Hay, Klaus!

[George K]

What's going on in Germany?

Lot of press here talking about how a "far right-wing" political party got some traction during the last election.

[Klaus]

True. What can I say? It's all about immigration. The AfD is a bunch of idiots and wannabe Nazis but they are the only ones who want to change something of significance about immigration.

[Axtremus]

What do most German want regarding immigration?
They just want to stop all immigration completely?
They also want to deport all illegal immigrants?
They want to go further and deport some classes of immigrants that have entered Germany legally in the last how ever many years?

[Klaus]

They want the rule of law restored.

[Horace]

@Klaus said in Hay, Klaus!:

They want the rule of law restored.

Terrifying.

[Jolly]

I frequent another board, where one of the frequent posters is an older German lady, living in a rural area. She's a big AFD supporter.

Her support mostly revolves around the immigration issue.

[Copper]

@Klaus said in Hay, Klaus!:

They want the rule of law restored.

Nazis

[Klaus]

The AfD has a very strange and incoherent platform.

They have very left-wing or socialist positions on many economic issues.

For some reason I don't understand, they are huge fans of Putin, and they want to orient Germany towards Russia and away from the US and NATO. They also want the support of the Ukraine to end.

They propose rather radical measures against immigration. From what I can see, most of their voters vote for them as a protest against the immigration policies of the other parties, and they ignore, or are unaware of, their strange other policies.

[Horace]

@Klaus said in Hay, Klaus!:

They have very left-wing or socialist positions on many economic issues.

There's a lot of that going around on the "far right". Btw, does AfD describe themselves as "far right"? Or is that a label applied to the party by mainstream institutional messaging?

[Jolly]

@Klaus said in Hay, Klaus!:

The AfD has a very strange and incoherent platform.

They have very left-wing or socialist positions on many economic issues.

For some reason I don't understand, they are huge fans of Putin, and they want to orient Germany towards Russia and away from the US and NATO. They also want the support of the Ukraine to end.

They propose rather radical measures against immigration. From what I can see, most of their voters vote for them as a protest against the immigration policies of the other parties, and they ignore, or are unaware of, their strange other policies.

Can they shove the other parties into co-opting their immigration stance?

[jon-nyc]

Sometimes it has the opposite effect. They end up putting stink on ideas that might otherwise be accepted by a more mainstream party.

[George K]

I read there are efforts to prevent these guys from joining the government.