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20260920 083000 UTC
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[00:00:12] expectations, and well, that is what
[00:00:35] Only bread, bed, and soap, nothing more for
[00:00:39] asylum seekers, was the slogan in 2024 by the
[00:00:43] radical German right, which today re-edits and
[00:00:46] radicalizes. AFD says:
[00:00:49] for children of irregular immigrants, separate
[00:00:52] schools; for refugees, areas
[00:00:56] far from the general population, establishments with
[00:00:59] foreigners. They must pay to monitor them, because they claim that
[00:01:03] they increase violence. This is an alternative for
[00:01:07] AFD in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany that triumphed in the local elections of Saxony Anhalt, with its leader
[00:01:11] Ulrich Segmund, who intends to give a more friendly face to a
[00:01:15] group accused by the German Evangelical Church of
[00:01:19] wanting to destroy democracy. They were
[00:01:22] three seats short of taking over the local government, capitalizing on the
[00:01:25] discontent against Chancellor Merz's government and the depressed
[00:01:29] economy. From that area, they present themselves as the only
[00:01:32] representatives who know how to connect with the people, of
[00:01:36] whom only Germans are truly a part. "My
[00:01:39] heart is bleeding," said a normally cold Angela
[00:01:43] Merkel, in response to this election result, as if to
[00:01:46] gauge what it means in the country that experienced the horror of
[00:01:50] Nazism, that AFD has for the first
[00:01:53] time won local
[00:01:55] what excites me most is elections. What is happening in the rest of Europe and how does it question the
[00:01:58] common project? What do these movements tell us in Latin
[00:02:02] America? We discuss it on Global Connection for CNN
[00:02:06] in Spanish.
[00:02:09] We begin the analysis of this exciting topic with Franco de Ledone,
[00:02:13] who is a researcher, as well as an analyst, specialist in all matters
[00:02:17] of authoritarianism and global far-right, and a doctor in
[00:02:20] communication from the Free University of Berlin, author of the book "Epidemia
[00:02:32] the program of Alternative for Germany, but what
[00:02:35] is this party and tell us a little about its
[00:02:38] history?
[00:02:40] Well, it is a party that is located
[00:02:43] democratic what AFD within the family of what are called radical right parties, that is, parties
[00:02:47] that through democratic tools manage
[00:02:51] to advance and possibly reach power, and from those
[00:02:54] positions, they have an agenda that erodes different
[00:02:58] aspects of democracy, democratic
[00:03:02] institutions, values, rights, and guarantees. It is
[00:03:06] a party that was born approximately 13 years ago in
[00:03:09] 2013 precisely as a eurosceptic party,
[00:03:14] impressive mobilization that is, it criticized the positions of the government at that time, the government of Angela Merkel, of
[00:03:18] supporting or rescuing banks and
[00:03:22] rescuing the euro itself. Do you remember that crisis, that
[00:03:24] moment? And over time, it mutated and became a
[00:03:28] much more radical party. It has
[00:03:31] these ideas that are much closer to what appeared in
[00:03:35] other Western European parties like the National Front at the time of Jean
[00:03:39] Marie Le Pen as a comparison, I mean,
[00:03:43] and it is the party that we find today where from
[00:03:46] a point of view of the current German
[00:03:50] political reality, it is absolutely normalized and
[00:03:54] right? To impact day. obtaining results like those of last Sunday. Let's talk about the
[00:03:57] leader of this party,
[00:04:00] AFD, but in Saxony Anhalt, who
[00:04:04] is Ulrich
[00:04:05] Segmund? Segmund is a character
[00:04:09] who is now occupying
[00:04:12] a prominent position in the Alternative for Germany party, but it has
[00:04:15] not always been this way, he has not always had
[00:04:19] such a relevant
[00:04:21] What ingredients must you have to be successful in place. He gained this space after the
[00:04:24] electoral campaign last summer where he obtained the result he did,
[00:04:28] but he is a person who comes from the most extremist sector of the
[00:04:32] party, the most radicalized sector. He is a
[00:04:34] person who has contacts
[00:04:38] with sectors of neo-Nazism, who has contacts
[00:04:41] with sectors like the identitarian movement, which are
[00:04:45] classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
[00:04:47] as extremist positions and movements,
[00:04:52] as an opposition, and in that sense, he constitutes one of
[00:04:56] the elements that lead the Alternative for
[00:04:59] Germany party to position itself in those more anti-democratic
[00:05:03] spaces, and to build a kind of
[00:05:06] agenda that points more to authoritarian tendencies at this
[00:05:10] moment. Yes. And what is the key to his
[00:05:13] success? Because among several things they have said is that somehow,
[00:05:17] beyond his real proposals, he appears very direct,
[00:05:20] young, in contrast to Chancellor Merth,
[00:05:24] and with a very
[00:05:27] intelligently planned
[00:05:29] campaign. Yes, that's true, he has
[00:05:33] a quality that other radical right parties around
[00:05:37] the world also have, and that is a fairly
[00:05:39] strong and fairly
[00:05:43] efficient ability to handle political
[00:05:46] communication. He can construct
[00:05:49] messages in a fairly accessible way,
[00:05:52] in some cases even simplified, which allows him
[00:05:56] to reach a very broad audience through social networks
[00:06:00] and what platforms offer with these short videos and so on.
