Former German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück (SPD) has proposed a new strategy for dealing with the AfD. According to Handelsblatt, Steinbrück spoke in the podcast “Ronzheimer” in favor of maintaining the so-called firewall against the AfD while simultaneously seeking ways to deradicalize the party.
Steinbrück said he considers the firewall necessary “for the foreseeable future.” At the same time, he raised the question of how to move the AfD toward a “right-wing conservative position.” He suggested defining red lines in various policy areas: “As long as you don’t reliably commit to that, cooperation or toleration is definitely not possible.”
Ban procedure rejected
Steinbrück rejected a ban procedure against the AfD. He argued that the party’s voters would not disappear as a result. Rather, one would exclude and perhaps “criminalize” them, even though they could be won back. Moreover, a successful ban procedure before the Federal Constitutional Court would be very difficult to enforce – failure, in his view, would have “catastrophic consequences.”
Instead, the Social Democrat advocated stripping individual AfD representatives of their passive voting rights. He cited Björn Höcke, the Thuringian AfD leader whose party is classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a proven right-wing extremist group. Steinbrück said there was enough material to show that Höcke “is a mental child who has nothing to do with the foundations of our constitution.”
Borrowing from Rödder
Steinbrück referred to Andreas Rödder, former chairman of the CDU’s Basic Values Commission. Rödder had advocated for “conditioned willingness to talk on this side of the firewall.” Steinbrück suggested pursuing this idea further to better deradicalize the AfD.
Meanwhile, several leading CDU politicians warn against cooperation with the AfD. Dennis Radtke, chairman of the party’s employee wing, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung: “The moment the CDU extends its hand to the AfD, it is finished.” Hamburg CDU leader Dennis Thering warned of “massive upheavals” in the party should cooperation with the AfD occur after the state elections in September. That would be “the beginning of the end.”
Source: www.handelsblatt.com
