Will Democracy Survive?

The Christian Democrats more than halved, the AfD nearly doubled

The election results in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt particularly shocked former Chancellor Merkel, as she explained in an interview with the news channel NTV.

I transcribed ans translated her remarks. Her unedited, verbatim German text is attached to this blog as an appendix.

You can see it in the polls in the days leading up to the election, but when you see it in black and white on Sunday evening, it’s simply shocking - at least that’s how I felt.

 
This is a turning point - a real turning point - that we’re witnessing in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, and to add a personal note, as a CDU member, it breaks my heart; I really have to say that.

Our former chancellor, visibly struggling to find the right words

But now we have to consider, for example, the reach that the AfD has on social media - in other words, its influence over the flow of information. It’s not enough to simply say, “Well, we don’t use TikTok”- we have to face this head-on and meet people where they are. We won’t be able to win them all back - I want to make that explicitly clear - because the AfD also wants to abolish public television. So how do we achieve this now?

  

In the spirit of the Enlightenment, we really must not allow a situation where, when it’s said that unemployment has fallen in Saxony-Anhalt and individual prosperity has risen - a position that could win a majority or nearly win a majority - the leading candidate then says, “Maybe so, but that’s not how it feels,” because then the emotion is being played upon. Emotion suddenly becomes just as important as the facts.

And if we allow that - and this, again, is a responsibility we all share - that was the progress of the Enlightenment: that the collective could agree on facts, and based on those facts, people then arrived at different preferences for political parties and so on.

But no one has ever disputed that the facts matter. When we communicate with one another now—and we’re actually supposed to be having a meeting to discuss specific facts - people say, “I’m just not feeling it today. We can’t talk about it.” If that mindset takes hold, then we’re taking steps backward in terms of civilization - at least that’s what I believe - and we need to raise awareness of that again.

I’ll be completely honest: I don’t have the answer. I just know that some things - AI aside - are perhaps even more important than they were before: addressing citizens on an individual level. And this is becoming crucial now, because everyone has their own information sphere.

But what’s also being demanded of candidates, for example - they now have to, so to speak; it’s no longer the case that the slogan comes from the Adenauer Haus* and then you walk out the front door and tell them that, and they say, “Nah, we’re not interested.” I have a question - I mean, the candidates also have to be really on top of things.
*The CDU party headquarters in Berlin

What’s happening to some extent now is that the AfD is so dominant that the others are already intimidated and don’t even show up anymore - and that’s not illegal yet - so as a democratic party, I have to seek out contact with citizens all the more.

 
So much for Angela; she tries desperately, but doesn’t have the answer.

Red Baron fears that our Western democracies may be destroyed by people’s selfishness and stupidity.

The reasons to vote AfD

Let’s try to analyze the situation for Germany: Why did people in Sachsen-Anhalt vote for the AfD? A poll shows:

21% are dissatisfied with the Merz administration.

Pluralism and democracy are always good as long as freely elected governments can hand out benefits. In that case, citizens even accept - sometimes grudgingly - that the distribution isn’t always fair and that the gap between rich and poor keeps widening. But with sufficient economic growth, the pie gets larger, so everyone gets a bigger slice.

But when economic growth stagnates or even “shrinks,” and tax revenues are low, there’s nothing more to distribute. When it comes to the point where our government has to take back some of those previously granted benefits, it hurts.

In a stagnant economy, apparent growth can only be produced artificially by taking on debt or increasing the share of the pie at others' expense.

An example is China. Chinese automakers are now flooding the European market with cheap, government-subsidized electric cars after the American market shut them out. The European auto industry is powerless against these dumping prices.

Fast-rising Chinese national debt

The price China is paying is a rising national debt. They couldn’t care less.

With the cornucopia of benefits empty, the erosion of democracy begins insidiously, and it accelerates when reforms roll back established privileges. AfD’s co-chair Alice Weidel swears: “Those at the top are flat nose pliers* (dimwits) who can’t get anything done.”
*Flachzangen in German, coined by Alice

In her statement, Weidel represents the 22% of AfD voters who are discontent with the political system. 

 
Decision-making in a democracy almost always involves compromise, and that takes time, so people voice dissatisfaction with the democratic system. Do they prefer a “strong” man or woman?

 
Germany’s postwar constitution was written to produce a “militant” democracy, with a robust toolkit for battling extremism.

As early as 2023, the Saxony-Anhalt Intelligence Agency for the Protection of the Constitution classified the state chapter of the AfD as a confirmed far-right extremist movement: “It holds views that undermine the central principles of the Basic Law*, such as the guarantee of human dignity under Article 1 and the principle of democracy under Article 20. The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt seeks to abolish parliamentary democracy in its current form and attempts to delegitimize the democratic system and its institutions.”
*The German constitution

Winston Churchill already said in the House of Commons on November 11, 1947, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

So let us fight for democracy. What alerts me most is that 34% of AfD voters in Sachsen-Anhalt cite the interests of the German Volk as their reason.

