No, the AfD are not the Nazis and neither are they Germany-s main problem right now

No, the AfD are not the Nazis and neither are they Germany-s main problem right now

President Steinmeier invokes the Weimar Republic as a warning to his people deliberately misremembering history to shut those people up
Unlike in countries such as Russia, the US, or France, the German presidency is not a powerful office. At least not in terms of what it can do directly or independently. Instead, Germany’s president is a largely representative figure, while real power to lead national policy belongs to the chancellor.
Yet the presidency is no mere decoration. According to , the authority of the office derives, above all, from the intellectual and moral influence it should exert, and whoever holds it embodies the unity of the state. In short, Germany’s president has two real jobs: to stand for national togetherness, especially when tensions increase and politics polarize, and to be a widely acknowledged moral authority.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current president, has failed quite spectacularly on both counts, and his recent speech on the Day of German Unity has shown once again how and why. This is a scandal, but it is not a surprise. Even before his latest performance, Steinmeier had earned himself the nickname Walter der Spalter, which translates as Walter the Splitter.
And for good reasons: Although charged with integrating the nation, Steinmeier has a long record of explicitly calling for the marginalization and exclusion of large numbers of Germans, not only but in particularly those who dare represent or vote for the new-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Usually implicitly but always clearly, the president has repeatedly smeared them as extremists beyond the pale of political participation. Last year, for instance,  – a date with several historical associations, including the massive pogrom of 1938 and thus the Holocaust – to, in effect, single out the AfD and its supporters as at least the successors of Nazism if not simply its new embodiment.
This year, in a revealingly snobbish sally, he has labelled them . For Steinmeier, clearly, there is not merely a distinction between democrats and non-democrats, but also one between inferior (vulgar) and superior (presumably sophisticated) democrats. Steinmeier clearly sees himself as a distinguished example of the latter. On a personal level, the obvious smugness of his attitude is merely deeply embarrassing. What is worse is that taking popular sovereignty seriously – as prescribed by the German constitution – would look vastly different.
Now, in his German Unity Day speech, Steinmeier has taken aim at what he himself described as large numbers of Germany’s citizens. They, the president has correctly noticed, are displaying That, for Steinmeier, is no reason to seriously examine what might be wrong with that order or to make a genuine effort to understand the reasons for that distrust. His scant and general remarks on Berlin’s own mistakes and the anxieties of ordinary Germans illustrated not humility but aloof and patronizing disinterest.
Generously conceding that maybe not all of those who have lost trust in the status quo are against democracy as such, Steinmeier explicitly kept all of them under precisely that suspicion. In essence, he conflated many Germans’ very plausible discontent with the devastating policies imposed by radical-Centrist establishment parties with rejecting the constitutional order or even democracy as such: If you are not for us, so the message, you’re not just against us but a virtually criminal misfit.
How convenient – if, that is, you are Frank-Walter Steinmeier and your whole political biography happens to represent precisely that establishment, its privileges, its obstinate refusal to learn, and its failure.
Read more Steinmeier also had harsh words for a whole catalog of horrors, of typical Centrist paranoia, blame-shifting, and scapegoating: the unbearable demagoguery of extremist forces and their ; outside powers that seek (meaning Rus