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It’s as if Germany existed twice. On the one hand, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are taking to the streets against the AfD and right-wing extremists. Those who fear for democracy, for freedom, for the rights of foreigners. They are shocked by the plans that a right-wing extremist Austrian presented to AfD members and two women from the CDU. “Remigration” is the fighting term. “Germany for the Germans, foreigners out,” as AfD people from Bavaria are said to have sung in a disco at night. The police are investigating.
And on the other hand there is a group of people who are easiest to find on Telegram. The “Free Saxons” says: “The rulers have currently asked their rank and file to organize pro-government demonstrations. Especially in West Germany, tens of thousands of extremists are taking to the streets against freedom, diversity of opinion and participation.
“Revolt of the Decent”
People call each other “extremists”. Accusing each other of being against freedom, against democracy. But are there still overlaps between the two poles? Do you talk to each other? Franziska Schreiber provides an interesting insight into the AfD. The woman from Dresden was in the AfD for a long time, but left in 2017. In an ARD film she reports on the “bubble” AfD. About the fact that many members isolate themselves and live in a different world, in the AfD world. And you won’t notice anything else.
At the same time, Chancellor Scholz’s SPD is calling for an “uprising of the decent people”. Conversely, this means: Anyone who doesn’t take part is indecent. This is not a bridge to people who have sympathy for the AfD but who still have their ears open to voices from the middle of society.
Two Germanys, two views of one country. How do researchers see the power of this weekend’s demonstrations? It is not the case that “the good guys” can show everyone else that they are on the wrong path, says Wolfgang Schröder, a political scientist at the University of Kassel, on ARD. Schröder says it gives hope that civil society is now speaking out. “But to combine this with the hope that the AfD will now become weaker is at least not automatic.”
Things could get tight for Scholz
So it takes more than demonstrations to get the two Germanys to listen to each other again. And Chancellor Scholz is also asked. Migration, the Ukraine war, Corona, inflation, all of this unsettles people and drives many to the AfD. According to an Insa survey for “Welt”, 64 percent of people have the feeling that the Scholz government is increasing social division.
And the Chancellor is not someone who likes to explain it convincingly over and over again. Scholz finds it difficult to hold Germany together. And the many arguments in his traffic light government don’t make it any easier.
That’s why things could get tight for Scholz. There will be elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in September. If the AfD triumphs there, if an AfD prime minister is suddenly elected, the pressure on Scholz will increase enormously.
The rumor mill in Berlin has been simmering for a long time that there could be a change in the Chancellery. Number one in the political popularity scale could take over: Boris Pistorius, the defense minister. To bring back together what is slipping away. To turn the two Germanys into one again.