AfD | Good sausage goulash, bad sausage goulash

Steep anti-thesis: The left-green Ossi Bubble in Berlin loves sausage goulash. What now? Photo: IMAGO/Funke Foto Services After the election in Saxony-Anhalt, not only many left-wingers finally started to campaign for understanding for their fellow citizens, who supposedly have to live with the feeling that they have "always been taken for a ride" since the fall of communism, as was announced on election evening with many grins to the television cameras, and who therefore no longer know what to do other than to give almost 44 percent of their votes to right-wing extremists.

Even in left-wing bubbles it was said that one should not engage in “ossibashing” and “kicking down.” “Are 35 years of lower wages enough?” was asked excitedly in one of the anti-fascist echo chambers. It is easy to prove that the extremely low standard of living in Saxony-Anhalt is a fairy tale. If you look at the price-adjusted per capita income, i.e. what is actually available to people, taking into account the different price levels in Germany, you can see, for example, that not a single district in Saxony-Anhalt has a lower price-adjusted per capita income than, for example, the banking city of Frankfurt am Main.

To illustrate, an example: The beautiful district of Börde in Saxony-Anhalt, “characterized by rolling hills, fertile fields and extensive forests,” as it says on landkreis-boerde.de, and with a real purchasing power of 29,161 euros per capita per year and a proportion of foreigners of 7.5 percent, voted 46.2 percent AfD in the state elections, while in Cologne, for example, the population only voted in real terms Net income of 26,221 euros, which means that he has 2,940 euros less at his disposal than the desperate AfD voters in Börde (rank 180 out of 400 all-German districts and independent cities). In Cologne (rank 343), the proportion of foreigners is around 21 percent, but only 9.1 percent vote for fascists.

It becomes particularly difficult if the urban left's hostility towards sausage goulash and Spirelli is simply imagined.

The journalist Krsto Lazarevic summed up the AfD voter problem aptly: »We are talking here largely about people who own a house and have a VW in front of their door, but think that they are actually entitled to a villa and a Porsche. At some point, social policy reaches its limits.”

The AfD self-defense voters who are desperate, underprivileged and culturally overwhelmed by hordes of foreigners cannot be reconciled with reality. But what then? Lazarevic again: “These are mostly people who think they deserve to be at the top because they are decent, pure-bred Germans. They like to step down and they don't care if there is a shortage of doctors. They just don’t want people with darker skin who earn more than them.”

However, “Welt” journalist Gerrit Seebald did not allow himself to be fobbed off with such obvious things. Instead, he gave the discussion a new twist with the now infamous sausage goulash theory: In view of a photo that showed AfD Hanswurst Siegmund eating Spirelli pasta, sausage goulash and Gouda from "Gut & Günstig" on his terrace with two other obscure figures and his wife and wearing "a worn-out Adidas shirt," Seebald couldn't help but immediately make what he thought was his idea “Thoughts” holds: “If I were to serve this food to my Berlin bubble – regardless of whether it was conservative, liberal or left-wing liberal – quite a few people would quickly turn up their noses.”

For the record: Berlin is ranked 383rd in the real purchasing power ranking, the district of Stendal, the one in which Siegmund took the "Good & Cheap" photo on his terrace in Tangermünde, is ranked 281st. But let's follow Seebald a little further: "In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has politicized a clientele that was previously apolitical. Maybe because this clientele has lived in a completely different world than those who have previously made politics. Ulrich Siegmund managed to bring the political back into their world." This also works "through the feeling that Siegmund gave people: to finally belong somewhere again."

Seebald's argument goes something like this: The right-wing radical leader of a right-wing radical regional association, who earns around 9,000 euros gross in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament, managed to persuade the sulking German non-voters to vote for him. And that because, in contrast to politicians from other parties who understand politics as dealing adequately with the problems that actually arise in a community, he instead serves them sausage goulash and cheap cheese and thus suggests that he can also be part of the sausage goulash and Gouda gang deporting foreigners. “You can constantly talk about classism and social exclusion,” writes Seebald. "But if at the same time you develop a political and cultural aesthetic in which a plate of sausage goulash with spirelli and a pack of 'Good & Cheap' Gouda are something that you secretly turn up your nose at, then it becomes difficult."

However, it becomes particularly difficult if you have only imagined the sausage goulash-Spirelli hostility of urban leftists and have never been to the places you think you know so well about in your entire life. The people who not only deal with questions of classism theoretically, but also do something about it, are very often people who live precariously themselves. These are the people who voluntarily organize soup and neighborhood kitchens, visit supermarkets every day to collect food and then go to the alternative club in the evening and prepare food, which they then “sell” for four euros plus a donation.

These are often exactly the people who sit at the local general meeting of the Left, the Greens or the SPD on the weekend without receiving a penny for it. None of them turn up their noses at cheap food. Wanting to accuse these people of having "developed a political and cultural aesthetic" (whatever that is supposed to be) that is classist and excludes itself, namely sausage goulash-eating German racists who vote for fascist parties - you have to get to that point first.

In any case, the prize for the shabbiest debate contribution goes to Springer's Gerrit Seebald, who in reality has nothing else in mind than to spread the same resentment of the aloof vegan city dweller in the millionth variation. Or to quote Lazarevic one last time: “And this story is also an impudence towards all people who are really not doing well financially and who would never sign up for a fascist party. By the way, a large part of them are people with a migration background, but they don't matter in the debate anyway." Probably because they've never heard of sausage goulash.

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