As of: March 13, 2024, 8:44 p.m
By: Jana Stabener
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Local politicians in East Germany have worked with the right 121 times in the past four years.
A political scientist has an idea why this is.
With the exception of Berlin, local elections will be held in all eastern German states in 2024.
“Fascism is literally at their doorstep,” warns the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS).
She has examined how democratic parties in the East have cooperated with the extreme right since the last local elections in 2019.
BuzzFeed News Germany
, a portal from
IPPEN.MEDIA
, has the results of the study available.
From 2019 to the end of 2023, there were 121 cases of formal cooperation with right-wing parties such as the AfD at the local level in the former East German federal states.
The frontrunner was Saxony; the most common form of cooperation was joint voting, in most cases at the initiative of the AfD.
“Explosive,” said political scientist Anika Taschke at an RLS press conference on Wednesday, March 13th.
“The common narrative that extreme right-wing motions are not approved is therefore empirically incorrect.”
At the local level there is always collaboration with the AfD - not just from the CDU.
(Symbolic image) © Pond5 Images/IMAGO
More on the topic: Wagenknecht explains how she and her party differentiate themselves from the AfD
How democratic parties cooperate with AfD and Co
Democratic parties in East Germany did not only cooperate with the AfD, NPD, the III.
Weg and Co: They also work together when it comes to elections or the establishment of committees, local councils and census communities, says Taschke.
She is a speaker for neo-Nazism and structures of inequality at the RLS.
This also explains why there was a particularly high level of cooperation immediately after the 2019 local elections.
For example in Gohrisch (Saxony).
Immediately after the local elections in 2019, a four-person faction emerged, consisting of one Alliance 90/The Greens (non-party), one AfD (by two AfD MPs), two CDU (non-party).
“We expect to see more such cooperation in the upcoming local elections in June 2024,” says Steven Hummel, education officer at the RLS.
In the local city parliament of Sassnitz (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), members of the SPD and the AfD had tried to cooperate with each other in the past.
This caused great dissatisfaction among the leadership of both parties.
The cooperation was then broken off by both of them.
© BildFunkMV/IMAGO
More on the topic: Protests against AfD: Political change before the state elections?
“All parties represented in the Bundestag have worked with the AfD at least once”
According to the study, the main cooperation partner of right-wing parties at the local level was the CDU (52 cases).
But the FDP (22), SPD (13), the Left (10) and Alliance 90/The Greens (5) also cooperated with the extreme right.
“We have to say very clearly: all parties represented in the Bundestag have worked with the AfD at least once,” says Taschke.
“It didn’t surprise me,” she said when asked by
BuzzFeed News Germany.
“We have been observing for years that cooperation is occurring again and again, not just in eastern German federal states.” An example of this is the election of the NPD man Stefan Jagsch as mayor in a small town in Hesse in 2019.
There was no one else standing for election here and no one was looking; Jagsch was only voted out again due to pressure from the press and civil society.
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More on the topic: SPD calls for clear demarcation of democratic parties to the right
Cooperation with the AfD was also due to “certain excessive demands”.
“At the local level, where many people work on a voluntary basis, there is often a certain amount of excessive demands,” says Taschke.
The study aims to shed light on this and make it clear to democratic politicians and parties that they should differentiate themselves more clearly from the AfD.
“For the firewall to hold, we need a clear stance against the right and a clear commitment to values,” says the political scientist.
Because the cooperation would be accompanied by a certain “normalization” of right-wing parties and their content.
This is also clear in the private interactions between politicians.
At the time, there was more fear of contact with the NPD, but with the AfD the inhibition threshold was much lower.
“We didn’t examine canoe trips or sharing a beer after a bike ride because they are very difficult to record,” says Taschke.
She assumes that there are some points of contact here and that the number of unreported cases of municipal cooperation with the AfD is very large.
The RLS also suspects there are some cases of cooperation with right-wing parties in the West German federal states and hopes to be able to look at these in further studies.
More on the topic: AfD on the rise – highest approval ratings in five years