Berlin and beyond: Virgin voter

September 29, 2017

They say you never forget your first time. And they might be right. After weeks of looking around for the right person, checking their credentials, wondering whether everything would fall into place to make sure it really happened for me and imagining what it would feel like when it did… the big day finally arrived.

Crossing the threshold of the building where I was to become one among millions who had undergone this rite of passage before me, my mood was a mix of excitement and anticipation. Slipping into one of two purpose erected unceremonious wooden booths, I did what I was there to do. I marked my ballot paper. Not once. But twice.

And then went home to listen to a Nobel laureate prophesize with his pen. And his guitar. I think he mentioned something about changing times.

More Berlin and Beyond

– Into the woods

– Hunting for hipsters

– Auf Wiedersehen Britain

No kidding, Bob. Not eight hours later, the polls had closed and the sun was poised to set on a country that had used its turn at the ballot box to give the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 94 seats in the Bundestag, and thereby usher a far-right populist party into the country’s parliamentary fold for the first time in more than half a century.

As I cycled to work on the morning after a restless night before, politicians’ likenesses bore down at me from their lamppost mountings. They already looked so yesterday, the color seeming to have drained out of some of their faces along with their hopes of appealing to the masses.

A large campaign poster is taken away

Packing up on the day after

Wheels in spin

The poster that most caught my eye was the one I had previously done such a good job of ignoring. But in the dismal light of that post-ballot day, the AfD’s campaign appeal for Germans to dare to vote for them was omnipresent. Because more than 12 percent of the population had heeded the call.

Throughout my bike ride, I scrutinized everyone I passed, wondering if they had contributed to the rise of a movement with anti-immigration rhetoric and sentiment at its core. Later, I zoomed into the interactive map of Berlin that reveals the predominant political proclivities of entire streets.

More Berlin and Beyond

– Zootopia to zoomania

– Back to school

– Books, glorious books

Mine, I was happy to note, was not marked in the blue that would make it an AfD hotbed. But that doesn’t alter the fact they exist elsewhere, and that Germany is consequently facing a different tomorrow.

anti-AfD demonstration

Too many peeople disagreed

A tomorrow that has already elicited demonstrations, recriminations, warnings that this – of all countries – must remain ever mindful of its past, questions about the how and what of a new coalition and promises from the AfD to make Angela Merkel play cat to its dog.

What has also been laid bare is that Germany’s main parties are as out of touch with the population, as they are with themselves. And that they have a lot of rethinking and reaching out to do if they’re to steer the country back off the course onto which it has now stumbled. A course that runs counter to the very ideals of an open and pluralistic society.

And so I’m quite certain I will remember this particular first. Not only because it was my virgin vote as a new German citizen, but because I cast it in what has already been dubbed a historic election.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alexander Gauland

Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team’s defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch – but people would not want “someone like Boateng as a neighbor.” He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: “We can’t be blackmailed by children’s eyes.”

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alice Weidel

Alice Weidel generally plays the role of “voice of reason” for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians “pigs” and “puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Frauke Petry

German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must “use firearms if necessary” to “prevent illegal border crossings.” Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Björn Höcke

The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin’s Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame” and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year – leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Beatrix von Storch

Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts – but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. “People who won’t accept STOP at our borders are attackers,” the European lawmaker said. “And we have to defend ourselves against attackers.”

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Marcus Pretzell

Alternative for Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state chairman Marcus Pretzell, who is also Frauke Petry’s new husband, wrote “These are Merkel’s dead,” shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andre Wendt

The member of parliament in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) – the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andre Poggenburg

Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to “get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus” – the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alexander Gauland – again

During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be “disposed of” back to Anatolia. The German term, “entsorgen,” raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

Author: Dagmar Breitenbach