Voting and demonstrations will not help: we must join forces with our colleagues, neighbours and classmates
~ from Die Platforme ~
It took less than two weeks for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) to use the terrible knife attack in Aschaffenburg to once again shift their course significantly to the right on the backs of their victims.
Last week, the CDU submitted two motions to the German parliament (Bundestag) calling on the Chancellor to massively tighten Germany’s migration policy. These include, for example, the introduction of permanent controls and the immediate rejection of people without valid entry documents at Germany’s external borders, as well as the arrest of foreign criminals, so-called ‘dangerous persons’ and all people who the immigration authorities classify as being required to leave the country. In addition, they proposed a tightening of state surveillance powers.
But it is not just the content of the motions that is significant: Contrary to the CDU’s previous assurances that it would rule out direct or indirect cooperation with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), this time it openly took the AfD’s support for its motions into account. In the end, CDU MPs voted together with AfD and the right-liberal FDP.
In recent days, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in many cities to protest against this collusion with the extreme right, rightly venting to their fear and anger. At the same time, there was also great outrage in the left-liberal bourgeois press and among the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party in the Bundestag.
The final crack in the firewall?
There is no doubt that the conservative CDU’s latest move is a new chapter in the process of social shift to the right in Germany that has been ongoing for at least ten years. At least at the federal level, the other bourgeois parties have not yet directly or indirectly promoted political projects with the AfD. Instead, they have publicly distanced themselves from the AfD and invoked a ‘firewall’ of “democratic parties”. The accusation against the CDU, which is being made in many places, is that the party—and specifically its chairman Friedrich Merz—has torn down this firewall. But this is a narrative that could not be more false.
The truth is that, beneath the public distancing from the AfD, cooperation has long been a reality in broad sections of political institutions. Whether at the local or state level, the bourgeois parties—primarily the CDU and FDP, but not only them—regularly cooperate with the AfD. The extreme right has long since become at least a somewhat-accepted force in political institutions. It was only a matter of time before distancing now crumbles at the federal political level. And it is only a matter of time before cooperation with the extreme right is no longer just indirect and before other bourgeois parties join the CDU and FDP in this.
The reason for this is that the considerations behind the ideological construct of the ‘firewall’—the good democrats on the one side together against the evil racists on the other—are wrong. Although the AfD’s positions are to the right, or significantly to the right, of the other bourgeois parties in almost all matters, all of these—regardless of whether they are called CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD or Greens—have moved massively to the right in the last ten years. If AfD politicians now rightly believe that the CDU has borrowed from their election manifesto, this does not only apply to them. Especially now in the election campaign, it is becoming clear that the migration policy agenda of all bourgeois parties only knows one direction: murderous isolation at the external borders, tightened restrictions for migrants, and deportation offensives. The ‘traffic light government’ has impressively demonstrated over the last three years that at least these are not empty election promises.
Racism is not only a core component of the program of the extreme right, racism is a core component of the program of current bourgeois politics and the bourgeois-democratic order as a whole.
‘Civil society’ against the shift to the right?
Many millions of our colleagues, neighbours, classmates and fellow students, friends, relatives—especially those who would be particularly strongly and directly affected by racist or patriarchal tightening of laws—and we ourselves are rightly worried about what will happen if the CDU/CSU, FDP and the other bourgeois parties openly cooperate with the AfD in the future. And it is right and empowering that hundreds of thousands of people are making room for themselves at the protests to take these concerns and their anger to the streets.
But because the shift to the right is being driven forward by the other bourgeois parties in the same way, it is fatal that many calls for demonstrations focus solely on the actions of the CDU instead of formulating a fundamental criticism of the shift to the right of all bourgeois parties. It is also fatal that because of this deliberate gap, in many cities the SPD and the Greens are also part of the protest, along with parties and their youth organisations that have enshrined racism in law in recent years. Their acceptance in such alliances is part of a deeper problem of the anti-fascist movement and emancipatory social movements as a whole: under the banner of a cross-class so-called “civil society” and mediated by left-liberal NGOs and movement organisations, cooperation is also being carried out with those who effectively make policies against the interests of our class in general and specifically of individual parts of it.
In addition, demonstrations are widely visible symbols of resistance. But they alone cannot stop the shift to the right. The protests from last spring are the best example of this. When these died down again, the AfD’s poll ratings continued to rise, the CDU made plans for future cooperation and the traffic light government intensified its racist offensive.
We can only trust ourselves
Effectively combating the shift to the right cannot be done with online petitions, cannot be done on the streets together with the SPD and the Greens, and cannot be done by casting the “right” vote in the ballot box on February 23rd.
Instead, we can only rely on ourselves and the organised power of our class. We must join forces with our colleagues, neighbours, classmates and fellow students in our workplaces, neighbourhoods, schools and universities on a permanent basis. The starting point for what is needed already exists in many places: trade unions, district unions, student unions, university groups and open anti-fascist meetings. The focus now must be on strengthening and broadening these approaches. Each of us can contribute to this by joining and supporting the existing structures. In many other places, an anti-fascist movement must be built almost from scratch. This also requires people who organise themselves on a permanent basis.
But in order to remove the basis for the shift to the right, we must tackle it at its roots. There is no capitalism without crisis, and the extreme right knows how to mobilise the anger of the exploited and oppressed for its agenda. The resentment that exists in the population and enables it to do this is fuelled by those in power in this bourgeois system.
The stronger the wind blows, the clearer it becomes every day: there is no alternative to revolution. Let us fight for it.
Corrected machine translation
