Yesterday I spoke here about the rise of AfD and BSW in Germany, two options situated at opposite poles but with some common elements.
Was the result of these two matches caused by Moscow?
As I pointed out yesterday, these common elements are twofold: their rejection of mass immigration and their affinity with Russia. I agree with the first of these points, and I totally reject the second, as those of you who have been reading my criticism of Putin for 16 years will already imagine. Obviously, there are reasons to think that both parties may have received support from Russia, since the Kremlin usually supports in one way or another any political force that might weaken the West or reject military aid to Ukraine.
This idea could encourage some to fall into the temptation of blaming Moscow for what has happened in Germany, without even the slightest self-criticism when it comes to addressing why these two political options have obtained such good results. In both cases, these parties would remain marginal if it were not for the serious problem that mass immigration in Germany has created, and especially Muslim immigration.
The irresponsible migration policy of the SPD and the CDU
The source of this problem is not in Moscow, but in Berlin and Brussels. It was the German governments of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) that opened the doors to mass immigration into Germany, creating the problems of lack of integration and insecurity that the country suffers from today. Specifically, In 2015, Angela Merkel's government (CDU) opened the doors to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and several African countries. It did so with the support of the Social Democrats (SPD). During that year, almost a million people arrived in Germany from these countries. Problems were not long in coming.
Insecurity increased, leading to street protests in Germany. Ignoring the problems caused by this massive wave of Islamic immigration, an SPD politician, Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, called the protesters "neo-nazis". Insulting those who warned of the emerging problem did not help.
Demonizing those who denounced the insecurity caused by mass immigration
On the night of December 31, 2015, to January 1, 2016, German women suffered a wave of sexual abuse by Arab and North African men. The problem caused alarm inside and outside Germany. At the time, Jäger equated the aggressors and those who complained about the attacks. In this way, a debate about the negative consequences of mass immigration was settled without further ado. But those consequences were increasing. As I mentioned here a few days ago, knife attacks have skyrocketed in Germany. In June of this year, the Berlin police chief acknowledged that most of the perpetrators of these attacks are immigrants.
Ursula von der Leyen blessed that open-door policy
So far, the CDU and SPD, with the support of the Greens and the communists of Die Linke, have created a problem and demonised those who have warned about it, thereby making the problem worse and disappointing millions of Germans who until now had faith in these two major parties. Pursuing the same policy as in other countries, the European Commission of Ursula von der Leyen (CDU member) has blessed her party’s alliance with the SPD and its open-door policy, while attacking conservative governments such as those of Poland and Hungary for rejecting this irresponsible immigration policy.
The rapprochement of the SPD and the CDU with Putin's Russia
We must also not forget that the SPD and the CDU have been involved in a rapprochement with Russia for years, which resulted in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, jointly promoted by both countries. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, chairman of the SPD from 1999 to 2004 and one of the promoters of these gas pipelines, was elected chairman of the Nord Stream AG consortium in 2005 and ended up being chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian state oil company Rosneft. As soon as she became German chancellor in 2005, Angela Merkel maintained this joint project with Russia and in 2008 she blocked Ukraine's entry into NATO. If this blockade had not occurred and Ukraine had joined the alliance, Russia would not have dared to invade that country.
As I explained here in 2022, Poland denounced these gas pipelines built by Russia and Germany, because they left Eastern Europe at the feet of Moscow. After his arrival at the White House in 2019, Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Nord Stream 2, sanctions that were rejected by Merkel and the European Union.
The SPD and CDU's sympathy for Russia is now turning against them
For years, then, with events such as those I have just reviewed, the CDU and the SPD sent the Germans the message that Russia was their friend and that they should get along with Putin and share Eastern Europe with him. This explains Angela Merkel's lukewarmness towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It would therefore be unfair to say that two pro-Russian parties have just emerged in Germany without stating that for many years the main pro-Russian parties in Germany have been the CDU and the SPD. It is their complicity and their lukewarmness towards Putin that has ended up infecting a part of German society, and now this sympathy towards Russia is turning against those who promoted it.
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Photo: Reuters. Demonstration by Pegida against mass immigration in Dresden on December 8, 2014.
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