Federal President of Germany, Steinmeier travels to the United States. A theme of the visit, the division of society in two countries. The big question: How to stop the Drift into Extreme? Carla Bleiker reported from Washington.
At the state election in Thuringia on 27. October, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 23.4 percent of the votes. Almost a quarter of all voters in the Central German province of the extreme-right party gave their vote.
Misconceptions about the attitude of the AfD in Thuringia were unlikely. The party leadership in Erfurt with your speaker Björn Höcke is considered a national, the AfD Thuringia is observed from the protection of the Constitution. “Who today has chosen the AfD, knew exactly what he was doing,” said the former President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, on election night.
Populism is, the Thuringia election has shown time and time again, on the rise in Germany. More and more people feel the parties of the political “Establishment” is not understood, ignored and not represented. This dissatisfaction make use of the populists, such as the AfD. They claim to have clear solutions for all the problems and as only the people on the street to listen.
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Thuringia after the election
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Difficult government formation in Thuringia
Populist politicians are those who claim to be “the sole representative of a supposedly true and unified will of the people,” said Federal President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a meeting of the German Association for political science last year. This was undemocratic.
This Wednesday, Steinmeier travels to Boston to celebrate the end of the year of Germany in the United States. His first official appointment to a working Breakfast on Thursday with the German and the US will be learning-the American social science. The topic of discussion: “populism and polarisation – challenges on both sides of the Atlantic”.
“Trump is a Populist”
Since 2016 populism is also in the US, a much-discussed Problem. “In the United States, we have a politician who adopted a [non-populist] party, and she has made a populist,” explains Sheri Berman, Professor of political science at the prestigious Barnard College in New York.
“The Republicans have been in the past a conservative party, but under Trump, they have changed in a very much populisti shear direction,” said Berman in an interview with DW. “Our President is a Populist, under virtually every Definition in the book. And his base, so the people who continue to vote for him, no matter what the Democrats say, or what candidates you place, consists of die-hard populist voters.”
Under Trump, the Republicans were brought in the populist corner, says Berman
Both in the USA as well as in Germany, the populist bearings operate with an “us-against-them”mentality: It is to defend the interests of the little people or the “right” Americans, or Germans, against immigrants, Latinos, Muslims, or other “outsiders”.
From the Content, except for populism, is, most experts agree, especially about the style of politics identify. “It’s about how a politician or party stands for democracy,” says Berman. “Bernie Sanders, I would not for example be seen as populists. He adheres to the democratic rules of the game and not trying to polarize American society even more.”
The trenches are deep
To divide the political camps in the United States even more than they are currently, would also be a challenge. Unlike in Germany, there are in the United States by the two-party System, coalition formation, and in the past few decades, the gap between Democrats and Republicans becoming more and more engrossed has. The go since the late 1970s or early 1980s, says Berman. “But during the presidency of Clinton [1993 until 2001, ed.] has aggravated it again.” Have moved the Republican party further to the right than Democrats to the left.
The political scientist sees particularly the Self-demarcation of the two groups of voters in so-called “Silos” as a major Problem. In your district in Brooklyn, for example, in 2016, voted by a majority of 97 percent for Hillary Clinton. And this social separation of Republicans and Democrats is on the rise, more and more, says Behrman: they live in different regions, spend their leisure time almost exclusively with like-minded, their children go to different schools.
The people voted in 2016, for Hillary Clinton, meeting only rarely to Trump voters.
No Overlap with the other side
“There are fewer and fewer places where people with different thinking can interact,” says Berman. “On such occasions, they would realize, ‘Hey, we have different political opinions, but this person is not malicious, he is working with the USA to undermine it.'”
A similar Problem Berman, who has lived for several years in Bonn, also in Germany. She describes the Greens and the AfD as the two parties are currently on the upswing, and says: “These two groups of voters have virtually nothing in common.” A few years ago, when the CDU and the SPD were the major parties, not the polarization so extreme.
A simple method of growing populism, or the growing divisions in the population to address, there is not, says Berman. If you have a solution, “I would tell politicians what they have to do”.