Shutting down the centre invariably drives people to the extremes, especially when the silencing is done by blatantly unfair means by autocratic elites.
The four years of disgraceful lawfare against Donald Trump, with the Democrats weaponising the machinery of the state, not just against the president – but his family, his supporters and even to the point of arresting his lawyers – only fired up supporters even more. Many Americans’ sense of fairness was grossly affronted by the sort of shenanigans once associated with the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Similarly, the grotesque conviction of Marine Le Pen in France had an immediate effect. A protest that police expected to draw 8,000 supporters rallied 45,000, with a sea of French flags blanketing the Place Vauban, near the golden Dome of Les Invalides and the tomb of Napoleon.
In Germany, too, the spectacle of the establishment parties ganging up on a hugely popular centre-right, oops ‘far right’, upstart party is sending its polling to new highs.
Support for the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has soared to its highest level in over a year as the recent election-winning centre-right party continues caving to the demands of leftist parties.
There is apparently growing dissatisfaction with the outcome of last month’s elections in Germany, after which the so-called conservative Union of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) opted to seek a partnership with the election-losing Social Democrats rather than pairing with the AfD.
It’s as grotesque for Germans as Labour and National entering a coalition to lock out New Zealand First. The CDU, like National, is an ostensibly ‘conservative’ party that in practice is more and more indistinguishable from the Greens. Under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, the CDU presided over two of the most disastrous policies in recent European history: the so-called ‘energiewende’ energy transition that has crippled German industry and sent household power prices through the roof, and the throwing open of the gates of Europe to invasion by millions of Muslims and Africans.
The AfD came close to unseating the CDU at the recent elections, winning 20 per cent of the vote to CDU’s 28 per cent. Instead of uniting with their fellow conservatives, the CDU chose to gang up with the left. Many Germans are rightly pissed off.
According to a survey from the research institute Forsa, the Union’s support has fallen to 27 per cent, a decline of a point and a half over just the past four weeks. In comparison, the AfD’s support has risen by over two points to 23 per cent, the highest level for the party since December 2023, Welt reports […]
Perhaps most concerningly for the Union, – formerly led by ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel – confidence in likely incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz has declined rapidly since winning the election.
According to the survey, just 34 per cent believe Merz will be a good leader of the country, a four-point decline since last month’s vote. Conversely, 58 per cent (a six-point rise) don’t have confidence in his leadership abilities.
Where, after all, is the difference between the ‘conservative’ CDU and the Greens?
Even after skirting the election results by forcing a vote in the outgoing parliament, Merz was still forced to make heavy concessions to see the constitutional changes pushed forward, including committing 100 billion euros for “climate action” and enshrining a commitment to “climate neutrality” by 2045 in the constitution.
The AfD’s polling just keeps rising. The latest polls have them neck-and-neck with the CDU/CSU coalition: both on 24 per cent.
“The Union is crashing dramatically. There has never been such a loss of approval between the federal election and the formation of a government,” [market research group Insa] chief Hermann Binkert said.
Merz’s great mistake was to immediately commit himself to governing with the socialist SPD. By doing so, he left himself no room to negotiate. The socialists are pretty much able to demand whatever they want, including altering the constitution so as to pass a trillion euro spending package. As happened to Australians in 2010–13, Germans are seeing the far-left tail wag the allegedly ‘conservative’ dog.
All while the establishment gibbers about the ‘far right’.
