Lawmakers from the incoming chancellor’s CDU party signal an end to the “firewall” that saw mainstream politicians refuse to work with extreme groups for decades.
The party that won Germany’s election is radically softening its approach to working with the far right as the reality of the country’s transformed political landscape starts to bite.
While the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) — the party of Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel — has for decades steadfastly refused to cooperate or do deals with politicians on the extremes, that “firewall” now appears to be crumbling as the German parliament works out how to organize itself in the wake of the country’s Feb. 23 snap election.
I mostly blame this on media manipulation. There is a constant barrage of fearmongering about recession and inflation and immigrants and terrorism even by supposedly left media outlets. Fact is, people arent doing bad in Germany, everything is mostly fine, crime is going down, people arent starving, the green energy sector is growing, the immigration levels are manageable. Its extremely clear that all this propaganda is coming from the AFD/CDU + international influences like Musk and Russia, because it all stopped right after they won the election.
Also people dont seem to understand that big changes take longer than 4 years, so just voting for the good guys for one election period isnt going to do much. The current government at any given time is usually busy dealing with the mess left by the previous government. So to people that dont actively engage with politics, it will look like nothing good came from voting for the good guys and they go back to voting for the old center right parties.