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Elon Musk makes surprise appearance at AfD event in eastern Germany
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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What would be the impact? In German politics, is that particularly bad?
For one: Them getting more than 20% is scary and shows we have a big problem in our country. Also them being the second-largest party in Germany is insane to me. But by itself that is not enough to get into the government, it still needs some other party to work with them.
Unfortunately the rhetoric of the CDU, which is the "just conservative" party is in my eyes pretty similar to the Afd at the moment and they are currently polling at around 30%. CDU decided on a ban working together with the Afd at all some years ago, but it never seemed more likely they would just drop that and then a potential coalition of CDU + Afd would have around 50% of the vote. Certainly enough to form a government. I'm still somewhat positive they would not actually decide to do that, but you know, by now I also would not be surprised anymore😔
As a last resort I'm banking on our "supreme court" (Bundesverfassungsgericht ) to strike down the worst things, since it still seems to be intact, unlike in the US. But courts are slow and you can do a lot of damage even with stuff that is not clearly unconstitutional...
Damn. I appreciate this insight. I've been doing some reading and I can see how and why Germans are worried. 😖
They have some form of proportional representation so at least some of these Nazis are getting into their government
No. They are not getting into government unless the conservatives (CDU) build a coalition government together with these Nazis. They are getting into parliament.
Is parliament not part of government?
No:
The parliament includes all parliamentary groups that were elected by the people and garnered 5% or more of the vote or have won 3 or more direct mandates.
The government consists of only the governing coalition parliamentary groups + chancellor + ministers; the chancellor is elected by parliament but need not be a member of parliament; the ministers are selected by the chancellor and likewise need not be members of parliament
In a stable majority government, the opposition parliamentary groups don't have much say over new laws. However, they can come up with own bills (which usually fail due to the majority belonging to other groups), query the government/administration, or install enquiry committees.
However, right now, Germany has a minority government which means all new laws need some support of opposition parliamentary groups.
I guess what you mean is that the Afd has influence in parliament. And they definitely do: They hold speeches, they obstruct the government with worthless and repetitive queries, they draft (eventually-failing) bills, etc. However, to a large degree, their power also comes from being invited to political talk shows by public broadcasters and spreading their message on the interwebs.
Yeah that is what I meant, I would consider that "in the government" but I guess other countries might have a stricter definition of "government" than I realized. Thanks for the info!