Latest news with #AlternativefurDeutschland
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Europe's establishment can no longer ignore immigration
European politics is becoming repetitive. Fuelled by concern over migration, a Right-wing party surges in the polls, and the political establishment immediately sets about working out how to deal with the symptom without addressing the cause. Having entered a coalition in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders appears to have come to the conclusion that the Dutch establishment is currently drawing from this exact playbook, and has collapsed the government as a result of its unwillingness to back his revised plans on migration and failure to deliver existing pledges. It is another sorry entry in a long series. In Germany, some politicians are calling for an outright ban on Alternative fur Deutschland, with the intelligence agencies now authorised to use surveillance in an attempt to gather information on the party. In France, Marine Le Pen has been banned from standing in the next election. And in Britain, 15 years of consecutive votes for lower migration, with manifesto pledges and verbal promises to deliver the same, have resulted in the precise opposite as politicians drunk on inflated fiscal forecasts have sought to shirk hard decisions. There is every prospect that Sir Keir Starmer's recent tough talk will turn out to be yet another attempt to pay lip service to concerns on migration without introducing meaningful reforms. The scale of the changes triggered by our open doors policy, however, means pressure will continue to build. Should politicians continue to defy the public, they should not be surprised if they pay a heavy price at the ballot box. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Epoch Times
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
AfD Sues German Spy Agency After Being Labeled an Extremist Party
The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) political party in Germany sued the country's domestic intelligence service on Monday for classifying it as a 'right-wing extremist organization.' The designation subjects the party, which came second in the national elections in February, to greater surveillance from state authorities. The AfD instigated legal proceedings at an administrative court in the city of Cologne, where the domestic intelligence service has its headquarters. A 'We will not allow a politically instrumentalized authority to attempt to distort democratic competition and delegitimize millions of votes,' they said. 'This shameful action undermines the fundamental values of our democracy—and has no place in a constitutional state.' Related Stories 5/2/2025 1/22/2025 A court spokesperson confirmed that the party had filed a suit and an urgent motion, the The move by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution—the formal name of the domestic intelligence service—means its officials can now use informants and other tools such as audio and video recordings to monitor the party's activities across Germany. The office, known as the BfV, warned that the party posed a threat to the country's democratic order, saying the AfD 'disregards human dignity,' in particular by what it called 'ongoing agitation' against refugees and migrants. After having regarded the AfD as a suspected extremist movement since 2021, the BfV designated the populist party as 'right-wing extremist' on May 2. BfV said in a statement that AfD's approach to ethnicity is 'not compatible with the free democratic basic order.' According to BfV's statement, AfD does not consider German nationals with a migration background from Muslim-origin countries as equal members of the German people. BfV Vice President Sinan Selen and Vice President Dr. Silke Willems said in a joint statement, 'We have come to the conviction that the Alternative for Germany is a definitively right-wing extremist movement.' The BfV has compiled a 1,100-page experts' report that it says will not be released to the public. As anti-illegal immigration parties have been gaining support across Europe, the AfD has attracted international attention, including support from tech billionaire Elon Musk. Some top Trump administration officials have criticized the decision. In an In its own social media post responding directly to Rubio, the German Foreign Ministry wrote, 'This is democracy,' and called the decision 'the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law.' The ministry said it is 'independent courts that will have the final say.' 'We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped,' it said. Certain U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who met with Weidel after the elections in February, wrote on 'Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it,' Vance said. The AfD has often faced criticism for its allegedly Russia-friendly positions and opposes Germany's stance toward the war in Ukraine. Berlin is Ukraine's second-biggest weapons supplier after the United States. Moscow also criticized the extremist classification of the party on Monday. 'The European political landscape itself is now full of various restrictive measures against those political forces and individuals whose world view does not fit into the dominant mainstream,' Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. He said the classification of the AfD as extremist was a domestic affair and that Russia had no intention of interfering, Russian state news agency Owen Evans contributed to this report.
