According to Euronews's latest Superpoll in April, Germany's far-right party AfD is polling in second place for the European elections next month. Is the current government doing enough to counteract the threat from the far right?
ADVERTISEMENTPolitical violence is on the rise in Germany, and news that politicians from the Green Party and Social Democrats (SPD) were attacked whilst putting up voting posters last Friday in Dresden has shocked the nation.
Many, including the SPD leaders in Saxony, Kathrin Michel and Henning Homann, blamed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. AfD strongly denied that it was behind these attacks and said election campaigns should be without violence.
Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands gathered across major cities in Germany to protest against the far right. Many experts fear that if AfD would come to power, it could, at the very least, change the constitution and school curriculum and introduce new, less liberal laws.
Those who say they'll vote for AfD often want a change in politics and complain that all the other established parties, including the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and SPD, are the same.
Social democrats from Germany and Europe held a democracy congress in Berlin on Saturday, where they promised not to cooperate with far-right parties in the likely event that coalitions may need to be formed.
But is the current government doing enough to counteract the threat from the far-right?
'Nostalgic backward vision for Germany'
Independent non-government organisation Amadeu Antonio Foundation spokesperson Lorenz Blumenthaler told Euronews that the government is trying its best now that it is aware of the dangers some of the far-right's ideas have brought to the fore.
"At least they are now acknowledging what threat the far-right poses to democracy and the people living in Germany," Blumenthaler said.
"But of course, a lot of mistakes were made in the past by not fully acting up on right wing extremism especially concerning the juridical branch. A lot of crimes remained unpunished."
"And that, of course, leads to a new self-consciousness of the far right, because if people are not punished for their crimes, they can repeat them, and they feel empowered in a way," he explained.
An image problem is at play, Blumenthaler suggested, recommending that politicians take more active steps to be more honest with voters and admit that mistakes may have been made, "for instance, the coronavirus pandemic, which might have seen a little too much political restriction."
He also said that it would help politicians be taken more seriously by voters if they acknowledged that times are hard in global crises but also celebrated national victories. According to him, many mainstream parties are afraid of being labelled as nationalist, thus straying from being proud of their achievements.
"But especially for Germany, we haven't been doing all too bad. Germany even came out of the pandemic surprisingly well. We achieved so much as a country in terms of doing a very credible transformation towards more green energy, towards jobs," Blumenthaler acknowledged, highlighting that the recession didn't hit Germany as hard as the AfD is portraying.
"If we break it down," Blumenthaler added, "the AfD is fear-mongering in the true sense. They portray this apocalyptic scenario that migration will ruin Germany, that the support for Ukraine and for Israel will ruin Germany. It's always just basically picking up votes by fearmongering."
This tactic can be seen across populist parties in Europe: "If we go back to point X, Y, Z in time, which, for the AfD, is like the '50s, then everything will be fine. And it's just this very nostalgic backward vision for Germany that I, at least, don't want to live in," Blumenthaler concluded.