Parties: Increase in membership for the Greens

The Greens say they have gained more than 4,500 members since the beginning of the year, more than ever before. The party leadership sees a connection between the relatively high number of new members and the protests against right-wing extremism and for the protection of democracy that have been going on for weeks. “This weekend, hundreds of thousands of people were again on the streets across Germany to take a stand against right-wing extremism and for our democracy,” said the party’s political director, Emily Büning, to the German Press Agency.

She is also experiencing this mobilization in her own party: “Since the beginning of January alone, over 4,500 people have decided to become members of the Greens – that is the second strongest monthly growth that our party has ever experienced,” said Büning. According to the party, there has only been an even larger wave of entry since the Greens were founded in 1980, in 2021 in the run-up to the federal election.

The nationwide wave of protests that has been going on for weeks was triggered by research by the media company Correctiv into a meeting between radical right-wingers and individual politicians from the AfD, CDU and Values ​​Union in Potsdam in November. There, the former head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, said he spoke about the concept of so-called remigration. When right-wing extremists use the term, they usually mean that large numbers of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress.

Studies on voter migration in recent years have shown that the Greens overall are losing fewer supporters to the AfD than other parties. In surveys, the Greens recently achieved figures between 13 percent and 14 percent nationwide.