Otago Daily Times
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Galloping away from The Donald
The dictionary defines a horse whisperer as "someone who is skilled at training horses using gentle, non-violent methods based on understanding horse behaviour and psychology." By that standard, the only Trump-whisperer in Europe is Vladimir Putin (although Hungary's Viktor Orban and Italy's Giorgia Meloni might get bit-parts in the movie). The other far-right parties in big European countries (Rassemblement National in France, Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany, PiS in Poland, Reform in the UK) don't know which way to look. They know that the US Republican Party is in the same tradition, but European history has also taught them to recognise fascism when they see it. They all do well in elections by being fascist-adjacent, but they start to shed votes if they get too explicit about their ideas. Nowhere do they get more than a-third of the votes, whereas Donald Trump got more than half in the United States this time. They cannot follow him where he seems to be going, and many of them wouldn't even want to. A better measure of how Trumpism does in the export market will be found in the other parts of the Anglosphere, and happily there are two elections in that zone in the next two weeks, in Canada and Australia. They couldn't be further apart geographically, but with the great exception of the French fact in Quebec they couldn't be closer in their history and politics. The French fact can be ignored on this occasion, since all francophones are united in thinking that it's bad enough living as a large minority (22% of the population) in a country that is familiar with the concept of language rights and in some parts is legally or at least de facto bilingual. The threat of annexation by the United States is existential for French-speakers, who would be only a minuscule fraction (2.6%) of the enlarged country's population. The prospect has converted almost every francophone into a devout Canadian nationalist, at least for the time being. The beauty of this experiment is that just three months ago the opposition party in both countries was fairly far right and becoming more so and that both parties were led by men who could reasonably be characterised as Trump-whisperers, or at least Trump wannabes. Most importantly, both parties expected to win the impending elections in a walk. Both prime ministerial candidates, Peter Dutton, of the conservative Coalition in Australia, and Pierre Poilievre, of the Conservative Party in Canada, concentrated on Trump's main themes: immigration, crime, an end to the "indocrination" of children in schools, and big cuts to "wasteful" government services. Dutton even proposed an agency like Elon Musk's DOGE. Indeed, while Poilievre has had great difficulty in taking his distance from Trump, Dutton has not even cut the umbilical cord. Not only did he promise to cancel offshore windfarms (a Trump obsession), but he even echoed The Donald's claim that they harm whales. Australian pollster Peter Lewis says simply that people think Dutton is "too much like Trump". There is no doubt that it was Trump and only Trump who turned the elections in both Canada and Australia from surefire victories into certain defeats for the right-wing parties. When Trump was inaugurated on January 20 of this year, both conservatives were far ahead of their opponents, but their numbers began to slide almost immediately. In Australia, a safe distance away from the United States, other factors were also in play, but a swing of almost 10 points in three months suggests that the Trump factor was decisive. In Canada, where there was a swing of more than 20 points in two months, there can be no doubt that it was Trump who enabled Poilievre to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. To explain this we must move from the realm of facts and calculations to the slippery world of motives and emotions, because it seems pretty clear that these votes did not shift because of self-interest or ideological conviction. They were mostly driven, I think, by revulsion at the character of the man Donald Trump. In Canada there was also a change of leader from the deeply unpopular Justin Trudeau to the relatively unknown Mark Carney, which lured some people back into the big Liberal tent. There was certainly outrage at Trump's threats to crush the economy and take over the country, which doubtless moved more votes to Carney. But none of that applies to Australia. There it is simple guilt by association that has brought Peter Dutton low and will probably cost him the election. It's unworthy of me, I know, but I take a certain comfort from that. • Gwynne Dyer is an independent London journalist.
