Opinion | Germany Has Finally Woken Up - The New York Times - 0 views
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German democracy is not well. The problem is not just the rise of the AfD, which has become strong enough in some regions to aspire to positions of power or at least to seriously disrupt the process of forming stable governments.
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It’s that in many parts of the country, a general sense of discontent has tipped over into disdain. People now reject not just the current government but the whole political system.
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it is true that Germans have had to deal with a lot: the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis, inflation and, most recently, the painful fallout from war in Gaza. Even though immigration is rising, we still lack skilled labor — teachers, plumbers, I.T. specialists — and public infrastructure is crumbling. Add in an ambitious government green transition agenda hamstrung by brutal infighting and you get a grim picture. Everything, it seems, is changing — and not for the better.
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Anecdotally, it seems like everybody knows someone who has dropped out of the mainstream, vowing to vote for the AfD or talking about emigrating
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What has started to dawn on us in recent months, and what the meeting in Potsdam laid bare, is that the far right is not about having horrific ideas — it is about enacting horrific ideas.
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Germany’s far-right adherents really mean it. With funding, support and a very real chance of winning federal states this year, they are closer to power than they have ever been in the nearly 75-year history of post-Nazi Germany.
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In his recent book “Triggerpunkte,” or “Trigger Points,” Steffen Mau, a sociologist at Humboldt University in Berlin, rejects the notion that German society is polarized neatly in two. In Germany, he argues, divisions instead run through several areas such as climate, migration and social justice. You can be moved by some issues, indifferent to others
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In recent months, those motivated by their opposition to migration or climate policies were the most vocal and visible. Now those who care about democracy, minority rights and the rule of law have reached their trigger point, too.