Udo Witschas, one of the CDU representatives who backed the proposal, said he thought it was “ completely fine” to vote with the AfD-and in a video published on his Facebook page, he echoed the kind of anti-refugee rhetoric common among the AfD. In December 2022, when the AfD proposed cutting benefits for refugees in the area to Bautzen’s district-level council, 19 members of the CDU voted in favor of the plan.
And it’s in places like Bautzen, this AfD stronghold of around 40,000 people in eastern Saxony, that the national parties’ commitment to isolating the AfD is breaking down. It has capitalized on a mix of anti-refugee sentiment, coronavirus skepticism, and economic insecurity to become the strongest party in two of five eastern German states and win double-digit support nationally. The AfD has become both more successful and more radicalized in recent years.
Leaders of the five main other parties in Germany’s Bundestag-the center-left Social Democratic Party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union bloc, the Greens, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, and the Left party-have vowed not to work with the AfD in any form, erecting what they refer to as a Brandmauer (or “firewall”) between them and the far-right party.īut 10 years after the AfD’s founding, that so-called firewall is beginning to show cracks. BAUTZEN, Germany-Ever since the populist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came onto the country’s political scene, there has been an explicit taboo among the other parties against collaborating with it.
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