Middle East Eye
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Middle East Eye
Progressive except for Palestine: Berlinale 2025 and the politics of omission
The 2024 Berlinale was the most memorable edition in the film festival's recent history for all the wrong reasons. The initial outcry over the opening ceremony invitation for the far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD) gave way to protests over Germany's complicity in the war on Gaza. Those protests notably ended with the infamous closing ceremony where solidarity with Palestine expressed by the award-winning filmmaker Yuval Abraham was deemed 'one-sided' and 'antisemitic' by various German officials, including minister of culture, Claudia Roth. The film that incited the loudest uproar was No Other Land, the bastard child of the Berlinale and now Oscar-winning documentary feature, which depicted the Israeli state-sanctioned destruction of a small community in the occupied West Bank. Roth's blatantly racist assertion that she only clapped for a speech by the Abraham and not his Palestinian co-director Basel Adra spiralled into a PR calamity. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The 2024 edition marked the end of the tenure for the festival's Italian curator Carlo Chatrian. Chatrian broke protocol when he released a statement from his personal account criticising the German political establishment for 'weaponising' antisemitic rhetoric for political gains. The controversy of the 2024 edition did not end there. Roth never apologised for her comments. Instead, she doubled down, claiming that opinions expressed at the closing ceremony were 'not balanced' and that she intended to work closely with the festival's new director on the selection of juries and films. This year's Berlinale has faced a widespread call for boycott for both its silence over Gaza and its handling of the backlash against pro-Palestinian filmmakers in the last edition. Film criticism amid censorship Paris-based Turkish critic Oyku Sofuoglu was one of the journalists who decided to boycott the festival after witnessing what had happened last year. 'Attending major film festivals represents an important source of income for many of us, so it's hard to ignore the utilitarian aspect of watching films and writing about them,' Sofuoglu told Middle East Eye. 'The Berlinale's silence in the face of this genocide is the loudest and most deafening silence imaginable in the film community.' - Udi Aloni, Israeli filmmaker 'Especially considering how irrelevant the argument for 'the love of cinema' sounds here, I feel hopeless seeing my fellow colleagues in Berlin gluttonously consume films and hastily produce texts with equal speed and disdain, without a single thought for the hypocrisy unfolding right before their eyes.' New York-based Israeli filmmaker and visual artist Udi Aloni echoed Sofuoglu's sentiment, writing on his Instagram account that 'The Berlinale's silence in the face of this genocide is the loudest and most deafening silence imaginable in the film community.' Tilda Swinton, this year's recipient of the Honorary Golden Bear and longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, opted for a different strategy: she used the Berlinale as a platform to condemn ''state-perpetrated and internationally enabled genocide'. She advocated for a cinema as 'state,' as 'a borderless realm... inherently inclusive, immune to efforts of occupation, colonisation, ownership or development of Riviera property,' in a not-so subtle reference to Trump's plans for Gaza. For new Berlinale director, American programmer and ex-director of the London Film Festival, Tricia Tuttle, it was a baptism by fire, as she found herself in the crossfire of possibly the thorniest cultural debate in Europe's recent history. Tuttle was tasked with the sensitive job of navigating the ruthless German culture sector while attempting to win back the artists and filmmakers antagonised by German politicians since 7 October. Tuttle initially showed good faith by expressing support for the No Other Land team last November. A car crash Berlinale concludes with a German witch hunt against pro-Palestine filmmakers Read More » 'I don't consider the film, or statements made by co-directors at the Awards Ceremony of the Berlinale to be anti-Semitic,' a statement by Tuttle read. 'I also believe that discourse which suggests this film or its filmmakers are anti-Semitic creates danger for all of them, inside and outside of Germany, and it is important that we stand together and support them.' In December, Tuttle admitted that the German position on Israel-Gaza debate is 'putting artists off' the Berlinale. 'People are worried about: 'Does it mean I won't be allowed to speak? Does it mean that I won't be allowed to express empathy or sympathy for the victims in Gaza? Does it mean that I, if I say this, then I also have to say this at the same time?'