The mood during election campaigns is becoming increasingly violent – especially in the East. Three voting booths on the market square in Weida show who can go with whom and who can’t. The CDU mayoral candidate does not shy away from contact with right-wing extremists.
In times like these, a man like Martin Schulze seems to be the perfect election campaigner. Especially when you take to the streets in Thuringia for the Greens. The 35-year-old from Weida in Vogtland in Thuringia measures 2.07 meters from sole to crown, has short, brown hair, an angular, broad chin and a trimmed beard and, despite his demonstrative leisureliness, does not give the impression that he cannot be fast , when it matters.
Shortly before the EU elections on June 9th and the local elections that will take place in Thuringia on May 26th, violent incidents during the election campaign are increasing up and down the country. Especially in the East, where attacks are increasingly directed against people.
At the beginning of May, Green Party leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt was harassed by a mob at a party event in the Oderbruch in Brandenburg and prevented from leaving. A short time later, in Dresden, several young men beat Saxony’s top EU candidate Matthias Ecke so badly that he had to be hospitalized. Green Party election workers were also threatened in Dresden while putting up posters that the police had to be called. “We are dealing with a lack of inhibitions and organized brutality that the AfD is creating together with other extreme right-wing structures,” Ecke explained.
“The mood in Weida has also become noticeably more aggressive,” says Schulze, who has just set up a campaign stand in front of the market square with two other Greens. However, he and his political colleagues in the Greiz district, to which Weida belongs, have “had luck” so far, said the computer scientist and electrical engineer. “The attacks are limited to verbal attacks. They insult us as ‘warmongers’ or shout ‘Especially not with you!’,” says Schulze, district spokesman for the Green Party and candidate for the district council.
The excesses of violence in Weida and the Greiz district were currently limited to the tearing down of election posters. “Around 10 percent of the posters put up are destroyed.” This is very annoying because campaign funds are very limited and torn down signs cannot be replaced so easily.
Ulf Lüdeke is a reporter at FOCUS online. Born in the West, he went to the East for eleven years immediately after the fall of the Wall to write about reunification as a journalist at the scene. There, in particular, a striking number of people sympathize with the AfD. Three regional associations were classified as “certainly right-wing extremist”. Nevertheless, there is a real chance that the “Blues” will win not only their first, but several of the three upcoming state elections. Now Lüdeke returns. “I’ve had enough, I’m going to the East,” he decided. And visits communities all over the country to report on people’s concerns and hopes.
What particularly affects the green giant, who once played in the national basketball league, is a “tragic change” in the culture of debate when it comes to political issues. “I notice this not only at the voting booth or during the door-to-door election campaign, but also in my own circle of friends,” admits Schulze.
At the polling station, the willingness to even stop and engage in conversations with the poll workers is decreasing. “People are becoming less and less interested in talking about politics because of increasing polarization.”
This tendency has now reached worrying proportions in circles of friends, where political preferences are increasingly becoming the litmus test for social relationships. “People don’t talk about it openly anymore so as not to endanger friendships, but they don’t send children to play with families if dad or mom votes AfD,” reports the computer scientist. “I even know cases where adult children who think democratically no longer talk to their parents who vote for AfD – for fear of losing them forever.”
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The Greens are not the only ones who set up their voting stand in front of the market square in Weida this morning. Ten meters to the left, the AfD has their flyers under a light blue umbrella, ten meters to the right, the CDU has theirs under a black one.
Weida has around 8,000 residents – in local politics everyone knows everyone. But just from the dancing of the campaigners between the three stands you can guess that not everyone here is green with everyone else.
Schulze, for example, has a long chat with Ulli Schäfer from the CDU, who wants to succeed his party colleague and district administrator Martina Schweinsburg in office. The outgoing Schweinsburg, who at the age of 65 is no longer allowed to run for office after three decades in office for legal reasons, now wants to become a member of the Erfurt state parliament.
However, neither Schulze nor his two fellow campaigners go to the “Blues”, nor do they receive visits from the AfD themselves.
In comparison, there is a lively exchange between the AfD and the CDU. And they all rush past the Greens.
Gunnar Raffke, who is running for mayor for the CDU, has short hair shaved on the sides and wears two thick, black earrings, greets the AfD district council candidate Jan Staps with wide open arms and a theatrical pat on the back, wearing a light blue jacket with the logo of the party whose regional association in Thuringia has been classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as “certainly right-wing extremist”. And he does so with such enthusiasm that you can hear from the Greens how closely Raffke sees the mayoral candidate’s CDU and AfD policies here: “We have the same policies!”
Weida’s CDU mayoral candidate seems to not only have no inhibitions about contacts with the Thuringia AfD, despite the federal CDU’s incompatibility decision. He also interacts publicly and unabashedly with well-known right-wing extremists who spread hate and racist incitement on the Internet.
One of them is the Gera right-wing extremist Christian Klar, who posted two captioned pictures at the beginning of the year that brazenly trivialized National Socialism. They bear the words “National Socialism is diversity of peoples” and “Globalism is genocide”. Since the Corona pandemic, the Geraer has been considered a central figure in the marches of right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists that are organized there every Monday.
