Voting Germans: J.D. Vance Factor and Aspiration for Peace

The speech by US Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich hit the mark, and not just among Germans who will vote for AfD. In a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) editorial published over the weekend, journalist and political scientist Nikolas Busse reminds us that we can only wait and see what German citizens think about this sometimes-fierce criticism by the US vice president. A colleague of mine, who votes for BSW, Sahra Wagenknecht’s personal party, and until recently probably voted for the Left, was all excited about it and this morning brought me an article (published in open access by Berliner Zeitung) by an American Johanna Freymann, a freelance journalist whose parents are Christian intellectuals from Palo Alto (Stanford) and who last fall supported Kamala Harris, who says she is ashamed of the reaction to J.D. Vance’s speech by the great Social Democratic leaders of the SPD (President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, and outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz).

In the name of democracy, SPD members criticize Vance’s speech, calling it undemocratic, despite how ludicrous that is, given that they represent no more than 14 percent of the electorate (according to Freymann), while those they criticize and whom J.D. Vance supposedly supported represent, according to polls, 20 percent of voters nationwide, and we have as much as 30 percent. The American journalist writes: “The US vice president pointed out that free speech is under threat in Germany and Europe, and many Germans share that view.” Allensbach estimates that about 40% of voters think so. And even the great Dresden writer Uwe Telkamp, who condemned the GDR system on a literary level in his popular novel The Tower (2008), condemns precisely this lack of freedom of speech in our society in his latest book, A Dream in the Clock. The Berlin-based California journalist rightly argues that “fighting the right” has nothing to do with the daily reality of a large part of Germany’s citizens. However, far greater concern to many is caused by the aggressive presence of Islamism in Germany, with its rejection of the values of the German constitution and widespread aggressive anti-Semitism.

As for young people, such as those I work with here in Saxony-Anhalt, many of them vote for the AfD not because they are influenced by TikTok or social media, but because in their daily school life they have to face, especially in non-elitist schools, ideologies that have nothing to do with democratic values, the ones that J.D. Vance talked about. And even at my school, there are already huge differences between high school and vocational school: less intelligent students see our calls against fascism as a threat to their freedom to vote for AfD.

Then comes the theme of peace. As for BSW, Sahra Wagenknecht rightly posted the following comment on X: “700 billion for arms and weapons for Ukraine? What do Scholz and Merz say about these crazy EU plans, which Ms. Baerbock (of the Green Party – ed.) clearly considers ridiculous? People have a right to know about these secret plans before the election!”

In short, everything points to the need for a real dialog on topical issues. And this without resentment, in short, without the very feeling that makes those who have no power or are losing it feel more than ever “worn out” (© Giulio Andreotti). Which I believe is also evident in Steve Bannon’s criticism of Elon Musk.

Given what happened in the Brussels parliamentary groups and the ongoing investigations of the AfD as a pro-Nazi party, many Germans (not only readers of this section) have concluded that the goal was to outlaw the right-wing and prevent a popular vote. Alice Weidel, the new leader and candidate for chancellor, should be commended for being able to offer the kind of leadership that cleared the field of risky nostalgia. A lesbian, mother of two children by an immigrant from Sri Lanka, she shattered the mechanism of social stigma in the name of “woke.”

And the Catholic Church? The German bishops have taken a clear stance and said they will not vote for right-wing parties. The president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, is a theological and political disaster and is leading the Church into a dead end: the problem is not the AfD, the problem is the Church itself, which has ceased to proclaim the Gospel, to proclaim “democracy” on the level of political theology… One could argue that it is only natural that the bishops oppose the hunt for migrants. In truth, the AfD can be portrayed as a party that persecutes migrants, but it can be dialogued with as someone who wants to solve the problem of illegal immigration. In any case, let’s wait and see what German citizens say in five days, and we’ll go from there.