German government parties contain extreme boom in East | Internationale

In Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz, representative of the hardest wing of ultra training, sang the victory: "The first place would have been the icing on the cake, but the results are clear. AfD is here to stay and politics will not be possible without us. "

"We succeeded. […] friendly Saxony won, "appeared in Dresden, noted the Prime Minister of the State, the conservative Michael Kretschmer. Relief and concern for the tight victories and sweet and sour taste of traditional festivals. This Sunday, they avoided the greatest evil, yes, but this Monday they will rise with the extreme right, the second most voted force and exercising their share of power.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a latent frustration has set in on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), as well as in Germany. a rejection of the arrival of refugees in the country, exacerbated by the AfD, who managed to self-direct the voice of the relief of the east. This Sunday, they were voted mainly by men and young people. Compared to the 2014 regional results, the AfD reportedly achieved an increase of 17.7 percentage points in Saxony and 10.6% in Brandenburg. The results, however, are similar to those obtained by ultras in the 2017 generals in both states.

In Saxony, the CDU was in first place on Sunday with 33% of the vote (six fewer five years ago), followed by the AfD which would have reached 28%. The conservatives have hitherto ruled in this state in coalition with the SPD, as in the federal executive of Berlin. This Sunday, they would have lost the majority, according to the first polls, which predict a complex formation of the regional government.

The fall has an obvious reading in the German capital, where the parties of the grand coalition do not stop losing support. For the CDU, the results in the East are increasing pressure on its president, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who will succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel, but more and more questioned within the party. It belongs, like Merkel, to the most centrist wing of the formation, which, for the most conservative, presupposes an excessive political right-wing gap, which the AfD has been able to occupy.

In Brandenburg, where the Social Democrats have been heading for 30 years, the SPD would have been in first place with 26.4% of the vote, but would have suffered a 5.5 point drop from 2014. is the nth defeat of support for a party that spends a very short time and is plunged into a crisis of identity. The results would not be enough to reissue a government with Die Linke (The Left). The AfD would get about 24% of the votes in Brandenburg.

The European elections last May had already clearly marked the trend. The AfD then obtained 25.4% of the votes in Saxony and 19.9% ​​in Brandenburg, slightly less than for the 2017 generals in both states. The power of the protest vote is particularly pronounced in the East, where about 20% of Germans live, since in the whole country, the far right represents on average 13%. For although economic and social indicators reflect considerable convergence between the two parts of the historically divided country, full equality has not arrived. Wages, for example, remain about 650 euros lower on average in the East, although the cost of living is also lower. GDP per capita in the East is only 73% of the national average.

Even so, the economic situation in these two states and the rest of East Germany, where the unemployment rate is below 6%, would be more than likely for many other European regions. Because beyond numbers and facts, the problem is largely untouchable and concerns comparative grievances accumulated and poorly digested for decades. Many Easterners feel that in the West they are still considered second-clbad citizens and that individual efforts towards reunification have not been recognized or duly rewarded.

The ultra party has involved this campaign in a revolutionary epic. He encouraged voters to repeat the peaceful revolution of 1989, when former citizens of the German Democratic Republic took to the streets to demonstrate and tear down the Berlin Wall. However, according to the argument that the AfD is propagating and that many are buying in this part of the country, German democracy is not, the traditional media and politicians are only spreading politically correct messages and only the ultras can dare to tell the truth. . If the wall was demolished 30 years ago, now is the time to abandon Merkel and his open door policy towards refugees and to fight to cope with climate change. They encouraged their constituents to "dare" to make history. The revolution, encouraged by AfD, begins in the East.

L & # 39; abandonment

They also reached it with a determined proximity policy. Local representatives are very active in the villages and listen to the concerns of those who claim to feel abandoned by Berlin politicians. AfD has also been able to feed this feeling of abandonment since the arrival of more than one million refugees in the country in 2015. Refugees benefit from the help and resources of the central government, while ignoring the needs of those who were already present. say "Who protects us from those who need protection?", reads on one of the election posters linking crime to refugees.

It does not matter that the proportion of refugees is in these states less than in others in the West, because what works is a kind of preventive xenophobia. "There are many people here who go to work every day in the West and see what life is like there. They do not want the East to end like this, Islamized, "Etgar Naujok, chairman of the AfD group in Leipzig, recently told the newspaper, stressing the urgency of the revolutionary appeal of his formation. "We do not have five years to change things yet."

For AfD, its rise to the East involves considerable dilemmas. His candidate in Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz, was in his youth active in the neo-Nazi environment. Belongs to Der FlügeThe most radical wing of the far right, which should also be strengthened in October in Thuringia. This result will accentuate the current internal divisions within the party, where those considered moderate are worried about the progress made in forming the ultra-sector, which could end up taking the lead, the party sources told EL recently. PAIS.