comment
More than two years ago, Götz Kubitschek, the chief ideologue of the New Right, spoke at an AfD strategy conference in Dürrenberg, Saxony-Anhalt. Kubitschek spoke of how, with a smart division of labor between AfD, identities, neo-Nazis and national conservatives, the basic social consensus in Germany can gradually be shifted to the right.
The AfD as a parliamentary party would have to pay attention, said Kubitschek, that it publicly represents only positions that are considered just acceptable in the political debate. They are likely to provoke society but not scare them. And she should always stress how much you care about democracy. "For the more radical positions" others are better suited. Only in this way can the AfD play its part in ensuring that public discourse is increasingly determined by right-wing content and ideas.
No fear of contact with fascists
The state elections in Brandenburg and Saxony have advanced the strategists of a right-wing cultural hegemony a good deal. It is even more irrelevant that the AfD has failed to become the strongest party in one or both countries.
Both in Saxony and Brandenburg, the AfD is now an integral part of the parliamentary spectrum. Every fourth voter has made the cross in the AfD, although the officials in the two countries know no fears of contact with fascists and would always prefer autocratic pseudo-democracies of open and free society.
That can only work if the right edge reaches far into the middle of society. And that is exactly what has been achieved in the East of the AfD. This was already on election night. An MDR presenter did not hesitate to call a purely mathematical cooperation between CDU and AfD a "stable bourgeois coalition". Her colleague in Potsdam called the right-wing and neo-fascist wing of the AfD "national conservative". Kubitschek should have rubbed his hands if he followed this discussion. Again, the discourse has moved a bit to the right.
Content unimportant, concepts secondary
It may sound paradoxical, but even the fact that Michael Kretschmer (CDU) in Saxony and Dietmar Woidke (SPD) in Brandenburg managed to become stronger with their parties than the AfD shows just another facet of the same story: how far the rights in the East already controls the political discourse.
Kretschmer and Woidke were responsible for much of the mood and mood campaign the AfD imposed on them. The right-wing populists had managed to make themselves the dominant election campaign topic. Content unimportant, political concepts of other parties at best still secondary.
There are a number of issues in both countries, such as infrastructure or education policies, which urgently need to be addressed. Instead, the prime ministers tried very paternally to assemble their citizens as a bulwark against the AfD behind. At least in Saxony with questionable signals.
An anti-Russian veto against representative democracy
Kretschmer had left early no doubt that he refuses to cooperate with the AfD, such with him was not to do. This has given him many sympathies in civil society. Even bitter opponents of the left paid respect. Kretschmer could expect that he will draw votes from the red-green spectrum. The polls a week before the election indicated that already.
Since then Kretschmer could also confidently renounce participation in the indivisible demonstration, in which a week before the election in Dresden tens of thousands marched against right and racism. The cancellation from the State Chancellery came suddenly and with a reasonably flimsy justification. He could not demonstrate where, even the "extreme left Antifa" protests. Kretschmer's demo cancellation was probably nothing more than a concession to the National Conservatives in his own party, which does not suit Kretschmer's anti-AfD course anyway.
Shortly before the election Kretschmer had then brought the public objection into play, a kind of vicious citizens' veto. After that, under certain conditions, the Saxons can overturn already bombarded Landtag laws. Kretschmer sees in public opinion an improvement of public participation, which promotes the "acceptance of political decisions".
It is quite possible that, above all, it contributes to the delegitimization of representative democracy. Then the discourse window in the east would be moved a bit further to the right.