BBC News in Berlin
One of the five Germans placed X in the alternative box for Germany (AFD) on Sunday: a record result that made them the second greatest force in German politics.
Driving on the back of this success, the party now calls for the end of consensus in German politics not to work with the end right.
That “firewall” – Brandmauer In German – he has worked since the end of World War II, but the AFD joint leader Tino Chrupalla says, “Anyone who raises the firewall will get a barbecue behind them.”
The decision among all the main parties of Germany holds that block on the site – and the German public supports them: 69% see AFD as a threat to democracy, according to voters surveyed on Sunday.
Friedrich Merz, who won the conservative election, believes that the only reason AFD exists because of problems such as migration and security to be solved: “We have to solve these problems … Then that party, AFD, will disappear.”
AFD won 20.8% of the national vote at the national level, and as the light blue areas of the map showed it, was dominant in five countries in the East, providing 34%.
“East Germans have made it clear that they no longer want a firewall,” said Tino Chrupall.
Friedrich Merz will now talk about the formation of a government with Social Democrats, who came to third place.
Although his party won 28.6% of the vote, it was still their second result since World War II.
The AFD support has doubled, and one million of their voters have left Merz conservatives for them, according to a study by the Infractest Dimap Institute of research.
The voters were not rejected by the fact that the German domestic intelligence service classifies parts of AFD as a right -wing extremist – or that the party has now accepted a politics called “remigracy”.
AFD claims that remigrants means deporting immigrants convicted of crime, but the term used an extreme right to mean mass deportations.
One of the big questions of Christian Democrats is how to bring back their voters and stop losing more.
Merz has already flirted with AFD in parliament, relying on his voices to push the proposal of migration.
But obviously he was scored by public and mass protests that followed in many German cities.
The German Chancellor-Cancer is unlikely to try it again, especially if it forms a government with the left center.
But now AFD has more than 150 places in parliament, and his supporters especially believe that it is time for the firewall to go.
“I just hope the firewall will fall. But we all know that it won’t be like that,” says Pro-AFD Tictok influencer Celin Brychcy, 26.
“I think they will fall no later than when a new election is being held. Then they will have to realize that at some point I can’t go through with what they are doing right now.”
“I mean Brandmauer It will remain, “says Dominic (30), who voted for AfD in Saxonia.” I want the Government to really think about their people and their own country. “
The pressure to collapse the long-standing firewall comes not only from AFD, but also from the leading figures in Trump’s administration, including US V
Most of the votes you hear causing firewall come from the east, which may not be surprising given the deep reach of AFD, especially in five Eastern countries out of a total of 16 in all over Germany.
Won 38.6% of the vote in Thuringia and 37.% in both Saxonia and Saxoni-AnhaltFar in front of CDU. This makes them all striving to hold them in the length of the hand.
At one of the big conversations on German television on Monday night, sharp but fair, one local mayor of Saxonia, Mirko Geissler, believed that AFD should be put on a “playground” so they could show what they could do. If not, they would eventually rise to 40-50%on the polls, he warned.
Liane Bach, an independent mayor from the village in Thuroryia, said that in her region “AFD voters are not right -wing extremists.”
The CDU Politician, Philippe Anthor, admitted that he should not be “a firewall between democratic parties and people voting AFD.”
This is the main question which major national parties will have to resolve. How to avoid ostreating AFD voters who obviously have no problems with violation of the firewall.
One mayor pointed out that one of her colleagues who was also the Councilor of AFD repaired the local fountain. It didn’t make sense not to work with him.
Profa Conrad Ziller of the University of Duisburg-Essen believes that the biggest threat to the firewall could come to the state level and not at the national level.
“If you have problems with the construction of a coalition in the country, then at some point there could be a minority government that occasionally relies on AFD or get votes from AFD.”
At the national level, the worst scenario would be a breakup in the coalition led by Merz: “Merz could go wrong. If it becomes very difficult in immigration, it could become problematic with the SPD.”
Germany has already seen an early election because of the collapse of the coalition, and AFD Alice Weidel made it clear that she was looking for early elections.
Her repeated performances at discussions on the TV elections made her a prominent character in Germany and helped raise her party’s profile.
But it was a constant focus on migration and safety became the number one question for AFD voters, partly encouraged by three deadly attacks, and all allegedly performed immigrants.
Solving uncertainty and perception of this will be a direct task for the next government, when the shape is eventually taken.
Basically, the leader of the right center of the Bavarian Center Markus Söder said that the need to deal with immigration, along with the German economic economy, “in fact, the last bullet of democracy.”
There is no question about the violation of a longtime firewall.
And the general secretary of the Merz party of Tom Unger was unwavering that there should be no cooperation with the party that opposed German relationships with the west, his membership in NATO “European Idea”.
That was incompatible, he said, with conservatives “basic DNA.”