. Tuttle was additionally opposed to the newly passed '"Antisemitism Resolution" which forbids a myriad of Palestinian symbols and gestures, emphasising that it's 'not a legally binding document and therefore doesn't have an impact on the way the Berlinale is run.' In that sense, Tuttle was extending an olive branch to the battered Middle Eastern and pro-Palestinian community. On the ground though, it was a starkly different story. Progressive except for Palestine Three Israeli films were featured in this year's edition, including two documentaries about the Israeli captives held by Palestinian fighters in Gaza. By contrast, there was a solitary Palestinian film, Yalla Parkour, which had its world premiere last year at Saudi Arabia's Red Sea festival. To put things into perspective, last year's edition presented a single Israeli film, the staunchly pacifist Shikun by Amos Gitai, a long-time ally to Palestinian artists, alongside No Other Land. Film selections reflect the politics of their organisers and the Berlinale, the most political of all major European festivals, is no exception. "For all festivals and all culture right now, the news agenda can often dominate the discourse," Tuttle said on 21 January. 'Shut up and fall in line': Israel, Palestine and the dawn of a new censorship in western art Read More » "We really hope that the films that audiences are going to see over the next weeks of the festival are going to get people talking about the vibrancy of the art form itself and the films themselves.' That did not turn out to be the case, ironically and precisely due to the highly politicised nature of the film selection. From Bong Joon-ho's Trump parody Mickey 17 to Radu Jude's anti-capitalist morality tale Kontinental '25, it was virtually impossible to avoid politics despite of Tuttle's best efforts. The politics on offer were predictably liberal and progressive, except for Palestine. Support for Ukraine remained unwavering, with Tuttle posing behind the country's flag at the Timestamp premiere. There was a sizeable number of LGBTQ films, anti-white supremacy films, anti-Russian films, pro-immigration films, anti-racism films, anti-patriarchy and feminist films, anti-Republican films, and anti-Assad films. The Berlinale 2025 selection was a confection of all imaginable liberal politics - except for Palestine. On Israeli captives The first of the Israeli films, Batim (Houses) by the Ukraine-born Tel Aviv-based visual artist Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum is the most innocuous of the lot. Yael Eisenberg plays Sasha, a non-binary person who abruptly quits his job and sets off on a journey to visit his old family house and confronts his demons. We soon realise that Sacha has been abused by her old mentor when he was still a girl. Everyone in Sasha's circle, be it her family or her aloof schoolteacher, pushes her to sweep her bruising past under the rug. The dual rejection of Sasha' Ukrainian and queer identities is emblematic of Israel's rejection of the different other, but there's little else about Israeli society in Tetelbaum's otherwise strikingly lensed and sensitive debut. More politically charged was the American-produced documentary Holding Liat, Brandon Kramer's account of the abduction and consequent release of American-Israeli peace activist Liat Beinin-Atzili. The bulk of the film, which is largely anchored from the point of Beinin-Atzili 's father, is set during her captivity, commencing on 7 October and concluding shortly after her release on 30 November. A relative of the family, Kramer initially focuses on the anxiety, panic, and confusion that engulf the Beinin-Atzili household. Only in the second half of the film, when the death toll in Gaza starts to mount, does the director expand the scope of the picture in a half-hearted attempt to provide a larger context for the conflict. The end result is patchy to say the least. Beinin-Atzili's father, Yehuda, is a sympathetic, compassionate figure who, as time goes by, laments the unfulfilled socialist promises of the kibbutz and equal co-existence with Palestinians. He mentions the 7,000 Palestinians held captive in Israeli prisons and remains vehemently anti-Netanyahu, as are most Israeli leftists. His teenage grandsons appear to be less sympathetic, however, demanding retribution for their mother's abduction and father's murder. Yehuda's brother, Stanford history professor Joel Beinin, emerges as the sole subject who is wholeheartedly with the Palestinian cause meanwhile. He cites the Nakba and underlines the fact that the kibbutz were constructed on the ruins of three Palestinian villages. The kibbutz utopia, he implies, was nothing more than a pipe dream. Throughout the course of the 50 days, Yehuda travels to the US, attends pro-Palestinian marches, confronts Netanyahu cronies and far-right Orthodox Jews, and briefly talks with a Palestinian activist who lost his family in Israeli army attacks. Over the course of 75 minutes, the