By FLAVIO AGUIAR*
In Berlin, a huge demonstration with thousands of people condemned the attitude of Friedrich Merz and the AfD
If there were a Richter scale – the one that measures the intensity of earthquakes – for German politics, it would have certainly exploded last week.
The week began with the commemoration on Monday 27 of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland, by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, in 1945. The subject is delicate and always leaves Germanic nerves on edge.
On Wednesday 29th, the German parliament, the Bundestag, approved a motion proposed by the opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, in the German acronym), to tighten the laws and rules on immigration and granting asylum.
The motion comes in the wake of a series of highly emotional crimes involving immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. The first occurred in December last year, when an immigrant from Saudi Arabia drove a truck into Christmas market goers in Magdeburg, killing six people and injuring more than 6.
The second occurred on January 22, when an immigrant from Afghanistan stabbed several people in Aschaffenburg, killing two of them, including a two-year-old child, and injuring three others.
Such events have raised the specter of “Islamic terrorism”, as xenophobes on the far right have always called it, although so far everything indicates that these were individual acts by people with psychiatric problems.
In the Bundestag, 348 members of parliament voted in favor of the motion, with 345 against, ten abstentions and 30 absences. The decisive votes to approve the motion came from members of the party alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right Alternative for Germany. Alice Weidel, the AfD's leader in parliament, celebrated the result, saying that Friedrich Merz had introduced a motion that would actually belong to her party. Friedrich Merz had previously said that he would do everything he could to get the motion passed, even if that meant counting on AfD votes.
That's when the earthquake began. It turns out that since the end of World War II and the Nazi regime, a tradition has been established among traditional parties of not negotiating with the far right. It has a name: “Firewall”, a reference to a firewall between two twin buildings. And Friedrich Merz's arrangement was seen by many people as a break with this tradition.
The reactions were swift and vehement. Michel Friedman, an influential CDU member and former chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, announced that he was leaving the party. Albrecht Weinberg, 99, a Holocaust survivor and former Auschwitz prisoner who has been decorated by the German government, said he was returning the medal because he could not accept the break with that tradition in the Bundestag.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged from her obsequious silence since resigning from her post and party leadership, publicly criticizing Friedrich Merz's actions. Current Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and politicians from other parties have also criticized Merz.
In Berlin, a huge demonstration with thousands of people condemned the attitude of Friedrich Merz and the AfD. Other protesters gathered in front of the CDU headquarters on Klingenhöferstrasse no. 8, pressuring the party to review its position.
The result was overwhelming. On Friday, January 31, Friedrich Merz presented the proposal to transform the motion approved on Wednesday into law, now with binding effect. The debate was described in the media as “heated”, “emotional”, and “historic”. And at the end of the afternoon, when the votes were counted, it was confirmed that the proposal had been defeated by 350 votes against, 338 in favor, five abstentions and 40 absences. Despite the vote being secret, it was clear that there had been defections within Friedrich Merz’s own party.
How should we interpret this sequence of events? Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz had apparently launched a trial balloon in order to strengthen his leadership position three weeks before the Bundestag elections. In polls, the CDU is in first place, with the AfD in second. Other polls indicate that a majority of voters favor stricter immigration and asylum.
Now there are doubts about how this turbulent week might affect the elections. It could be that Friedrich Merz went to collect wool and came away shorn. Or, in other words, that having forced the firewall, he at least got burned.
* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/48UDikx]
Originally published in the “O Mundo Agora” section of Radio France Internationale (Brazil).
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