Controversial television duel: Who will be Höcke’s main opponent?

analysis

On April 11, 2024, at 8:15 p.m., a taboo will once again be broken in the Federal Republic. A Christian Democratic politician has arranged to meet with a right-wing extremist for a bilateral dispute. More precisely: The Thuringian CDU state chairman Mario Voigt is running against his AfD counterpart Björn Höcke.

Apparently it’s about European politics. But it’s actually about something completely different. Both men want to move into the Erfurt State Chancellery as Prime Minister after the state elections on September 1st. Their lowest common denominator is: the left-wing incumbent Bodo Ramelow has to give way.

The so-called duel will be broadcast on Welt TV. Since the date was announced, Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left have castigated Voigt’s plans as an approach to a fascist state party. The CDU is finally raising the Thuringian AfD, with which it has already passed tax cuts and other laws, on an equal footing and also normalizing it. The goal is clear: Voigt wants to gain government power with the help of the Höcke faction. After all, the CDU, together with the AfD and FDP, had already elected a certain Thomas Kemmerich as Prime Minister.

Reference to Nazi history

The critics’ whispering narrative is supplemented with morally charged references to history. April 11th is the anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. More than 50,000 people fell victim to National Socialist crimes there.

The CDU has now perfected its counter-narrative. Voigt portrays himself as the upright executor of the new anti-AfD strategy adopted by the CDU federal executive board in January. It works in two ways. On the one hand, the so-called firewall is intended to exclude any active cooperation with the AfD. On the other hand, the CDU wants to increasingly “substantiate” its far-right competition. Given the strength of the polls, the “Nazi club” no longer works, says Voigt. He also aggressively defends the choice of date: “I think the date is exactly the right day to discuss it because it makes it obvious what consequences an inhumane ideology can have.”

But the narratives from both sides are largely based on campaign-driven propaganda. A demagogue can hardly be successfully countered with fact-based arguments. How does Voigt want to discuss the content with Höcke about whether “this EU has to die” or, as the AfD demands, millions of foreigners should leave Germany? And even if calling Höcke a Nazi is ahistorical, his writings and speeches show that he is an extremist who recycles National Socialist ideas.

However, the assumption that Voigt is preparing an alliance with the AfD for the CDU also lacks any power-political logic. Cooperation with the AfD in Thuringia or elsewhere would put the Union in the state and federal government in the same precarious position of the 2020 Kemmerich election. This is all the more true since, like last year, it is in a federal election. Cooperation with the AfD would result in the loss of the bourgeois-liberal voter milieu in West Germany and could tear the party apart internally.

The AfD’s strategy

Even leading AfD politicians are aware that their party can continue to expect rejection from the CDU – at least for the time being. Their short-term plan is therefore to translate the survey results into election results this year and next, which will be difficult enough given the new competition from the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance and the Values ​​Union. The AfD’s minimum goal is to be the strongest faction in the state parliaments of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg from autumn onwards and to achieve opposition leadership in the federal government with around 20 percent in 2025. From 2026 onwards, with the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the firewall will be eroded in order to prepare the field for the federal election in 2029.

The AfD’s view of the debate is correspondingly ambivalent. According to the Federal Executive Board, it is not Voigt who gives Höcke a chance to raise his profile. Rather, it is the other way around: the AfD state leader is negligently building a ramp for his competitor.

In fact, this concern goes to the heart of Voigt’s motives. His popularity is significantly lower compared to Ramelow and Höcke. When it comes to the direct election question, the Thuringian CDU chairman is a long way behind the Prime Minister and roughly on a par with the AfD state leader. This roughly corresponds to the situation five years ago, when the CDU was literally crushed in a duel between the Left and the AfD. At that time, Ramelow was specifically groomed by the Left as Höcke’s main opponent. “Bodo or barbarism,” it was said in the party.

The risk of Mario Voigt

The duel with Höcke should now break this fatal dynamic for the CDU. Voigt involuntarily assists the Wagenknecht party, which has double-digit numbers in the Thuringian polls and is obviously siphoning off votes, especially from Höcke and Ramelow. The AfD has sometimes slipped below 30 percent and the Left to 16 to 18 percent. Meanwhile, thanks to the federal trend, the CDU is stable at a good 20 percent – and therefore in an acceptable starting position.

But as understandable as Voigt’s strategy is, it is also risky. There are two main dangers. One is of a fundamental nature: Just as he gave the AfD shaping power in joint votes through direct agreements, he is now enhancing Höcke in direct dialogue. The other danger affects Voigt personally. In order to beat an extremist like Höcke, he must be clearly superior to him intellectually and rhetorically. And to put it very carefully: At this point, people other than the Thuringian CDU state chairman have failed.