Last month, the world’s richest man offered the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)— a former member of the Hayek Society, a financial consultant, and still a staunch neoliberal — a global stage to say obscenities such as “Hitler was a communist, a socialist.”
The remarks made by AfD leader Alice Weidel on X with Elon Musk may seem extreme. Yet they represent the latest point reached by what is by now a long-standing trend in Europe.
For years already, we had seen mainstream politicians breaking down the remaining barriers against the far right. In the German Bundestag this past Wednesday, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Weidel’s AfD voted together to pass a motion calling for a clampdown on migration. But now we are even beyond the point where we could talk of those defenses being removed. For today, the so-called cordon sanitaire is being actively constructed against the Left.
By “Left” I do not only mean parties with some sort of social calling — as we have seen recently with the demonization of the New Popular Front in France and the exclusion of the Social Democrats from government negotiations in Austria. For this silencing also extends to social movements, climate activists, NGOs, trade unions, and, more generally, a vital civil society able to react against the unscrupulous alliance of neoliberals and right-wing populists.
The effects of this trend are especially mature in Austria, where there has never been an effective cordon sanitaire against the far right. Here the first government led by…
Auteur: Francesca De Benedetti
