The 90-year-old liberal Gerhart Baum considers it a serious mistake to dismiss the AfD as a “bad mood party”. This downplays the greatest threat to German democracy to date.
Former Interior Minister Gerhart Baum (FDP) has asked Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to say clearer words about the AfD. “I expect the Chancellor to speak plainly about the AfD,” said the 90-year-old human rights lawyer at the German Press Agency in Cologne. Anyone who, like Scholz, dismisses the AfD as a “bad mood party” is playing it down. “The AfD is the greatest threat to our democracy since the Federal Republic was founded 74 years ago,” Baum warned. “Guys, wake up!”
Not only Scholz had to dare to come out of cover. “Many more opinion-forming personalities must also show their colors – intellectuals, artists, entrepreneurs and bishops,” said Baum. “Everyone is coming out of the summer break and just getting on with it, as if the Magdeburg party conference of the AfD hadn’t shown in a shocking way that our liberal order is under massive attack – and Europe at that.”
“Growing group of anti-democracy”
Scholz may believe that the high polls for the AfD are a temporary phenomenon that criticism only enhances. “That’s fundamentally wrong,” criticized Baum. “Plated frustration is feeding a long-growing group of anti-democracy groups.” The reasons for this went much deeper than the current resentment at traffic lights. “We are in a global crisis of confidence that I have never experienced on this scale,” said the lawyer, who was born in Dresden in 1932. In view of the Ukraine war, large refugee movements, climate change and the increasingly acute conflict between the USA and China, many people are gripped by uncertainty and fear. “Then the resort to simple solutions is obvious.”
At this point, all democrats are called upon to defend the free order and to make it clear to voters that by voting for the AfD, they are also jeopardizing their own freedom. Planned cuts in political education must be averted, said Baum. He also expects that politicians from all parties will vigorously defend the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, if he names the anti-constitutional efforts of the AfD.
Source: Stern
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