[00:06:03] Other parties may not reach as well. It is also true that
[00:06:07] during the campaign, he showed a very people-friendly profile,
[00:06:10] a profile
[00:06:13] showing himself as a member of a community, right? But what
[00:06:16] explains this local victory of
[00:06:20] also regarding national politics?
[00:06:23] Well, first of all, it must be said that Saxony-Anhalt
[00:06:27] is a fairly small, sparsely populated, and quite
[00:06:31] poor region, one of the poorest, which means we are always talking about a
[00:06:34] symbolic blow with what happened last Sunday. Now, as you
[00:06:38] rightly point out, it belongs to a particular
[00:06:41] region in Germany that is known as Eastern
[00:06:45] Germany or East Germany, which is precisely located where the
[00:06:48] old GDR was, the territories of the old
[00:06:52] GDR. This territory
[00:06:55] was unified with West Germany in the
[00:06:59] early 90s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a process
[00:07:03] of, if you will, annexation took place there. The
[00:07:06] point is that in this process of reunification,
[00:07:10] a narrative has been built and developed
[00:07:14] that has been passed down from generation to generation of a kind of
[00:07:17] injustice, an injustice in economic terms, but also in
[00:07:21] terms of positioning in decision-making
[00:07:24] places, etc. This narrative has
[00:07:27] become a kind of profound
[00:07:31] frustration, even for people who did not experience the process but
[00:07:34] who received it later by listening to their
[00:07:37] parents, their grandparents. And
[00:07:40] from there, no party could take
[00:07:44] responsibility for that narrative. The majority of people
[00:07:47] who understood that process as unfair ended up taking refuge in
[00:07:51] abstention. Now,
[00:07:55] has done is to build an identity, a
[00:07:58] political identity through that narrative. AFD has presented itself as the
[00:08:02] only party that responds to that anger, that can
[00:08:06] channel it. From there, they have been able to
[00:08:09] establish a kind of connection that goes beyond the political
[00:08:13] program, that goes beyond the concrete content they
[00:08:16] propose. There lies at least part of that very important
[00:08:20] success they have had. Now, and of course,
[00:08:23] one can also see an
[00:08:26] with the highest participation recorded at 78%, with
[00:08:30] new voters, discontent, punishment for the general
[00:08:33] government, the leaderships we mentioned, the strategies we
[00:08:37] mentioned, also against immigration
[00:08:41] and in favor of greater
[00:08:44] stability with bad economic figures. I would like to ask you, Franco, what can you tell us
[00:08:48] from your perspective, and what effect can
[00:08:52] this local election have on the
[00:08:54] next local elections, but especially thinking about
[00:08:58] 2029 in the next national general
[00:09:01] election, how much can it shake things up, how much can it
[00:09:05] change the German political system?
[00:09:09] Let's see, first of all, it's a novelty that AFD is on the verge
[00:09:12] of forming a government. It won another election in Thuringia two
[00:09:16] years ago, if I remember correctly, but it was never as close as now to
[00:09:20] forming a government. As you correctly pointed out, it needs only three
[00:09:24] seats and would achieve it, or with some abstentions as well. This puts
[00:09:27] AFD in a role and a space it didn't have until
[00:09:31] now. This allows AFD to pressure even
[00:09:35] more the rest of the parties to break the
[00:09:38] cordon sanitaire, to build or at least to
[00:09:42] be open to building dialogue with AFD, something that no party
[00:09:46] wants to do except the left, the conservative
[00:09:50] left, which is a relatively new party that emerged two years ago and has shown
[00:09:54] itself open to this. But yes, going back to your question,
[00:09:57] AFD now has a much stronger
[00:10:01] position in the political spectrum, or rather, on the political
[00:10:04] stage. This will surely generate an impact on the
[00:10:07] other regional elections, but above
[00:10:11] all, I believe that the most significant symbolic impact is at the federal
[00:10:15] level, in terms of showing that the discontent with the
[00:10:18] federal government, with Fredrik's government, is more
[00:10:22] present than ever. That exception
[00:10:25] that there might be with the electoral promises, both
[00:10:28] to the more progressive sector and to the more
[00:10:32] conservative sector, would not be meeting
[00:10:37] would perhaps reflect the growing AFD vote
[00:10:41] that we are seeing in the polls now. Yes, of course, and the vote of the
[00:10:45] CDU, which supports Merz, falling by half.
