“The AfD threatens our democracy,” says Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier in an interview with ntv.de. For the run-off election in the district of Sonneberg in southern Thuringia, in which a district administrator will be elected this Sunday, he, as SPD leader of Thuringia, has therefore called for the election of the CDU candidate. “The district election is also about sticking together as democrats.”
In the direction of Berlin, Maier says: “Politicians should ensure that everyone can participate instead of creating new fears.” When asked whether a ban on the AfD was still an option in view of its poll numbers, Maier explained that this is “an instrument of defensive democracy” that cannot be ruled out and that “does not depend on poll numbers”. “But it has to be very well justified. In my view, it would currently be more expedient to put the AfD in a political position.”
ntv.de: On the evening of the first ballot in Sonneberg, you called for the CDU candidate to be chosen in the run-off. How difficult was it for you?
Georg Maier: That was a bit difficult for me because the CDU in southern Thuringia is very conservative. In the federal election campaign, she put up Hans-Georg Maaßen there, whose election victory we were able to prevent with our candidate Frank Ullrich. But now we have a different situation. The district election is also about sticking together as democrats.
The Thuringian AfD calls the other parties “block parties”. If everyone else is calling for the CDU to be elected, aren’t you reinforcing this insinuation?
First of all, that’s a perfidious statement – especially to the SPD, which we were never a block party. And of course that’s just propaganda. This is a run-off election, there are two candidates: election recommendations are completely normal. Perhaps the AfD should ask itself why all other parties make an election recommendation that is not called AfD.
Are successes of the AfD a danger to democracy?
I believe that the AfD is actually a danger to democracy because it rejects our free democratic basic order, even acts against it and imagines a different political system. She makes no secret of it: An authoritarian understanding of the state based on Putin’s model can be clearly heard in the AfD. The Thuringian AfD boss has a national concept of the state – for him one only belongs to it if one biologically belongs to what Mr. Höcke imagines as the German people. In Thuringia, the AfD is clearly right-wing extremist. It threatens our democracy.
The district of Sonneberg is the district in Thuringia with the second-highest net household income, with unemployment at 5.1 percent. Why do people there vote in such large numbers for a party that threatens democracy?
We have a very positive economic development in Thuringia, not only in the district of Sonneberg. Economically, Thuringia is now a pioneer in the whole of the East. The unemployment rate and per capita income do not help answer this question. There are other reasons that go a little deeper. Of course, this has something to do with the experiences of reunification and the post-reunification period. This upheaval has left deep scars in the consciousness of the people here. It was a change for the better, that has to be said clearly, but for many it meant deep cuts, low incomes, unemployment. These experiences have left fears that come up again, especially in times of crisis. And we live in a time of crisis.
What are these fears?
That something like this could happen again. These fears are deliberately reinforced by the AfD. She does what populist parties always do: she sees every crisis as an opportunity to scare people. She presents supposedly simple solutions that would not work in practice.
But there is another reason that needs to be clearly stated: 33 years after reunification, Germany is still not fair. We still haven’t managed to equalize wages between East and West. On average, East Germans have less wealth than West Germans, and significantly less. Because of the unemployment and low incomes in the 1990s and the noughties, we are still faced with a major problem with pensions that are too low. Politicians have not yet found a conclusive answer to such questions.
The “Thuringia Monitor” recently revealed that the more rural they live, the more people feel left behind. Can state or federal politics change anything about this feeling?
I think so. That must be our claim. Thuringia is a federal state whose population is shrinking rapidly. This is particularly noticeable in rural areas. I live in a small spa town in the Thuringian Forest, you can see it there too. You can see that shops are closing because there are no successors. Medical care and mobility are not as good as in the cities. For a country hit so hard by demographics, these are major challenges. It is all the more important that we succeed in improving the reality of life in rural areas.
In Sonneberg, the SPD candidate only got 13 percent in the first round, the joint candidate from the Left and Greens achieved 4 percent. In 2018, the joint candidate from the SPD and the left received 37.6 percent. Is the race between the democratic parties and the AfD now carried out by the CDU, perhaps not only in Sonneberg?
No. It is not the case that SPD candidates are doing poorly across the board in Thuringia, quite the opposite: we have five district administrators and we are confident that we will be able to win additional district administrators in next year’s local elections. The fact that we didn’t do so well this time was also due to the fact that the election became necessary very suddenly because the incumbent was ill. Anja Beauty was a very good, very down-to-earth candidate. But she wasn’t that well known.
And then the AfD conducted the election campaign as a real material battle, the likes of which I have never seen before. There was hardly a lamppost in the district that didn’t have an AfD poster on it; It’s no secret that the AfD has funds. It was specifically used there.
A green local politician from the district has saidthe climate there is “poisoned”.
Sometimes I experience it that way too. I’m not a social scientist and I can’t prove that with studies, but it feels like there are more people today whose worldview is completely solidified and who completely reject other opinions. Then the whole thing is garnished with sayings like “We live in a dictatorship”. These people see a different opinion as a personal attack. One can say that the political climate has been damaged to some extent. This also has something to do with the populist attitude of the AfD. Another factor is certainly social media. I keep hearing that I should find out more about “other channels”. You can clearly feel the influence of disinformation campaigns. This is quite worrying. At the last conference of interior ministers, we talked about how resilient our democracy is to attacks from outside. Because it can be assumed that Russian bots and trolls are up to mischief here.
The state parliament in Thuringia will be elected next year. What happens if the parties in the current state government do not get a majority and no other coalition can be formed?
We already have a minority government, which unfortunately cannot rely on a partner of tolerance or cooperation. The CDU and FDP refuse, which I find very regrettable. As a result, the decision-making processes in the state parliament have become cumbersome. You need quick decisions right now, an agenda that you work through. This is another reason why democracy in Thuringia does not manage to convince people that it can work efficiently, well and quickly. As the SPD’s top candidate, I’m fighting for a majority government to return after the election. There is a chance for that too. I believe that we will succeed in revealing the mechanisms of the AfD – that it has no solutions, but only fuels fears. If we then also manage to design change processes in such a way that we take everyone with us, then it can work.
You mean the heating law.
For example. Politicians should ensure that everyone can participate instead of creating new fears.
Is a ban on the AfD still an option or is that out of the question for a party from which in Thuringia 28 and nationwide 19 percent of eligible voters say they want to vote for her?
A party ban is an instrument of defensive democracy that has already been used in Germany. In this respect, it cannot be ruled out and it does not depend on survey numbers. But it has to be very well founded. From my point of view, it would currently be more expedient to put the AfD in a political position.
Hubertus Volmer spoke to Georg Maier