• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Friday, March 31, 2023
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Featured

Jewish Groups Voice Fear Over German Far-Right Surge

Staff Writer by Staff Writer
10/28/19
in Featured, World
Jewish Groups Voice Fear Over German Far-Right Surge

Demonstrators hold up a banner reading ‘Who votes for Höcke votes for fascism’ referring to AfD candidate Björn Höcke. Photograph: Christof Stache/AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Jewish community leaders in Germany voiced alarm Monday over a surge in support for the far-right AfD in a regional election Thuringia state, just weeks after an anti-Semitic attack.

Led by one of its most radical figures, Bjoern Hoecke, the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Alternative for Germany party doubled its score from the previous election in 2014 to 23.4 percent in the ex-communist region, knocking Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s CDU party off second spot.

The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said the AfD’s success could no longer be dismissed merely as “protest votes” because there was no denying the hard-right extremist ideology of Thuringia’s AfD branch.

“Anyone who voted for the AfD on Sunday shares responsibility for the gradual undermining of the foundations of our democracy,” Schuster said, adding that the AfD had lured voters “with cheap racist propaganda.”

Far-right AfD surges to second place in German state elections.

Party leader, Björn Höcke, sees the election as a clear no to a "paralysed party democracy".#Thuringia#ltwth19 pic.twitter.com/FHhd2qfCKm

— DW Politics (@dw_politics) October 27, 2019

Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor who heads Munich’s Jewish community, said the fact that the party was able to garner such a strong score, showed “something fundamental has gone off the rails in our political system.”

She warned that voters who had picked the AfD have “backed a party that has for years prepared the ground for exclusion and violence of the far-right.”

‘Terrifying’

Christoph Heubner, deputy president of the International Auschwitz Committee, which represents survivors of the Nazi death camp, also voiced fears over the trend.

“For survivors of German concentration camps, this strong increase in votes for the AfD is a new terrifying sign that raises fear of a further consolidation of right-wing extremist trends and attitudes in Germany,” he said.

The AfD’s strong result came despite widespread criticism after an October 9 attack in the eastern city of Halle, where a suspected neo-Nazi gunman tried and failed to storm a synagogue and then shot dead two people outside.

After the bloody attack, the commissioner for combatting anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, like many other critics, argued that the AfD had trafficked in incendiary anti-Jewish sentiment.

The AfD’s local leader in Thuringia, Hoecke, in particular had been heavily criticised over his radical speeches, and political figures had urged the far-right party’s bosses to cut him loose.

The 47-year-old has labelled Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame” and called for a “180-degree shift” in Germany’s culture of remembrance of the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime.

His main challenger in the tensely fought Thuringia vote, CDU candidate Mike Mohring, called Hoecke “a Nazi” on the campaign trail.

Germany's far-right #AfD could capture a quarter of votes in Sunday's #Thuringia election that's seen as a key test for Merkel's CDU. The AfD’s top candidate there is known as a nationalist firebrand – but just who is Björn #Hoecke?pic.twitter.com/9NaTnwrCFH

— DW Politics (@dw_politics) October 25, 2019

A triumphant Hoecke told supporters late Sunday that, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Thuringia had voted for a second revolution, a “Transition 2.0”, and delivered “a clear ‘no’ to the ossified party landscape.”


More on the Subject

Germany Security Agency Steps Up Watch of Far-Right AfD

ShareTweet
Staff Writer

Staff Writer

AFP with The Globe Post

Related Posts

German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station on 9 January, 2016
World

Far-Right Terrorism ‘Biggest Danger’ to Democracy in Germany: Intel Chief

by Staff Writer
March 12, 2020
Supporters of the "Der Dritte Weg/Der III Weg" (The Third Path/The III Path) far-right and neo-nazi party walk through Plauen, eastern Germany, during a demonstration on Labour Day, May 1, 2019
Opinion

Confronting the Mainstream Context of Germany’s Far-Right Extremism

by Aristotle Kallis
March 11, 2020
AfD demonstrators wave German flags
Opinion

Germany’s Left Must Create an Alternative to Far-Right AfD

by Constantin Eckner
February 25, 2020
German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station on 9 January, 2016
Featured

German State Premier Quits After ‘Unforgivable’ Far-Right Vote

by Staff Writer
February 6, 2020
Germany’s AfD Faces Electoral Test After Synagogue Shooting
Featured

Germany’s AfD Faces Electoral Test After Synagogue Shooting

by Staff Writer
October 24, 2019
Merkel Vows To Fight Hate After Attempted ‘Massacre’ At Synagogue
Featured

Merkel Vows To Fight Hate After Attempted ‘Massacre’ At Synagogue

by Staff Writer
October 10, 2019
Next Post
‘Deaths of Despair:’ Why Are US Suicides on the Rise?

'Deaths of Despair:' Why Are US Suicides on the Rise?

Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush

Selective Empathy is Far Worse than No Empathy at All

Recommended

Damage from a series of powerful storms and at least one tornado is seen on March 25, 2023, in Rolling Fork, Mississippi

After Tornado Kills 25, Mississippi Faces More Extreme Weather

March 26, 2023
Transgender Army veteran Tanya Walker speaks to protesters in Times Square near a military recruitment centre

Tennessee Is A Drag on the First Amendment

March 26, 2023
participants of an artificial intelligence conference

How AI Could Upend the World Even More Than Electricity or the Internet

March 19, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping

China’s Path to Economic Dominance

March 15, 2023
Heavily armed police inspect the area near a Jehovah's Witness church where several people have been killed in a shooting in Hamburg, northern Germany

Eight Dead in Shooting at Jehovah’s Witness Hall in Germany

March 10, 2023
Myanmar Rohingya refugees look on in a refugee camp in Teknaf, in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, on November 26, 2016

US Announces $26M in New Aid for Rohingya

March 8, 2023

Opinion

Transgender Army veteran Tanya Walker speaks to protesters in Times Square near a military recruitment centre

Tennessee Is A Drag on the First Amendment

March 26, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping

China’s Path to Economic Dominance

March 15, 2023
An earthquake survivor reacts as rescuers look for victims and other survivors in Hatay, a Turkish province where hundreds of buildings were destroyed by the earthquake

Heed the Call of Our Broken World

March 1, 2023
Top view of the US House of Representatives

‘Cringy Awards:’ Who Is the Most Embarrassing US House Representative?

February 13, 2023
Protesters rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, outside of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023

How Do Violent ‘Monsters’ Take Root?

February 3, 2023
George Santos from the 3rd Congressional district of New York

George Santos for Speaker!

January 16, 2023
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post