When conservative German politician Jens Spahn urges Syrian refugees to return home out of “patriotic duty,” his words reveal more about Germany’s politics than about the Syrians themselves.
Tag: afd
By trading class struggle for identity politics and lifestyle dogmas, Germany’s left has estranged ordinary citizens and handed the far right a chance to pose as their defenders.
A secretive organization is training children in nationalist ideology, drawing on the legacy of banned neo-Nazi groups. With ties to former extremists and echoes of Hitler Youth rituals, the Jungadler operates under the radar — and may have been active for over a decade.
New German Chancellor Friedrich Merz talks about his private exchanges with U.S. President Donald Trump, his own lack of government experience, and why it’s not so clear how to handle the far right AfD.
As AfD grows in popularity, it gets potentially more dangerous — but also harder to ban. This could become a test for democracy and cripple his leadership from the outset.
They train in the woods and strike at night against migrant and LGBTQ targets.Far-right youth groups are emerging across Germany. Die Zeit tracks a new generation of Neo-Nazis.
On social networks, people on the extreme right use emojis to encode their ideology. Over the past eight years, two Dutch researchers have become experts in this symbolic language that operates across borders — in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany alike.
With photographs from Nepal, Germany, Israel, China — among other places.
The German elections showed rising support for the far-right AfD, and increased dissatisfaction running rampant in German society, Polish columnist Bartosz T. Wielinski asks whether this runs the risk of history of the early 20th century repeating.
The Left (Die Linke) and the far-right AfD party scored big in Germany’s federal election on Sunday. But their success has less to do with the fact that they offer more or less radical alternatives to other parties than in their style of political discourse — and more moderate parties would be wise to learn a thing or two from this.
The multi-faceted Friedrich Merz promises to be a most indecipherable head of government. Only one thing’s for certain: He is willing to take risks. It comes with serious perils, but may be exactly what Germany (and the world) needs right now.
Germany’s AfD has leveraged TikTok as a key tool in its political strategy, flooding the platform with catchy, populist posts whose virality has strengthened the party’s far-right discourse among a younger demographic.
An analysis of all election programs shows that German political parties have never been more right-wing than today. Of course, there’s the AfD — but other groups have also toughened their stance.
Ahead of Germany’s crucial national elections Sunday, Russia is actively working to destabilize the country through cyberattacks, agents, and disinformation campaigns. Can anything be done to stop or at least counter these attacks?
In economics, disruption describes an ordinary process: innovations replace outdated technologies. But in politics? It takes on a far darker meaning, writes German weekly Die Zeit.
The Holocaust was based on the same ultranationalist ideas that the New Right refers to today. Even if Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Germany’s AfD leader Alice Weidel try to distance themselves from the words associated with Nazism, their politics cannot fool us.
With the global rise of the far-right, many Germans are afraid that the past is about to repeat itself. German writer Florian Illies explains the trap about such analogies — even as other dangers lurk.
Elon Musk is hosting Alice Weidel in an interview on X, having tried to convince the American tech billionaire she’s not an extremist. But who is Weidel, really? She’s described the Germans as “slaves” of the U.S. and quotes the infamous text of a nationalist philosopher that is a dog-whistle for the far right in Germany.
German history teachers talk about teaching their subject during a resurgence of the far-right AfD party and rising antisemitism in the country.
The first mosque in East Germany to have visible Islamic architecture is soon to open in Erfurt, in the State of Thuringia. But it’s already become a target for Islamophobic attacks, including pig heads and wooden crosses tossed on the premises.
One of the few EU countries to not agree to the 2015 migration scheme, Poland had long been viewed as a right-wing periphery on migration. But with the rest of Europe moving rightward, Poland has emerged as the new leader on the issue.
The German Parliament has taken up discussion on a bill for an outright ban on the AfD, the country’s increasingly popular far-right party. Here’s the case to remove a political force that wants to dismantle the institutions of democracy from within. Germany, of course, has its own history on the question.
In Sunday’s regional elections in Thuringia, yes, 400,000 people voted for the extreme-right party AfD. Is that a lot? Depends on how you look at it. But looking at overall electoral trends, we know that the vast majority of Germans do not want right-wing extremists in power.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban officially announced the creation of a new group in the European Parliament, the “Patriots for Europe” to gather extremist parties that have been sidelined by the establishment. It can also be a bridge to Trump and Putin.
July 1 – July 7, 2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s declaration labeling Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as “extreme right-wing” is a politically charged move. But is this assessment fair, given Meloni’s strong support for Ukraine and responsible economic decisions — or is there some demonizing and distracting at play?
There’s the risk both for over and underestimating the unprecedented gains of far-right parties in the European elections.
This week, 360 million voters across the EU will elect 720 Members of the European Parliament. Nationalist and far-right forces are expected to gain ground. At stake is the Europe’s ability to implement its security and competitiveness agenda over the next five years.
In Germany, support for the far-right AfD party is dwindling while its French counterpart, the Rassemblement National of Le Pen, is leading the polls. Opposed trajectories that stem from very different approaches: German radicalization vs. French “dédiabolization.”
As the far-right propagates a simplified and emotionally resonant message, the lack of coordination and a shared vision among the “non-far-right” strengthens the far-right’s illusion of representing the entirety of “the people.”
Bogus images of angry dark-skinned men and bloodied blond women were quickly flagged as fakes, but the quality of the artificial intelligence is only bound to improve.
The Russian president was a KGB agent in the city in the former East Germany when the Iron Curtain started to give way. The ghosts of the past are everywhere.
Categories
Germany, Welcome To The New Normal
The success of the far-right Alternative for Germany party in the election is history’s revenge against the idea that Germans had to be a model for the rest of the world.
German elections will see the results of a seismic change within the German political landscape, as Merkel’s moderate policies have opened space on the right for extremists.
-OpEd- BERLIN — The rise of populists has given way to an alarming reaction among so-called elites. Many of them are blaming themselves for not having considered those who have been “left behind,” for not having paid attention to the needs of common people. Journalists blame themselves for having been too politically correct, too fond […]
Die Tageszeitung, Sept. 19 Another election, another humbling defeat for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a Berlin state vote, Merkel’s CDU party polled 17.6% — its lowest showing since 1990, figures from public broadcaster ARD showed on Monday. It’s the second poll drubbing as CDU got crushed just two weeks before in an eastern German […]
The weakening power of the “Mother of Europe” comes at a bad time for both Germany and the rest of the continent.
-OpEd- BERLIN — The ministers of the interior of Germany’s 16 federal states have presented their plan against terrorism. Among them, the abolition of the dual citizenship and a public ban on wearing the burqa. As far as is known, no dual citizenship holder has committed a crime of a terrorist nature. The number of […]
Die Tageszeitung, Feb. 3, 2016 “Right is the New Center,” writes Berlin-based daily Die Tageszeitung on the front page of its Wednesday edition, with a picture of a garden gnome giving the middle finger. The German daily, known for its tongue-in-cheek humor, features an analysis of a new political force to be reckoned with in […]