Shouts of “Get out!” and piles of dung
Greens are increasingly becoming targets
Federal Green Party leader Ricarda Lang was insulted in Schorndorf. photo
© Christoph Schmidt/dpa
The traffic light government is unpopular. This is what current opinion polls show. But why are the Greens in particular getting so much of the trouble?
“Ready because you are,” is the slogan with which the Greens enter the 2021 draw federal election. It is now clear that part of the population is not ready for the changes that Green Party politicians want to initiate in government and have already implemented in some cases. And that among those who are unfamiliar with the party’s ideas and political culture, there are some who do not shy away from malicious insults and violence.
At the political Ash Wednesday in Schorndorf, Baden-Württemberg this week, disruptors hindered the departure of Green Party federal chairwoman Ricarda Lang and shouted “Get out!” In Biberach, a planned event with Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir and other prominent Greens was canceled at short notice due to security concerns after a demonstration got out of hand and a pile of dung was dumped in front of the steps to the town hall. Last year, a man threw a stone at the top Bavarian Green Party duo Ludwig Hartmann and Katharina Schulze at a campaign rally in Neu-Ulm.
More attacks on Green Party facilities
While in the years 2019 to 2021 it was the AfD whose party facilities were most often the target of attacks, the picture has changed since the change of government. According to federal government statistics, most attacks in 2022 were against Green Party facilities, followed by those of the AfD. According to preliminary figures, there were 224 attacks on Green Party facilities nationwide in 2023. Buildings and other facilities owned by the AfD and SPD were each targeted in 115 cases last year.
“The Greens are a party that is strongly tied to the milieu, and they are even more strongly perceived and described as such,” says Robert Vehrkamp, who works on democracy and social cohesion at the Bertelsmann Foundation. Its core electorate is relatively stable, and its supporters are primarily people “who have a positive attitude towards ecological and cultural modernization.”
At the same time, research by the foundation showed that the Greens are highly polarizing in some areas of society. This polarization is primarily driven by the AfD, but also by parts of the Free Voters, the Union and the FDP. The increasing verbal attacks by some politicians against the Greens fueled this polarization. In addition, the Greens have a very strong public presence at the moment with their issues and people.
Green Party issues are often uncomfortable
“The Greens are occupying the government on many uncomfortable issues such as the climate crisis, which some would rather turn a blind eye to,” believes Elmar Brähler, who, together with other scientists, regularly publishes studies on authoritarian attitudes and dissatisfaction with democracy. He also identifies the “feminist foreign policy” propagated by Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as a hot topic, which is now being ridiculed by some.
“Unlike in previous decades, where the divide was between right-wing and left-wing parties, we now see a strong polarization between city dwellers and people in rural areas as well as between educated and less educated people,” says Brähler. This polarization is reinforced by the fact that the AfD and politicians such as Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and Free Voters leader Hubert Aiwanger portray the Greens as “out-of-touch academics”. An image that the Green Party’s top staff is doing everything it can to defend itself against.
Instead of being loudly outraged at the bad reception he and his party colleagues received in Biberach, Agriculture Minister Özdemir tried to remain calm after the tumult and reassured: “Those who have gone overboard are not German agriculture . Those were individuals who behaved like that.”
Top Green politicians as an enemy of the AfD
In the first few years after the AfD was founded, the then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) was the AfD’s main enemy, but now it is politicians from the Green Party like Ricarda Lang or Robert Habeck. The narrative that the right-wing populists are spreading is roughly summarized as follows: The Greens are ideologues who have not learned a real profession and are now running the country down.
Brähler is surprised that this narrative catches some people, who wonders how the “bad transport ministers from the ranks of the Union” could be forgotten so quickly.