Constanze Stelzenmüller
Appearances
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
My name is Constanze Stelzenmüller, and I apologize. That's the name I was born with.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
And I direct the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
So, I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, Germany has very special rules for for prohibiting parties, and for hate speech because of its history, because of national socialism that was in power in Germany between 1933 and 1945, and that led to the Holocaust and to World War II.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
But to answer your question about why the AFD has even gotten into the crosshairs of these legal rules, it is that its members and its leadership over the past decade have repeatedly made overt or barely veiled references to Nazi slogans and Nazi ideas. They cooperate with extreme right and neo-Nazi movements.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
They ally themselves with parties in the rest of Europe and also in the European Parliament that are overtly neo-Nazi. As for prosecuting hate speech, for the longest time after 1949, throughout the Cold War and much of the decades after reunification in 1990, There were always hard right movements. There were always neo-Nazi movements, but they were socially and politically fringe.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
So it has only been the rise of the AfD in the past decade that has led to the broadening of the spectrum of what is sayable in Germany, what is socially and politically possible. And therefore, there has literally been more hate speech in the public domain that has received the attention of of not just other political competitors, but also the courts.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
I will just say this, that the American constitutional order has always privileged freedom of speech in ways that the Germans after 1949 felt that they could not do because of the horrific experience that they had just gone through. You have never had a Holocaust. You have never started a world war. We did.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
And we felt that it was necessary to prescribe statements that declared allegiance to an ideology that had not just been toxic, but literally murderous.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
Is that right? Well, I can say that I was there in Munich. I wasn't in the exact same room. I was in the overflow of the overflow, because that speech had been awaited with some, I think a mixture of anticipation and apprehension, is fair to say, by everybody there. And one of the things that was so startling about it was that everybody had expected a
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
speech about foreign and security policy, about the future of NATO, about the peace negotiations with Ukraine and Russia. And instead of which, the vice president said the greatest threat to security in Europe was not external, but the threat to freedom and democracy.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
That's something with which I think 95% of those present at the conference and listening to him would have begged to differ. I mean, it's extraordinary. We are in the middle of a war in Europe, right, where the Russians are killing people every day on the front line and by bombarding cities.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
Ukrainian cities every day, and where they were also committing acts of disinformation and sabotage across Europe, including in my own country, Germany, every day. And to suggest that a public debate about prohibiting the AFT or other extremist parties Or the prosecution of hate speech to suggest that that is somehow a greater threat to security in Europe left people absolutely flabbergasted.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
It left me flabbergasted. You could literally, you know, see and hear the shockwaves ripple through the room. Because...
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
It's never happened that an American senior official, apart obviously from the efforts made by Elon Musk, who is, after all, not an elected official, that an American senior official had, in front of a European audience, espoused parties that seek to subvert the German constitution. Again, you're right that he didn't mention the AFD, but it was pretty clear whom he meant.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
And the people in the room and the people at the Munich Security Conference and public commentary in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, I think completely correctly read that as an endorsement of the AFD. And by the way, the AFD is problematic not just because it references in a positive manner Germany's Nazi history, It is also problematic because it is pro-Putin. It is pro-China.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
It is against the European Union. It is against NATO. And I think it should also interest American listeners that it is also very anti-American, right? It's just now getting so much support from senior American figures that it is letting that part of its platform drop under the counter. And so there were multiple, multiple genuinely offensive aspects of that speech.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
But if the vice president was trying to help the AFD gain a greater vote share, it hasn't worked. Again, consider the following. The AFD is stuck at around 20%, which is exactly where it was in the polls before Elon Musk and the vice president began their efforts to help it.
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
I will say this, that while I am relieved that the AFD did not experience a triumphal result, it remains in second place, and none of the Democratic parties will coalition with it. And my greatest concern is that we could see a next German government that has to govern with a volatile and perhaps fragile three-way coalition, actively opposed by a very strong anti-system right-wing party, the AfD,
Today, Explained
Germany's rightward march
And which in turn finds vocal and determined supporters, not just in Moscow and in Beijing, but also in Washington, D.C.,