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Europe

Far-right AfD eyes new win in east German state vote

2024-09-23

[IsraelTimes] On heels of extremist terror attacks in the country, the anti-immigration party hopes to repeat its recent gains in Thuringia and Saxony, deliver ‘hard blow’ to Scholz’s SPD

Germans began casting ballots Sunday for a regional election in a formerly communist eastern state where the far-right AfD party is narrowly ahead in opinion polls.

The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany has long railed against Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular coalition government, which faces national elections in a year.

In the state election in Brandenburg, the AfD hopes to replicate the strong gains it made in the east three weeks ago, when it won a parliamentary vote in Thuringia and came a close second in Saxony.

A victory in Brandenburg, which surrounds the capital Berlin, would deliver another setback to Scholz’s Social Democrats

...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
(SPD), the center-left party that has ruled the state since Germany’s reunification in 1990. Infighting in the government has seen Scholz’s approval ratings take a dive while his defense minister, fellow Social Democrat Boris Pistorius, often tops surveys as Germany’s most popular politician.

ISLAMIST ATTACKS
Around 2.2 million people aged over 16 are eligible to vote in Brandenburg. Polls will close at 1600 GMT.

The state takes in wealthy towns such as Potsdam, with its Prussian-era Sanssouci Palace, as well as thinly populated rural areas and industrial zones, one of which houses a Tesla plant.

Popular SPD state premier Dietmar Woidke has kept his distance during the campaign from his party colleague Scholz, even though the chancellor’s electoral district is Potsdam. But Woidke, in office for over a decade, has thrown down a challenge to voters by saying he will quit if the AfD wins.

However,
some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them...
the latest surveys give the AfD an edge, predicting it will win with 27-29 percent of the vote, even as the SPD has recently narrowed the gap and polled at 25-26 percent.

Even if it wins, the AfD is unlikely to govern because all other parties have ruled out entering into a coalition with it. But its rise has heaped political pressure on Scholz and his governing allies, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats.

The decade-old AfD has stoked and capitalized on public fears about irregular migration after a string of recent krazed killer attacks with suspected Islamist motives. Germany was especially shocked by a knife rampage that killed three people and maimed eight in the western city of Solingen last month. Police arrested a Syrian asylum-seeker who allegedly claimed allegiance to the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group and had evaded a deportation order.

LEFT-WING KINGMAKER?
A recent survey in Brandenburg found that immigration was the top concern for many voters.

"People are always talking about integration and saying that they are not satisfied with what is happening," one voter, Edeltraud Wendland, 82, told AFP on a Potsdam shopping street. "Of course, we have to help people, but we can’t take in too many of them."

The AfD, besides protesting against ~~migrants~~ colonists, Islam and multiculturalism, also questions climate change and holds pro-Russian positions on the Ukraine war.

This year has also seen the emergence of a second populist party, the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which is polling at 13-14 percent in Brandenburg. Hailing from former East Germany, Wagenknecht is a veteran opposition politician and frequent TV talk show guest who quit the hard-left Die Linke party to form her own movement. She has described the BSW’s policies as "leftist-conservative" — a blend of economic policies that help workers and the poor and conservative cultural positions, including on limiting immigration.

As in Thuringia and Saxony, Wagenknecht’s party could gain a potential kingmaker role after the election, complicating the task for the other parties who oppose her pro-Russia and anti-NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure....
stance.

Posted by:trailing wife

#1 "Sahra Wagenknecht was born in Jena on July 16, 1969, to an Iranian father and a German mother. During her school years, she was a member of the Freie Deutsche Jugend – FDJ (“Free German Youth”). In an interview, she explains that “the standard pre-military training for pupils in the GDR was extremely demanding: [that] she could no longer eat, which the authorities interpreted as a political hunger strike”, subsequently forbidding her to carry out her studies. ... Wagenknecht supported herself financially by giving private Russian lessons." (Tough pro-Marxist broad)

Posted by: S MAI 2024-09-23 09:28

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