Welt newspaper ran a commentary that relentlessly mocks the establishment parties and their efforts to outdo each with fearmongering claims against the AfD. The paper focuses on a recent CDU politician and his warning that the AfD would deliver a “completely different country.”
The problem for the CDU and other establishment parties? Germans also want a different country.
Andreas Rosenfelder, the chief commentator for Welt, points to Reiner Haseloff, the CDU Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, who spoke with Stern Magazine.
“We have to make it clear to people what is at stake,“ said Haseloff: “The AfD wants a completely different country.“
Rosenfelder responds with biting text, writing: “Yes, exactly, we too – that’s what many of the (AfD) party’s sympathizers will think with regard to mass layoffs, deindustrialization, migration problems and over-indebtedness.”
“For months, bourgeois politicians have been outdoing each other with apocalyptic threatening backdrops, which would happen after an AfD election victory. They want to deter potential AfD voters — and don’t realize that they are having the opposite effect,”
The Welt columnist writes that this is the central paradox currently gripping German political discourse. Instead of stemming the tide of support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the increasingly dramatic warnings from established parties appear to be serving as the party’s most potent election advertising.
He writes the piece at a time when the AfD continues to soar in the polls, and is now firmly polling as the most popular party in the country. In turn, rival parties like the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) continue to issue dire warning after dire warning against the AfD.
Rosenfelder continues to go on the offensive against the CDU’s Haseloff, who stated in the Stern interview that “There is no need for a revolution for a system change,” said Hasselhof.
“A system can be brought down at the ballot box,” he added, while referring to the AfD’s 39 percent support in his state.
Rosenfelder notes for Welt that this claim about the AfD bringing a “system change” is actually exactly what more and more Germans want. In this manner, Haselhoff is actually feeding into the AfD’s narrative that they are the real opposition and that the system does require a complete revolution at the ballot box.
“What is supposed to be a warning is actually the best election advertising for the AfD,” Rosenfelder writes. He continues by stating that the idea that a single cross on a ballot paper can cause the “system to falter or even fall” is seemingly irresistible to a growing cohort of citizens feeling alienated by politics.
Crucially, this “criticism of the system” should not automatically be equated with a rejection of democracy. The source text argues: “Contrary to what the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and left-wing sociologists claim, the trend towards ‘criticism of the system’ cannot simply be equated with a move away from democracy and the rule of law.” Instead, many citizens feel that the state itself, and its representatives, are the ones moving away from basic democratic and constitutional principles.
The text is essentially lambasting the powerful domestic spy agency, the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), along with various establishment politicians, NGOs, and their media arms, who are seeking to ban the AfD. Rosenfelder is, in fact, alluding that these forces, which claim to “defend democracy,” are actually revealing themselves to be actively pursuing anti-democratic actions.
“This alienation began with the Coronavirus policy. Today it is extended by the feeling that a dysfunctional state apparatus no longer fulfills the promise of a life of security, freedom and prosperity – and does not look for the problem within itself, but vice versa in the milieu of those citizens who are disappointed and frustrated by it,” writes Rosenfelder
The Welt columnist notes that the chaos the parties warn about if the AfD comes to power is actually already here.
“For months, politicians from bourgeois parties have been talking to voters’ consciences with apocalyptic sermons. But the belief that these voters would introspect and then vote for the Union or SPD again out of civic responsibility is naive. When the established parties are so afraid that they outdo each other with the most shrill alarmism, a right-wing mood arises in the milieu of the dissatisfied: The voter is not an underage child and does not want to be treated as if the ballot paper were a dangerous toy,” the Welt commentator continues.
However, Rosenfelder also discusses a promise delivered by many parties, including the AfD, which in the end, has proven elusive in all democracies in the West — namely, the idea that dramatic change is even possible.
“But the main problem with the argument that our system can simply be voted out is completely different: It’s not true,” writes Rosenfelder.
“Even the absolute majority that the AfD may dream of in the state of Saxony-Anhalt with 2 million inhabitants would not shake democracy in the Federal Republic. We live in a highly complex system with political, legal and fiscal control mechanisms. A simple implementation of political ideas is difficult or impossible — the black-red coalition is also experiencing this painfully. When government politicians act as if the AfD could turn the entire country to the right overnight, they are simply confirming the opposition party’s wishful fantasies,” he writes.
“Instead of responding to the AfD’s survey successes with warnings, those responsible should rather see these surveys themselves as warnings,” he concludes.