word Palestine is not uttered once. The family members, who remain in the kibbutz, never address the horrors next door As it turns out, there is a limit to Beinin-Atzili's liberalism. In one scene, Yehuda pins part of the blame on the Palestinians, suggesting there's a price to be paid for the civilians who placed Hamas in power. Liat, on the other hand, admits that she was treated well by her Hamas captors who told her at some point that the Jews will be banished from Palestine. This statement is left hanging loose without a commentary. Neither Liat nor Kramer elucidates how the view was born and fostered. Near the end of the film, Liat stresses that nothing justifies the Israeli rampage in Gaza; that nothing could validate starving people to death. 'At the same time, you can't just go around invading houses and killing people,' she says. This flip-flopping could be regarded as part of Liat's complex thought-process through her experience of captivity. But herein lies the responsibility of the filmmaker to provide a proper framework for their political discourse, but one would be hard-pressed to find one in Holding Liat, an undeniably sincere film ultimately failed by its reluctance to adopt a political stance. There is a legitimate reasoning behind the selection of Liat, which earned the best documentary award. The same cannot be said of A Letter to David, Tom Shoval's ruminating essay on the capture of actor David Cunio on 7 October, who is yet to be released by Hamas. Like Liat, A Letter to David zeros on the actor's family members who remain emotionally paralysed by their son's unknown fate. Tom Shoval 'A Letter to David' is about the capture of David Cunio by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023 (AFP/John Macdougall) Home videos of David along with testimonials detailing the invasion and subsequent destruction of their house are punctuated with Shoval's voiceover, which takes the form of a personal letter to his former collaborator. Over the course of 75 minutes, the word Palestine is not uttered once. The family members, who remain in the kibbutz, never address the horrors next door; they never spare a thought to the carnage unfolding a few kilometres away from them. In the most unintentionally shocking, most morally reprehensible moment of any film I saw this year, David's mother stands casually in her balcony, calmly smoking a cigarette as the sound of Israeli shelling of Gaza is heard in the background. Holding Liat is not devoid of shortcomings, but at least it shows some humanity to Palestinian victims. David does not, casting the Palestinians in the role of the faceless barbaric perpetrators responsible for the robbed innocence of the actor and his family. Token Palestinian offering In the midst of this Israeli wave, Yalla Parkour, the debut feature by Nablus-born Washington, DC-based Areeb Zuaiter, came off as the token Palestinian film in the selection. Years in the making, Yalla Parkour follows Ahmad Matar, an affable Parkour athlete from Gaza dreaming of a better and freer life away from his hometown. Ahmad is a daredevil and a gifted athlete with remarkable agility honed by years of relentless practice. Hailing from a humble background and stranded in a place with little prospects, Ahmad treats the video camera as a vehicle to illustrate his talents to the world and as a potential ticket out of Gaza. The camera is his sole means of freedom: the borderless realm where he can realize his full potential; the realm where he can be anyone he wants to be. The Berlinale's position towards Russia in comparison to Israel has one indisputable interpretation: That Israeli actions in Gaza are more morally justifiable than Russia's For Palestinians in Gazan like Ahmad, the camera is their only viable tool of defiance. The narrative of Yalla Parkour consists of two layers: Ahmad's painful and lengthy efforts to leave Gaza, and the director's endeavour in reconnecting with her Palestinian roots and discovering her buried identity. The two strands never mesh together, with the latter transpiring to be superfluous, unconvincing, and forced. Zuaiter fails to convey the full essence of Ahmad. Zuaiter's hagiographic, one-dimensional presentation of her protagonist leaves off his loves, his weaknesses, his relationships, and even his political convictions. The only facet of Ahmad put on display is his determination to leave. The importance of Yalla Parkour lies in its sheer dramatisation of an ordinary young Gazan with modest dreams and hopes quashed by the invisible and unnamed Israeli occupation. Zuaiter documents the inhumane daily impediments Ahmad and his friends casually experience, from the impossibility of obtaining a Schengen visa to the agony of getting the coveted pass through the Rafah border; impediments Liat and Cunio are privileged enough not to experience. At the premiere of A Letter to David, a vigil was held for Cunio that was attended by Tuttle and a host of