If you open the six comments on Klar’s post, you will also find a post by the current CDU mayoral candidate of Weida, who in turn takes a position on a post by André Poggenburg.
Poggenburg, whom Raffke addresses as “André,” founded the ethnic-nationalist “wing” in 2015 with Thuringia’s AfD state leader Björn Höcke. In March 2020, the group was classified as a “certified right-wing extremist movement” by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. After the then AfD federal executive board asked the “wing” to disband, the group deleted its online presence.
At the time, Poggenburg was the AfD leader of the Saxony-Anhalt AfD state association, which is now also classified as “certainly right-wing extremist” – and in 2019 he became too right-wing radical even for his own party. After the AfD federal executive board blocked Poggenburg from holding any party positions for two years, Poggenburg resigned from the AfD.
In any case, shortly after Raffke’s bizarre greeting scene, district administrator candidate Schäfer, with eyebrows raised in surprise, vigorously contradicts the reporter’s question as to whether the CDU is pursuing the same policies as the AfD. “I’m sorry, what? Of course not. We are realists, not populists. And we don’t promise anything that we can’t keep.” Although we’re talking to the AfD, we’re not working together, says Schäfer.
As far as the mood in the election campaign is concerned, the doctor of business administration, who has been working “full-time” in East Thuringian hospitals and in hospital management since 2003, according to his personal homepage, sees the situation in a similar way to Martin Schulze. “The tone has become more aggressive and the willingness to even engage in a conversation has decreased. And the more rural it becomes, the more blatant the aggression.”
For example, his election workers are harshly accused of being “responsible for the war in Ukraine and open EU borders, even though we can’t do anything about it either in the district or in the municipalities,” said the 42-year-old.
The destruction of election posters is also becoming an increasing nuisance. “There are streets where posters from both the CDU and the AfD were hanging on several lampposts, but only the CDU posters were destroyed,” says Schäfer angrily.
At the AfD, however, the mood during the election campaign is “good,” according to Barbara Geithner, who was one of the commuters to the CDU stand and, in addition to shaking hands, also tasted cake there. The recently retired pensioner is an “AfD member with heart and soul” and is running for a district council mandate now that she has time.
She is only in 21st place out of 22 on the AfD candidate list. With a total of 46 district council seats, of which the AfD currently only holds five instead of the original nine, according to the official homepage, her prospects for a mandate should therefore remain manageable.
Geithner has almost 30,000 followers on her TikTok account (for comparison: Ulli Schäfer has around 250). She immediately boasts of good contacts with the top of the right-wing extremist AfD regional association, especially its right-wing extremist boss Björn Höcke, of whom she says she is a big fan. Höcke is applying for a direct mandate in the Greiz district for the state elections on September 1st because the prospects of directly winning his home constituency in Eichsfeld are not great enough.
And then Geithner asks a question that she immediately answers herself: “Do you know what the word Nazi means? For me it means ‘Not interested in immigration,'” says the 63-year-old, laughing enthusiastically about her tasteless, open trivialization of the National Socialists. None of the five people standing at the table are offended by this, not even AfD district council candidate Kerstin Müller, who is standing right next to Geithner.
On the table in front of AfD list candidate number 21 are AfD flyers with the inscription “Our program for the Greiz district”. The first point is called “Short legs – short way to school” and promises: “Smaller and more school buses ensure shorter journey times for our children!” Point 1 under “Economy and Finance” states: “Spending discipline remains the top priority at the district level.” All on the same page.
Next to the flyers is a stack of the weekly newspaper “Neues Gera”. On the front page there is a large picture showing five smeared or torn AfD election posters, headlined: “Hate and agitation by the ‘democratic’ competitors.” The inside section, the reporter later discovers, is chock-full of AfD election advertisements, some of which are full-page. On pages 2 and 3 there are reports of stabbings, on page 4 there is a two-column column about an AfD application with the title “Remigration required”.
When asked whether the newspaper had anything to do with the AfD, Geithner, who said she was so well connected, replied: “No, it’s a completely normal newspaper that is available everywhere for free.” At the end of the conversation, she admonishes the reporter in a smugly friendly tone: “And always stick to the truth!”
What the AfD politician does not say is that the newspaper “Neues Gera” is published by Harald Frank, the AfD faction leader in the city council of Gera, who is well known throughout the region, just 16 kilometers from Weida. The AfD is the strongest faction there with 12 seats, the CDU has 8. A study by the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena came to the conclusion three years ago that a “special sympathy” for AfD politics was “unmistakable”. Islamophobic texts are met with “xenophobic slogans”, some of which are based on misinformation. The Holocaust is sometimes put into perspective in letters to the editor.
The AfD slogan “Courage for Truth” is emblazoned on the sagging edge of the light blue AfD umbrella on the market square in Weida. In any case, this does not seem to apply to list candidate 21.
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