Panorama Ramelow near “Miosga”
“Before Corona, now with a dove of peace and a Russian flag”
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Prime Minister Ramelow: “There is a point where I have reached a limit”
Source: NDR/Thomas Ernst/ThomasErnst
Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow criticizes the strengthening AfD and the alliance of his former party colleague Wagenknecht. He also warns against the Russia-friendly attitude of many East Germans. “We have to stick with the Russians,” he often hears.
State elections are coming up this year in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. According to recent surveys, the AfD, which is particularly radical in East Germany, is in first place among voters in all three countries. The BSW is also warming up to Sahra Wagenknecht. “Will the East become ungovernable?” Caren Miosga asked the Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left). Following the individual conversation, she expanded the group to include the former Interior and Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière and the sociologist Katharina Warda, who primarily deals with East Germany and racism.
Ramelow looked back once again to February 2020, when Thomas Kemmerich was elected Prime Minister of Thuringia with the support of the AfD. At first he was “calm and composed” and later left the plenary hall. On the one hand, this was due to AfD politician Stefan Möller, who announced that his party had “set a trap” for the elected FDP politician.
The left-wing politician criticized the attitude as an “unbelievable catastrophe”. An FDP representative also met him personally and told him: “We will check your office at 5 p.m. to see whether you have cleared it.” He found such an announced “control commission” to be “outrageous.”
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Five years later, according to a survey by ntv and RTL, the Thuringian AfD now stands at 36 percent. Bodo Ramelow justified the party’s values with a “stacking crisis”. These included the lack of new elections in Thuringia, the “short-term prime minister” Kemmerich and the impression that then-Chancellor Angela Merkel had “brought him back into office”.
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In addition, the AfD benefited from the pandemic and the associated political decisions, which “led to a division in society” that still exists today. The left-wing politician explained that those who previously went to the Monday demonstrations because of Corona were now demonstrating with “the dove of peace and the Russian flag together in their hands”.
The representatives of the newly founded BSW also have a certain proximity to Russia. Ramelow invited Sahra Wagenknecht to “show a face against the brown monster” with him in Thuringia. But his former party colleague now believes it is permissible to vote with the AfD in the Bundestag. “There is a point at which I have reached a limit,” said Ramelow, “I will do everything to ensure that democracy wins.” The development surrounding Wagenknecht was “bitter” for him. He shared leadership responsibility with her and always “fought for the broad left”.
Bodo Ramelow, Katharina Warda and Thomas de Mazière at “Miosga”
Source: NDR/Thomas Ernst/ThomasErnst
“I’m not convinced by any of this at all,” said Thomas de Maizière about the BSW. Sahra Wagenknecht is primarily “interested in her fate” and “less in the fate of the country.” His position on the AfD was even clearer, which he characterized as a “right-wing extremist led and controlled party”. The Union differentiates itself from it “crystal-clearly”.
As with the right-wing populists, there is also a “demarcation decision” on Bodo Ramelow’s left, but he in no way wants this to be understood as “equating” the two. Nevertheless, the CDU politician rejected closer cooperation with the Left with regard to their stance on NATO and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. “You can’t form a coalition with them.”
Katharina Warda, on the other hand, saw it as the Union’s political responsibility to work with the Left to prevent Björn Höcke from becoming a potential head of government. Instead, in her home country of Saxony-Anhalt, for example, she experiences a “strong flirtation with right-wing content, with right-wing rhetoric – also towards the AfD” among CDU candidates.
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Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer is also trying to gain sympathy points among AfD voters through his skepticism about arms deliveries to Ukraine. However, adopting such positions simply leads to “shifting what can be said, what is normal, further to the right,” warned the sociologist, and thus enables “a climate in which it is very easy to vote for right-wing parties.”
Ramelow was particularly concerned about the widespread attitude towards Russia in East Germany. Although Vladimir Putin represents chauvinism, imperialism and colonialism, he hears from people in the East that “we have to stick with the Russians.”
He pointed out that Thuringian soldiers were stationed in the partner country Lithuania, against which there was a “motion to abolish sovereignty” in the Russian State Duma. “Moscow is already playing with the idea that after Ukraine, “Lithuania may become a target of attack,” warned the left-wing politician, “and then we will be right in the middle of it with Thuringian soldiers.”
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