by WorldTribune Staff, May 8, 2025 Real World News
In 2017, Friedrich Merz vowed in an interview with Bild magazine to “halve” the AfD vote.
Instead, the AfD vote doubled, hitting 10 million in the Bundestag election in February of this year.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz / Video ImageAccording to new polls, the AfD is the most popular party in Germany. And it has a MAGA connections with support from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House adviser Elon Musk.
“Atop a fragile ruling coalition, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will have to learn to live with the elephant in the living room: Alternative für Deutschland,” James Brooke wrote in a May 7 analysis for The New York Sun.
In the first vote for chancellor, held on Tuesday, Merz stumbled. He became the first candidate chancellor since World War II to lose a Bundestag confirmation vote.
The attention was then directed to the AfD co-leader, Alice Weidel, who said of Merz’s governing partners, the Social Democratic Party, or SPD: “It shows you how weak this coalition of conservatives and the SPD is.”
“Merz, a conservative with 36 years of experience in federal politics, soldiered on. He patched together his coalition and won a second vote,” Brooke noted.
On Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, drew on a classified 1,100-page report to declare the AfD “an extremist organization” based on allegations of racism and anti-Muslim beliefs. The new classification allows the agency to cultivate informers in the party, to install wiretaps, and, potentially, to deny public funding.
U.S. leaders had warned against such undertakings.
In February, Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference and lambasted Europe’s “establishment” for restricting speech and tilting the political playing field against outsiders. Visiting Germany nine days before the Bundestag elections, he snubbed then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Instead, he held a long meeting with Weidel.
On Friday, Rubio took to X to denounce the “extremist” classification of AfD, posting on X: “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD, but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”
Vance, reposting Rubio’s post on X, added his own comments, saying: “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany,” but “now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”
The vice president added that “the West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”
If Merz’s ruling coalition proves to be shaky, “it may be hard for Germany to fill the shoes of the United States in Ukraine,” Brooke wrote. “So far, White House sympathies lean toward the AfD. In January, Musk conducted a chummy, sometimes giggly, 74-minute live chat with Weidel. After agreeing on a series of topics — nuclear power, bureaucratic regulations, the need for tax cuts, and an end to ‘wokeness’ — Musk opined: ‘Only the AfD can save Germany.’ He hailed Weidel as “the leading candidate to run Germany.”
Merz told German reporters on Tuesday: “Ten million AfD voters — you can’t ban them. You have to engage with them factually and on substance. And I want to do everything in this federal government to help people regain trust in the political center — so that they no longer feel the need to vote for a party like the AfD.”
Still, Merz may try to commandeer the top issue of the AfD — immigration.
“Pollsters say immigration tops Germans’ worry lists,” Brooke noted. “Almost 20 percent of Germany’s 83 million inhabitants are foreign-born, a level that sets off alarm bells in North America. By comparison, foreign-born persons account for about 15 percent of America’s population and 23 percent of Canada’s.”
In January, Brooke continued, “Merz broke a decade-long taboo in German politics against using AfD votes to pass legislation. He drew on AfD support for a motion in the Bundestag to tighten immigration enforcement. The motion failed because some members of his Christian Democratic Union defected in outrage. However, future cooperation is expected if Merz acts on his promises to block immigration from the developing world.”
The only minister Merz carries over from the old government is the defense minister, Boris Pistorius.
“The two men, both hawks on Russia, are believed to pass three litmus tests on Ukraine: sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, contributing soldiers to an Anglo-French ‘reassurance’ force to enforce an armistice, and raising German defense spending to President Trump’s new 5 percent target,” Brooke noted.
The AfD opposes Western sanctions on Russia and calls for ending German military aid to Ukraine.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the new curbs on the AfD: “The European political landscape itself is now full of various restrictive measures against those political forces and individuals whose world view does not fit into the dominant mainstream.”
Within minutes of Merz’s confirmation as chancellor, Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted his congratulations: “Ukraine is deeply grateful for the support of Germany and its people. Your helping hand has saved thousands and thousands of Ukrainian lives. We sincerely hope that Germany will grow even stronger and that we’ll see more German leadership in European and transatlantic affairs.”
Merz, Germany’s 10th postwar chancellor, departed on Wednesday on his first foreign trips. He will visit France and Poland.
“The whole of Europe looked to Berlin today in the hope that Germany would reassert itself as an anchor of stability and a pro-European powerhouse,” the European Council on Foreign Relations’s Jana Puglierin posted on X from Berlin. “That hope has been dashed. With consequences way beyond our borders.”
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Germany’s Merz bows to the inevitable: Rise of MAGA-MEGA reforms added by Editor Two on May 8, 2025
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