“I am profoundly grateful to all voters and sympathizers. We became the second force on a national scale, the largest force in the East and achieved the best consequence for AfD in its past – it's fantastic! However, I am most happy with the results of voting among young voters: A 12-percent increase made us the top force among voters under the age of 24 – that was precisely my goal, and this is only the beginning. Despite all these slander campaigns, we have opened up fresh opportunities in patriotic politics” – says Maximilian Krah, associate of the European Parliament of the AfD.
"The beginning of the fresh German march above can only be a reversal: a return to the East, a rejection of the West, a departure from liberalism, bourgeoisie and European civilization" – he wrote Ernst Niekisch.
The voters were after something.
“We have witnessed the biggest right-turn since 1949. It is simply a shock to the very essence of democracy" – specified words Sanem Kleff, Head of the national Coordination Centre “Schools Without Racism – School of Courage”, barely held back panic after the Sunday elections to the Landtags. 32.8% of voters in Thuringia and 30.6% in Saxony had the courage to vote for a party, which the increasingly politicized national Office for Constitution Protection described for convenience as "the utmost right". Can you be surprised? erstwhile alleged defenders of democracy do not want to perceive to people, people themselves find a way to hear their voice.
The chief of the largest school network in Germany, which oversees over 4,500 schools indoctrination with 3 million students and teachers, is likely to endure from insomnia due to the fact that so many voters first dared to challenge the carefully nurtured by establishment narration. "With these elections, right-wing extremism has become a massive problem among young people. In Thuringia and Saxony, 37% and 30% of first-time voters voted for AfD respectively. This is the most dramatic turn towards the right that the national republic has experienced in any election since 1949.” – regrets Sanem Kleff. Or is it simply that this "problem" is that younger generations do not want to repeat the mistakes of older people and start rejecting the dogmas that they are taught by the state? This trend was already very clear in the U18 election, in which 37.36% of people under the age of 18 in Thuringia and 35.52% in Saxony voted for AfD. possibly these young voters just wanted something.
True Causes
"As a national network for tackling the ideology of inequality, we experience all day how right-wing populism and right-wing extremism increasingly penetrate children and young people" – Complains Kleff. "This is supported by the banalisation and normalisation of the far right" – adds. Let us translate this: the more we show those who disagree with us as extremists, the more they begin to realize that we have no influence on it. Kleff's refusal to admit that expanding support for right-wing ideas is simply a legitimate consequence to the failure of the current political agreement tells us everything. As for the causes of right-wing turning among young people, Sanem Kleff officially repeats a fixed set of points: ‘One-cause explanations this time are not useful. No 1 has a patent for solutions either. However, we must not overlook the long-term effects of the pandemic on young people, as well as the effects of the war in Ukraine and Gaza, which besides affected younger generations". It is always easier to point to external factors, alternatively of admitting that young people simply reject status quowhich only harms them from the first time they experience “diversity” in the school yard.
Enemies and Defenders of Democracy
Democratic education is, of course, a central component of the state's educational and educational mandate in schools – at least this is what Sanem Kleff tells us, who then convinces: "Under educational law and the Consensus of Beutelsbach, schools are tasked with promoting democratic values and critical thinking. This means that teachers cannot stay impartial, but rather, acting in accordance with the Basic Law, they should take a clear stance against, for example, right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism, condone force or statements expressing contempt for humanity.". delight – this is simply a classical example of "we are in favour of freedom of speech and critical thinking, but provided you agree with us." Clearly, promoting "democratic values" means brainwashing students with the only tolerated point of view where questioning the current communicative is completely prohibited. Teachers must be of course ‘enhanced and supported’ in the implementation of this programme: "Training, concepts and materials to strengthen democratic education play a key role". Nothing is simply a better "education" than the state-run programme that stigmatizes all thought of resistance.
Kleff calls to the end: “We now request to mobilise all of our forces together to defend our hard-earned freedoms and rights. Democratic forces in politics and civilian society must stand side by side more than always against the enemies of democracy". But who is the enemy of democracy? possibly it is the alleged democratic forces that are just becoming more and more terrified of the imagination of the future, in which they will no longer be able to control the narrative, due to the fact that more and more citizens, especially young people, will reject their increasingly apparent attempts to suppress real attempts at democratic expression?
Echo Niekischa
In East Germany, we are not witnessing a simple change in electoral behaviour, but the beginning of a fresh Conservative Revolution in which the ideological echoes of the times of the Weimar Republic are heard. The increase in support for AfD in Thuringia and Saxony, as well as the emergence of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which won 15.8% and 11.8% of the votes cast, respectively, points to the anticipation of resurrecting the national-bolshevik stream. This movement, like the Prussian-colored national Bolshevikism of Ernst Niekisch, rejects the liberal West and looks eastward, towards Russia and its political system, while rejecting the western decadence and moral decline.
National Bolshevikism proposed by Niekisch in the times of the Weimar Republic was a peculiar synthesis of nationalism and socialism, profoundly rooted in the rejection of Western liberalism, capitalism and parliamentary democracy. Niekisch and his supporters considered the West culturally and ethically corrupt. They believed that Germany's future was an alliance with the russian Union, seen as a bastion of anti-Western and anti-capitalist ideology. This alliance was not based on a common belief in communism, but on strategical cooperation against common enemies – Western liberalism and the restrictions imposed by Versailles. The National Bolsheviks advocated a strong, centralised state, guided by a collective ethos negating both Western capitalism and cultural degeneration associated with it.
New Prussia
In this historical context, the current revival of akin ideas in East Germany becomes understandable. The increase in support of the AfD combined with the emergence of the BSW corresponds in many respects to Niekisch's vision. Both groups reject the liberal globalist arrangement, which dominated the modern politics of Germany and Europe. AfD with its nationalist and anti-immigration positions, and BSW with its left-wing economical program combined with cultural conservatism and anti-NATOV rhetoric, embodies deep-rooted disappointment with the West. She was a solidist, Sahra Wagenknecht, like Niekisch, calls for a break-up with the Liberal West, criticizing NATO as a tool of American dominance and postulating closer ties with Russia. Her opposition to mass immigration and calls for the defence of German culture match the national-bolshevik contempt for Western multiculturalism and the rejection of erosion of national identity.
The anticipation of secession of East Germany from the national Republic of Germany on a dispute about mass immigration becomes a serious subject of discussion. The influx of non-European immigrants, seen by many people in the East as a threat to their cultural and national identity, deepened divisions between East and Western Germany. These tensions bring to head Niekisch's imagination of the emergence of a sovereign east state, which would become a bastion of opposition against Western liberalism. Niekisch even proposed to change the name of the German Democratic Republic (communist East Germany) to “Prusses” to item their separate identity and negation of the Western order. present the thought echoes in the words of those who see East Germany as a possibly separate entity that could embody the principles of sovereignty, defence of culture and opposition against mass immigration. The combination of the nationalist trend of AfD with the leftist, and at the same time the culturally conservative Wagenknecht movement, shows that even present this historical dream of a prussian, sovereign east country is possibly not as unreal as it seemed until recently.
Constantin von Hoffmeister
The Middles come from Editorial.
