Thuringia’s Prime Minister Ramelow has denounced the handling of East Germans after AfD election successes. He spoke of a “partial distortion of reality” – and not only criticized the media, but also his own party.
After the AfD’s recent local political election successes, Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) complained that blanket judgments were being made about East Germans. “What we are experiencing right now is a partial distortion of reality,” Ramelow told the “Thuringian General”. “Scandalizing reporting and abridged analyzes give rise to the false perception that the 52 percent of voters who voted for an AfD district administrator in the Sonneberg district must all be Nazis.”
The AfD has recently experienced a boom in polls – it is currently at around 20 percent nationwide. In Thuringia the values were higher. There, in the district of Sonneberg, AfD politician Robert Stuhlmann was elected Germany’s first AfD district administrator. In Raguhn-Jeßnitz in Saxony-Anhalt, an AfD politician was appointed full-time mayor.
Ramelow said that “what social and political frictions we have and what the AfD is driving up all over Germany at the moment” is being ignored. Ramelow criticized some of the national media. “If I’m out all day with camera teams in and around Sonneberg looking for Nazis, then I’ll find them too,” he said. “And if someone then says I want Adolf Hitler back: there were always such idiots.” And they also exist in West Germany.
“Do you still have them all?”
Ramelow pointed out that scientific studies like the Thuringia monitor measured “a reliable understanding of democracy among the vast majority of people”. In the most recent survey, 84 percent of those questioned said that democracy was the “best of all state ideas”. Data from the Thuringia Monitor 2022 show, however, that satisfaction with the practice of democracy has fallen more than ever before – and was only 48 percent. Confidence in state institutions also fell sharply.
The Thuringian head of government accused the AfD of relying solely on negative emotions. “It bundles fears, prejudices and aggression, which works especially well in East Germany.” The other parties should not respond to their strengthening by “knocking on each other,” he said. That applies to the CDU, but also to his party: He hears demands from the left that non-Germans should leave the district of Sonneberg as quickly as possible. “So I asked: Do you still have them all?”