German artists and filmmakers. Nearly half the crew of Yalla Parkour, as the credits reveal, were killed by Israeli strikes after 7 October. No vigil was held for them; the Palestinian victims did not receive the same treatment by the festival. The objection on the inclusion of Israeli films is related to one blaring reality: the ongoing bar on Russian films. All major European and American fests have banned Russian filmmakers and journalists since the outset of the war in 2022. This was a moral stance the West had taken against Putin's aggression. No one demanded the festivals to be 'more balanced'; no one pressed for the importance of presenting 'the perspective of the other side'. The Berlinale's position towards Russia in comparison to Israel has one indisputable interpretation: that Israeli actions in Gaza are more morally justifiable than Russia's. Few, including this writer, wouldn't have had qualms over the inclusion of Israeli films had Russian movies been also admitted. But by welcoming back Israeli cinema with arms wide open after the murder of more than 49,000 Palestinians, after the destruction of Gaza, after the detention of thousands of Palestinians who have not received a fraction of the attention afforded to Beinin-Atzili and Cunio, the Berlinale and its new management have exposed their moral selectiveness. The Berlin Film Fest was held from 13 to 23 February
The Independent
22-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Germany's best defence against the AfD is for mainstream parties to offer hope
Politicians who are strongly opposed to immigration – who are sometimes supportive of Vladimir Putin, usually sceptical about the European Union and often described as 'populist' – have been gaining ground across Europe for some years. The expected advance of Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in the German federal election this weekend is not, therefore, evidence of some new phenomenon that the traditional parties struggle to understand. Viktor Orban has been prime minister of Hungary since 2010. Giorgia Meloni became prime minister of Italy three years ago. There are right-wing 'populist' governments in Austria and Slovakia. Geert Wilders's Freedom Party is the largest party in the Netherlands parliament and part of a four-party coalition government. Marine le Pen's party is the main opposition in the French parliament. In Britain, the success of the pro-EU centre-left Labour Party in last year's election only temporarily obscured the rise of a similar anti-immigration populism in the years before the EU referendum of 2016. It may be that the AfD is different in kind as well as perhaps in degree; that it is more of a sinister threat to liberal democratic values. Or it may be that the sensitivities about Germany's past make it seem so. But the important point about the AfD is that it is no more likely to be part of the government of Germany after these elections than it was before. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, has made it clear that he would rather lead a grand coalition with the Social Democrats than rely on the support of the AfD for a government exclusively of 'the right'. And the broader point about this election, as with so many across Europe, is that there is no mystery about how to fight the kind of politics that the AfD represents. The German economy has stagnated, which means that the historic error of Angela Merkel in allowing immigration on an unprecedented scale 10 years ago has returned to haunt her successors. The Independent is in favour of immigration under fair rules and at sustainable levels. A certain amount of immigration is not only a good thing but essential to a successful, dynamic, open economy. However, Ms Merkel overdid it, just as Boris Johnson lost control of immigration in Britain more recently. And neither the German economy nor the British has been able to offer the improvements to the standard of living that their citizens expected since the pandemic. This malaise has been disastrous for incumbent governments the world over and it would seem that Olaf Scholz, who has been German chancellor for three and a half years, is no exception. It does mean, however, that it is possible to defeat the politics of the AfD – as well as the sometimes similar politics of the extreme so-called left, in Germany's case that of the pro-Russian BSW, the breakaway from Die Linke which is struggling to win the five per cent share of the vote that would guarantee seats in the Bundestag. The parties of the mainstream know what they have to do: they have to offer the voters hope – the hope of prosperity, decent public services and fair rules on immigration. It is a terrible paradox that the most serious threat to the values of liberal democratic Europe, including the right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own future, should come not from the likes of the AfD but from outside: from US president Donald Trump.
