Last week, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), introduced a nonbinding motion in the Bundestag to tighten the country’s immigration procedures. It called for an extension of police powers to remove rejected asylum seekers and make it harder for admitted refugees to bring over their families from abroad. Although the motion was passed with support from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), it subsequently failed to turn into an actual bill when members of Merz’s own party abstained from voting.
Merz, who is one of the strongest candidates to become chancellor after the February 23 federal elections, evidently believed he could weaken the AfD’s influence by showing voters that he, too, listened to their concerns about immigration and national security, giving both himself and his party an electoral boost. Instead, he divided Germany’s political establishment by breaching the so-called Brandmauer or “firewall,” a long-standing agreement among the major parties not to cooperate with far-right extremists. As a result, the CDU lies wounded, while the AfD, capitalizing on the ongoing chaos, is looking stronger than ever before.
The call to defend a “firewall” reflects the reality that even historical Nazism reached power through democratic means, via the connivance of more established forces. Yet in today’s Germany, parties from the Christian Democrats to former Die Linke spokeswoman Sahra Wagenknecht’s party (BSW) — which also voted in favor of Merz’s motions — are increasingly tempted to incorporate right-wing stances into their own programs in the hope that doing so will help them at the polls. But as history showed, and current events are showing once again, this strategy not only strengthens the movements they wish to keep in check, but also damages their collective ability to stop them from taking over.
Even if these votes did not actually produce new…
Auteur: Tim Brinkhof
