Dresden, GERMANY – The firewall against the right is burning.
In June 2023, the party leader of the German center party, the Christian German Union, made a strong statement against AfD, the far-right party.
“This party is xenophobic. This party is anti-Semitic. We have nothing to do with these people and there will be no co-operation here – under the table, over the table, under the table, with me and not with us,” party leader Friedrich Merz told fellow members of Parliament.
“As long as I am party chairman,” Merz went on, “there will be no cooperation with this party.”
Merz, who is running for chancellor in the Feb. 23 national election, promised and reiterated this promise after the collapse of the German federal government on November 6 by suggesting that the Greens and the Social Democrats make mutual agreements to never gain majorities in Germany’s federal Parliament with the help of AfD votes.
Merz thus provided relief and the feared possibility of a black-blue coalition between the Christian German Union and the AfD seemed to be averted.
In doing so, Merz captured the spirit of the times. An investigation by the European newspaper CORRECTIV revealed a secret November 2023 meeting between right-wing politicians and well-known right-wing extremists from Germany and Austria.
The story, uncovered at the end of January 2024, sparked the Brandmauer movement, a demonstration that called for a ‘firewall’ of democratic society and parties to ban the AfD.
The principle and demand of the movement was to recognize that the AfD was anti-democratic and that cooperation would therefore mean working with anti-democrats.
The arch-conservative millionaire and politician Merz is being eyed critically, particularly from the left wing of society and the Christian German Union party. Merz has also attracted attention within the party with his right-wing rhetoric and populist demands. He has already been accused several times of making AfD positions acceptable in terms of content and language and thus pushing the boundary further to the right.
For example, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the leader of the Green Party accused Merz of wanting to make a name for himself with right-wing populist measures after Merz accused Ukrainian refugees of social tourism.
Merz’s statements about refugees and migrants in Germany also caused an outcry in the media. On a talk show in 2023, he labeled migrant primary school children as spoiled by women – using the sexist and derogatory term ‘pashas’ – and claimed they were, or would be, violent offenders.
Months later, Merz caused another scandal when he falsely told the German TV station WELT that foreigners were having their teeth redone at the expense of the social welfare fund – while Germans were not getting appointments.
Merz rejects the banning of the AfD, which has been categorized by the national Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist party.
After former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migrant-friendly policies ended with her departure in 2021, this new positioning under Merz represents a new direction for the party.
As chancellor, Merkel was also a member of the German Christian Union and even shared the leadership of the parliamentary group with Merz for a while before excluding him from her cabinet in 2005.
A knife attack in Aschaffenburg last month – in which a perpetrator with a migrant background attacked a kindergarten group and killed a 2-year-old child and a man who tried to intervene – reopened the integration and migration debate in Germany and heated up the current hot phase of the German national election campaign.
By embracing support from the extreme right AfD party, Merz last month successfully convinced the German Parliament to enact a crackdown on migrants, both at Germany’s borders within the country.
Merz’ head-spinning capitulation to the extremists shocked the nation, since he’d spent years vowing to never work with the AfD.
Even Merkel, who rarely intervenes in German politics since her resignation, criticized her former party colleague for breaking his promise.
In the view of many Germans, the firewall erected against the right fell when Merz aligned with the AfD.
Many AfD and Merz critics see this as confirmation of their fears that the Christian German Union could cooperate or form a coalition with the AfD in the future, even though Merz emphasized in an interview after the vote that there would be no future cooperation with the AfD.
German television station ZDF’s trusted program, “Political Barometer” shows that a clear majority of Germans reject cooperation with the AfD. Polls are more divided on the Christian German Union’s anti-migrant vote with the AfD in Parliament.
In Dresden, a demonstration on Thursday evening in front of the conference center where Merz was holding an election campaign event to protest the Christian German Union’s voting behavior.
The German ‘Centre for Political Beauty,’ an activist collective known for its usually rather artful criticism, also erected a gravestone of the German politician Franz von Papen – the politician who allowed Hitler to come to power in the Weimar Republic – in front of the Christian German Union’s federal office.
It remains to be seen how this decision by the Christian German Union will affect the election results this month, and the new government.
But the party has made gains in the polls again, and – since joining with the AfD party in the Parliament vote – is now in a stronger position.
No one knows what this Sword of Damocles will bring. A lot of Germans are holding their breath.
Lina Marie Schulenkorf is a Senior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