[00:10:48] Briefly, to close, you who are
[00:10:51] there, how has the victory, even if regional,
[00:10:54] and the advance of this far- right resonated
[00:10:58] in a country that experienced World War II,
[00:11:00] the horror of Nazism? Well, first of all, I would say
[00:11:04] that in general there is a significant concern,
[00:11:08] because of course, as I told you a while ago, the connections
[00:11:11] that may exist with more extremist sectors, neo-Nazis, are
[00:11:14] worrying. It has come to light that some of the candidates who were
[00:11:18] voted for on that list belonged to the Stasi,
[00:11:21] which was the secret police of the GDR. Others have deep connections
[00:11:25] with neo-Nazi sectors,
[00:11:29] openly neo-Nazi sectors,
[00:11:31] connections with Russia, etc. There are many elements that generate
[00:11:34] concern. Now, when you look at the reactions in general,
[00:11:38] you start to try to identify different
[00:11:41] profiles. You also find opinions such as,
[00:11:45] "Well, they should be allowed to govern to see if they do well,
[00:11:48] and if they don't do well, they will be punished electorally,"
[00:11:51] a position that I,
[00:11:55] I doubt, I doubt that this will be the case,
[00:11:59] because in general it has not happened. We have examples all over the world that
[00:12:02] when the far right comes to power, it doesn't necessarily receive that
[00:12:06] punishment. And there are other positions that have to do
[00:12:10] with, "Well, this will help the rest
[00:12:13] of the parties realize that they need to change their stance on some issues, that they need to
[00:12:17] change their discourse on some issues," something that also makes
[00:12:20] me doubt, because if they haven't succeeded until now,
[00:12:24] we are already, in some way, at the end of the
[00:12:28] process of normalization. There have been other warning signs, so I also
[00:12:31] doubt that will happen. The point is that, in any case, AFD occupies
[00:12:35] this place, a place that 13 or 14 years ago was unthinkable
[00:12:39] for a party of this type to have this role in Germany, and
[00:12:43] Germany, as well as the rest of Europe and in many other places in the world,
[00:12:47] will have to learn to live with that and try to uphold
[00:12:51] democracy and democratic
[00:16:36] What does the triumph of this radical right in
[00:16:40] a local election in Germany mean for Germany, for Europe, and for Latin America? We will
[00:16:44] discuss it with Michel Jafeman, academic from the Institute of Political
[00:16:48] Science at the Catholic University. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much, Monica, for the
[00:16:51] invitation. We talk about local leadership,
[00:16:54] specifically in Saxony-Anhalt, with the
[00:16:57] local leader Ulricht Segmund of AFD. But what
[00:17:01] does national leadership mean, again a
[00:17:04] woman, Alice Weidel,
[00:17:07] the head of a radical right-wing party, as we have seen in other places?
[00:17:11] Exactly, we have the cases, right, of Marine Le Pen in France, Giorgia
[00:17:14] Meloni in Italy, the leader of the far-right
[00:17:17] party of Denmark. Female leadership is repeated in the
[00:17:21] European far-right. This is a particularity of these
[00:17:24] European parties that promote female leadership because
[00:17:27] they understand that gender equality and women's
[00:17:31] rights are civilizing achievements of... and
[00:17:34] that allows them to contrast these projects against the threat posed
[00:17:38] by the East, especially the Middle East and Muslim migration,
[00:17:41] right, that reaches Europe, which understands women in a different
[00:17:45] role within society and in a more patriarchal
[00:17:48] role, certainly subordinate to authority. This is how these
[00:17:52] more radical right-wing groups portray it.
