In two weeks, two new parties have been born in Germany on the fringes of politics. The winter will go down in history as the winter of fury, Europe correspondent Anna Karismo writes.
Anna Karismo Germany correspondent
BERLIN. The rag doll hung from a gallows in the center of Berlin at the beginning of January. The German tripartite government swayed limply in the wind.
Farmers later removed the nooses from their demonstrations across Germany at the request of the authorities, but the image has remained on the retinas.
The figurative hanging of a government or a farmer and fierce slogans tell about the state of the country’s politics. The winter of 2024 will go down in history as the winter of German fury.
During the first three weeks of the year, people have been on the streets practically every day. The opposition and some media have demanded new elections. The government’s budget for this year will be renewed, as large savings needs were revealed at the end of the year. The strikes have stopped traffic.
The fact that two new parties have already seen the light of day this year is indicative of the confusing and torn situation. That’s a lot in a country that still had a two-party system at the beginning of the millennium.
On Saturday night, the members of the Christian Democrats, or CDU, and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, decided to found a new party, the Union of Values. According to their own words, Arvoliito has more than four thousand members.
Arvoliitto was founded in 2017 as a gathering channel for CDU members who think that the then leader of the Christian Democrats Angela Merkel the policy was not old enough. In particular, the one million immigrants allowed into the country by Merkel in 2015 as a result of the war in Syria were particularly annoying.
The new Arvoliitto party plans to participate in the elections in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony already in the fall. In these states, Arvoliitto competes above all for the votes of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Many of the supporters of the Union of Values criticize above all the increased immigration, which is also the number one issue for the AfD. According to Arvoliitto, the CDU of the Christian Democrats has “continued to slide into the camp of the left-greens” by Friedrich Merz under.
The value alliance places itself between the Christian Democrats and the extreme right on the political scale. The new party is therefore nationally conservative, but not right-wing radical like, for example, AfD.
However, unlike other German parties, Arvoliitto does not intend to refuse cooperation with the AfD. Thus, the party could be offered to form a government with the AfD in one of the states if it succeeds in the autumn elections.
The leader of the value association Hans-Georg Maassen was forced to resign as head of Germany’s constitutional protection agency five years ago after being accused of leaking information to the AfD and questioning acts of violence against foreigners.
Arvoliitto representatives also participated in the end of November meeting in Potsdam, where the extreme right, neo-Nazis and a few business leaders planned the forced return of foreigners.
A left-wing party that attracts votes from the extreme right
At the beginning of January, a bright left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht founded the BSW party, whose name comes from the words Association (German: Bündnis) Sahra Wagenknecht. It is also expected to attract far-right supporters. Wagenknecht also attracted a lot of politicians from his former party Die Linke.
Wagenknecht is critical of the military alliance NATO, opposes sanctions against Russia and military aid to Ukraine. While Arvoliitto defines itself as a reformed and organized CDU, Wagenknecht positions his party as a counter force to the current German government.
According to him too, Germany is on the wrong course and will become weaker in the next few years if there is no change in policy. There are already too many immigrants in Germany, says Wagenknecht.
His popularity is on the rise among the people. According to an opinion poll published on Sunday, the BSW could get seven percent of the votes nationwide.
In the autumn elections in East Germany, the vote share may be clearly greater. Wagenknecht’s party is also competing for the votes of the AfD, or the Alternative for Germany party.
The breakup started 12 years ago
The fragmentation of the German party field can be said to have already started with the founding of Die Linke in 2007, but at the latest with the Pirate Party in 2012.
The Pirate Party was a protest party like today’s new parties, but its populism was not built on anti-foreigners and patriotism. The pirate party focused on pushing concrete issues such as sharing information completely openly on the internet.
The Alternative for Germany party was born in 2013 to oppose the single currency, the euro, and support for Greece. Its founding members left the party when the agenda began to focus more and more clearly on the theme of immigration.
The rural party Free Voters, born in Bavaria, got its first candidate through in the 2014 EU elections. The right-wing party has since clearly grown in popularity and is now a partner of the Christian Democrats’ CSU party in the Bavarian government.
The popularity of the new parties indicates that Germany’s traditional parties are losing their acceptability, especially among the youth and older people. The same development is happening elsewhere in Europe. In Germany it just happens amazingly fast.
The Green Party, which is getting old and established in the party field, is no longer a channel for young people. Parents, on the other hand, think that the current parties are not conservative enough. They consider both the CDU and the SPD to have sacrificed Germany’s interests in supporting Ukraine and imposing sanctions against Russia.
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