Today's election in the German state of Thuringia shows major gains for the far-right AfD party and diastrous showing for the CDU. It was also a dark day for the SPD
Thuringia lies in the former GDR. Its capital city is Erfurt. It includes the towns of Eisenach, Weimar and Jena.
Most likely the current minister president Bodo Ramelow of The Left will remain in his job. But the forming of a new coalition will prove difficult.
The Left improved their vote and the first time for the party to top the poll in any of the federal Länder or states.
The FDP crossed the five per cent mark and so are now in the parliament.
It was a disappointing day for The Greens, who won 5.1 per cent of the vote.
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3 comments:
The vote for the AfD in Thuringia is deeply worrying.
In the past few years, many in Germany have tried to relatavise support for the AfD - especially in the former GDR - by speaking of a protest vote, of the shallow rooting of centrist parties in the formerly communist part of Germany, of disillusionment with the economic and social consequences of the reunification process, etc. And there is some truth in this.
But the Thuringia election result, with almost a quarter of the electorate voting AfD goes beyond such clever justifications. Björn Höcke, the leader of the Thuringian AfD, is a Nazi. (He recently lost a legal case for defamation against being called a fascist.) He doesn't even have the benefit of the feeble excuses made for East Germans; he was born and raised in West Germany, and has a University degree in history. He's the one who questioned the appropriateness of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as a "Memorial of Shame [Denkmal der Schande]".
The Thuringians knew exactly who and what they were voting for. And as it's now thirty years since the Berlin Wall fell, the explanations regarding the old GDR socialisation are growing threadbare too.
A Süddeutsche Zeitung correspondent said on the Anne Will Show last evening he has met many East Germans with good jobs, drive flash cars, live in fine houses who feel they are victims.
Björn Höcke seems far more frightening than Boris Johnson or Donal Trump.
But were there not those who 12, 24 months ago who realised the dangers of the AfD?
A ghost is spreading not just through Europe but the world and that same ghost is gathering momentum in the Cathloic Church, in religious congregations.
I agree, Michael. I see us on the way into a new age of barbarism, dominated by strongmen (and they are all men), selling a populist-driven ideology of fascism lite - in some cases not even lite. Trump. Bolsonaro. Duterte. Modhi. Putin. Erdogan. Orban. The list grows yearly. Pied Pipers, promising easy answers to complicated questions based on suspicion, exclusion, and hatred, leading their countries into hopeless caves of darkness.
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