[00:17:55] Is it correct to call them the radical
[00:17:58] right? The categorization we are using and the
[00:18:01] typology that is most often
[00:18:05] proposed is that there is a family of parties that is the far
[00:18:09] right. There we have two projects: the extreme right, which is characterized
[00:18:12] by trying to operate outside of democratic rules, and
[00:18:16] right-wing radical populism, which plays within
[00:18:21] norms and takes advantage of democratic institutions to
[00:18:24] roll back democracy. AFD
[00:18:28] would be in that sub-family. It is
[00:18:31] advancing, and how! What can this
[00:18:34] election tell us about the advance of this radical
[00:18:37] populist right in Europe? Well, we are,
[00:18:41] according to what various authors have proposed,
[00:18:44] in a fourth wave of the far-right, and in this
[00:18:47] fourth wave, of course, we have seen the European cases, Viktor
[00:18:51] Orbán, the case of Marine Le Pen herself, who has not yet
[00:18:54] acceded to government but has grown
[00:18:57] nationally in the
[00:19:00] representation in France, the case of Giorgia Meloni, as we mentioned,
[00:19:03] and also Viktor Orbán, who accedes to government and
[00:19:06] then withdraws. The Polish far-right
[00:19:10] party also accedes to government and then loses the next election. That's why
[00:19:14] we talk about Hungary exactly with Orbán, and
[00:19:17] that's why we talk about the wave, right, that in a certain
[00:19:21] way activates and deactivates
[00:19:24] cases in different parts of the
[00:19:27] continent. But we are facing a phenomenon that is extending
[00:19:31] worldwide, which is why we can speak of a wave in
[00:19:34] general terms, and of the
[00:19:38] same logic, right? Just as many female and male authors have paid attention to
[00:19:42] Europe, now they are also paying attention to Latin America, and with the cases that are emerging
[00:19:46] in our region, what can we say
[00:19:49] then about the European project? Is it
[00:19:52] threatened by these groups that are at least
[00:19:55] Eurosceptic? Exactly, one of the logics
[00:19:58] of the emergence of these parties is opposition,
[00:20:02] right, to globalization. They are profoundly
[00:20:04] anti-globalist. Or anti-
[00:20:08] globalization. They are
[00:20:11] sovereignists; they understand that countries should resolve their political issues
[00:20:15] within their borders. So, transnational bodies,
[00:20:19] right, and international governance like the European Union
[00:20:22] are threatening. Think that, as you already mentioned,
[00:20:26] AFD emerged
[00:20:30] right, to the European Union's plan to rescue countries like Greece
[00:20:33] during the crisis between 2008 and 2013, and today
[00:20:37] it is also opposed, for
[00:20:40] example, to support for Ukraine against Russia. Exactly,
[00:20:43] this is one of the fundamental characteristics of these radical right-wing
[00:20:47] populist projects: a nostalgic
[00:20:51] authoritarianism, right? In this case, a nostalgia
[00:20:54] for the German project of Eastern Europe, right, a
[00:20:58] search for vindication of that previous state, right, of a previous
[00:21:01] order that was lost and that in a way explains the shortcomings and
[00:21:05] difficulties faced by that sector, that area of Germany, even if it is a
[00:21:09] different ideological sign. Even if it is a different ideological sign, and that is curious, because
[00:21:13] there was a communist regime, but there was an order, and there is a
[00:21:16] nostalgia for that order. On the other hand,
[00:21:20] right, a populist discourse in the logic of separating
[00:21:24] society between a "them" and an "us," right? "Them"
[00:21:27] being the corrupt elite, in this case the corrupt transnational
[00:21:31] elites, the European Union, right, that wants
[00:21:34] to threaten that "us," right, which is the pure German
[00:21:37] people. Also, Muslim migration,
[00:21:40] which is a civilizational, cultural threat to pure
[00:21:44] Germany. And finally, a component known as nativism,
[00:21:47] which is different from xenophobia, which is the idea
[00:21:50] that countries should operate with the natives of those
[00:21:54] regions, that is, Germany for the Germans,
[00:21:57] right, and German decisions made by Germans. What happens in
[00:22:01] Latin America? What can this German process tell us or
[00:22:05] teach us for our continent? Well, the
[00:22:08] far-right has a diffusion effect, as happens with
[00:22:11] many political phenomena in general and in global
[00:22:15] terms too, right? From Latin
[00:22:18] America, we have seen the advance of the
[00:22:21] far-right in Europe, and it is no coincidence that there are
[00:22:24] links between the parties, right, of these new right-wing
[00:22:28] parties or the far-right, as different authors are studying
[00:22:32] them, right, with parties like Vox, right, with parties
[00:22:35] like AFD or FPO of Austria, which had
[00:22:39] its MEPs at the Madrid Forum last week here
[00:22:43] in Santiago. So the success in Europe, in a certain
[00:22:47] way, it is inevitable to think that it encourages these projects
[00:22:50] in Latin America. But we must understand that there are
[00:22:53] fundamental variations. The migratory issue is not
[00:22:57] a political issue for the Latin American far-right,
[00:23:00] right? Most countries, for example, Brazil, Argentina, that
[00:23:04] have had governments or are having
[00:23:06] them, like the Argentine case, do not have
[00:23:10] migration as a public problem or a public
[00:23:13] agenda item, as it can be for the Chilean case. Yes,
[00:23:17] economy, yes, indeed, security.
