Violence against politicians
“Maischberger”: Aiwanger calls the Greens “extremists”
By Marko Schlichting
May 9, 2024, 5:43 a.m
Attacks on politicians are increasing. Physical violence on the streets has been preceded by verbal blows from certain politicians for years. With “Maischberger”, Bavaria’s Economics Minister Aiwanger cannot recognize the problem – and demonstrates that he himself is part of it.
Attacks on Greens in Essen and Dresden, the Saxon SPD’s top candidate for the European elections, Matthias Ecke, was beaten up on Friday evening, and on Tuesday afternoon, Berlin’s Economics Senator Franziska Giffey was injured in the head and neck in an attack. Attacks on politicians are increasing. Bavaria’s Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger from the Free Voters and Hesse’s former Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir from the Greens speak on the ARD program “Maischberger” about possible reasons.
“Violence should not be a means of political debate. Against anyone. Once you deviate from this principle, you end up on a slippery slope – and you can’t get off this slippery slope,” emphasizes Al-Wazir in the course of the discussion, which later took place becomes quite unappetizing.
The fact is: Many people in Germany are dissatisfied with the traffic light government’s policies. Tarek Al-Wazir can understand that: “There is no question that cooperation in the coalition does not deserve a beauty prize, to put it mildly.” But the traffic light is not to blame for the violent attacks, says Al-Wazir: “You have to think very carefully about where it actually started and who ultimately ensures that the political climate has changed so much and become so poisoned: These are the right-wing radicals, and unfortunately they are also populists who think they have to run after the right-wing radicals.” By this he means, among others, Hubert Aiwanger, who last year at a rally against the heating law in Erding near Munich called on voters to take back democracy.
Now Aiwanger could have used the opportunity to distance himself from his statement or at least weaken it. But he doesn’t think about it. The general secretary of the Green Party demanded that democracy be recaptured; that was much worse. He asked Green Party leader Lang about this, and she claimed she knew nothing about it. She lied, she must have known better.
And in general, Aiwanger rejects Al-Wazir’s claim. “It’s because of the polarization of society with this left-right trend that society is splitting,” he says. Society is relatively without prospects and more and more citizens are afraid of the future. Extremists took advantage of this. “The left and right fringes have always been a threat to democracy,” said Aiwanger. There are now right-wingers who attack the left-wingers, and then there is Antifa, which carries out violence against police officers, the state and right-wing politicians. The violence comes from extremists, who become increasingly stronger the less the political center can hold society together. “You no longer come together in the middle, but you see the other as the enemy, some in the AfD, others in the Greens, and so society is divided.”
Aiwanger and the green extremists
Aiwanger says he can’t help it if the Greens are booed in beer tents when he is asked about violence against Green politicians and asked whether his choice of words might not be completely innocent. “People are fed up with this heating law, self-determination law, this accelerated naturalization, the cannabis release, many such things, where the average citizen simply says: It’s better to make sure that my energy is affordable, that I’m still allowed to drive a car, bans Don’t give me the combustion engine, don’t mess up my oil heater if you don’t have anything better. That’s the reason.” He criticizes the Greens in order to curb the ideological excesses of Green politics. “And if I’m to blame for the Greens being attacked because of this, that’s really a scapegoat search. You’ll have to look elsewhere, but please not with me.” Incidentally, all possible parties would be attacked, the AfD even more than the Greens.
Yes, there are extremists on all sides, answers Al-Wazir. “The question is: How do you deal with these moods (among the population): do you try to heat them up or do you try to cool them down?”
Aiwanger, whose blood pressure seems to have risen a little in the meantime, is now bursting with anger: “Have the Greens tried to cook down the blockers at the IAA so far? The climate glue? You always simmered them down! You were at the forefront! And Joschka Fischer, the stone thrower, always targets police officers. The Greens don’t need to act like democrats.”
Now the moderator is trying to bring peace, and Aiwanger is also trying to calm down. His language gets derailed again: “When I see that I have to slow down the Greens or other extremists who are appearing massively somewhere, Islamists, right-wing radicals or left-wing extremists, I say stop everywhere, stay in the political center, deal with each other and does not use physical violence.”
In the end, the impression remains: Aiwanger does not support violence against politicians. But he is unable to control his speech because of this.