https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/opinion/germany-far-right-afd.html
"BERLIN — In the heat of debate about Germany sending tanks to Ukraine, it’s
easy to forget that just two months ago, the authorities arrested 25 people for
planning a radical right-wing coup to overthrow the German government.
The would-be insurgents — followers of the antisemitic Reichsbürger (“citizens
of the Reich”) movement, which claims that every German state since World War I
has been illegitimate — included soldiers, police officers, army reservists, an
aristocratic “prince” ringleader and, notably, a number of members of the
far-right Alternative for Germany party, including a former representative of
the German Parliament.
The group’s ideas are bizarre and the plot had no serious chance of success.
And yet one might think that the unearthing of a heavily armed movement aiming
at the elimination of the state would set off an intense discussion around
nationalism and far-right violence. Germany, after all, is celebrated for
reckoning with its fascist past. But that did not happen. After some lukewarm
speculation about a potential ban of Alternative for Germany, known by its
German acronym, AfD, the issue has almost completely disappeared from public
debate.
This development — or more precisely, the lack of development — is symptomatic
of a disquieting fact: Germany has a problem with right-wing extremism. Nowhere
is this more evident than in the rise of the AfD, which effectively functions
as the parliamentary arm of the broader far-right movement. The party, which
commands around 15 percent of the vote nationwide and is the largest electoral
force in some regions, was founded only in 2013. Yet in a decade, it has
conclusively shifted the country’s politics to the right.
Now known for its aggressive antimigrant stance, the party wasn’t primarily
focused on immigration in its early days. The priority, initially, was
economic. The 18 men — among them several economists, a former conservative
journalist and businessmen — who founded the party in February 2013 had one
main aim: for Germany to leave the European Union’s currency union, or abolish
it altogether. This was, of course, at root a nationalist position."
Via Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
