BSW and fascism: When the AfD's "peace party" rolls the red carpet

On August 30th, the BSW invited people to “Fortress Mark” in Magdeburg, disguised as a “freedom of expression festival”. Anyone who looked didn't see a festival, but a workshop: Here there was a live demonstration of how a party that calls itself "left" is paving the way for the AfD. Top candidate Claudia Wittig opened the event with the statement that there is no need for a "basic consensus" in political debates - a formula that in practice only means one thing: Nazis are socially acceptable conversation partners as long as they share the correct enemy image.

The line-up spoke for itself. Stefan Homburg, convicted of the banned SA slogans, was allowed to undisturbedly demand that public prosecutors and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution be politically expelled and that the "appointment practice of judges and public prosecutors" be changed - in plain language: a synchronization of the judiciary according to the AfD's taste. The audience applauded. Gabriele Krone-Schmalz was allowed to sell her relativization of war reporting as science and was subsequently announced as the BSW candidate for the office of Federal President. Accredited: the right-wing extremist Compact magazine, satisfied with the BSW's "openness" towards "patriots and right-wing forces". Anyone who still doubted that this cross-front strategy had a system could read the next day that Wittig met unannounced with the AfD parliamentary group leader Oliver Kirchner at the parallel "Peace Festival" - while a moderator was already publicly brokering a coalition.

That's not a glitch, that's strategy. The BSW is losing support dramatically in Saxony-Anhalt - from 11.2 percent in the last federal election to currently around 4 percent in surveys. Instead of distancing itself from the right, the party is seeking proximity to the AfD, apparently hoping to overcome the 5 percent hurdle through common enemy images - migration, "Ukraine war", media hatred, corona policy. It's always the same cross-front logic: first take the "citizens' concerns" seriously, then dismiss the democratic firewall as an elitist thing, and in the end you end up sitting at the table with the same people you supposedly wanted to fight.

The “Antiverschurbelte Aktion” protested against this on site with a satirical counter-rally - small, visible, uncomfortable for the festival guests, who responded to the protesters with insults and openly right-wing radical statements. That's exactly the point: Anyone who demands "freedom of expression" but labels every contradiction as an attack is not practicing a culture of debate, but rather exclusion with the opposite sign.

For us as an anti-fascist movement, this means: The opponents are not just those who tick AfD on the ballot. They are also those who keep the extreme right's back organisationally, medially and rhetorically - whether out of calculation, out of desperation over dwindling poll numbers or out of genuine ideological proximity to the Russia fetish and authoritarianism. In Magdeburg, the BSW showed where this path leads. Solidarity goes to those who resisted there with cardboard boxes and patience - and to the resistance that must now be organized, regardless of who ultimately wins the state elections.

Sources

- https://de.indymedia.org/node/860393
- https://de.indymedia.org/node/860392