“Caren Miosga”: When asked a question, Bodo Ramelow becomes tight-lipped

As is well known, Bodo Ramelow suffers from a reading and spelling disorder. His school career in the 1960s and 70s: a fiasco. Dyslexia was only diagnosed by a psychologist when I was in vocational school. At the beginning of the debate, the Thuringian Prime Minister impressively described his difficult socialization. But unfortunately neither he nor Caren Miosga managed to establish a link to the present. There certainly would have been. Thuringia’s AfD leader Björn Höcke, who dreams of providing his brown comradeship with posts and state secrets from September, wants, among other things, to abolish inclusion in schools. All Ramelows who don’t fit into the scheme would be out. Selection instead of equal opportunities.

Caren Miosga’s guests were:

The AfD in Thuringia is at 36 percent in current surveys. The CDU and the Left come to a similar value. Caren Miosga wanted to know why his party had halved since the last election. Ramelow cited two main reasons. The government crisis in 2020 with the failed new election. “Since then, I’ve been accused of sticking to my chair.” As well as Corona and the resulting division in society. Miosga pulled out the poverty statistics. Thuringia is only in 12th place out of 16 federal states. “How can this happen to a left-wing prime minister?” Thin-lipped response from Ramelow: “I can only spend the money that I have available.”

A shift to the right would harm the East German automobile industry

Sara Wagenknecht’s new group is also mining voters from the left. Katja Wolf, a longtime confidante of Ramelow, recently moved to BSW. She received a lavish clip on the show – Thomas de Maizière pointedly described the clip as a “party spot at prime time.” In fact, the incumbent mayor of Eisenach was eloquent about the “established parties” with whom people were disappointed and to whom she and her party would now make a “new parliamentary offer”. After all, she also shot against Höcke. “A shift to the right would be a demographic and economic dead end for our city.” Management positions in the local automotive industry are already difficult to fill because of the region’s right-wing image.

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has further widened the gap between East and West. In the current issue of “stern”, Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer speaks out against further arms deliveries to Ukraine. He represents a minority opinion in the CDU, said de Maizière. “It’s not an election tactic on his part, he’s really convinced of it.” Sociologist Katharina Warda has her doubts about this. The issue is occupied by the right, and Kretschmer is certainly counting on it. For them, however, it was a false conclusion. “This only shifts the space of what can be said and normality further to the right. This creates a climate in which it is very easy to vote for right-wing parties.”

“Deep-seated anti-Americanism”

But why does Putin do comparatively well in the eastern German states? Thomas de Maizière spoke of a “melange”. There is a tendency to want to stay out of international conflicts as much as possible. This applies very much to conflicts with Russia, against which Germany has “always somehow” lost out. Added to this is a deep-seated anti-Americanism.

Warda finds such generalizations difficult. An idea of ​​the “East” as a kind of evil twin of the “West” has grown in public discourse. This is linked to attributes such as plural, diverse and cosmopolitan. The East, on the other hand, is characterized by authoritarianism, without diversity, without migration, without civil society. “This image is being exploited by the international right, brought back to the East and filled with a lot of sentiment.”

And what happens now on September 1st in Thuringia if the AfD actually achieves a landslide victory – will the CDU and the Left then join forces to form a firewall against the right coalition? “Such a discussion only contributes to the AfD’s account,” said Bodo Ramelow. “We should rather talk about the danger that Mr. Höcke poses to democracy.”