Elections will take place in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1st. Possible government constellations are difficult, the AfD dominates the opinion polls and has over 30 percent in both countries. Many voters can also imagine voting for the Wagenknecht Party (BSW).
This strengthening of the political fringes now further complicates the situation for the parties that previously did not always form easy coalitions there. The question arises as to whether the two federal states in the east are threatened with ungovernability.
Our author Karin Christmann has analyzed which government constellations would be conceivable here:
How can votes be won back from the political fringes? How best to deal with the AfD? Read an editorial selection of reactions from the Tagesspiegel community here.
THFremains
“In the East, neither the National Socialist nor the real socialist past and reunification were ever dealt with. The transition from the Nazi era to the SED dictatorship and from state socialism to democratic capitalism mostly never affected people.
It was mostly about political or economic interests, about power, about victory. It was never about the people, their identities, their fears, their hopes. The East is suffering for the third time from the ‘inability to mourn’, because for many the hopes of Western democracy and capitalism have not been fulfilled either.”
2010ff
“I am now convinced that any attempt to use the specter of the AfD to generate approval for a ‘middle’, however imagined, leads to the opposite effect. Anyone who wants to influence voter behavior in such a superficial way will fail. By the way, it has been for years.
You can beat the AfD 24 hours a day – it doesn’t change the reality of life for millions of people who are dissatisfied with this or that, the people who don’t feel noticed and recognized for their needs.
What I mean is: Articles like this lay a reliable path to success for right-wing extremist forces like the AfD. If you want to push the envelope, you have to continue to ignore realpolitik and instead nurture and nurture the specter of the AfD.”
DrHund
“Perhaps another thought about the ‘disillusionment with democracy’ in the East, which I have rarely read before: Many Ossis are very familiar with a government that thinks it knows better than the people what is good for the people. One reacts particularly ‘allergically’ to this paternalism – even if there may be the best intentions behind it.
If it then turns out – even if only in places – that these ‘best intentions’ were driven by egoism, ideology and self-enrichment intentions, then you quickly reach the point of ‘we already had it, we don’t want to’.”
.JeanLuc7
“In the worst case scenario, the AfD rules alone. If that happens, then the East (or the federal state in question) will be lost not just for the democratic center, but for the free-democratic constitutional state as a whole. This prospect alone should be enough to immediately initiate proceedings to ban the AfD. After the elections it could already be too late for that.”
all the time
“I have been living in the new federal states for many years now and, as a former ‘Wessi’, I may have a different view of the situation in question than the locals. It seems to me that there is currently a pendulum swing of the people here in the direction self-assertion in relation to the Federal Republic’s culture.
After the fall of communism, many people happily adopted this culture themselves, culture in the broadest sense as a way of life. In the meantime, however, disillusionment has set in and people are reflecting on the reality of their lives during the forty years of the GDR.
Back then there was also an everyday life, but it was very different from our western one. This is usually expressed with the sentence ‘It wasn’t all bad for us either’. The AfD is taking advantage of this, but not all of the people here are AfD members. Rather, their success appears to be an effective means of culturally distancing oneself from the West.”
Load_Balancer
“Democracy also means deciding for yourself with whom you form a coalition, and above all: protecting democracy from being destroyed again by a right-wing extremist minority. Last time the right-wing extremists set half the world on fire. And we Democrats will not allow that to happen again.”
Election researcher
“The East is by no means lost to the AfD. The parties in the middle should simply reflect on their strengths and then represent them offensively. However, what must not happen under any circumstances is that certain topics are simply left out and thus left to the AfD. This particularly applies to direct confrontation with the AfD candidates.
This refusal to confront the AFD directly is one of the main reasons for its rise! Only in the concrete issue-related debate will voters realize that the AfD has no solutions at all. If you don’t have any solutions, you won’t be elected!
It is the damned duty and responsibility of the parties to seek this direct confrontation and to address these issues (such as migration) and to offer solutions that are supported by a broad majority. Then the AfD problem will solve itself due to a lack of voter support!”
Source: Tagesspiegel
I work as a news website author and mostly cover the opinion section. I have been writing since I was a teenager, and have always enjoyed telling stories. I studied journalism at university and loved every minute of it. After graduating, I decided to move to London and take up a position with a Global Happenings. It has been an incredible experience, learning about all sorts of different cultures and meeting some amazing people. My goal is to continue learning and growing in my career so that I can provide readers with the best possible content.
