«Local alliances with Afd». In Germany there is a storm over the Cdu leader

He immediately slid into the opposite direction after the vehement denials of the new CDU mayor in Berlin and CSU leader. However, not only did he pronounce it in front of millions of viewers, but his proposal fit perfectly with the idea of ​​a large part of the East German conservative electorate: “At the local level we can ally with the AfD”.

Twenty-four hours later, the political bombshell launched by Friedrich Merz, secretary of the Christian Democratic Party and leader of the opposition in the Bundestag, continues to reverberate on Sunday on public television channel ZDF. The change of face imposed by the uprising within the party and even before that the rule of the main ally leading the other half of the CDU is not enough. “There is no cooperation in the municipalities with an anti-democratic force of the far right that is dividing our society” is the exclamation put yesterday by Markus Söder, President of the Christian Socialists and Governor of Bavaria. Until two days ago, the complete isolation of the Afd was seen as an institutional duty of the so-called Democratic Front formed by the other six parties in Parliament (Spd, Greens, Fdp, Cdu, Csu and Linke).

“I never said otherwise” is Mears’ patch, but she is unable to fix the open black hole with international consequences. The leader of the CDU is the majority shareholder of Ppe, the largest group in Brussels, on whose doors today patriotic populists from half of Europe are knocking, starting with Giorgia Meloni committed to designing the field in light of Europe 2024. While the issue of the “new” Spain is also pending.

For Mears, right now, they’re all other planets. In Germany, relentless polls that return the CDU’s alternative to just four points weigh in a ton. The party advanced with Chancellor Alice Weddell’s candidate to second place in the consensus after first overtaking the Greens and then the Social Democrats. Not to mention the local level: here the barrier against the far-right collapsed last month with the election of the first AfD mayor in Saxony-Anhalt.

However, Mears’ shift to the right creates a major problem for the Christian Democrats with American allies, who are quickly caught up in by his internal rival from the Union. “The alternative wants to leave NATO,” Soder recalls, and this is a real problem for the Cdu secretary who is closely linked to the United States, not only as chairman of the supervisory board of the BlackRock fund. Moreover, Mears himself, who was still a member of the ZDF, had admitted just a month earlier that the AFD “is also an anti-Semitic force”.

Another increasingly fragile taboo in the Bundesrepublik that was founded on the ashes of Nazism is now almost protected by laws put in place after the war. They remain in prison for up to three years for Hitler salutations, bans on impressive license plates (the S in Stuttgart is prohibited from adding another plate, the K in Cologne cannot be followed by the Z or L that form concentration camp initials) and other official vetoes to contain the increasingly Third Reich-inspired policy of Afd supporters.

It is no longer just the “false press” but all the initiatives that fill in various lands the investigation files of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution which in Germany performs the function of counterintelligence. In the eyes of the secret agents, the AfD Youth Association stands out above all, which carries out activities “contrary to democratic principles” precisely at the local level.

The same thing that Merz is looking at now, the historical opponent of former Chancellor Merkel and contradictory to her political vision. Focus on small alliances in municipalities with Afd rather than Grosse Koalitions à la Angela.