Teresa Roelcke, Author at European Focus

Matthias Quent is a sociologist and expert on the far right. He teaches at the Eastern German University Magdeburg-Stendal, where he also co-founded the Institute for Democratic Culture.

Concerning the recent rightist demonstrations in the eastern part of Germany – are they rather a “grassroots” uprising or organised by some central players?

It’s a bit of both: on October 8, we had the big demonstration called “Energy security and protection against inflation – our country first”, organised by Germany’s far-right party AfD with more than 10.000 people in Berlin. It was the only big demonstration in recent times: we mostly see decentralised gatherings being part of networks which have emerged during the pandemic.

Can the huge financial aid from the government help to keep rightist protests down?

What we see just now are no social uprisings, we see nationalist uprisings. They are campaigning against migrants as well as against covid prevention measures and mixing it up with the energy topic.

Of course, good social politics is extremely important to prevent discontentment among those who do not yet identify as far right, a discontentment which may be instrumentalised by nationalist players. However, nationalism is present anyway, it doesn’t need an energy crisis to emerge.

There will also be real social protests during the upcoming weekend by left-wing groups trying to differentiate themselves clearly from alleged social protests of the right.

How strong is Russian influence over the German far right?

It’s difficult to say. On October 3, Björn Höcke, a right-wing exponent even within AfD, held a speech in Gera where he explicitly stood up for a pro-Russian agenda. Of course, one popular argument of the far right doesn’t work anymore now: the call for opening Nord Stream 2.

Although there is no renewed proof of concrete Russian influence in recent times, it doesn’t seem that the far right is dependent on it so much: it is strong in eastern Germany anyway.

Johannes Hillje is a political consultant with a focus on pan-European communication and author of the book “Plattform Europa”, in which he elaborates his vision for a vital European public discourse.

Mr. Hillje, you are critical of the way public spheres in Europe are still generally organised on a national basis. Why?

Although there is a lot of reporting on European issues in different national media, it is nearly always filtered by national interests. In most cases, the preferred perspective is: What is ‘our’ national benefit from a decision? But not: How does it serve our common European interest?

What are the risks?

Overall, this causes a democratic problem because we are living in a common political system. The nation states have handed over a considerable amount of decision-making power to the EU. Our common political institutions make decisions influencing the lives of all of us on a daily basis. But we don’t have a common and public democratic debate in which we could discuss these decisions together.

In addition, national governments will continue using this absence again and again for a blame game: Responsibility for unpopular decisions is often blamed on Brussels, while popular decisions are claimed to be taken by the national capital. There is hardly anyone correcting the stereotypical depiction of the EU or the other member states. So you can easily nourish anti-European sentiment.

What do you suggest?

In general, we need more shared communication spaces and truly European mass media. I also envision a real big shot: A common, publicly-owned digital European communication platform providing the infrastructure for a pan European discourse. It should provide not only news on European matters, but also entertainment and cultural content advancing a European identity.

We should have political talk shows with European politicians and series, which tell stories of Europeans living together, for instance in border regions, during Erasmus or Interrail. And it could enable a truly pan European exchange including artificial intelligence-supported translations or virtual reality meetings.