“Ronzheimer” podcast: “This brings back memories for me of how the SA and SS performed here,” warns Banaszak | EUROtoday

It is a cross-party phenomenon. The Berlin political institution invitations folks to maintain to themselves and to verify themselves, defined Green Party chief Felix Banaszak firstly of his dialog with Paul Ronzheimer. “Parts of the debates that the Union is leading are also so disconnected from people’s everyday lives, otherwise we wouldn’t come up with such a nonsense term like ‘lifestyle part-time’,” he complained. “You don’t develop a concept like that if you’ve had a normal conversation with normal people in the last few weeks.”

Looking again, he outlined the implications of final yr’s election. “After the federal election, some made the mistaken conclusion that honesty is not rewarded in politics,” he described. “Robert Habeck told people honestly what was coming, and Friedrich Merz lied to them.” Even earlier than the federal election, the CDU chairman knew that he needed to reform the debt brake so as to have the ability to act, however all the time claimed the alternative. In his remark, the voters appreciates seeing politicians as actual folks. Banaszak admitted that right-wing populist politicians specifically are profitable at interesting emotionally to their goal group.

When requested about learn how to cope with the AfD, the federal chairman of the Greens defended the firewall idea. He didn’t settle for the oft-heard argument that this had completed nothing to decrease the AfD outcomes. “The firewall was never intended to keep the AfD down, but rather to keep it away from power,” insisted Banaszak. “And the question of whether in 2026 we will nonchalantly go back to forming majorities with right-wing extremists – as if we don’t know what the consequences could be – scares me a bit.”

The instance of the United States reveals that authoritarian forces are implementing their program. “What happened in Minneapolis was announced by Donald Trump. The AfD says, great, we want to orientate ourselves on that, i.e. on the ICE agents who shoot people on the street,” he advised Ronzheimer. “That’s why I’m a little irritated that people have such a relaxed attitude towards a gradual transfer of power to a party that has a tradition with the National Socialists.”

He complained that the ICE commanders within the USA had been dehumanizing. “Anyone who gets in their way will be shot.” It is true that warning is suggested in opposition to false historic comparisons – and he doesn’t wish to make the comparability, “but that at least awakens in me memories of how the SA and SS appeared here in the years before the formal transfer of power to Adolf Hitler.” The drift into an authoritarian system all the time occurs easily. However, the United States remains to be on the level the place selections are reversible.

The state of affairs is comparable on this nation. “The AfD is a party that is essentially anti-pluralistic, anti-democratic,” warned Banaszak. “They say that themselves.” Neither an elevated stage of creativity nor an in depth examine of historical past is critical to acknowledge that “the AfD has an image of society and an image of democracy as the embodiment of the will of the people that aims to restrict minority rights and opposition.” Before the NSDAP got here to energy, related components of the democratic forces thought that it might be higher to return to phrases with their growing outcomes. Even if the AfD and the NSDAP couldn’t be equated, the debates again then had been repeated at present.

The present episode of RONZHEIMER may be heard right here: “Do you think the AfD are Nazis? With Felix Banaszak”

Banaszak subsequently known as for brand new urgency and readability in coping with right-wing extremist forces. “We still have a functioning legal system here, we still have a largely stable anchoring of fundamental rights here,” he admitted, “but in Thuringia, for example, they are no longer in a position to appoint new constitutional judges, which Björn Höcke sees critically.” The democratic heart should restore belief on this system. Right-wing authoritarian forces conveyed a message of change. The heart mustn’t counter this by saying that all the things should stay as it’s. “Then she’ll lose.”