The Jerusalem Post

Electoral gains by far-right German party cause concern

- • By TOBY AXELROD

BERLIN (JTA) – Electoral gains by Germany’s strongest far-right party has both Jews and Muslims here worried.

Winning 23.4% of the vote in Sunday’s parliament­ary election, the anti-immigrant Alternativ­e for Germany or AfD party – propelled by voters under the age of 60, and by male voters – is now the second strongest party in the former east German state of Thuringia.

“Something has fundamenta­lly gone off the rails in our political system,” former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, told reporters on Sunday.

AfD politician­s have “trivialize­d the Nazi era, [expressed] open nationalis­m and fomented hatred against minorities, including the Jewish community,” Knobloch said, accusing the party of “preparing the ground for exclusion and right-wing extremist violence.”

Recently, observers have blamed anti-migrant, nationalis­tic rhetoric for the Yom Kippur attack by a neo-Nazi on the synagogue in Halle, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Two people on the street were killed in the attack.

In Sunday’s state election, the AfD came in second to the Left Party, and surpassed the mainstream party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union.

Reportedly, the CDU is considerin­g creating a coalition with the Left Party in order to block the far-right party from power.

In fact, the AfD has taken second place in parliament­ary elections this year in the states of Saxony and in Brandenbur­g. Some pundits suggest the AfD is grabbing a protest vote against mainstream politics, while others see a rise in populism, in part driven by Merkel’s liberal approach to migration.

In general, mainstream parties have sworn off any coalitions with the AfD.

Aiman Mazyek, head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, in a tweet expressed shock that so many voters supported “a right-wing radical party… it is much worse than merely a warning sign.”

Internatio­nal Auschwitz Committee executive vice-president Christoph Heubner said Holocaust survivors see the AfD’s climb up the political ladder as “a renewed signal of terror, which gives rise to fears that rightwing extremist attitudes and tendencies in Germany will continue to consolidat­e.”

Meanwhile, a new study shows an increase in open antisemiti­sm in Germany. Felix Klein, Germany’s commission­er on fighting antisemiti­sm, commented that, while antisemiti­sm was always present, people are expressing it more openly than before. And he accused the AfD of contributi­ng to the problem.

In 2018, the Central Council and numerous other German Jewish organizati­ons joined in issuing a statement titled “AfD

– not an alternativ­e for Jews,” after a small group of supporters called themselves “Jews for the AfD.”

“The AfD has been trying for some time to score points with its alleged solidarity with the State of Israel and its alleged concern for the security of the Jewish community in Germany,” the statement read in part. In fact, it continued, “The AfD is a party in which Jewish hatred and relativiza­tion up to the denial of the Shoah have a home. The AfD is anti-democratic, contemptuo­us of humanity and in large parts right-wing extremist.”

 ?? (Michael Dalder/Reuters) ?? BJOERN HOECKE, AfD Party leader and top candidate for Thuringia, gestures during an election campaign rally ahead of the upcoming Thuringia state elections in Gotha, Germany last week.
(Michael Dalder/Reuters) BJOERN HOECKE, AfD Party leader and top candidate for Thuringia, gestures during an election campaign rally ahead of the upcoming Thuringia state elections in Gotha, Germany last week.

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