Vance at Munich’s security conference: Is there still the fire wall?

US Vice President JD Vance asked the Munich Security Conference on Friday that the German parties should open up to work with the AfD. “There is no place for fire walls,” he said in a speech that promoted the cultural struggle of the new right over long distances. Then Vance met with AfD chairman Alice Weidel.

The symbolic meaning is enormous. The United States, which enabled West Germany after 1945 to build a liberal democracy and supported reunification in freedom in 1990, are now committed to the government participation of a party, in which individual state associations are classified as constitutional. The agenda of US President Donald Trump and his Vice Vance for Europe makes talk: they want to enable right-wing parties to power in all states.

Sure, we can clearly reject this influence. Just as the German politician from Olaf Scholz to Friedrich Merz did. Only we should make ourselves honest: outrage alone does not solve the problem. And at least as important: When we talk about the defense of democracy against right wing, we are happy to indicate illusions. You could also say: self -deception.

“We are the fire wall” was the motto of many demonstrations in the past few weeks. The aim is to get the CDU and CSU to refrain from cooperation with the AfD. The hope of many is to stabilize democracy without having to go for the sharp sword of a party ban procedure against the AfD.

The advocates of the fire wall to the AfD should recognize that this approach is very likely to be equivalent to a hopeless bet against political gravity. It is not very realistic to believe that the fire wall can last in the long term.

On the one hand, it unintentionally leads to the AfD becoming stronger and the fire blows more and more over the wall. Thuringia gives a foretaste. It is always more heterogeneous coalitions, the only purpose of which is to keep the AfD away from power. “Great well and solve the problems of the citizens” In response to the AfD, more and more difficult, in an increasingly wild constellations, is becoming more and more difficult. At the same time, the AfD can become increasingly effective in the course of the process as the only alternative to the “system parties”.

On the other hand, the tactical location for conservatives in the Union is becoming increasingly frustrating. The AfD on its right is getting bigger, while in coalitions it has to make increasingly unsatisfactory compromises with center-left parties. It is therefore unlikely that CDU boss Merz can discipline his party in the long term not to collect the AfD in the long term.

The fact that Merz has recently accepted joint votes with the AfD in the Bundestag will increase the centrifugal forces against the ban on any cooperation, especially in the East German state associations. If formal cooperation with the AfD occurs in individual CDU regional associations, the party threatens to tear. Tragically, the AfD with its bet on the resolution and fragmentation of the CDU as the Christian Democratic People’s Party has no prospects for success.

The conclusion from it is clear: All those who are convinced that an AfD does not disease or democratized due to a government participation and therefore must not get close to government responsibility cannot simply build on the continued existence of the fire wall. You must seriously deal with a ban procedure for the AfD, even if this is a bad and risky option. In any case, as Merz at the beginning of last year, from the failure of the NPD ban that a party cannot be forbidden with such a large voters, is misleading.

The Federal Constitutional Court does not have the 2017 NPD ban on the NPD because the party did not consider it to be constitutional. The court considered it to be proven that the NPD “is planned and qualified to achieve its goals against the free democratic basic order”. Rather, the reason for the rejection of the application for a party ban was that “concrete clues with weight” was missing from the Klein Party NPD that it could be successful. So it is precisely the fact that the AfD is currently united around 20 percent of the votes nationwide that even makes the success of a prohibition procedure more likely. This is exactly the basic principle of the “defensive democracy” of the Basic Law, which also did not seem familiar to the US Vice President in his speech yesterday.

Regardless of whether you are tackling a prohibition, democratic parties should emphasize an “AfD stress test” of the rules of the constitutional organs such as dishes or parliaments. These should be adjusted in such a way that in the event of a government participation, the AfD is made as difficult as possible to improve liberal-democratic basic principles.

In addition, it should apply that the standing for liberal democracy must not be a purely defensive project. The defense of democracy on the part of the SPD, Greens and also many civil society forces has recently looked like a strangely ideasless-conservative project. It is true that democracy should not be a playground for disruption fantasies of tech-oligarches like Elon Musk, as Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier put on Friday. But if the project of liberal democracy wants to continue to be successful, it has to be about further development and improvement, especially in times of great technological upheavals – not just about preservation.

At the same time, everyone has to be clear what is at stake with a view to the next federal government. It could have been the last shot of the democratic center if the coalition dismantled itself again. In recent years, the CDU/CSU opposition has accompanied the self-disassembly of the traffic lights with a lot of malice. The new democratic opposition should critically accompany the work of the next coalition. But no matter how difficult it is after the last few weeks: If the Union wins the choice, all democratic powers should be due to the success of a Chancellor Friedrich Merz.