When does the moment come when an election result is no longer just an election result, but something more? A turning point, a – one doesn’t really want to use the word – a caesura? When does the point come when we should no longer discuss who is the biggest loser and who is the second biggest winner, but when we start to think seriously?
Perhaps when in a German federal state the AfD
won a state election, a right-wing extremist party came first. What we are experiencing here is a momentum, a momentum of political crisis. This is a defining, a special evening for Germany. And you don’t have to be an East German who is wondering what is happening to your homeland to have this feeling.
The AfD is in Thuringia The AfD has narrowly missed out on coming first in Saxony. A second party that is certainly capable of pushing populist buttons, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), achieved double-digit results in both federal states, and in Thuringia it even reached almost 16 percent. All of the parties that have shaped the history of the republic for decades, on the other hand, have been punished more or less harshly.
That means something: The formation of a government can no longer proceed as it used to. The parliament in Erfurt and Dresden will no longer be as it used to be. The Monday after this election will be a different Monday than after other elections. And one should consider whether – if one is already keeping the AfD out of any government participation for very understandable reasons – one wants to do the same with the BSW.
Germany has a massive problem
The AfD’s march to the top within a few years and the rise of the BSW now show that there is a massive, painful problem in Germany: fundamentally with the trust, with the belief that the established parties, from the CDU to the Greens, are still capable of solving the problems that were most important to voters in Saxony and Thuringia, above all migration. Fundamentally with the hope that what is considered politically important in Gera or Görlitz will still be heard in party headquarters in Berlin. Fundamentally also with right-wing extremism; in Saxony and Thuringia and also in some other places in Germany, this is a phenomenon of a size that just a few years ago was thought to be permanently unattainable in post-war and post-reunification Germany.
But perhaps the biggest problem is that there is no longer any confidence in the version of Germany that it seemed to be for many decades – a very proud, innovative, progressive country. The trains are not running, the energy transition is a minor disaster, steel companies are pulling out. It is no longer enough to just say that. This election result proves it. The optimism about progress is gone. And East Germans traditionally find that particularly distressing.
The traffic light coalition is not solely to blame for the situation, as the CDU previously governed for decades. But how else should we interpret it if not as a devastating testimony to one of the worst federal governments in the history of this republic, when the traffic light parties together – in both federal states – only just achieve double-digit percentages, meaning that they have effectively become irrelevant for the political process in Saxony and Thuringia in the next five years?
When does the moment come when an election result is no longer just an election result, but something more? A turning point, a – one doesn’t really want to use the word – a caesura? When does the point come when we should no longer discuss who is the biggest loser and who is the second biggest winner, but when we start to think seriously?
Perhaps when in a German federal state the AfD
won a state election, a right-wing extremist party came first. What we are experiencing here is a momentum, a momentum of political crisis. This is a defining, a special evening for Germany. And you don’t have to be an East German who is wondering what is happening to your homeland to have this feeling.
