Original title: Tens of thousands pack into a protest in Hamburg against Germany’s far right
Edit: The protest was ended early because the location was too small for that many people, raising concerns that e.g. paramedics couldn’t quickly reach people in the centre of the crowd in case of a medical emergency.
Originally, the protest was supposed to take place in front of the town hall and not at the Jungfernstieg Boulevard, but the far right Alternative for Germany party had called on short notice for a meeting of the state legislature in the town hall. During such a meeting, protests are banned within the vicinity of it for security reasons.
In the last national election, the AfD got 10% of the vote, relatively low. Currently, they are polling at 23%, considerably higher, but far from a majority. The centre right CDU is currently leading in the polls at 31%. Together, these two parties would have a majority.
Officially, the CDU rules out any cooperation with the AfD, but such cooperation has already taken place on the local level without the local CDU politicians involved getting kicked out of the party. Overall, the CDU is probably the only major party in Germany that might consider a coalition with the AfD.
Internally, the CDU appears divided on the issue. Their current leader once talked about allowing cooperation on the local level, but backpedaled after immediate criticism from within the party (source). When polled, 53% of CDU supporters opposed any coalition with the AfD on the state level, with only 36% supporting such a coalition and the remainder being unsure (German source). I haven’t found any polls regarding the local or the national level, but I’m relatively certain that support for a coalition on the national level won’t be any higher among CDU supporters.
Friendly reminder that the nazis never won a majority the first time around.
As I said, there’s a danger that the centre right might enable our contemporary Nazis. Hopefully, they listen to the majority of their voters who oppose this.
At least Daniel Günther, CDU governor of Schleswig-Holstein, the state where the CDU has its largest state level majority (43%), is quite outspoken against the AfD. While he clearly belongs to the most centrist wing of the party, his 2022 reelection victory still gives him considerable weight within the party. It also shows that cooperation with the Greens can be a winning strategy for the CDU, at least in the more populous former West Germany.
They should be intimately familiar with the results of the last time conservatives turned to fascists to try and cling to power.
Listening to what those people say on the news, I get the feeling they are familiar with this, they know it, but they don’t care because they feel like they can profit from it. CxU parties are very far from what the “Christian” in their name would suggest.
I mean, the Nazis didn’t, but the Nazis + another fascist party did, so the issue wasn’t a shortage of people who vote for fascist parties.