Nationalism, which reared its head in the France of Louis XIV and was elevated to prominence during the French Revolution, has brought nothing but disaster to Europe. Nationalism has erected borders, separated European neighbors from one another, and ultimately erupted into two bloody world wars.

The AfD wants to leave the Schengen Area, abolish the euro, and give the German people back their Germany. This would be a disaster not only for the common European House but also for our economy.

Where do we go from here?

And once again, a rift is opening up between Europeans who see the far right as a threat to democracy, and a growing number who see it as democracy’s savior.

The former warn that the far right will dismantle checks and balances, while treating minorities as second-class citizens. So far, Meloni, after a flirtation with Trump, seems like a good European, but shouldn't we reckon with the German fury?

The latter see the far right as a bulwark against an out-of-touch governing elite that has eroded their national identity and endangered their livelihoods. On average, people in Germany’s eastern federal states are worse off financially than those in the west. They criticize Germany's spending on refugees and aid to Ukraine, while many older people have to get by on small pensions.

Next step: How to form a government in Sachsen-Anhalt.

Appendix.
Das Merkel-Interview bei NTV:
Man sieht das in den Tagen vorher in den Umfragen, aber wenn man’s dann am Sonntagabend schwarz auf weiß hat, dann ist das einfach schockierend, jedenfalls mir ging’s so.

 
Das ist ein Einschnitt ein wirklicher Einschnitt, den wir in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland erleben, und um jetzt noch was aus etwas Emotionales zu sagen, mir als CDU Mitglied blutet das Herz, das muss ich wirklich sagen.

Jetzt müssen wir aber überlegen, welche Reichweite zum Beispiel die AfD in den sozialen Medien hat. Also welche Informationshoheit. Dann ist es damit nicht getan zu sagen, ja aber wir gehen nicht auf TikTok, sondern dann müssen wir uns dem schon stellen und die Menschen da auch abholen, wo sie sind. Wir werden sie nicht, ich will das ausdrücklich sagen, weil die AfD auch das öffentlich-rechtliche Fernsehen abschaffen will, nicht alle zurückholen und wie schaffen wir das jetzt?

 
Wir dürfen im Sinne der Aufklärung wirklich nicht zulassen, dass es, wenn gesagt wird, die Arbeitslosigkeit ist gesunken in Sachsen-Anhalt und der individuelle Wohlstand ist gestiegen, mehrheitsfähig ist oder fast mehrheitsfähig, der Spitzenkandidat dann sagt: "Kann sein, aber das wird nicht so gefühlt", denn dann wird das Gefühl bedient. Das Gefühl ist plötzlich genauso wichtig wie das Faktum.

 
Und wenn wir das zulassen, und das ist wieder eine Aufgabe von allen, das war der Fortschritt der Aufklärung, dass sich die Summe der Menschen auf Fakten einigen konnte, und auf der Basis dieser Fakten kam man dann zu unterschiedlichen Präferenzen für politische Parteien und so weiter. Aber es ist nie in Abrede gestellt worden, dass das Faktum das Wichtige ist.

 
Wenn wir jetzt miteinander kommunizieren und eigentlich sollten wir ein Meeting haben und uns über bestimmte Fakten austauschen, dann sagt man: "Ich fühl mich heut nicht so. Wir können nicht drüber sprechen." Wenn das die Hoheit übernimmt, dann gehen wir zivilisatorische Schritte zurück, das glaube ich jedenfalls, und das muss auch wieder bewusst gemacht werden.

 
Ich sag jetzt ganz offen, ich hab die Antwort nicht. Ich weiß nur, manche Sachen, KI hin und her, sind vielleicht noch wichtiger als sie vorher waren: Die individuelle Ansprache der Bürger, und es wird jetzt ganz wichtig, weil ja auch jeder seinen Informationsraum hat.

 
Aber was wird da auch von Kandidaten zum Beispiel verlangt die müssen jetzt sozusagen, es ist nicht mehr die Parole kommt aus Adenauer-Haus und dann gehst du vor die Haustür und sagst ihnen das, dann sagen die, nee, interessiert uns nicht. Ich hab die Frage, ich hab die Frage, d.h., die Kandidaten müssen auch richtig fit sein.

 
Was jetzt zum Teil passiert ist, dass die AfD so dominant auftritt, dass die andern schon verschüchtert gar nicht mehr hingehen und das ist ja noch nicht verboten und deshalb muss ich jetzt umso mehr als demokratische Partei den Kontakt zum Bürger suchen.
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