BERLIN – The EU must die so that real Europe can live.
This is what the power figure of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, a far-right member, said Björn Höcke in a recent television interview.
The phrase is familiar from the Second World War. One of the slogans of the Nazis was: “They died so that Germany may live”. The National Socialists referred to the bloody Battle of Staliningrad, where hundreds of thousands of Germans fell.
Höcke’s exit is by no means the first with rhetoric cognoscenti estimated to come directly from the Nazis. Although the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) officially renounces all neo-Nazi connections, the ties remain proven to be close.
A group of West German professors and researchers founded the AfD party in 2013 to oppose the single currency, the euro.
In 2015, more than a million migrants came to Germany, a large part of which were Syrians fleeing the war in their homeland. Opposition to immigration became AfD’s number one theme.
At the same time, the party became clearly right-wing. Now it is primarily an East German party.
The AfD opposes supporting Ukraine and accepting Ukrainian refugees in Germany. Many people of Russian background in Germany vote for the AfD.
The chairmen of the party are Alice Weidel and With Tino Chrupa.
Extremism is getting stronger
The alternative to Germany has grown rapidly. While a year ago it received the support of one in ten, today more than one in five German voters would vote for it.
Read more here: The far-right is growing loudly in Germany, but the party cannot enter the government – the researcher names two reasons why entry should be prevented everywhere
In addition to growth, the Alternative for Germany has become radicalized. The previous leader of the party’s EU parliamentary group resigned from the party in the middle of the election period. by Jörg Meuthen in AfD’s opinion, there was “too much totalitarian [epädemokraattisia] forces”.
The party, which is now aware of its strength, is preparing for next summer’s European elections. It chose 35 candidates for the EU Parliament last weekend.
Even though voices occasionally rose on the rostrum, the six-day meeting flow was carried out more smoothly and calmly than before in the ten-year history of the party. The AfD is ready to seize power.
AfD’s new MEP candidates take a sharper far-right line than their predecessors. The goal is to make Europe a “fortress” against immigrants, and thereby protect the German nation.
– Strong radicalization has won in the party, summed up the political scientist, professor Emanuel Richter meeting events in an interview with the German broadcasting company on Sunday.
Based on opinion polls, Alternative for Germany could increase its current number of MEPs from ten to even 21. In this way, it would be even bigger than the currently ruling French National Alliance in the far-right ID group of the parliament.
Perussuomaliket was involved in founding the ID group in 2019 and was still part of it at the beginning of this year. PS though came back to the ECR group of right-wing populists in April, just before the Finnish parliamentary elections.
Russia and China say thank you
In the speeches of the German far-right AfD last weekend, it was noteworthy that there was virtually no opposition to Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Rather, Russia – and China – received support.
Criticism from the West, above all from the United States, was harsh.
– In the war in Ukraine, we see that NATO has become a threat to Europe, AfD leader Alice Wiedel said.
AfD’s slogan in EU politics is to turn the European Union into a “union of independent states”. The party wants to weaken the union from within, disconnect Germany from the euro and end the EU parliament, among other things.
This would suit China or Russia, for example. Large countries would be able to negotiate and agree, for example, trade agreements with a decentralized Europe.
Loud talk gets you popularity
AfD’s top candidate in the European elections is a far-right, already sitting as a MP Maximilian Krah. He does not shy away from radicalism and has caught the German law enforcers after him with several of his advances.
Krah has twice been suspended from his EU group’s activities for periods of a few months due to, among other things, misuse of public funds. His connections to China, Qatar and Russian oligarchs are still being investigated.
All this did not hinder the influencers of the Vaihehto Saksalle party in the weekend’s mepp vote.
– Krah wants to control the discussion with radicalism. In the past, the AfD sought more votes by emphasizing moderation. Now the strategy has reversed, Professor Richter said live from the meeting place in Magdeburg.
Based on the polls, the anti-Islamic and xenophobic strategy also seems to be working.
What has changed in Germany?
The rise of extremism and nationalism is influenced by the general atmosphere of crisis, which has taken over the industry in Germany little by little since the beginning of the corona pandemic.
Finally, the war in Ukraine and the inflation it brings with it frustrates a part of the people. Germany, which used to be the economic powerhouse of Europe, is in recession, and bad news about the industry keeps coming.
Citizens’ moderation is fraying, impatience is increasing, and people are not trying to understand complex issues, instead they are grasping at simple messages. It fuels AfD and radicalization, the researchers estimate.
The biggest single economic problem is the exhaustion of Russia’s gas and oil taps. It has become very expensive for the Germans.
The government is planning a new energy law that would oblige households to replace oil and gas heating with heat pumps. Due to the resistance of the citizens, the popularity of the governing parties has also collapsed.
At the same time as the economy has declined, Germany has taken in nearly 1.1 million refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. One of the biggest reasons to vote for the Alternative for Germany party is precisely immigration.
According to a July poll by public broadcaster ARD, 77 percent of Germans say they are worried about the current state of their country.
Impact on Finland
The growth of extremism in Germany affects Finland through European politics and economics. Chancellor of the Democratic Party Olaf Scholz will have to focus even more on bridging the power of the far-right and far-left in the coming autumn.
According to him, it is done by creating jobs and improving the appreciation of craftsman and industrial professions.
The German government has recently supported industry and jobs to an extraordinary extent in order to please the voters. Only on Tuesday was the latest announced, for the most part a taxpayer-funded billion-dollar project in which Taiwan’s TSMC builds a large chip factory in East Germany.
The competitiveness of Finnish industry weakens when the big EU countries start competing with state subsidies. There is now a lot of pressure to speed up the competition for state aid because, along with Germany, France, another large EU country, wants to relax the rules of the EU’s internal market.
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Germany’s AfD nominates a chancellor candidate for the first time.
The topic can be discussed on 11.8. until 11 p.m.