The German farmers are revolting against the centrally planned injustice they face. The social-democratic-liberal-green government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to cut their fuel subsidies and impose taxes on them. They say, up there in the capital, that the central budget has a big deficit, and that to make up for it, they should abolish the farmers’ benefits, along with others. This would save a few hundred million euros. At the same time, however, billions are planned for so-called aid to Ukraine.
German farmers, if nothing else, are rightly incensed by this disproportionality. Thousands of tractors have set off for Berlin and everywhere else across the country. The crowds of demonstrators were visited by the relevant leaders, and some of the Green ministers wanted to address them. They failed and were booed.
Until the end of last week, only the usual baleful whispering tried to break the farmers’ unity, but by Saturday, politics responded to the protests according to another, equally familiar scenario. Until then, the tractor marches had been explained by the fact that the extreme right-wing party Alternative for Germany was organizing the demonstrations from behind the scenes. They had already reached as far as touching on Nazism. Then came the familiar line from earlier, the claim, particularly offensive to sensitivities in Germany, that the AfD is anti-Semitic.
Left-wing people in the big cities took to the streets in Frankfurt, Hanover, Dortmund, and Nuremberg, waving their “Fascism is not an alternative” signs. It is interesting to note the reason for the sudden anti-fascist upsurge: In November, a meeting in Potsdam attended personally by AfD and CDU affiliates also addressed, among other issues, the issue of remigration, and more specifically the expulsion of immigrants and minorities.
The brave anti-fascist protesters probably don’t know that they are part of a rather transparent diversionary operation. Their organizers and leaders are trying to pigeonhole the AfD as a dangerous Nazi party and claim that their special forces are the German peasants with green tractors. Let’s hope that the urban people, fooled by anti-fascist slogans, will see through this charade.
The growing masses of Germans, however, are not to be fooled. After all, the AfD is now the second most powerful party in the country. Not a bit Nazi, by the way, just more sober than the warriors of the left-green madness.
