AfD in the survey high: Gregor Peter Schmitz on the current star

Editorial

stern Editor-in-Chief
Does Germany want to get used to a party like the AfD? Gregor Peter Schmitz on the current star

In the editorial of the current star editor-in-chief Gregor Peter Schmitz talks about the strengthening of the AfD – and the perplexed reactions of the established parties.

Dear reader,

it is customary in political Berlin not to speak to the AfD. Politicians, on the other hand, talk a lot about the AfD, actually all the time. At appointments, representatives of the Union apologize that the Bundestag offices of “these people” are so close to theirs that it is unreasonable for the visitor to have to walk past them. Social Democrats angrily explain how the AfD wants to use its party foundation to build up young people on a permanent basis, i.e. talented people from the right. The Greens and Liberals explain that the AfD’s latest jump in polls – to 18 percent, on a par with the Chancellor’s Party SPD – is not the real shock, but the larger increase around a year earlier, which was ignored.

All of these conversations have one thing in common: they no longer describe the alternative for Germany as an alternative that could soon end up on the dustbin of history. You outline it as a political force that you have to learn to deal with over the long term.

Who is to blame for the success of the AfD?

This normalization is frightening enough. It is far more frightening that I have not yet met a political representative who can explain conclusively how a) this approach works and how b) the AfD vote share is supposed to shrink again at some point. At the moment it’s more about assigning blame: For the Union, the traffic light coalition with its supposed patronage and its chaotic heating law is of course to blame for the AfD boom. Conversely, the traffic light counters that the Union wants to overtake the right-wingers on the right and only makes them strong that way.

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None of the partisan attempts at an explanation is convincing: the Union is overreacting in its Habeck and Heating bashing, but even Markus Söder does not speak of “asylum tourism” again in the Bavarian election campaign or does away with climate protection. Conversely, the heating law is hopelessly screwed up. But last year the traffic light coalition delivered without a hitch, for example when it came to energy procurement. Was she thanked for this because voters said: But the populists would never have made it? No. The often very quiet chancellor nevertheless seems to believe that once the heating law and the budget are in place, the right anger will subside again. But that didn’t happen last year either. Now and then it is said that right-wing populist parties are part of democracy in many countries, and that some even rule. But does Germany want to get used to it?

Risks and side effects of a Biden candidacy

If politics, as is often quoted, begins with looking at reality, someone should finally say to Joe Biden: It was nice seeing you, Joe, but once again you will not be a candidate for the most powerful political office in the world. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone who could whisper this to Biden, and apparently nobody in the federal government knows anyone either. If you ask traffic light representatives in Berlin about a president who will be 81 in November and falls every now and then during his performances, they resort to helpless explanations.

They explain verbosely when exactly Biden said something clever, which shows his rich experience – or that, for historical reasons alone, one cannot refuse a president who wants to stand again. Unfortunately, fickle US voters probably don’t care much about either when they see such pictures. Our federal government should therefore also prepare better for the risks and side effects of a Biden candidacy.

Published in stern 24/2023