candidate who failed to give the hoped-for push.
Commenting on the outcome of the vote, the German media concentrated above all on the great success of the CDU, a good viaticum for Chancellor Angela Merkel's party and for Armin Laschet, her probable successor. However, there are other important aspects.
That of the extreme right has been a setback, the CEO will still remain out of the coalition games, but rejoice too much in the face of a result that sees one in five voters vote for the radical wing and two out of five do not go to vote, at least it is a sin of optimism. The Alternative für Deutschland, which indeed loses about three points compared to the regional ones of 2016, but gains very slightly compared to the parliamentarians of 2017 and the Europeans of 2019, both in percentage and in votes, still confirms itself as the second force of Saxony Anhalt, with almost double the consensus compared to Linke, the extreme left party heir to the communist one of the GDR, and as “heavy” as the Social Democrats (SPD), Verdi (Grünen) and Liberals (FDP), put together. Faced with these numbers, accompanied precisely by the moderate turnout (60%), even the representatives of the CDU, both in the regional capital Magdeburg and in Berlin, must reflect on the fact that the national-populist wave has lost momentum, especially compared to polls, but the AfD remains a force to be reckoned with. Concretely, not just in words.
The party led nationally by Jörg Meuthen and Tino Chrupalla, the latter named top candidate in the September 27 elections together with Alice Weidel, is particularly strong in the Länder of old East Germany, while in the West it continues to struggle. In Brandenburg, Thuringia, Mecklenburg and Saxony it went well over 20% and is the second formation for several years now; in the eastern regions it travels between 5% and 10%, but is still present everywhere. Eight years after its foundation, which rapidly transformed from a Eurosceptic party into a formation with the main nationalist and extremist traits, so much so as to have aroused the interest of the Verfassungsschutz, the internal secret services, the AfD is now a constant presence in the German political arena, held at a safe distance from all others. It remains to be seen for how long.
Collaboration with the national populists is excluded at all levels by the CDU and the CSU, the conservative parties that have always monopolized the votes of the right, until they have been overruled by the AfD, which has garnered support from the extreme wing rather than the center. The growth of the radical right and relations with it have become a dilemma for the Union (CDU-CSU) for some years now, especially in conjunction with the crises linked to Europe and immigration. In Saxony Anhalt the problem was brilliantly solved by Reiner Haseloff, but it is not excluded that in the near future, in five or ten years, if the AfD will remain a point of reference for right-wing voters in the East and if it will perhaps soften the tones (a decisive line will be dictated by either the right-handed hawks or the centrist doves), changes in the rest of the political spectrum cannot lead to forms of collaboration.
What is now excluded in every corner of Germany has in fact already happened in Austria, with the nationalist FPÖ who on a couple of occasions came to the government with the popular members of the ÖVP. Of course, as long as the numbers allow it, the Union will never ally itself with this AfD, but the future could also reserve some surprises, at least locally, especially in the East.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/germania-che-cosa-succede-al-partito-di-destra-afd/ on Tue, 08 Jun 2021 04:24:19 +0000.