this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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This is absolutely wrong. The validation of immigration concerns by the SPD, Greens and CDU is what gave AfD the popularity they have now.
This effect is well proven in political sciences.
Same in France. All the major parties have been tougher and tougher with immigration for decades, and the far right popularity keeps increasing. It's just validating them and it solves nothing.
I think that’s your opinion and you’re making a claim for which you don’t have any evidence. We have real world evidence that giving voters what they want wins elections. I cited the Danish example. The Social Democrats adopted slightly tougher immigration policies after the 2015 election, in which the right wing Danish People’s Party (DF) won 21.1% of the votes. Following these changes, the DF lost most of their votes, dropping to 8.7% in 2019. I would hardly call Denmark a right wing hellscape today.
I take issue at your broader contention that it’s somehow wrong to give voters what they want. That’s how democracy works.
By your logic, AfD should now be below 5% because all major parties in Germany are now tougher on immigration, the CDU is now directly taking positions of the AfD a few years back.
In Denmark this may have worked, might just be correlation, but in general, what your saying is wrong and would make AfD even stronger.
But they aren’t. Only the CDU has proposed some changes which they haven’t implemented, and aren’t expected to make any measurable impact. It is far too little, far too late.
CDU/CSU and FDP pushed for exactly what AfD wants on migration in parliament and voted with them a few weeks ago.
Chancellor Scholz (SPD) is pushing a tougher stance on deportation.
We have border controls to tackle illegal immigration again, decided by interior minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).
The Green Party has internal struggles because the youth organization wants the party leadership to stop going along with the aggressive tightening of migration policy.
One of the big reasons BSW split off from the Left was because they wanted a more aggressive stance against migration, completely in line with AfD.
To summarize:
AfD wants Nazi shit.
CDU/CSU, FDP and BSW are copying them on the topic, including demanding things that are obvious violations of European law and our constitution.
SPD is steering in that direction as far as possible without obviously breaking European law and our constitution.
The Greens are begrudgingly going along with it.
Among all the relevant parties here only the Left have a clear stance against all this madness.
I'm not sure if you read your sources but you are only corroborating what I argued. It's a lot of empty talk. None of them are willing to act. Take the example of the border security. It's theatre. Even if an illegal immigrant is stopped, they still have the right to reside in the country for many years, and indefinitely if they refuse to leave in most circumstances. All of this is paid for by German citizens. I can't believe you would use the Greens as an example of a party getting tough on immigration. They have zero policies to reduce immigration.
To summarise your sources: not a single party is willing to act on immigration. Don't be surprised when people vote for parties which will.
I am not wasting any more time by digging out statistics about any of this stuff. Since you apparently on purpose ignore the blatantly obvious part where 2 other major parties actively voted with AfD for exactly what they want on migration I don't think any amount of sources or data could convince you anyway.
No, please, continue to support my arguments. I very much appreciate it.
You're talking to yourself now
The voters from DF mostly switched to other populistic right wing parties. In total very few voters moved across the middl, even if the middle has moved further to the right.
People are being polarized more which is exactly the intention with the foreign propaganda. So, no, Denmark did not solve the problem.
I don't think that's accurate. You can see voter turnout for the 2015 and 2019 elections here. It's true that some voters went to KF and Nye Borgerlige, but even more voters went to RV and SF. I think you are right to argue it caused more people to vote for parties further on the left and right, but the far left appears to be the aggregate winner.