“Enough with the neo-liberal fallacy!“

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In the latest opinion polls, the SPD is the second-strongest party and is superseded by the AfD. In the Interview of the week, the historian Peter Brandt, what do the social Democrats, now says.

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Peter Brandt: “Not every right is a Nazi.”

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Peter Brandt: “Not every right is a Nazi.”

17 percent, according to the latest ARD-deutschlandtrend. Who thought that the SPD would stabilize in the government slowly, looks wrong. The discussion on the protection of the Constitution President Hans-Georg Maassen the social Democrats in the polls even further slippage, and the end is not in sight. Peter Brandt, the oldest son of former Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, is to stop the downward trend only if the SPD is “back on the mass of the working people-oriented and not of special and marginalised groups of the society.”

Brandt: “I appreciated my father all my life and some of his political actions also admired”

Willy Brandt had power in 1972. In September, two months before the election, was the SPD in polls, nearly hopeless ten percentage points behind the Union with their Chancellor candidate Rainer Barzel. But then the social Democrats managed to the voters to shake up – a mobilization that has followed ever again in the German election campaign. With the catchy message “Willy choose” scored the SPD with 45.8 percent, the best result in its history, the turnout was incredible 91.1 per cent. “The SPD has managed the balancing act to integrate different groups in a political program,” explained Peter Brandt, “she managed, until today, never again”.

SPD needs to put the social question back at the heart of its policy

Today, 46 years later, the SPD, however, tough competition: also the Greens and the Left are competing for votes on the left, and for Brandt to make but none of the three parties, “in their actual addressees, i.e. the working people, to arrive.” The accusation that the SPD is often like that, however, goes even further: the social Democrats have left a vacuum that had filled the right-wing populist AfD. “The SPD has pulled the social question, which is actually the core of leftist politics, a strong back,” agreed the historian.

“The neo-Nazis are trying to reinforce the direction in the right-hand movement”

The rise of right-wing parties in Europe, Peter Brandt sees with great concern. “The right-wing populists have managed to reach deep into the classical clientele of left-wing parties, including social democracy, dig in and success there,” he says of the recipe. The riots in Chemnitz, the greetings from Hitler, and fascist slogans have the 69-Year-old “horrified”, but: “Not every right is a Nazi. The tendency to the far right is larger, but a certain floor set by the Nazis, there has always been since the Second world war.”

Collection of the move “stand up” as a linker of ideas

Peter Brandt sees himself, personally, have a responsibility to resist this tendency. Therefore, he makes with the left collection of the move “stand up”, even though large sections of the SPD oppose the movement under the leadership of the Left group head of Sahra wagenknecht. “It needs the impetus from the outside,” defended Peter Brandt his Position. “It’s a question that the parties, as they exist, are not destroyed, but to move about, to mobilise and to influence”.

It would not have used the collection’s movement of today, probably even if the SPD had won the election to the Bundestag 2017. With the Brandt quite coherent themes of justice and solidarity. “The approach was right, but the SPD didn’t become concrete”. Peter Brandt believes that there is a potential of more than 40 percent of votes, “but then has to make a Chancellor candidate, Martin Schulz, of his advisers, unfortunately, almost a political neuter, against the better your own Feeling.”

“The knee was not somewhere in Warsaw, but at the monument of the Warsaw ghetto”

Knee-the case of Warsaw the eternal legacy of Willy Brandt

A Willy Brandt would not have committed this mistake, probably, and only on his own Intuition. To get at the risk, first of all, no more fixes. Brandt mentions in the Interview of the week, the example relaxation policy. And, of course, the world-famous genuflection of Warsaw. His then 22-year-old son was very moved, “that someone who is, personally, completely unencumbered, is doing for his people atonement for the crime that happened.” To the question, what would say to Peter Brandt and his father, if he were alive, says the historian: “That he has done for many people, even those that have criticized him in part, Significant.”