[00:23:21] And the idea of that intrusion, right, of
[00:23:24] agents outside of national states, right, in local
[00:23:27] politics, let's call it the UN, let's call it the
[00:23:30] WHO for the Argentine case, right? But of
[00:23:34] entities that seek to interfere in local
[00:23:37] politics, right, with the aim of also, in the populist logic,
[00:23:40] harming that "us" that is the pure people. I'll close by asking you something that
[00:23:44] is always very difficult for political scientists,
[00:23:47] but do you think this will still be
[00:23:50] a specific event going forward to the next
[00:23:54] regional elections, will the
[00:23:58] more radical populist right of AFD in
[00:24:02] Germany also advance, and perhaps thinking about
[00:24:06] 2029, be the leading force in the national
[00:24:09] elections? I believe there is a process
[00:24:12] that an author named Valentín
[00:24:15] calls the "information shock," which is when these
[00:24:19] parties win elections, increase their representation,
[00:24:22] and when they come to power, other political
[00:24:26] leaders see that they don't seize power by force, they see that they
[00:24:30] comply with institutions, they see that they
[00:24:33] are even capable of sitting down to negotiate, and what some in France have
[00:24:36] called the "cordon sanitaire" is lowered. In
[00:24:39] Germany, the other parties have called it the "firewall,"
[00:24:44] it. Exactly, that advance will depend on how the other
[00:24:48] political forces
[00:24:50] align around this
[00:24:53] far-right force that is growing electorally.
[00:24:57] On the one hand, how much they keep it marginalized and how much
[00:25:00] they integrate it into the political mainstream, right? How much
[00:25:04] capacity they have, right, are they willing to form a coalition with them
[00:25:08] or not? We are already seeing the discussions,
[00:25:11] right, from the German Christian Democrats, AFD itself, that there is no possibility of a coalition, but the truth is...
[00:25:15] that they don't have a majority so they have to negotiate the local government to
[00:25:19] reach 50% of the seats,
[00:25:22] so part of the successes of the far right also has an
[00:25:25] endogenous character in the sense that it is outside of the parties and
[00:25:29] it has to do with how other political forces react, I understand, but also how
[00:25:33] the media reacts, how much they normalize these
[00:25:36] projects, because the language
[00:25:39] can change and they can moderate certain antisemitic positions
[00:25:43] that they have put forward, Holocaust deniers that they have put forward, or ultimately
[00:25:47] uh uh Islamophobic ones that they have put forward,
[00:25:50] but the project remains, so they moderate
[00:25:54] in order to grow, and when they grow,
[00:25:57] the environment gives it a boost. Michel, thank you very much for having
[00:26:01] joined us in global connection. Thank you very much, break and we'll be back.
[00:26:17] Here on
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[00:28:25] And I know it's difficult, but how do we reach a
[00:28:27] balance in which we don't lose sight of
[00:28:31] this that we had all over the place when we started
[00:28:34] preparing this talk, which is the common
[00:28:38] goal, that we all benefit, not just a
[00:28:41] few, it should not be a business,
[00:28:45] because as a business, other things can be invented,
[00:28:48] but something so delicate and with so much technological advancement as artificial
[00:28:52] intelligence must have a
[00:28:56] basic condition, which is that it serves a
[00:28:59] majority of humans.
[00:29:19] To understand the world you need to seek
[00:29:22] the truth, let's return to the era when we had to be much
[00:29:25] more human, that's why we follow the facts,
[00:29:29] wherever they take us, no matter how far we have to go.
[00:29:35] there are new statements from President Donald Trump, I take an
[00:29:38] external perspective, we delve into the
[00:29:41] data, ready for whatever comes, the concern is for the
[00:29:45] common Cuban, we
[00:29:47] face the world, who will finance Maduro's
[00:29:51] defense, find joy in new perspectives and
[00:29:54] new horizons, every
[00:29:57] day, no matter where life takes
[00:30:00] you. We follow what
[00:30:03] matters to you, we forge a path towards
[00:30:07] truth and understanding of the world,
[00:30:23] October 6, deadline to see if AFD manages to
[00:30:27] form a local government, what repercussions does this have nationally
[00:30:31] for Germany and for Europe, we are following it
[00:30:34] closely, in global connection for CNN Spanish,
[00:30:50] we are CNN, the world leader in
[00:30:53] news.